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This manuscript is one of the three indicated as containing abridgements of the Moralia attributed by the 17th century editor, Martin Marrier, to Eudes, the famous Abbot of Cluny. The other two are the Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud. misc. 456, also dating from the mid 9th century and produced in central or southern France, and Vatican Reg. lat. 306, dating from the second half of the 11th century and produced at Cluny. This latter is the only text to show an attribution to Eudes. This abridgement was definitively shown to be spurious by Gabriella Braga in 1977 on the basis of research and careful description of the manuscripts. The dating of two of the manuscripts is obviously incompatible with an attribution to Eudes (d. 942.) The scholar, who has identified the correct abridgement by Eudes in the Paris manuscript lat. 2455, has proposed an early Carolingian date to the spurious text, renamed The Marrier Abridgement. In addition to having shortened the Moralia considerably […], the unknown abridger has reorganised the Gregorian material to follow the Book of Job more closely […]. The Moralia abridgement is preceded by a prologue in which the author, who does not reveal either his name or a dedicatee, explains his method, […]. This prologue is followed by a poem in 60 hexameters […] to which are added other verses written in the world of Visigoth ecclesiastics working in close collaboration at Charlemagne’s court. These elements could lead us to connect the abridgement with Orléans and Fleury, where the Visigoth Theodolfus was both bishop and abbot at the beginning of the 9th century […]. We can see even more cogent parallels between the prologues in the abridgement – enough to surmise the author’s identity – and those, also in prose and hexameters, respectively, of the Concordia regularum by Benedict of Aniane, the great abbot of Visigoth origin who was decisive in spreading the Benedictine Rule in the Frankish monasteries. Theodolfus and Benedict maintained close relations, which would explain the reciprocal influences.
PAOLO CHIESA
Reproduced here: p. 10 with zoomorphic initial (vir) from the abridgement.
The complete record can be found in the exhibit catalogue Gregorio Magno e l'invenzione del Medioevo, ed. Luigi G. G. Ricci, Florence, SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo 2006 (Archivum Gregorianum, 9).