From Aquileia to Cologne: Reconsiderations of early Latin exegesis

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The first generation of Latin biblical exegetes, who were active as early as the mid-third century, has recently come into clearer focus through new manuscript finds and author attributions, allowing us to rewrite the history of this important genre in the Latin West. In a way, however, the picture has also become less clear, in particular if we contextualize these late ancient texts in a broader, late ancient to early medieval tradition. Neither the absolute chronology nor the interrelations between early Bible commentaries, nor, indeed, the names of their authors are as uncontroversial as has been suggested. The picture that emerges is one of a complex textual tradition, but also of the intentional shaping of an idealized scholarly past.

Hildegund Müller is a specialist of late antique Latin literature, both poetry and prose, especially the Latin Church Fathers. She has published a critical edition of a part of Augustine’s Psalm Sermons (Enarrationes in Psalmos) for the CSEL series, as well as numerous studies on this and other late antique sermon collections. Her interest in late antique homilies covers widely different aspects, such as their relation to classical rhetoric, their use of Biblical and other sources, the way they are shaped by improvisation and orality, and their Nachleben in the Middle Ages. Her other field of interest is the Latin Middle Ages, especially poetry and (early) exegesis. She wrote her dissertation on an exegetical collection from the late Carolingian era (the so-called ‘Luculentius’ homiliary) and published articles on poetry from the 11th and 12th centuries. Her favorite classical authors are Cicero and Horace.