The Second Book of The Memorial del pecador remut by Felip de Malla

Abstract

This article proposes a biographical and genre-based reading of the second book of the Memorial del pecador remut by Felip de Malla (1378?-1431), an incomplete and unique manuscript preserved in the Archive of the Valencia Cathedral. The purpose is to get a general idea of the work as a whole, its first book having been published by Els Nostres Clàssics, and to add new information provided by the second book to what we already know. Felip de Malla
earned his Master of Arts in Paris under Jacques de Nouvion, a member of the French humanistic circle tied to the Collége de Navarre, which also included Clamanges and Montreuil. He also studied Theology under the Chancellor of the University of Paris, Jean Gerson, the most distinguished intellectual of the group. De Malla was also a classmate of a well-known Hussite, Jerome of Prague. The work itself is a literal and moral exegetic treatise on the passion and death of Christ based on the Book of Matthew. From a generic theological standpoint it is influenced by his teacher, Gerson. Within the economy of the work, the second part construes the theological foundations that sustain the “artistic”, that is, rhetorical first part—the one we already know—with an idea of theology as an inquiry into the Biblical text which entails a return to sources prior to the speculative systematisation that began in the second half of the 12th century and continued into the 13th, which Felip de Malla does not
reject, either. Finally, provisional conclusions are offered as to the order and date of composition, as well as to the defective transmission of the manuscript.