Virgil, Georgics, in Latin verse, in Beneventan minuscule, manuscript on vellum [Italy (Apulia), late eleventh century]

a single leaf, 305mm. by 195mm., single column, 30 lines in dark brown ink in an ornate variant of Bari-type Beneventan minuscule (identified as Apulian by Virginia Brown), initial letters set apart from beginning of each line (as common for verse), some slight stains and small holes (only one affecting text and removing a single initial letter), fifteenth-century marginalia on recto: 'Michaelis doctis del dan. Opus' and 'Liber incompletus hic sit pronomineque delectus' and a line-drawn armorial shield, on verso: 'Jacobus', '1362' and scribbled accounts, hessian binding

provenance

Bernard Rosenthal, acquired in 1968; Quaritch, cat.1128 (1990), no.7; Schøyen MS 61.

text

The only manuscript of a classical text in Beneventan script recorded in private hands. This leaf contains Book I, lines 61-120 from the great agricultural poem by Virgil (d.19 BC.). He was perhaps the most well known and influential Roman poet throughout the Middle Ages, rivalled only by Ovid; and was chosen by Dante in his Divine Comedy as a guide through Hell and Purgatory. Tradition claims that the whole work was recited by its author and his patron Maecenas (d.8 BC.) before Emperor Octavian upon his return from defeating Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium.

Beneventan is often thought of as an exclusively liturgical script, but Montecassino was crucial for the survival of a large number of classical texts. Tacitus' Historiae I-V and Annales XI-XVI exist only in a single Beneventan manuscript, and the same witness is also the unique source for Apuleius' Metamorphoses and Florida. The library there also preserved the most accurate text of Seneca's Dialogues, Cicero's Somnium Scipionis, De natura deorum and De divinatione (see Lowe, Beneventan Script, p.87, and Cavallo's survey in Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo 22, 1975). Seven manuscripts of Virgil are listed in F. Newton, The Scriptorium and Library of Monte Cassino, 1058-1105, 1999. The present readings are of superior quality, agreeing with three fourth- or fifth-century manuscripts (Vatican, Pal.Lat.1631, Lat.3867, and Florence, Laur.xxxix.i: specifically l.71 novales, l.76 fragiles, and l.92 tenuis, as well as the correct l.105 Pignus, for which the edition of Ribbeck, 1894 has no early manuscript witness). These suggest that a similarly ancient witness was its exemplar.

literature

V. Brown, 'A Second New List of Beneventan Manuscripts I', Mediaeval Studies 40 (1978), p.271, no.1; V. Brown, 'A Second New List of Beneventan Manuscripts II', Mediaeval Studies 50 (1988), p.615; Répertoire des catalogues de manuscrits en escriture latine anterieurs à 1600, list no.10 (1990), p.8, no.42; Bibliografia dei manuscritti in scrittura beneventana, II (1994), pp.228-9; P.O. Kristeller, Iter Italicum VI, Addenda Norvegica (1992), p.577