Cassiodorus, Historia Ecclesiatica Tripartita, history of the ancient world, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [Germany, eleventh century]

a single leaf, 210mm. by 135mm., single column, 25 lines in brown ink in late Carolingian minuscule, some small stains, folds and scuffs, but with little or no affect to text, hessian binding

provenance

H.P. Kraus (1907-88), acquired in 1963, his cat.117, no.48; Quaritch, Bookhands I, cat.1036 (1984), no.2; Schøyen MS 236.

text

This leaf contains part of book I, ch.14 (Migne, Pat.Lat.69, cols.907-08) from a fine and handsome early copy of the Historia Ecclesiastica of Cassiodorus (c.485-c.585). He was a giant of late Roman culture, who stood between the world of classical learning and the earliest beginnings of Christian study. Having held a consulship in 514, and a praetorian prefectship in 533, he retired from public life to found a community of Christian learning at the Vivarium, near Naples. "He stands with his face averted from the ancient Roman past, the first man of letters, as it were, to step into the Middle Ages" (E.A. Lowe, Handwriting, 1969, p.16). He composed this text there, a history of the Roman empire from Constantine (306) to Theodosius II (439), based on three fourth- and fifth-century Greek sources (Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret). The text provided an important link with classical antiquity at a time when Greek was virtually unknown in the West. Jacob, Handschriftliche Überlieferung, 1954, lists 138 extant manuscripts.