Beschreibung:

Ɵ Small cutting from Sulpicius Severus, Life of St. Martin of Tours, in Latin, manuscript on parchment[England (St Albans Abbey, Hertfordshire), mid-twelfth century] Rectangular cutting, with remains of single column of 12 lines of Anglo-Caroline minuscule by 'scribe B' of the St. Albans' scriptorium during the abbacy of Ralph Gubiun (1146-1151), one large initial 'I' in blue on reverse, recovered from reuse as an endleaf in a sixteenth-century printed book (8o), slight darkening to edges through contact with leather of binding, one small split along old fold, else good and presentable condition and on strong and heavy parchment, 90 by 120mm.; in cloth-covered binding A fine example of English twelfth-century monastic script, written by a hand securely identified as the head scribe of St Albans Abbey Provenance: 1. The parent manuscript of this cutting was written by Scribe 'B', probably the head of the scriptorium of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Albans, in the mid-twelfth century, and the book presumably remained in use there until the close of the Middle Ages. The site of the monastery was Roman in origin, and an Anglo-Saxon church stood there by the time of Bede. A double-monastery was founded there in 793 by Offa of Mercia. Apart from some decades in the tenth century when it was abandoned after a Viking attack, it grew steadily to rank as one of the wealthiest English religious sites of the Middle Ages. Its scriptorium in the twelfth century produced such glorious examples of the book arts as the St Albans Psalter, and a century after the present manuscript was written was the place in which the famous medieval chronicler Matthew Paris worked. It is perhaps humbling to think that he may well have held and read the parent codex of this fragment. The abbey was dwindling by 1521, and was surrendered on 2 December 1539 and its abbot and inmates pensioned before the valuables of the abbey were looted. The sixteenth-century printed volume in which this fragment (and its sister fragment now in Keio University library, Tokyo) survived presumably left the abbey's holdings then and passed into private hands and the English booktrade.2. Dr. George Salt (1903-2003), entomologist and fellow of King's College, Cambridge, his MS 8.3. Sotheby's, 17 December 1991, lot 8 (part).4. Schøyen Collection, London and Oslo, their MS 1554, acquired in the Sotheby's sale. Scribe:Scribe 'B' of the abbacy of Ralph Gubiun (1146-1151) is "distinguished by the elegance and flamboyance of his hand, which is highly disciplined and with very distinctive flourishes" (R.M. Thomson, Manuscripts from St Albans Abbey, 1066-1235, 1985, I, p. 29). He copied all of Cambridge, Emmanuel College, MS 244; Pembroke College, MS 180; and St. Petersburg, Q.v.I, 62; as well as parts of Cambridge, Trinity College, B.2.19 and B.5.1; British Library, Egerton, MS 3721 and Royal MS 2.A.x; Bodleian, Laud MS misc. 370; and the rubrics in British Library, Royal MS 19,590. He also copied a St. Alban's charter, datable to between 1151 and 1154. His role was often that of the master of the scriptorium, taking charge over crucial texts such as charters, and copying rubrics as well as extensively correcting texts. He appears to have been the chief scribe of the scriptorium around the midpoint of the century. The cutting here contains part of chs. 13 and 16 of the text. Published: J. Griffiths, 'Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection Copied or Owned in the British Isles before 1700', in English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700, vol. 5, eds. P. Beal and J. Griffiths, British Library, London, 1995, pp. 36-42.C. de Hamel, 'The Life of Saint Martin', in Papyri Graecae Schøyen (PSchøyen II): essays and texts in honour of Martin Schøyen, ed. R. Pintaudi, Papyrologica Florentina 40, Edizioni Gonnelli, Firenze, 2010, pp. 117-122.