Toynbee "Quàtuor Virtùtibus Cardinàlibus, De"
treatise of Martinus Dumiensis On the Four Cardinal Virtues otherwise known as the Formula honestae vitae; this work, which was translated into Italian (towards the end of cent. xiii) by Bono Giamboni, the translator of Brunetto Latini's Trésor, and of several medieval and late Latin works, was in the Middle Ages, and even as late as cent. xvi, commonly ascribed to Seneca. Petrarch, however, did not accept this attribution, and pointed out that it was the work of Martinus; he writes:

Senecae libellus, nolenti non dubitem, datus est, cujus titulus est De Quatuor Virtutibus. Omne vulgus opusculum illud avidissime legit, ac Senecae libris interserit inque eo quod Seneca nunquam vidit Senecam praedicant miranturque. Sunt qui inter ipsius Senecae libros omnes hunc maxime diligant, quippe illorum maxime ingeniis conforme. . . .Is quidem liber Martini cujusdam est Episcopi, ad Myronem quendam regem ab authore suo inscriptus Formula Vitae Honestae; quae omnia non libenter errantibus, brevi quadam praefatiuncula dicti operis pridem nostris ex libris abolita, per bibliothecas autem Galliarum, ubi scriptum creditur, adhuc stante noscuntur. Isti vero inopem scriptorem et hoc forsan unico gloriantem suo spoliant, ut divitem et rebus onustum suis onerent alieno. (Epist. rerum senilium ii, 4.)

The substance of this treatise appears to have been borrowed by Martin of Braga from the first part of an earlier work, wrongly attributed to Seneca, entitled De copia verborum. (See Haureau, Notices et extraits des MSS., etc., xxxiii. Pt. i. pp. 208 ff.; and P. de Nolhac, Pétrarque et l'humanisme, p. 313.)

D. quotes the treatise (without the author's name) as il Libro de le Quattro virtù cardinali, Conv. III. viii. 12 ('Sales tui sint sine dente, joci sine vilitate, risus sine cachinno, vox sine clamore', De continentia) and (as the work of Seneca) as Liber de Quatuor Virtutibus, Mon. II. v. 3 ('Quid est justitia nisi naturae constitutio seu divina lex, et vinculum humanae societatis?' (De iustitia). [Martinus Duminsis: Seneca.]

©Oxford University Press 1968. From A Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante by Paget Toynbee (1968) by permission of Oxford University Press