Beschreibung:

SMARAGDUS OF SAINT-MIHIEL, Commentary on the Rule of St Benedict , in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [Visigothic Spain (perhaps Burgos province), 10th century] 'Apart from Paris and London, very few libraries in Europe can boast of more than one or two Visigothic manuscripts. The great Bodleian of Oxford has not a single one' (E.A. Lowe). One of the earliest witnesses to the oldest known commentary on the Rule of St Benedict. A partial leaf, 274 x 150mm, remains of two columns of 29 lines written in brown ink in a fine early Visigothic minuscule, headings in red, two large initials with compartments of burgundy, one terminating in a simple flower bud (offset in places from another leaf, slightly scuffed, worming and trimmed on one side removing outer half of one column). Bound in grey buckram at the Quaritch bindery. Provenance : (1) Bernard Rosenthal, his 'I/162', acquired in 1962. (2) Quaritch, Bookhands III, cat.1088 (1988), no 12. (3) Schøyen Collection, MS 73. Sister-leaves : A bifolium from the prologue of the same volume is Beinecke Library MS 447 (B. Shailor, Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts , II, 1987, p.398 ) . Shailor dates the Marston bifolium to the 1st half of the 10th century. It has inscriptions suggesting that the parent volume was cut up in 1612. Text : Smaragdus (760-840) was a Benedictine monk and scholar and one of the handful of authors who helped shape the earliest phases of the Carolingian Renaissance, operating within a movement that sought to address the troubled state of education among the clergy by encouraging production of accurate and easily digestible texts filled with learning from Antiquity. Very little information survives about him: he was previously thought to be Irish, but this was questioned by Bernhard Bischoff ( Celtica 5, 1960). Other scholars followed, noting Smaragdus' use of Visigothic examples in his writing on patronyms (Holtz in Bulletin de la Société nationale des antiquaires de France , 1983), and knowledge of obscure Spanish texts such as the Sententiae of Taio of Saragossa (Rädle, Studien zu Smaragd , 1974, pp.75-77). It now seems certain that Smaragdus came from Visigothic Spain, and may have been the abbot of Silos. He perhaps fled ahead of the Islamic advance in the late 8th century. As such, he is one of the last witnesses to the lost scholarship and culture of that region. The text of the present leaf is from his commentary on the Rule of St Benedict (ch.III: Migne, Pat . Lat . 102, cols.746-48), a work he composed after the 816 Council of Aachen imposed the Rule on all monasteries in the Empire. It is the oldest known commentary on the Rule of St Benedict. It is clear that Visigothic Spain, and in particular the north-western Burgos province, played an important role in the early copying and dissemination of the writings of Smaragdus. Like the present leaf, three of the earliest manuscripts of the text are in Visigothic script: Rylands Library, Lat. MS 104 (early 10th-century, from San Pedro de Cardeña: Shailor, 'The Scriptorium of San Pedro de Cardeña', Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library , 61, 1979, p.454); British Library, Add. MS 30055 (early 10th century, perhaps from Cardeña); and fragments of the 9th and 10th centuries in the archives of the monastery of Silos (Archivo del Monasterio, frg.1 and 5-16, with other leaves from the latter probably in Madrid, Archivo Historico Nacional Clero. Carpeta 1030, num.24). Script : The script is a beautiful Visigothic script of square upright form with fine vertical strokes, displaying characteristic use of the letter 'g' in q-form, the i-longa or tall 'i', the 'ti' ligature, and the conjunction 'quum' (cum). Visigothic minuscule was the national writing of Spain, deriving, like other early National scripts, from the late Roman system of scripts, and influenced by half-uncial models and notarial cursive. Bibliography : M. Ponesse, 'Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel and the Caroli