MS. Laud Misc. 394
Summary Catalogue no.: 1348
A: Chronicle, from Ninus, first king of the Assyrians, to the death of Emperor Heraclius, c. 642. B: Commentary on the Octateuch. Germany, late 12th century
Physical Description
Binding
Laudian binding. Sewn on four bands laced into pasteboards covered with brown tanned leather, each covered framed with a pair of blind filets and stamped in the centre with the gilt arms of archbishop Laud; holes from a pair of ties towards the fore-edge.
The spine with a 17th-century paper label inscribed ‘Anna:[les?] C[hro]|nica usq[ue ad?] | Heraclium [ … ] | Comment. in | 5. libris M[oi]sis | M S’, with ‘A’ between the M and S; and three printed Bodleian paper labels printed ‘Laud. | I | 8.’, ‘Laud’, and ‘394’ respectively.
Rust-stains on fol. 1r doubtless caused by a pair of clasp-fittings from a former binding.
History
Provenance and Acquisition
Inscribed, 14th(?) century: ‘Iste liber continet Cronicam [ smudge ] et brevem stilum super(?) quinque libros Moysis’ (fol. 1r); copied below by a 16th-century hand, leaving a space for the unread word.
Inscribed, 15th century: ‘In culpam labitur mente qui non dominatur | Est miserum homini malum defendere rei’; ‘Quanto sanctiores(?) tanto rariores’; and ‘Contra naturam est superbire et ab equali velle timeri’ (Gregory, Moralia in Job, II, 21, 15).
Part A only with marginal summaries in a late 15th- or early 16th-century hand.
Samson Johnson, protege of William Laud, inscribed ‘Liber Samsonis Johnsoni’ (fol. 1r), 16th/17th-century; cf. MS. Laud Misc. 355.
William Laud, 1573-1645: with the usual inscription, dated 1635 (fol. 1v, lower margin).
Part of his first donation to the Bodleian, 1625. Former Bodleian shelfmarks: inscribed in ink ‘J. 8’ twice (cf. spine), ‘Laud 394’, and in pencil ‘olim 1348’ (front pastedown), and ‘J.8.’ (fol. ir).
MS. Laud Misc. 394 - Part A (fols. 1-31)
Contents
Language(s): Latin
Historical compilation from Ninus, first king of the Assyrians, to the death of Emperor Heraclius
⟨Exordia Scythica⟩Continues without a break from the previous text. A copy of a 10th-century paraphrase of a 6th-century work, edited (using the Bamberg MS. as the base text) by M. T. Kretschmer, ‘Aeneas without the Gods: a 10th-century abbreviation and paraphrase of the Excidium Troie’, Studi medievali, 51 (2010) 307–27, at 319–26.
Continues without a break from the previous text; an abbreviation of Paul the Deacon's work. Ed. by M. T. Kretschmer in Rewriting Roman history in the Middle Ages: the ‘Historia Romana’ and the manuscript Bamberg, Hist.3 (Leiden, 2007), at pp. 68–162; the present MS. is like the edition as far as line 2789 (on the 5th line from the bottom of fol. 29v).
Continues without a break from the previous text. The last three lines of the page are unwritten, so the ending here is not due to a lacuna in the present MS.
Cap. 66, lines 1693–1828; ed. Jones, CCSL, 123B (1977), pp. 520-5.Items 1-3 circulate together in four manuscripts noticed by Kretschmer in 2010: Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Hist. 3 (Halberstadt, late 10th or early 11th century, copied from a 10th-century Italian exemplar); Salisbury, Cathedral Library, MS 80 (Salisbury, late 12th or early 13th century); Oxford, Magdalen College, MS 14 (England, 13th century: a copy of the Salisbury MS.); and Vatican, BAV, Urb. lat. 961 (Italy, 14th century, ending at XVI.8). To these can be added the present MS. and Paris, BnF, ms. lat. 4794, fols. 30v-65v (also ending at XVI.8; Italy, 14th century; from the Visconti-Sforza library), also apparently Rome, Biblioteca nazionale centrale Vittorio Emanuele II, Vittorio Emanuele, Vitt. Em. 1119 fols. 9v-59r (again ending at XVI.8).
Added to a leaf left blank at the end of a quire, and followed by the stub of a cancelled blank leaf.
Physical Description
Collation
Layout
Ruled in faint plummet, for 37 lines; ruled space 175 × 110 mm. Written above top line.
Hand(s)
Pre-gothic bookhand; change at fol. 22v line 7.
Decoration
Initials in plain red, some with rudimentary ornament.
History
MS. Laud Misc. 394 - Part B (fols. 32-117)
Contents
With Genesis (fols. 32r–67r), Exodus (fols. 67r–87v), Leviticus (fols. 87v–98v), Numbers (fols. 98v–107v), Deuteronomy (fols. 107v–111r), Joshua (fols. 111r–113v), Judges (fols. 113v–117r), and Ruth (fol. 117r–v).
Found in MS. Canon. Pat. Lat. 175 (written in Beneventan script, attributed to Bari in the early 12th century), with the incipit ‘Catholicorum patrum studia maximis adeo sunt preconiis predicanda’.
Stegmüller, Bibl. RB no. 10061, cites only the Canonici MS. and the present one, and gives the incipits of the prologues. The Ruth commentary is C81 in de Martel, Répertoire des textes latins relatifs au Livre de Ruth, p. 130, also citing only these two MSS. A 14th-century copy of text is recorded in Naples, Archivio di Stato, Museo, 99.C.24, inventario 133, by A. Improta, ‘Tra sopravvivenza e distruzione: i codici dell’Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Bartolommeo Capasso e lo studio della miniatura a Napoli alla fine del XIX secolo’, Archivio Storico per le Province Napoletane, 131 (2013), 261–308 at 291 no. XXXIV.
Physical Description
Collation
Layout
Ruled in plummet for 1 column of 33-5 lines; ruled space 170 × 110 mm. Written above top line.
Hand(s)
Protogothic bookhand
Decoration
One 4-line initial in red with blue penwork at Genesis 12 (fol. 42v).
1- and 2-line initials in plain red.
History
Provenance
Chapter numbers added, using medieval Arabic numerals.
Sporadic late medieval marginalia and a few manicula, e.g next to ‘Sed hec advertant monachi qui captant curas seculi’ (e.g. fol. 40v).
The beginning of Genesis 12 divided into readings by four ‘lectio’ annotations in the margins (fols. 42v–43r).
Medieval(?) damage and repairs to the first leaf, suggesting that the start of the text was lost early.
Additional Information
Record Sources
Digital Images
Digital Bodleian (full digital facsimile)
Bibliography
Abbreviations
View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.
Last Substantive Revision
2021-04-20: Description fully revised for Polonsky German digitization project.