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''De mirabilibus urbis Romae'', preserved in a single manuscript in Cambridge, England,〔The late thirteenth-century copy, titled ''Narracio de mirabilibus urbis Romae'', is preserved in a vellum compilation of brief texts and excerpts at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, press mark L v 87, according to M. R. James, "Magister Gregorius de Mirabilibus Urbis Romae" ''The English Historical Review'' 32 No. 128 (October, 1917:531–54) p. 531.〕 is a medieval guide in Latin to the splendours of Rome, which was written in the mid-twelfth century by a certain Magister Gregorius ("Master Gregory") of Oxford.〔G. McN. Rushforth, "Magister Gregorius de mirabilibus urbis Romae: a new description of Rome in the twelfth century" ''Journal of Roman Studies'' 9 1919:14-58, reprinted in ''Codice topografico della città di Roma'' vol. III:143-67..〕 The outlook here is even more secular than the ''Mirabilia Urbis Romae'', Roberto Weiss noted.〔Weiss, ''The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity'' (Oxford: Blackwell) 1973:7f〕 Gregorius spent much of his time describing and even measuring the Roman ruins, and, according to Erwin Panofsky "had yielded so thoroughly to the 'magic spell' (''magica quaedam persuasio'') of a beautiful Venus statue that he felt compelled to visit it time and again in spite of its considerable distance from his lodgings".〔Panofsky, ''Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art'' 1960, pp. 72f.〕 Magister Gregorius is the first to take notice of the Roman bronze called the "''Spinario''", then among ancient bronzes at the Lateran. Panofsky included Magister Gregorius's little book among examples of the reawakening of interest in classical antiquities evinced by a handful of connoisseurs in twelfth-century Rome.〔Studied at some length by James Bruce Ross, "A Study of twelfth-century interest in the antiquities of Rome", in ''Medieval and Historigraphical Studies in Honor of J.W. Thompson'' Chicago 1938, pp. 302–21.〕 Still, like most of his contemporaries raised in familiarity with the Gothic hand, the unfamiliar Roman letters in inscriptions sometimes eluded his translation.〔Roberto Weiss 1973:8.〕 The fourteenth-century chronicler Ranulph Higden knew the ''Mirabilibus urbis Romae'', for he quoted from it in book I of his universal history, ''Polychronicon'', so extensively in fact, that his manuscripts have been useful in establishing a good text of his source. The existence of Magister Gregorius's work had been known since the mid-nineteenth century from Higden's mention of him as a source.〔Higden's extracts were published in the Rolls edition of the ''Polychronicon'', ''Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden monachi Cestrensis'', ed. Churchill Babington and J.R. Lumby, 9 vols., Rolls Series, 41 (London, 1865-66).〕 Magister Gregorius, known to us only from passing remarks in his Prologue, did not depend on other accounts of Rome, though he had read ''De septem miraculis mundi'' attributed to Bede. He was not a pilgrim, for he remarks on pilgrims with scorn, but a man with business at Rome, a member of an unidentified but literate group, whose members pressed him to write his account. His references to Rome's churches are brief: Old St. Peter's Basilica and the Lateran are mentioned almost in passing, and Santa Maria Rotonda (the Pantheon) for its unusual form; he paces it off and finds the structure is 266 feet wide. He refers three times to the destruction of statues by Gregory the Great and the Temple Of Minerva, "once beautiful but torn down by the great efforts of the Christians". This "document of unique value which is completely independent of the ''Mirabilia'', a description of Rome by a foreign traveler written from a secular and antiquarian point of view and based primarily on personal observation supplemented by the best local tradition"〔Ross 1938, p. 316.〕 was first reported to scholars by M. R. James, in 1917.〔 James, "Magister Gregorius de mirabilibus urbis Romae" in ''The English Historical Review'', 32 No. 128 (October 1917), pp. 531–54.〕 The standard edition of the text with apparatus criticus is by R. B. C. Huygens (Leiden: Brill) 1970. A translation by John Osborne, ''The Marvels of Rome'', was published in Toronto, 1987. Gregorius opens with a personal expression of his stupefaction and wonder at the sight of the city from a distance, quoting the first lines of Hildebert's elegy on the grandeur that was Rome.〔Hildebert wrote two elegies ''De Roma'': no. 36 and 38 in ''Carmina minora'', ed. A. Brian Scott, 2nd edition (Walter de Gruyter, 2001).〕 After naming the he passes directly to the sculptures, in marble and in bronze, before describing the "palaces", among which he includes the Baths of Diocletian, then the triumphal arches and standing columns, before passing to burial pyramids and obelisks. The manuscript stops short, without a peroration, though the last page is not written on the verso, so that the text that has been preserved was complete as it stood. __NOTOC__ ==See also== *''Notitia Dignitatum'' *''Mirabilia Urbis Romae'' 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「De mirabilibus urbis Romae」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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