The oldest Western European codex in private hands

1 Canones conciliorum

Manuscript on vellum,written by an insular scribe.Northern Italy,c.775.

223 x 175 mm.94 leaves.Internally complete,lacking one gathering at the beginning and some leaves at the end.The quires are signed with Roman numbersfrom II-XIII.– Written space fol.1-64v:165 x 130 mm,on fol.65-94v:175 x 135 mm,ruled in blind for one column of 24-25 and 19-20 lines.fol.1-60v writtenin half uncials and precarolingian minuscules,fol.61-94v in precarolingian minuscules in olive grey,light brown and dark brown ink.Many capitals in uncial withsimple decoration with penwork ornament,including one initial in a form of a fish.– In fine condition for a volume of such antiquity.Right upper corner onfol.70 torn away with some loss of text.– 19th-century brown morocco by the Parisian bookbinder Marcelin Lortic.

PROVENANCE: 1.The codex was written by an insularscribe from Ireland or Northumbria,working in NorthernItaly.2.Monastery of Reichenau in Germany (at an early date).3.Bound in Paris by Marcellin Lortic who opened his shopin the Rue St Honoré in 1840.4.Ms.17.849 of the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps(1792-1872);his oldest western manuscript and one ofPhillipps’“greatest treasures”.5.William Robinson Ltd.,cat.81:Precious Manuscripts,Historic Documents and Rare Books,London 1950,no.92.6.Dr.Martin Bodmer,Geneva,Switzerland (1899-1971).7.Peter and Irene Ludwig,Aachen,ms.XIV 1 (1978-1983).8.The J.Paul Getty Museum,Malibu (1983-1988).9.Now:Private collection,Europe.

TEXT: fol.1-58:Canones Conciliorum– fol.58-77v:Symmachi-ana,so-called ‘Symmachian forgeries’– fol.77v-94v:Decretalsof Siricius,Boniface I,Innocent I,Zosimus,and Celestine I;end of text missing.Following the death of Pope Gelasius I († 496) DionysiusExiguus (c.470- c.555),a skythian monk in Rome,wascommissioned by the papal court to compile the ‘CollectioDionysiana’which united the canons of the councils andpapal decretals.This anthology was the first compilation ofthis kind carried out in the Western Church and forms thefoundation of Western Latin canon law.The compilation ofDionysius exists in three editions of which the codex atissue represents the so-called ‘Dionysiana II’.Manuscripts ofthe ‘Dionysiana II’are rare uncombined with other texts,while only one codex preserved as a complete book is ofan earlier date:ms.fol.v.II.3 in St Petersburg (RossijskajaNacionalnaja Biblioteka),a Burgundian codex dating fromthe 7thcentury (CLA 11 no.1061).Apart from this manu-script only a fragment in the Biblioteca Amploniana inErfurt (Ampl.2°74) can be dated earlier having beenwritten during the second half of the 6thcentury,pre-sumably in Italy.After the Canones Conciliorumthere follows as an insert,which cannot be found in this form in comparable collec-tions,the so-called ‘Symmachian forgeries’,dating from thetime of Pope Symmachus (498-514;see Landau 1998).Hewas elected pope after the death of Anastasius II by a certainfaction;a second faction declared the archpriest Laurence aspontiff.As a result of the turmoil which followed the elec-tions,the ‘Symmachian forgeries’were written,which stroveto demonstrate by means of fictitious papal case files thatthe pope would not be subject to a human court of justice,but solely to the judgement of God.The third component of the book comprises decretals com-piled under the pontificate of Pope Hormisdas (514-523)and contains the complete corpus of the old canon law,which consisted of the decrees of the Middle Eastern,Greek,African and Roman councils as well as those of the popes.The compilation is known as the Sanblasianus edition,be-cause it was edited on the basis of a manuscript which firstbelonged to St Blasien in the Black Forest and then to St Paulin Lavanttal (Stiftsbibliothek,cod.7/1).Only seven manu-scripts of this edition are preserved,three of which are olderthan the present codex (Paris,BN,lat.3836,dating fromthe second half of the 8thcentury;Cologne,Dombiblio-thek,ms.213 dating from the first third of the 8thcenturyand the Sanblasianus,which also dates from the mid-8thcen-tury).The oldest manuscript within the group (Cologne,Dombibliothek,ms.213) was written in Northumbria andbrought to Cologne in the 8thcentury.The Canones concilio-rumgained such an importance in subsequent decades thatthe text was duplicated again and again in the Frankish em-pire and from this later period over 100 manuscripts are pre-served in the Frankish area alone.The codex was written by three different scribes.The mainscribe (fol.2-60v) wrote the Canones conciliorumas well as theopening of the ‘Symmachian forgeries’.Palaeographic analysisreveals that this scribe came to the continent from an insularscriptorium and finally settled in northern Italy.It is notascertainable,however,in which northern Italian scriptoriumthe manuscript was written.The palaeographic indicationscannot be used to date the manuscript to a specific year,but it is very likely that it was executed in the years around775,making the present manuscript contemporary withthe famous copy of the Canonescompilation,the so-calledDionysio-Hadriana,which was presented to the Frankishruler Charlemagne (768-814) by Pope Hadrian I (772-795)in Rome in 774.After the presentation,the wording ofthe statute book was made compulsory for the Frankishempire,and numerous transcripts of the codex,originallykept in Aachen and now lost,were produced.

LITERATURE: Munby 1960,pp.104 and 108;Euw/Plotzek1985,no.XIV,1;sales cat.Sotheby’s 6 December 1988,lot 39;Kéry 1999,p.30.Landau 1988,pp.11-49;Dura 1993,pp.279-290;Wirbelauer1993;exh.cat.Cologne 1998,no.18;Kéry 1999,pp.9-13 andpp.29-31.