Two cuttings from a bifolium of Smaragdus of St-Mihiel, Liber comitis, including his quotation of Bede, De octo quaestionibus, quaestio II, with one of the earliest references to English illuminated manuscript ownership, in Latin, manuscript on parchment[Germany or perhaps France, third quarter of the ninth century] Substantial parts of a large bifolium, cut through the middle horizontally to use on a later binding as board supports, with sections cut out of the two halves for the thongs at the spine, trimmed at foot with loss of about 6 lines there, text showing that this once the innermost bifolium from a gathering, wanting probably a single line where bifolium was sliced through horizontally, cuttings now with remains of double column of 27 lines in a good rounded Carolingian minuscule with integral et-ligature within words, a notably long capital 'S' which sits with its midpoint on the baseline, and a distinctive 'r' with a long and undulating horizontal stroke, capitals in same pen, some offset, scuffs (especially to reverse, obscuring some areas of text there), splits and areas of discolouration, overall fair and presentable condition, in total 215 by 400mm.; set in glass on both sides, and in a large black fitted case Provenance:1. Quaritch of London; with a postcard dated 29 May 1991 from Bernard Bischoff, with his opinions on the cuttings, enclosed.2. Schøyen Collection, London and Oslo, their MS 1380, acquired from Quaritch in June 1991. Text: These cuttings contain Smaragdus of St-Mihiel's commentary on Corinthians 11, citing John Chrysostom and Ambrose (recto first leaf to verso first leaf, col. 1 and first half of col. 2), but with the text truncated at its end (compare the first half of col. 2 of fol. 1v here with that in Patrologia Latina 102, cols. 104-105), followed by Smaragdus' extensive quotation of Bede, De octo quaestionibus, quaestio II (verso first leaf, second half of col. 2 through to first half of col. 1 on recto of second leaf, this again truncated at end), and ending with Bede's commentary on Luke VIII (remaining recto and verso of second leaf). The De octo quaestionibus is by far the rarest here and deserves some individual attention. The initial publication of this text by Johann Herwagen in 1563 (reprinted from there by Migne, Patrologia Latina, 93 in 1862, and there called the Aliquot quaestionem liber) served to confuse rather than elucidate its authorship, as Herwegan used a manuscript which had interpolated non-Bede material at its end. This lead to the publication of the text by Migne among the 'dubia et spuria' and similarly among the uncertain works of Bede by M.W.L. Laistner and H.H. King in their Handlist of Bede Manuscripts (1943). Moreover, J.A. Giles went so far as to exclude it from his edition of Bede's work in 1843-1844. However, the Carolingians certainly knew of the text in a form usually described as 'eight questions' (it is cited by Smaragdus of St-Mihiel, Claudius of Turin, Hrabanus Maurus and Haimo of Auxerre, and in 852, Lupus of Ferrières sent a request to Abbot Altsig of York requesting a number of works, including 'questions by your Bede on both Testaments'), and strong academic defences of Bede's authorship of some part of this material were made by Paul Lehmann in 1919 ('Wert und Echtheit einer Beda abgesprochenen Schrift', in Sitzungsberichte der Phil.-Phil. Und der Hist. Klasse der bayer. Akad. Der Wissenschaften, Abhandlung 4) and again in 1999 and 2008 (M. Gorman, 'Bede's VIII Quaestiones and Carolingian Scholarship', Revue Bénédictine, 109, 1999, pp. 32-74; and E. Knibbs, 'The Manuscript Evidence for the De Octo Quaestionibus Ascribed to Bede', Traditio, 63, 2008, pp. 129-183). An initial core of eight 'questions' are now firmly thought to be of the eighth century, with four of these confidently ascribed to Bede (including the quaestio cited here). These cuttings here did not, however, come from a manuscript of that text in its unadulterated form, but from a copy of Smaragdus Liber Comitis, which quotes quaestio II of Bede's text. That quaestio is famous for its record, in its explanation of II Corinthians 11:24, of an illuminated manuscript brought from Rome by the most reverend and most learned Cuthwine, bishop of the East Angles (probably fl. mid-eighth century; here "reverentissimus ac doctissimus vir Chudo [in error for 'Cuduinus', which seems to have confused our scribe, leading to the erasure following] orientalium anglorum antistes", 5th to 3rd lines from end of col. 2 on fol. 1v). The brief description given by Bede of the miniatures of that volume allows the tentative conclusion that the illuminated manuscript brought back from Rome was a copy of Arator, De actibus apostolorum. However, Cuthwine may have owned more than one such manuscript. An illustrated copy of Sedulius' Carmen Paschale survives in the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, their M 17.4. It dates to the ninth century, but its scribe copied in ornamental capitals an apparent ex libris from its earlier exemplar on fol. 68v: "Finit fines fines Cuðuuini" (noted by L. Traube in 1902; see also J.J.G. Alexander, Insular Manuscripts: 6th to the 9th Century, 1978, p. 83; and M. Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, 2006, pp. 26-27). This is not the sole record of its kind (Bede also records Benedict Biscop's bringing of an illustrated Apocalypse to Monkwearmouth-Jarrow from Rome in the seventh century), but it does stand among the very earliest such accounts, and its author was most probably an eye-witness to Cuthwine's manuscript. In addition, as no manuscript of the complete text of Bede's De octo quaestionibus or Smaragdus' Liber Comitis has ever come to the market, and no other commentator on Bede's text quotes the relevant passage about Cuthwine, this is most probably the only chance to ever acquire this important early bibliophilic record in manuscript.
