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Walters Ms. W.2, Collection of works by Augustine, Didymus the Blind, and QuodvultdeusBrowse images (Browse images in a new window) | TEI in XML format
Manuscript
Collection of works by Augustine, Didymus the Blind, and Quodvultdeus
Text title
Liber de opere sancti Augustini
Author
Authority name: Augustinus, Aurelius, Saint, Bishop of Hippo
Known as: St. Augustine
Author
Authority name: Didymus, the Blind, ca. 313-ca. 398.
Known as: Didymos, Alexandreus
Known as: Didymos, der Blinde, ca. 313-ca. 398
Author
Authority name: Quodvultdeus, Bishop of Carthage, d. 454?
Abstract
This Carolingian manuscript, probably written in northeastern France in the late ninth century, may have important royal affiliations. A distych, or a two-line verse, found on fol. 60v refers to "REX SAPIENS," and has been seen as evidence that this manuscript is a copy of one made for Charles the Bald. In addition to this remarkable pedigree, the manuscript is also noteworthy for its inclusion of several rare texts, including works by St. Augustine of Hippo, the Coptic theologian Didymus the Blind, and Quodvultdeus, a fifth-century bishop of Carthage. The single illumination in the manuscript, an elaborate title page, is a modern addition.
Date
Second half of the 9th century CE
Origin
Northeastern France (possibly Reims or Champagne?)
Language:
The primary language in this manuscript is Latin.
Support material
Parchment
Medium- to heavy-weight parchment, hairsides sometimes poorly finished, many flaws and repairs
Extent
Foliation: ii+104
First two folios have been foliated but are not original and are not integral to the structure of the first quire, so they are counted as flyleaves here
Collation
Formula: 1(2), 2-4(8), 5(8, -1), 6-10(8), 11(8, -8), 12-14(8), 15(4, -4)
Catchwords: None
Signatures: Roman numerals added in seventeenth century to bottom middle of versos at end of each quire
Comments: First quire composed of an added bifolio, which has been foliated "1" and "1 bis," so first original quire of manuscript begins on fol. 2; quires begin on fols. 1(1), 2(2), 10(3), 18(4), 26(5), 33(6), 41(7), 49(8), 57(9), 65(10), 73(11), 80(12), 88 (13), 96(14), 104(15)
Dimensions
16.0 cm wide by 19.8 cm high
Written surface
13.0 cm wide by 16.0 cm high
Layout
Contents:
fols. 1r - 106r:Decoration:
Upper board outside:
Inscription in Slavonic.
Velvet binding is nineteenth-century, but plaque is earlier, and came from a Serbian flabellum.
fol. 1bisr:
Title page added in nineteenth century by artist attempting to recreate a medieval illuminated initial, likely to make the book more desirable for collectors.
Binding
The binding is not original.
Late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century red velvet binding by León Gruel, Paris; cover was embellished by Gruel with an eighteenth-century silver and gilt plaque of Christ, originally from a Serbian flabellum, and which contains a Slavonic inscription; front and back pastedowns taken from an early eleventh-century Central Italian Sacramentary; a description of an earlier cover was recorded in the library catalog of the monastery of Saint-André Villeneuve-lès-Avignon in 1640 by Dom Odon de la Mothe, who described it as "postibus copertum et basana alba a parte putrida"
Provenance
Created in northeastern France, probably in the region of Reims or Champagne (later French Flanders), ca. 875; a distych on fol. 60v, which speaks of "REX SAPIENS," is believed to refer to Charles the Bald, and it is likely this manuscript is a copy of one made for that Carolingian emperor
Owned by the monastery of Saint-André Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, by the seventeenth century; early ownership inscription, fol. 2r, reads "Iste liber est monasterii sancti Andree dyocesis auinionensis .aab."; slightly later inscription (after 1635) reads "Monasterii Sancti Andreae congregationis S. Mauri"; in the bottom margin a slightly later (after 1640) inscription reads "Catalogus inscriptus," a reference to the library's catalog (Bibliotheque nationale de France, lat. 13070, fol. 109r) which contained a description of the manuscript (see binding information from this source below)
Bénigne-Charles Févret de Saint-Mémin of Dijon, eighteenth century; his bookplate (or possibly facsimile of it) on upper board pastedown, probably reinserted (?) by Gruel after rebinding
León Gruel, Paris, late nineteenth or early twentieth century
Henry Walters, Baltimore, purchased from Gruel before 1931
Acquisition
Walters Art Museum, 1931, by Henry Walters' bequest
Bibliography
Miner, Dorothy. Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages and Renaissance: An Exhibition Held at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Exhibition Catalogue. Baltimore: Trustees of the Walters Art Gallery, 1949; cat. no.7, pl. 4.
Faye, Christopher Urdhal, and William Henry Bond. Supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1962, p. 195, cat. no. 60.
De Ricci, S., and W.J. Wilson. Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. Vol. 1. New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1935, p. 818, cat no. 374.
