Multa anima agit, illa ipsa nesciente : notes sur le Musica Theorica attribué à Bède le Vénérable

Among the works traditionally attributed to Bede, there is a known treatise called Musica Theorica whose authenticity had long been undisputed. It has only recently been discovered that the treatise is in fact nothing more than a collection of scholia added over the centuries to Boethius’ De Institutione Musica and gathered together at an unspecified time by one or more unknown commentator. An analysis of the philosophical and musicological content of the treatise, which until then had hardly attracted any attention whatsoever, actually highlights the apocryphal nature of the work. This is particularly evident with regard to the unconscious activity of the soul, the place given to the senses and even the harmony of the spheres, where one notices a certain degree of autonomy in the reasoning which belongs more to the second half of the Middle Ages (perhaps the XIIth century) than to Bede’s times.