Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 304: Iuuencus, Euangelia metrica

purl.stanford.edu/cb007dq5327

Title:

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 304: Iuuencus, Euangelia metrica

Alternate Title:

Iuvencus

Language:

Latin

Extent:

ff. 1 + 115

Dimensions:

250 Height (mm) and 170 Width (mm)

Approximate Date:

[ca. 600 CE - 699 CE]

Provenance:

To this some remarks may be added. As to the owners of the manuscript in medieval times. There is, as is stated above, an erasure at the top of f. 1r. It is of one word only, of ten or twelve capital letters, apparently. The first letter might be A and the last S. On the margin of f. 72v is neatly written (x?) the word sugga. On f. 75v at top in pale ink (as noted by Marold) is the name Engelberga (in a German hand according to Traube). Traube, O roma nobilis p. 57, compares the marginal reference in the Berne MS. 363 to Angelberga wife of Louis II. A note in the College Library copy of Nasmith's Catalogue records an opinion (possibly that of Traube) that the ornamentation of this MS. is Hispano-Gothic. The book has evidently been long in England. There are a good many marginal notes in an English hand of cent. viii or ix, rather rough. There are also a few interlinear glosses (all apparently in Latin) in a neater hand of cent. x (?). I incline to identify it with the Juvencus in Romana scriptura which is mentioned in our oldest catalogue (xii) of Christ Church, Canterbury (Ancient Libraries, p. 11, no. 152). This had the mark HL, not now traceable in the manuscript. Two features might suggest the possibility that the book has a connexion with Spain. These are (1) the occurrence of Saracenic arches in the ornament of the preliminary leaves, (2) the passages from Isidore of Seville inscribed thereon. But though pages framed in horse-shoe arches do occur in early Spanish MSS. (e.g. those of Beatus on the Apocalypse) they also occur in Italian art: see for instance a Monte Cassino martyrology of cent. xii in Mr H. Y. Thompson's collection (Fifty MSS. I, p. 37). And the popularity of Isidore was early and wide-spread. Nor is there any clear indication of Spanish habits of orthography in the text. On the whole, it is probably safer to regard the book as of Italian origin.

Table of contents:

Euangelia metrica

Description:

CCCC MS 304 is a very important early copy of Juvencus, Euangelia metrica, a metrical paraphrase of the gospels in Virgilian language composed in the fourth century by this aristocratic Spanish priest. It also contains the earliest known version of some verses by Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636). This manuscript was written in the first half of the eighth century in Uncial script. E. A. Lowe changed his mind about this manuscript between the two editions of the second volume of his Codices Latini Antiquiores: in the first he considered it to be Spanish, in the second Italian. It seems to have reached England by the tenth century, perhaps at Christ Church, Canterbury or Malmesbury, and may be identifiable with an item in the Christ Church library catalogue.