278 The Role of Interpretive Studies in Medieval Latin Philology by Jan M. Ziolkowski Kein anderes Gebiet der Literaturwissenschaft ist so fragwürdig geworden wie das, in dem sie lange ihre Mitte gesehen hatte: die Interpretation der Werke. 1 Interpretation and philology have a long, rich, and complicated relationship. In one sense philology takes interpretation as its point of departure, while in another philology aims ultimately at facilitating or achieving interpretation. Since in discussing literary criticism and theory the practice is sometimes followed of conveying the most serious thoughts in nouns derived from Greek, the circularity of the relationship between interpretation and philology could be reduced to the following statement: interpretation figures in both the etiology and the teleology of philology. Even if we put aside the question of philology, interpretation by itself is an impressively far-reaching enterprise. It is associated intimately with such extensive and varied practices as hermeneutics and exegesis, glosses and commentary, and translation. According to Ps. Bernard Silvestris in his oft-cited commentary on the first six books of the Aeneid, hermeneutics derives from the noun hermēneia (“interpretation”), which is constructed in turn from the name of Hermes, the messenger of the gods with winged feet. Ps. Bernard qualifies hermeneutics as being the discipline that studies the theory of interpretation: [Mercurius] dicitur virgam gerere qua serpentes dividit quia habet interpretationem qua rixantes et venenum fallit. Mercatoribus preest quia eloquentia a se merces extrudunt vendentes. Unde dicitur Mercurius quasi mercatorum kirios, id est deus, vel Mercurius, mentium currus, quia excogitata profert. Unde etiam Hermes dicitur, id est interpres. Hermeneia enim est interpretatio. 2 1 Heinz Schlaffer, “Ursprung, Ende und Fortgang der Interpretation,” in Germanistik, Forschungsstand und Perspektiven: Vorträge des Deutschen Germanistentages 1984, ed. Georg Stötzel, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1985), 2:385–97. 2 (Ps.) Bernard Silvestris, The Commentary on the First Six Books of the “Aeneid” Commonly Attributed to Bernardus Silvestris, ed. Julian Ward Jones and Elizabeth Frances Jones (Lincoln, NE, 1977), p. 25, lines 7–14, on Aeneid 1.222.