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The awareness of the dynamic nature of medieval literature is one of the most significant accomplishments of modern-day philology.1 Nowadays, scholars, both in and outside medieval textual criticism, are aware that searching for the meaning of a text is treading on thin ice. A similar thing can be said about the audience of a text, as we have become aware that the intended audience of a text does not "predict" or necessarily match the audience of the manuscripts containing that text. Rather, the repeated copying of a text in different codices results in a plurality of audiences. In this essay, these general statements about the instability of meaning, interpretation, and audience of a text traveling from one manuscript to another are illustrated by discussing Augustijnken's short verse narrative, "Van der Heiliger Dryvoldicheit Vader Soen Heilge Geest Eyn Schoen Gedichte" ("On the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit: A Beautiful Poem"; henceforward, "Dryvoldicheit").2
Introduction: Augustijnken and (intended) Audience
There are seven texts attributed to the fourteenth-century itinerant storyteller Augustijnken.3 They have in common that they are all in Middle Dutch and relatively short, but otherwise there are considerable differences between them. In this corpus we find, for instance, a song, a riddle, and two predominantly religious texts. The first of the religious texts is a rather elaborate exegesis of the prologue of St. John's Gospel. This text amounts to around a thousand lines and is Augustijnken's longest and most learned text.
The second "Dryvoldicheit" is much shorter: 316 lines in the most extensive version. This text consists of two parts. In the first part, the Creation is explained as coming from a tree, which is rooted in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Everything comes in sevens: there are seven Sacraments, the tree has seven branches and seven flowers, there are seven days, seven planets, seven liberal arts, and so on. The second part of "Dryvoldicheit" combines two lists of seven: seven religious authorities (from pope and cardinal down to monk) and seven secular authorities (from emperor and king down to squire). The two lists are combined seven times: an emperor and a pope are placed at the same level to enlighten Christianity, as are a king and a cardinal, and so...