Quintilian, in his famous Institutio oratoria quotes Cicero 689 times, not counting innumerable allusions and references to Cicero that lace his prose. As for the transmission of Quintilian through the Middle Ages, there are ten major extant editions of Quintilian produced from the late ninth to the end of the eleventh centuries, that constitute the basis for our modern twentieth, twenty-first century editions, especially the famous Turin manuscript produced in Sankt-Gallen during the course of the early eleventh century. Furthermore, there are at least twenty early printed editions. In short, Quintilian’s work not only is without a doubt enormously indebted to Cicero, but Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria infused the medieval Latin reading public not only with what must have seemed to them the legendary figure of Cicero, an orator and intellectual of nearly divine capacity, but also with very solid subjects, expressions, questions, and structures of arguments, not to mention a whole quarry of pithy sayings and epigrams suitable for every possible occasion. Quintilian’s Cicero also offered an education, not only in rhetoric, but for life. This lecture will explore Cicero through Quintilian’s eyes and his profound influence on medieval mentality.
Nancy van Deusen, holds a PhD in Musicology, Indiana University, Bloomington; is currently Professor of Musicology, Benezet Professor of the Humanities, Claremont Graduate University, and is Director of the Claremont Consortium in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Claremont Colleges and Graduate University. She has taught widely at Indiana University, the University of Basel, Switzerland, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Central European University, Budapest, and within the California State University system. She has received American Philosophical Society, numerous NEH, and Fulbright grants; and has published on music within the medieval city of Rome, music, liturgy, and institutional structure within the medieval cathedral milieu of Nevers, France, the medieval sequence within its Latin codicological and paleographical contexts, as well as its significance for the history of ideas; music as medieval science and within the curriculum of the early university.