This website seeks to provide open access research materials from Flores Bernardi ("Bernard's flowers"), a Latin florilegium comprising a large number of Latin quotations attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux that was compiled in the mid-13th century, probably by Guillaume, Dean of Notre-Dame de Courtrai (pictured at right), as argued by Thomas Falmagne in "Le Liber Florigerus: Recherches sur l'attribution d'un florilège augustinien du XIIIe siecle (avant 1260)," Revue des Études Augustiniennes 45 (1999): 139-81; Falmagne thus challenges the traditional attribution of this florilegium to Guillaume de Tournai O.S.B.
The text was first printed by Johann Sensenschmidt at Nuremberg not after 1470 (ISTC ib00388000). From January 2023 to March 2024 three student research assistants (acknowledged below) generated a transcription of this edition from the copy provided freely online by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich: 2Inc.s.a.186.
The sources for the hundreds of quotations that comprise this florilegium are currently being identified and documented.
"Domnus W. de Curtracho"
Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine,
MS lat. 753, fol.1r
(reproduced with permission)
The next phase of this project will convert the text into an edition of the 13th-century copy in Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS lat. 753, which by summer 2025 will be published on this website and become searchable via the Janus Intertextuality Search Engine, developed by Frank Tompa and Andrew Kane in 2008 for The Electronic Manipulus florum Project.
The editor gratefully acknowledges financial support for this project provided by an Insight Grant awarded in 2021 by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for The Digital Auctores Project. Funds allocated to this portion of the project paid the salaries of three student research assistants who contributed to its development from January to April 2023 (Samantha Reid & Madison Hobbins) and since May 2023 (Iris Bednarski). Thanks are also due to the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek for providing the open access digital copy of Sensenschmidt's incunable edition.