Lot 20

Augustine, Tractatus in Johannem, commentary on the Gospel of John, in Latin, in Beneventan minuscule, decorated manuscript on vellum [most probably Dalmatia, thirteenth century]

Estimate

3,000 - 5,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

a substantial fragment of a leaf, 395mm. by 310mm., double column, remains of 33 lines of an angular Beneventan hand in black ink, capitals touched in red, irregularly cut for reuse in binding with losses at top and small holes in middle of leaf, verso somewhat rubbed with losses to legibility in central panel, hessian binding

Provenance

provenance

Bernard Rosenthal; Quaritch, cat.1128 (1990), no.20; Schøyen MS 56.

Catalogue Note

text

This leaf is from a large and handsome Beneventan manuscript most probably produced in one of the monastic foundations on the Dalmatian coastline (now modern Croatia), perhaps Zara, Spalato, Ragusa or Trau. Dalmatia sat on the borders of the western and Byzantine empires and acted as a conduit between the two cultures. However, it is palaeographically clear that culturally the region looked westwards (E.A. Lowe, The Beneventan Script, 1914, pp.59-63). In 986 when the monastery of St. Chrysogonus was rebuilt in Zara, the nobles of that city invited Madius, a monk of Monte Cassino, to be abbot, and an adapted form of the Beneventan script was cultivated outside the Italian mainland on the edge of the Greek-speaking world. Monte Cassino continued to exert a significant influence over the region throughout the Middle Ages.

The text of the present leaf is Augustine, Tractatus in Johannem, 12:4-12:7 (Corpus Christianorum, series Latina 36, 1954, pp.122-24)

literature

V. Brown, 'A Second New List of Beneventan Manuscripts, I', Mediaeval Studies 40 (1978), p.272, no.viii; 'A Second New List of Beneventan Manuscripts, III', Mediaeval Studies 56 (1994), p.345; Bibliografia dei manoscritti in scrittura beneventana, II, 1994, pp.227-28