Acta sancti Alexandri Papae, in Latin, in Beneventan minuscule, manuscript on vellum [south-east Italy, second half of the eleventh century]

a single vast leaf, 475mm. by 335mm., double column, 40 lines in dark brown ink in a rounded early Beneventan minuscule, recovered from use as a folder for documents dated 1413 and 1470, single fold affecting second column and a rust mark in centre of leaf, recto scuffed and rubbed with small losses, else in fine and readable condition, hessian binding

provenance

Bernard Rosenthal: one of two leaves from the same manuscript (by different scribes); the other was sold in 1961 to Mark Lansburgh (An Illustrated Check List of Manuscript Leaves in the Collection of Mark Lansburgh, 1962, pl.v), lot 189 in our rooms, 11 July 1966, now Berkeley, Bancroft Library, ff2MS A2M2 1000:7; this leaf Quaritch cat.1128 (1990), no.2; Schøyen MS 52.

text

This leaf is from a very large Beneventan manuscript. Its script is notably close to two other collections of saints' lives in Beneventan script: Naples, Bibl.Naz. VIII.B.6 (Troia, Apulia, eleventh-century) and British Library, Egerton MS 2889 (south-east Italy, eleventh-century), and they perhaps all emanate from a single centre in the vicinity of Troia. In the early eleventh century control of this town (named by the Normans after Troy, their supposed place of origin) was of great strategic importance. It sits in the main pass through the Apennines, enabling control of Apulia. In 1022, the abbot of Monte Cassino entered into a union with the Norman mercenaries in southern Italy and the two successfully offered their allegiance to the Greek emperor in defiance of Henry II. The three manuscripts perhaps bear witness to the settlement of a community of monks from Monte Cassino at this strategic, ideological centre of Norman control, in the years immediately before the establishment of the Norman kingdom of Sicily.

Alexander supposedly died in the early decades of the second century, and was erroneously called a pope in the Middle Ages. The present leaf is from the opening section of the Acta, and contains the account of Hermes, a Roman governor converted by St. Alexander in the reign of Hadrian (117-38), as well as some of Alexander's miraculous cures. The present leaf contains the text in Acta Sanctorum, 1 May, 4-8, 1968, pp.371-2.

literature

E.A. Lowe, The Beneventan Script, re-edited in 1980 by V. Brown, vol.II, p.134; V. Brown 'A Second New List of Beneventan Manuscripts, III', Mediaeval Studies 56 (1994), p.344; B.G. Baroffio, Manoscritti liturgici italiani, IV, 1991, p.49; Bibliografia dei manoscritti in scrittura beneventana, II, 1994, p.227