A catalogue of Western manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries and selected Oxford colleges

MS. Canon. Class. Lat. 41

Summary Catalogue no.: 18622

The Oxford Juvenal

Juvenal, Satires ('The Oxford Juvenal'); Italy (Montecassino), late 11th or early 12th century

Contents

Juvenal, Satirae

With scholia.

This manuscript famously contains 36 lines of satire VI not found in any other manuscript, 34 after line 365 and 2 more after line 373 (fols. 20v-21r)

Language(s): Latin

Physical Description

Form: codex
Support: parchment
Extent: i (paper) + 56 + i (paper)
Dimensions (leaf): 230 × 135 mm.
Many leaves with irregular edges.
Foliation: 1-56 in 19th-century pencil; endleaves unfoliated.

Collation

1(8)-3(8) (fols. 1-24), 4(8) (3 and 6 are half-sheets) (fols. 25-32), 5(8) (fols. 33-40), 6(8) (2 and 7 are half-sheets) (fols. 41-8), 7(8) (3 and 6 are half-sheets) (fols. 49-56).

Layout

Ruled with hard point; 1 col., 35 lines; ruled space 185 × 95 mm.

Hand(s)

Beneventan script by one scribe, not trained at Montecassino, but whose hand has also been identified in other manuscripts written at Montecassino: see Erik Kwakkel and Francis Newton, Medicine at Monte Cassino: Constantine the African and the Oldest Manuscript of His Pantegni, Speculum Sanitatis  1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), esp. pp. 118, 154-6, 224.

Decoration

Good initials. (Pächt and Alexander ii. 24, pl. II)

Binding

18th-century Italian quarter-binding of leather and plain parchment.

History

Origin: 11th century, end, or 12th century, beginning ; Italian, South, Montecassino

Provenance and Acquisition

Matteo Luigi Canonici, 1727–1805

Giuseppe Canonici , -1807

Purchased by the Bodleian in 1817

Record Sources

Description adapted by Matthew Holford (Sept. 2022) from the following sources, with additional physical description and reference to published literature as cited.
The Survival of Ancient Literature [exh. cat.] (1975), cat. 113
Otto Pächt and J. J. G. Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library Oxford, II (1970), no. 24
Previously described in the Quarto Catalogue (H. O. Coxe, Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum Bibliothecæ Bodleianæ pars tertia codices Græcos et Latinos Canonicianos complectens, Quarto Catalogues III, 1854).

Availability

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Digital Images

Digital Bodleian (full digital facsimile)
Digital Bodleian (6 images from 35mm slides)

Last Substantive Revision

2022-09: Description revised for publication on Digital Bodleian.