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Tim, I'm terribly sorry but my papers are inaccessible, from living in one
room with a large library, two shelves deep, and books piled on books, and
computer, but the account where Petrus Alfonsi visits Prior Walcher of
Malvern and they discuss moon or sun eclipses is fascinating - and doesn't
compute. The good Prior's monument slab can still be seen at Malvern Priory.
I have a hunch that the account occurs in one of the volumes such as Lynn
Thorndike, on Adelard of Bath and so forth, or perhaps it is in something
edited by Charles Homer Haskins? Or that it is in a journal. Pre-1960's
vintage. I found the Latin text of the conversation from a footnote
reference. I wrote on Petrus Alfonsi for Sir Richard Southern when in
graduate school, and I'm now retired. Apologies.
What other conversations do we have from the Middle Ages? There is this one.
There is Margery Kempe's and Julian's. It is almost like having a tape
recorder into the past. There is also Petrus' Dialogus with himself as
Moise. It's in PL. He comes upon himself who begins the text in disgust by
exclaiming `Veh!' if I remember correctly. There had been an earlier and
much drier treatise by Prior Walcher on the same topic. The dialogue form
instead seems to live and breathe and one watches the participants learn.
And then, of course, Dante is using such dialogues throughout the Commedia.
One hears the voices. And they remind one that in the Middle Ages and
Renaissance people didn't begin Latin with Caesar, but with the plays of
African Terence!



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