Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on the Pauline Epistles, in Merovingian minuscule (a variant of Corbie a/b minuscule), in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [France (vicinity of Corbie), second half of the eighth century]

provenance

(1) Most probably from the great royal abbey of Corbie, in northern France, founded c.659 by St. Balthild, an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman and wife of the Merovingian king Clovis II (637-655/58). The first community was composed of monks from Luxeuil, and under royal patronage grew to be one of the most important repositories of scholarship and book production in the pre-Carolingian medieval West, ranking alongside only Tours, Bobbio, Monte Cassino and Cluny. The use of its distinctive script "outside the abbey walls seems very doubtful" (Lowe, CLA.VI, p.xxv), even in the case of close variants such as that found here. All early manuscripts of the text here are from the library of Corbie (British Library, Harley MS 3063, second half of the eighth century; Amiens, Bibliothèque Municipale mss.87-88, c.800; and the flyleaf of Vatican, Lat.340 + BnF. ms.lat.17177, fols.5-12, c.800). Many Corbie books were lost and dispersed in the sixteenth century (cf. L. Delisle, Le cabinet des manuscrits, II, 1874, pp.133-39), but the majority passed in the following century to the abbey of St-Germain-des-Prés in Paris and thence to the Bibliothèque Nationale, or to the Bibliothèque Municipale at Amiens after the Revolution.

These leaves may well be a direct copy of a manuscript owned by Cassiodorus (c.485–c.585), the intellectual giant of late Antique Italy. This text was most probably translated into Latin in north Africa in the sixth century (see below). Cassiodorus records in his Institutiones that he had commentaries on the Pauline Epistles sought out in the north African monasteries for his library at Vivarium - itself the forerunner and model for all European monasteries. Certainly, an anonymous Commentarius in XIII epistulas Paulinas was among the books at Vivarium, and the text here circulated in Europe without connection to Theodore's name. The community at Vivarium dwindled and was disbanded soon after the death of its founder. The books seem to have passed to Rome and from there to a number of monastic houses including York and perhaps Verona. A number of late Antique African texts, or their direct descendants, can be traced in the library of Corbie in the early Middle Ages (see D. Ganz, Corbie in the Carolingian Renaissance, 1990, pp.40 and 126-27), and a number of scholars have identified Vivarium as their previous home (S. Graham, Dissemination of North African Christian Intellectual Culture in Late Antiquity, unpublished PhD. thesis submitted to University of California 2005, pp.207-09; P. Courcelle, Les Lettres Grecques en Occident, 1948, p.366; F. Troncarelli, Vivarium, 1998, pp.41 and 61; and Codices Latini Antiquiores, XI, no.1614). Abbot Grimo of Corbie was in Rome in 739-41 and he may have acquired the volumes there for his community. (2) Rediscovered in 1995 having been reused as a wrapper around a volume of canon law published in Lyons in 1525. Sold in our rooms, 5 December 1995, lot 7; Schøyen MS 2081.

text

The biblical scholarship of Merovingian Gaul stood on the border of classical antiquity and the Middle Ages. Theodore of Mopsuestia (d.428) was a classmate and close friend of St. John Chrysostom, as well as a leading scholar in the school of Antioch. He was a prolific writer whose works were fiercely defended by the Syriac church, but provoked controversy elsewhere. Soon after his death, the Catholic scholar, Marius Mercator (c.390-c.451) accused him of heresy, and the fifth general council (553), under the influence of the emperor Justinian I, pronounced an anathema on his writings. The north African delegation objected to a ban on an author they had not read, and so on their return began work on this Latin translation, interspersed with the fourth-century commentary of Ambrosiaster.

After the death of Augustine of Hippo in 430 we do not usually think of a flourishing Latin written culture in north Africa, but it did exist and continued to interact with mainland Europe (see Graham, Dissemination, pp.224-29, for a list of authors). In the sixth century, both Cassiodorus and Gregory of Tours (d.594) owned and used a number of texts from this region. The Latin Christian communities of north Africa were only suppressed in the late seventh century, following the Arab conquest of Carthage in 698.

Other leaves of this manuscript appeared in our rooms, 22 June 1999, lot 14, and are part of the same volume as the leaves described in Codices Latini Antiquiores, Addenda no. 1878 (Bischoff, Brown and John in Mediaeval Studies 54, 1992, pp.296-97; see also M. Ferrari in Lateinische Kultur im VIII. Jahrhundert: Traube-Gedenkscrift, 1989, pp.69-73). The present leaves contain I,6-9 and II,12-21 of the text (H.B. Swete, Theodori Episcopi Mopsuesteni, II, 1882, pp.196-98 and 206-09).

literature

A.H. Becker, 'The Dynamic Reception of Theodore of Mopsuestia in the Sixth Century: Greek, Syriac and Latin', in Greek Literature in Late Antiquity, 2006, p.44