Miner, Dorothy. "The Development of Medieval Illumination as Related to the Evolution of Book Design." Catholic Life Annual 1 (1958): 7-23, 95; p. 11 (fig. 3).
Swarzenski. "The Anhalt Morgan Gospels." Art Bulletin 31 (1949): 77-83; p. 79 (n. 25).
Baltimore Museum of Art. The Greek Tradition in Painting and the Minor Arts: An exhibition sponsored jointly by the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Walters Art Gallery from May 15 through June 25, 1939. Baltimore Museum of Art, 1939; p. 75, cat. no. 89.
Miner Dorothy, V.I. Carlson, and P. W. Filby. 2,000 Years of Calligraphy: A Three-Part Exhibition Organized by the Baltimore Museum of Art, Peabody Institute Library, and the Walters Art Gallery, 6 June-18 July 1965. Exhibition Catalogue. Baltimore: Trustees of the Walters Art Gallery, 1965; cat. no. 14, fig. 14.
Diringer, David. The Illuminated Book: Its History and Production. London: Faber and Faber, 1967; p. 166 (pl. III-22a).
Berkowitz, D.S., editor and organizer. In Remembrance of Creation: Evolution of Art and Scholarship in the Medieval and Renaissance Bible. Waltham, Massachusetts: Brandeis University, 1968; cat. no. 6, illus. of ff. 15, 62, 123.
Nordenfalk Carl. "A Tenth-Century Gospel Book in the Walters Art Gallery." In Gatherings in Honor of Dorothy E. Miner. Edited by Ursula E. McCracken, Lilian M. C. Randall, and Richard H. Randall Jr. Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, 1973; pp. 139-170, figs. 1-12, 14-19.
Nordenfalk, Carl. Review of An Early Breton Gospel Book from the Collection of H.L. Bradfer-Lawrence (1887-1965) by F. Wormald and Jonathan J. G. Alexander. Burlington Magazine 120 (1978): 243-244; p. 244.
Cahn, W. "Three Eleventh-Century Manuscripts from Nevers." In Etudes d'art médievale offertes à Louis Grodecki. Paris, 1981; p. 71 (n. 51).
McKitterick, Rosamond. âCharles the Bald (823-877) and His Library: The Patronage of Learning.â English Historical Review 95, no. 374 (January 1980): 28-47.
Mütherich, F. "Ausstattung und Schmuck der Handschrift." In Das Evangeliar Otto III: Clm 4453 der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München, vol. 1. Edited by Fridolin Dressler et al. Frankfurt a. M., 1978; pp. 70, 124.
Jeauneau, Edouard. âUn âdossierâ carolingien sur la création de lâhomme: Genèse I, 26-III, 24.â Revue des Ãtudes Augustiniennes 28 (1982): 112-132.
Randall, Lilian M.C. Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery. Vol. 1. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989, pp. 3-4, cat. no. 1, fig. 1 (fol. 60v).
Staubach, Nikolaus. Rex Christianus, vol. 1. Weimar and Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1993; p. 22.
Machielsen, John J. Clavis patristica pseudepigraphorum Medii Aevi: (Praefatio) Theologica exegetica, Vol II. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1994; pp. 11, 19.
McKitterick, Rosamond. The Frankish Kings and Culture in the Early Middle Ages. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Variorum, 1995; p. 104.
Bischoff, Bernhard. Katalog der festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts: Aachen-Lambach. Weisbaden: Otto Harrasowitz, 1998; p. 43, cat. no. 185.
Dutton, Paul Edward, and Herbert Kessler. The Poetry and Paintings of the First Bible of Charles the Bald. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1997; p. 127.
Steinhauser, Kenneth B. "Manuscripts: Florilegia and Epitomes." In Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia. Edited by Allan Fitzgerald. Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1999; p. 526, cat. no. 3.
Gorman, Michael M. "Bernhard Bischoff's Handlist of Carolingian Manuscripts." Scrittura e Civiltà 25 (2001): 89-112; p. 98.
Gorman, Michael M. "The Manuscript Tradition of Augustine's De Genesi contra Manichaeos." Revue des études augustiniennes 47/2 (2001): 303-311; p. 306.
Diem, Albrecht. "Augustine, De opere monachorum." Monastic Manuscript Project. Lasted update January 1, 2013.
Contributors
Principal cataloger: Randall, Lilian M.C.
Cataloger: Herbert, Lynley
Editor: Herbert, Lynley
Copy editor: Dibble, Charles
Conservators: Owen, Linda; Quandt, Abigail
Contributors: Emery, Doug; Herbert, Lynley; Schuele, Allyson; Tabritha, Ariel; Toth, Michael B.; Wiegand, Kimber
Publisher
The Walters Art Museum
License
Licensed for use under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Access Rights, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode. It is requested that copies of any published articles based on the information in this data set be sent to the curator of manuscripts, The Walters Art Museum, 600 North Charles Street, Baltimore MD 21201.
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