Bede, Homilies on the Gospels, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [Germany (most probably Fulda), second or third quarter of the ninth century]

A leaf from an early and important manuscript of the homiliary of Bede (672/3-735), copied in Fulda, probably within the circle of the Carolingian scholar Rabanus Maurus (c.780-856) from an eighth-century Northumbrian exemplar once owned by St. Boniface (c.680-754)

provenance

Evidently written in the imperial abbey of Fulda, founded in 751 and one of the preeminent centres of scholarship and book production in Western Europe, and to be identified with item 170 in their library catalogue of c.1550: 'liber omeliarum Bede presbiteri numero XXV' (Palat.Vat. lat. Latinus 1928; K.Christ, Die Bibliothek des Klosters Fulda, 1933). If the present manuscript does date to the second rather than the third quarter of the ninth century (see below), then it was written during the abbacy of one of the greatest scholars of the Carolingian Renaissance, Rabanus Maurus (c.780-856), second only to his teacher Alcuin (c.730-804). He is recorded as enriching the library at Fulda so that its volumes were too numerous to count, and he also ran the monastic school there and taught scholars such as Walafrid Strabo (c.808-49) and Lupus of Ferrières (c.805-62). He may well have held, scrutinized and studied the present leaf as it was being written, and his students will have heard it read in the refectory or classroom, and perhaps pored over its pages in the library.

text

This leaf contains Homily I, 21, lines 180-239, for Epiphany (D. Hurst, Corpus Christianorum 122, 1955, pp. 153-4), from the homiliary of Bede, monk of Wearmouth-Jarrow and perhaps the single most important author of Anglo-Saxon England. Laistner (Handlist of Bede Manuscripts, 1943, pp. 114-18) records some 21 manuscripts, all of which are in institutional ownership; and to these might be added the 5 fragments in Quaritch: Bookhands of the Middle Ages III (cat.1088), items 1, 2, 6, 7 and 8 (c.800 to twelfth century).

The present manuscript is of great textual importance. As no copies survive from England before the twelfth century, our earliest witnesses are Continental. Of these, 6 complete manuscripts and 2 of the fragments listed above are of comparable antiquity, but only one other can be located to a particular scriptorium: the St.Gallen copy (Zurich, Zentralbibl. C42, second half of ninth century). In a letter written in 747-51, St. Boniface requested from one of Bede's students and followers, Archbishop Egbert of York, "some of the works which Bede, the inspired priest and student of Sacred Scripture, has composed" including "his book of homilies for the year, because it would be a very handy and useful manual for us in our preaching" (Tangl, Die briefe des heiligen Bonifatius, 1916, no.91). In exchange for the volumes he sent "two small casks of wine ... for a merry day with the brethren". Boniface was instrumental in the foundation of Fulda, near his missionary outpost at Fritzlar, and retired and was buried there. His copy of the text most probably remained in the monastery. That lost manuscript was an extremely important witness to the text, doubtless written in the same scriptorium in which Bede worked, within a decade or so of his death by scribes who probably knew the author. The present manuscript's readings are consistent with those of the St. Gallen copy (Hurst's class IA) and both must have had Boniface's copy as their exemplar. St. Gallen's library was expanded in the ninth century and received numerous copies of books from Fulda. They are probably the sole surviving witnesses to this important lost exemplar.

The date of the present leaf

The present manuscript falls within the second or third quarter of the ninth century, and some general parallels can be found in other Fulda manuscripts from the second part of this period (including a copy of Gaudentius, Tractatus, from the middle of the ninth-century, reproduced in Brozinski, Fuldische Handschriften aus Hessen, 1994, no. 33; and Fulgentius, Mitologiae, third quarter of ninth century, Brozinski no. 34). However, Insular influences on the script here are quite pronounced, including 'q's with descenders that curve to the left, 'g's which seem to take their zigzag-shaped tails from Insular forms, and overall a pronounced angularity to the letters. These probably echo the letter-forms of the Northumbrian exemplar, and indeed several other fragments from Fulda of other works by Bede are in hands strongly influenced by Insular scripts (see Brozinski nos. 29 and 39). They also suggest a date before the mid ninth century when such features appear to have been in decline.