Manuscript Summary:Felix Lope de Vega y Carpio (1562-1635), author of many comedias de santos, finished this Historia de Barlán y Josafat, comedia in three acts and in verse at home „En Madrid a primero de febrero de 1611.“ This complete manuscript contains numerous corrections and revisions by the author. This story of a conversion is more than an authentic Christian legend (then attributed to Saint John of Damascus) — it is above all a Christianized story. In the prince, who first gives up his palace in order to learn about the plagues of the world and then leaves his throne for the meditative life of an ascetic, one certainly recognizes Buddha. The edifying Christian story, set at the banks of the Ganges, is nothing other than an adaptation of Vie du Bodhisattva, a 2nd-4th century Sanskrit text, which over centuries was translated and adapted first by the Manichaeans, then by the Arabs, Georgians and Byzantines, until it finally reached the far distant people of the Western World: Lope de Vega’s work thus (without the author’s having been aware of this) is part of one of the most impressive chains of intellectual transmission in history.(duc)
Online Since: 12/17/2015
Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, V-7.2
Paper · 114 pp. · 15.9 x 21.5 cm · 1 February 1611
Felix Lope de Vega y Carpi, Barlaán y Josafat, autograph
How to quote:
Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, V-7.2, Front cover + Front paste-down – Felix Lope de Vega y Carpi, Barlaán y Josafat, autograph (https://www.e-codices.ch/en/list/one/fmb/ms-Vega-V-007-002)