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Ɵ Substantial fragment of a Carolingian Homiliary, perhaps that of Paul the Deacon, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchme

Bloomsbury Auctions

Lot 14

Ɵ Substantial fragment of a Carolingian Homiliary, perhaps that of Paul the Deacon, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment [probably western Germany, second quarter of the ninth century]To view a video of this lot, click here. Six leaves (including a bifolium, that forming the outermost leaves here, all others reconstructed into bifolia on small paper guards), each with a single column of 29 or 30 lines of a single fine and elegant Carolingian minuscule (all here 29 lines, except fol. 4 with 30 lines, but all in same hand and clearly from a single parent manuscript), with few abbreviations, the scribe varying the size of his script in places apparently in order to fit words neatly onto the lines, red rubrics and chapter headings, larger initials offset in margin, six large initials in red, a few contemporary corrections and erasures, some small smudges and spots, two leaves with vertical cuts in margin (see below), lower outer corner of fol. 5 repaired with strip of parchment (not paper as in earlier reports), outer edges apparently trimmed, else in excellent condition and on fine, heavy and supple parchment, 305 by 205mm.; in cloth-covered card binding Six leaves from a large and handsome Carolingian codex, surviving the twelve centuries since their creation not through reuse as binding material, but as leaves of a book and thus in an exceptional state of preservation Provenance:1. Written and decorated in a Carolingian scriptorium in the second quarter of the ninth century, most probably in Germany. With letter from Bernard Bischoff, dated 1989, establishing the dating.2. At least three of the leaves here were definitely owned by the manuscript-dealer Bruce Ferrini, and perhaps all these leaves were. A previous report of this manuscript noted that fol. 4 here was acquired by the Schøyen Collection from Ferrini in November 1989, and indeed it bears a pencil stock number of Ferrini's ("VM 5507"). In addition, fols. 2-3 here also bear Ferrini stock numbers ("VM 5508" and "VM 5509"), and the fact that the stock numbers are sequential suggests that Ferrini may have owned several bifolia from the parent manuscript and been bisecting these for individual sale. In the 1990s, the late Jeremy Griffiths suggested that fol. 4 was one of the leaves removed from Montpellier, Bibliothèque municipale, MS H. 240 in the nineteenth century (this most probably due to the fact that of the long list compiled by R. Étaix of homiliaries in French public libraries ['Répertoire des Homéliaires Conservés en France' in Homéliaires Patristiques Latins, 1994], only the Montpellier manuscript agrees with the physical layout of the present leaves). However, the Montpellier manuscript has quite different initials and script to that here. Furthermore, the publication earlier this year of a new study of the Homiliary of Paul the Deacon by Z. Giuliano with an apparently exhaustive list of early manuscripts (including 88 manuscripts of the ninth and tenth centuries), similarly contains no witness that could have served as the parent codex of these leaves. Finally, no other leaf from the parent codex is known to us, and they do not come from either of the two ninth-century Homiliaries listed in the Schoenberg database as being sold in the twentieth century. Thus, it seems most likely that only a handful of bifolia survived to the modern period, perhaps as part of a sammelband.3. Quaritch of London, who sold leaves 1-3 and 5-6 (the first and last of these the outermost bifolium here) to the Schøyen Collection in December 1989, and these marked up with individual Quaritch stock numbers and price codes.4. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 587, and acquired for that collection in order to protect these leaves from further dispersal. Text:Collections of homilies, or explanations of the Gospels, assembled and ordered for public reading throughout the ecclesiastical year, were fundamental to the medieval Church. The fifth and sixth centuries were dominated in this genre by the early popes, Leo the Great (c. 400-461) and Gregory the Great (c. 540-604), and the eighth century knew a now-lost homiliary composed by a Roman named Agimundus, as well as that of Bede of Wearmouth-Jarrow and that of Alanus, abbot of Farfa, which still survive. The ninth century saw homiliaries written by Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel and Hrabanus Maurus, as well as the grand compilation of Paul the Deacon produced at the behest of Charlemagne. The leaves here are not consecutive, and form three units. The first and last leaves here are parts of the same bifolium (with parts of Leo I, Sermo XCV, and a lection on the Gospel of John by Gregory I, Homilia XXX). The second leaf here contains part of the same text as that on the first leaf here. The third leaf here stands alone, with text from Gregory I, Homilia XXX, a lection on the Gospel of John 14:23-31, and the fourth and fifth leaves both contain parts of a tractatus on Luke by Ambrose, as well as other lections, readings for the Vigil of the Feast of St Peter and the Feast of the Octave of Pentecost and the opening of a sermon of Leo I for Feria IV mensis IV. Both homilies on fols. 1-2 and 3 here are found in the Homiliary of Paul the Deacon, and are not found together in any other homiliary recorded by Étaix. Ninth-century codices and substantial fragments of them are now of the utmost rarity in private hands, and only a tiny number of collectors can expect to acquire such an item in a single lifetime of collecting. Complete or substantially complete codices are now all but gone from private ownership, with Sir Thomas Phillipps' MS. 4558 having passed to Rosenbach in 1926, and thence to Edward Harkness (1874-1952), and on to the New York Public Library. J. Pierpont Morgan was able to secure two, in 1902 (now Morgan Library and Museum, M. 191), and 1927 (M. 728), and the grandest bookseller of the twentieth century, H.P. Kraus, in a lifetime of searching, obtained and sold only three (see his In Retrospect, 1978, nos. 5-7). To these must be added the Gospels of St. Hubert, sold in Sotheby's, 26 November 1985, lot 93, and the Gospels of Queen Theutberga, last appearing in Christie's, 15 July 2015, lot 20, and now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Even fragments of only a few leaves from codices of the ninth century now command high prices, with a fragment of 14 leaves recording the translations and miracles of St. Lomer, written in France c. 873, realising £60,000 hammer in our last Schøyen sale, 8 July 2020, lot 28. Script:The hand here is worth especial mention as a fine example of Carolingian minuscule. It is a model of legibility and elegance, with a rejection of the cacophony of ligatures of the Early Medieval local hands, employing instead ligatures only for 'et' and joining 'ct' and 'st'. The 'g' here is quite distinctive, in a closed form and with a tail commonly with a sharp-tipped 'fish-hook-like' end, as is the majuscule 'N' in which the first ascender is longer, descending far below the line, and the mid bar is horizontal, sitting just above the baseline.

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