The Summula de Summa Raymundi in Gordan MS 95, Bryn Mawr College

Raymond of Peñafort’s Summa de casibus conscientiae, including its fourth book, the Summa de matrimonio, was one of the most successful texts for pastors and confessors composed in the Middle Ages. Written by a Dominican friar in the thirteenth century, it treated cases of conscience in a systematic manner. It also examined matrimony and the other sacraments. The Summa was subject to detailed commentary by William of Rennes, updates by John of Freiburg reflecting new papal pronouncements, and abridgment for pastors’ greater convenience. One important summary was done in Latin verse, a work attributed to Adam of Aldersbach, a Cistercian monk. Eventually Adam’s Summula de summa Raymundi itself received a detailed prose commentary. This commented version was printed in Cologne in the late fifteenth century. Gordan Manuscript 95 at Bryn Mawr College, from the collection of Phyllis Goodhart Gordan, contains Raymond’s Summa with his commentary on the trees of consanguinity and affinity, which indicated whether couples were not permitted to marry because of blood kinship or sexual contact. It concludes with an extended extract from Adam’s work added after the texts by Raymond had been copied. That extract varies from the printed version and two manuscripts located at the University of Pennsylvania. The excerpts display differences from the other available texts of Adam’s work, including additional lines of verse, suggesting that it was drawn from a different manuscript tradition.