Western Manuscripts S/O

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Lot 23
  • 23

Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [northern Italy (perhaps Nonantola), early to mid-ninth century]

Estimate
20,000 - 30,000 GBP
bidding is closed

Description

  • Vellum
two leaves (perhaps once a bifolium), each leaf approximately 420mm. by 280mm., double column, 35 lines in brown ink in a transitional hand incorporating many earlier letter forms and ligatures alongside features of early Carolingian minuscule, ornate snaking descenders to lowest line terminating in penwork trails or curls, one 3-line ornamental initial 'E' decorated with simple knotwork panels and geometric shapes, two original holes in vellum in second leaf, some stains, scuffs and trimming to borders from reuse in binding, hessian binding

Provenance

provenance

Bernard Rosenthal; Quaritch, Bookhands V, cat.1147 (1991), no.75; Schøyen MS 622.

Catalogue Note

text

The present leaves contain Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, 33, IX:17-X and 33, XII:23-XII:25 (M. Adriaen, Moralia in Job, 1985, pp.1687-89 and 1693-95). 

These large leaves are an excellent example of the conservatism of Italian scriptoria in the face of the spread of Carolingian minuscule. There are Carolingian features here, but they are blended with earlier ones and hints of Beneventan influence, forming a distinctively Northern Italian script, tentatively identified by Bernhard Bischoff as that of the imperial Abbey of Nonantola (founded 752), in Lombardic Emilio-Romagna.

The abbey was destroyed in 889 by invading Hungarians and all members of the community fled or were killed. Nonantolan script from this period survives in only twenty manuscripts and fragments (cf. Bischoff, 'Manoscritti nonantolani disperse dell'epoca carolingia', La Bibliofilia 85, 1983 and J. Ruysschaert, 'Les manuscrits de l'abbaye de Nonantola', Studi e Testi 182, 1955).

The catalogue of the library of Nonantola in 1166 includes a copy of the present text as no.33, which may be the parent manuscript of this leaf (G. Becker, Catalogi Bibliothecarum Antiqui, 1885-87, p.221).