Read on Twitter
There’s a lot to observe on this leaf I retweeted yesterday. Let’s unpack it layer by layer, in today’s #BreakfastPaleography! http://tudigit.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/show/Hs-4262
Original use: The leaf was part of a copy of Bede’s De Tempore Rationem, written in his home abbey of Wearmouth-Jarrow (actually two sister abbeys) around 725, i.e. in Bede’s lifetime. That makes this one of the earliest (if not THE earliest) known copies of this important text.
This side preserves the end of Chapter 26 and the beginning of Ch. 27.The Patrologia Latina edition (XC:411-414) is online here: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Patrologiae_cursus_completus/-X39muHzcDMC?hl=en&gbpv=0
And here’s the library’s printed catalogue description (Hessische Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek Darmstadt, Bibelhandschriften, Volume 4, by Kurt Hans Staub and Hermann Knaus):
Three Things I Love about this leaf: a) the occasional shrinking letter size at the end of the line, to squeeze in the whole word (typical of this script at this place and time); b) the graceful long-s at the end of the line;
c) the contemporary correcting hand, here adding an all-important “non” that the scribe forgot.
The script is said to be similar, although not identical, to Lowe’s CLA Suppl. 1682, from early 8th-c. Wearmouth-Jarrow: https://elmss.nuigalway.ie/catalogue/1985
Binding use: rotated to be used as a wrap-around cover for the binding of a 1587 work by Philip Melanchthon ( https://hds.hebis.de/ulbda/Record/HEB462072320). The (faint) title “Liber de Anima” can be read on the outside, which was dyed.
There was another fragment laid between the Bede and the actual boards, this one of a printed Bible with commentary on paper. This one was rotated and folded in half before it was used; the rotated offset can still be seen on the Bede fragment.
The library’s printed catalogue mentions that the host volume is inscribed by an early owner, Johannes Greitingerus, who owned the volume in 1591.
Unfortunately, the Melanchthon host volume hasn’t been digitized, so I don’t know if there is still any evidence of the fragment in that book. If I’m ever in Darmstadt, I’ll be sure to take a look! https://hds.hebis.de/ulbda/Record/HEB462072320
With fragments, it is always important to note the evidence of use and reuse in addition to interpreting the original manuscript, because that evidence records the fragment’s journey from there and then to here and now. The End.
