SOURCE: “Andreas Capellanus's De Amore,,” in The Explicator, Vol.49, No. 4, Summer, 1991, p.198.

In the following essay, Poole briefly explains why he finds a variant reading of a passage from De Amore more fitting than the traditional reading of that passage.

In Trojel's variorum edition of Andreas,¹ followed by Battaglia² and Ruffini,³ the eighth of the twelve precepts of love reads: “In amoris praestando et recipiendo solatia omnis debet verecundiae pudor adesse” (Trojel I, VI, D*, p. 106) [Modest bashfulness must be present when love's solaces are given and received]. According to this reading, lovers are exhorted by Andreas to be shamefaced.

Three manuscript texts, however, have the variant abesse [to be absent] instead of adesse [to be present], (v. Trojel's textual notes to the passage), and this is perhaps the correct reading. The manuscripts in which lovers are exhorted not to be bashful are C (Codex Vaticanus), written in...