Smaragdus of St. Mihiel, Haimo of Auxerre, Ambrose Autpert and others, Homilies for Easter, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [France (probably Tours), second half of the tenth century]

The earliest recorded witness to an important Carolingian text, identified as from a scriptorium in Tours, the centre of the development and production of early Carolingian minuscule

provenance

1. The attribution of the script of this manuscript to Tours appears first in Kraus's catalogue (see below), doubtless following Bischoff, and is quite credible. The rounded and compressed script and large and somewhat clumsily laid out ornamental initials show striking similarity to a contemporaneous copy of Livy's Ab Urbe Condita from Tours (cf. E.K. Rand, A Survey of the Manuscripts of the School of Tours, 1929, no.182). In the early Middle Ages a number of monastic communities flourished there, notably Marmoutier (founded by St. Martin of Tours in 371), St. Martin's (founded in the fifth century) and St. Maurice's (founded 578, and after 1096 reconsecrated to St. Gatian), and in 796 these communities were all placed by Charlemagne under the rule of Alcuin (c.730-804), the intellectual father of the Carolingian Renaissance. Carolingian minuscule, the great unifying script developed at the royal court at Aachen and intended to nurture Europe-wide literacy, probably came with him; and it was almost certainly from this site that this revolutionary script was disseminated. As Rand notes, in the eighth century Tours had been inferior to Corbie, Luxeuil and Fleury, but "in the beginning of the ninth, Tours, and particularly St. Martin's, shot ahead of the rest" producing a paleographical style which for its "simplicity, easy grace and sheer beauty, [was] easily queen among the scripts of France" (p.9). Beeson sums up its importance in the pithy statement that "to no student of the Middle Ages ... can Tours and its scriptoria fail to appeal" (Classical Philology 25, 1930, p.285). Regretably no library catalogues survive for the great monastic libraries of Tours, and they were sacked in 1562 by the Huguenots, and many overtly Catholic books were burnt. They then fell into disrepair, and in the early eighteenth century when the antiquary Bréquigny visited the town, books were being destroyed (see lot 30). Bréquigny attempted to get the manuscripts transferred to the Royal Library in Paris, but the plans stalled on the price offered to the abbeys for their books, and in 1799 the Revolution swept away the monks, and the collections were scattered onto the market. The disarray of the monastic libraries of Tours might well explain the fact that until recently the leaves of the present manuscript lay jumbled up with those of two other contemporary homiliaries (formerly Bergendal MSS.50 and 89, both now in the Pontifical Institute, Toronto).

3. Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872); the three homiliaries in a state of disarray forming his MS.6653 (later renumbered in error 21,631), bound in Middle Hill boards; acquired from Téchener of Paris via Payne and Foss; offered in his sale in our rooms, 29 November 1966, lot 41.

4. Bergendal MS.90; bought by Joseph Pope from Kraus in January 1983 (his cat.153, no.4): Bergendal catalogue no.90; Stoneman, 'Guide', pp.199-200; Pope, 'The Library', p.159; R. Etaix, 'Les homéliares carolingiens', in L'école carolingienne d'Auxerre, 1991, p.247.

text

Almost no Carolingian codices have emerged from complete obscurity in the last century, and the great discoveries have predominantly been made in fragments of leaves from once magnificent books. It is thus quite remarkable that a tenth-century codex from an important Carolingian scriptorium should emerge from the chaos of leaves that was once Phillipps MS.6653. This may well be the last great unrecognised Carolingian book to emerge and come to the market.

The Homiliary was a fundamentally important text for the Carolingian Renaissance. The re-establishment and re-enforcement of Christianity throughout the empire had to come before other studies, and from 802 lawcodes increasingly insisted that priests should know the homilies to be read out as part of the services every Sunday and feastday. The identified authors in the present manuscript are among the leading lights of ninth-century scholarship. Foremost is the Irish scholar Smaragdus (c.760-c.840), abbot of the community of St. Mihiel, Verdun, and close counsellor of both Charlemagne and his son, Louis the Pious. The homilies ascribed to him run from fols.1r to 23r, 25r to 27v, and 36v. Another intellectual giant of the Carolingian world, Haimo of Auxerre (d. c.855), composed almost all the remainder of the homilies here (fols.23v, 28v to 35r, and 40r to 61r). He studied under the Irish grammarian Murethach, and in founding the school of Auxerre brought Carolingian biblical exegesis to its zenith, producing many works in his own name, as well as underpinning those composed by his pupils Haimo of Halberstadt (d.853; many of whose published works may in fact be by Haimo of Auxerre), Heiric of Auxerre (841-76) and Remigius of Auxerre (c.841-908). To these has been appended a homily on fol.61v on the Assumption of the Virgin by the Frankish biblical exegete, Autpert Ambrose (c.730-84), who was imposed as abbot of San Vicenzo in southern Italy by Charlemagne and Pope Stephen III, and who was the subject of a homily read by Pope Benedict XVI in St. Peter's square in 2009.

This homilary was almost certainly assembled in the mid ninth century, but this is its oldest recorded manuscript of it, as the well as the only extant Carolingian copy: the next oldest is BnF, n.a.l. ms.464, which dates to c.1150.