Sources of the Notabilia (1427), a medieval handwritten grammatical treatise from the Portuguese monastery of Alcobaça

Abstract

Abstract The most significant Latin-Portuguese medieval grammatical treatise, due mainly to its complexity and the great number of folios, remains unpublished. It originates from the Cistercian Monastery of Alcobaça and belongs to the Portuguese National Library, codex Alc. 79. The manuscript presents the (unfinished) incipit Hic incipiunt notabilia que fecit cunctis and is commonly known by the Latin noun Notabilia [noteworthy things]. The Alcobacensis manuscript is a quite elaborate volume, copied perhaps by two hands and it is divided into 31 chapters. The text identifies several main sources, such as Donatus (mid-4th century), Priscian (late 5th to early 6th century), Alexander of Villa Dei (c.1170–c.1250), Giovanni Balbi de Genova (fl.1286–1298), and two pre-modist or speculative grammarians, Petrus Helias (c.1100–post-1166) and Robert Kilwardby (c.1215–1279), but it might have other unnamed references, such as, hypothetically, the Catalan-Aragonese grammaticae proverbiandi (fifteenth century) and the Italian Notabilia by Giovanni da Soncino (? –c.1363).