)
An exquisitely ‘hagiographic’ numeral informs the selection of texts contained in the volume. […]. Thus, the manuscript on exhibit can be placed among the oldest examples of the third Vita dedicated to the pontiff after those composed by the Anonymous Author of Whitby and the Venerable Bede. However, until recent times the text escaped the attention – from a different perspective – of scholars of the manuscript tradition, which now numbers more than ninety texts according to the latest census, but within which it appears that only two can be dated in the 9th century. In addition, the manuscript represents an important example of the tradition for the events linked to its production. As certain graphic and decorative peculiarities attest, it was produced in the scriptorium of the Bishopric of Freising, among the most productive centres associated with the cathedral chapters of the High Middle Ages. The manuscript is connected with the time of Bishop Hitto (811/812-836), the patron of the said chapter library most worthy of praise if – as various contemporaries agree – we owe to his patronage, in particular, the production of manuscripts of ‘theological’ works. The attention paid to the accessibility of the text is beyond doubt […], despite the erasures and frequent corrections and additions to the parchment, which is clearly not uniform as it was assembled in irregular gatherings (numbered in roman numerals, sometimes over erasures then corrected themselves.) At some unknown date the manuscript was moved from the original libraria to that of the famous Benedictine Foundation at Tegernsee […]. Paul the Deacon’s hagiography elicited vivid interest among the monks at Tegernsee, as shown by the notabilia in the margins and the references within the text […]. The last chapter of the history of the text’s vicissitudes saw it acquired in 1814, along with other manuscripts from the Bavarian abbey, in Paris (where various manuscripts from Tegernsee has already ‘re-emerged’ at the beginning of the century) by the noble, Ludwig von Oettingen-Wallerstein, epigone of a series of munificent bibliophile ‘benefactors’ of the young Universitätsbibliothek of Augsburg, where a large percentage of the manuscripts they collected came to be housed.
DONATELLA FRIOLI
Reproduced here: f. 77v at the beginning of Paul the Deacon’s Vita Gregorii, introduced by a simple coloured initial and index (without the author’s name.)
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).