2010
@article{MZN2010,
vgclass = {refpap},
author = {Mews, Constant J. and Tomas Zahora
and Dmitri Nikulin and David Squire},
title = {The \emph{Speculum morale} (c.\ 1300) and the study of
textual transformations: a research project in progress},
journal = {Vincent of Beauvais Newsletter},
volume = {35},
pages = {5--15},
year = {2010},
url = {/publications/postscript/2010/MewsZahoraNikulinSquire2010.pdf},
abstract = {The \emph{Speculum morale}, last printed in 1624 as the
third of four books making up the \emph{Speculum maius} of Vincent of
Beauvais, is an encyclopaedia of human behaviour, divided into three
constituent books. Yet because of the coincidence of identical text in
the \emph{Speculum morale} and the \emph{Summa theologiae} of Thomas
Aquinas the attribution to Vincent has been seen as problematic at
least since the late fifteenth century. In 1708 the French Dominican
scholar Jacques Echard published a massive (668pp) study of the
work---arguments that he subsequently summarized within his
continuation to Quetif's \emph{Scriptores ordinis praedicatorum}
(1719)---in which he demonstrated that the \emph{Speculum morale} cannot
have been written by Vincent of Beauvais. Endowed with a prodigious
capacity to recognise and identify Latin texts, and influenced by early
enlightenment notions of plagiarism, Echard described how he came upon
this realisation in 1704 while working in the library of Saint-Victor.
He argued that the \emph{Speculum morale} had not only borrowed on
occasion from Aquinas but the entire work had been plagiarized from the
writings of various moral theologians from the thirteenth century:
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Etienne de Bourbon (d. c. 1261), Peter of
Tarentaise (1225-1276), the Franciscan Richard of Middleton (c.
1249-1302), and an anonymous author of \emph{Tractatus de
consideratione novissimorum}. Echard's assessment of the \emph{Speculum
morale} as a derivative compilation has led to the work being largely
neglected by subsequent scholarship.
This article summarizes a research project on the \emph{Speculum
morale} currently being undertaken at Monash University, Australia that
seeks to rectify this situation. It considers the limitations of simply
dismissing the work as `plagiarism' and instead draws attention to the
potential significance of studying how texts can be subtly transformed
in the process of compilation. The project involves co-operation
between medievalists and IT specialists in transforming what is
commonly called `plagiarism' detection software into text similarity
detection software, with particular relevance to Latin texts.},
}