Note 442 — Chapter IV · THE SOURCES FOR THE PERIOD 1100–1250 A. D.

In the earliest printed editions the De imagine mundi is attributed to “Honorius Inclusus.” In an edition of 1497 we are told that the work is sometimes ascribed to St. Anselm and sometimes to Honorius Inclusus. For the first time in 1544 it was attributed to the well-known Honorius of Autun and included among his works. This was also done subsequently in Migne, Pat. lat., vol. clxxii, cols. 115–188. The attribution to Honorius of Autun was based on a note in the last chapter of that author’s De luminaribus ecclesiae which gives a list of his writings: among them Imago mundi de dispositione mundi. It can be shown, however, that this chapter was added to the De luminaribus ecclesiae by a later compiler, who may well have confused Honorius of Autun with Honorius Inclusus. On an extremely shaky foundation the German scholar, J. A. Endres, in his Honorius Augustodunensis: Beitrag zur Geschichte des geistigen Lebens im 12. Jahrhundert, Kempten and Munich, 1906, has erected a theory that the author was a German, who lived at Ratisbon. For the whole question, see the clear and just discussion by Duhem (Système, vol. iii, 1915, pp. 24–31), who tends to favor the attribution of the work to the virtually unknown Honorius Inclusus and who says of the elaborate German argument: “Un loyal et modeste aveu d’ignorance ne vaudrait-il pas mieux que de tels raisonnements?” (ibid., p. 31).