Ɵ Alcuin, Conflictus veris et hiemis, and other texts, manuscript on parchment [France, c.873]

Ɵ Conflictus veris et hiemis, a verse in hexameters on the debate between Spring and Winter, attributed to Alcuin of York, with the translations and miracles of St. Lomer, with further additions of Carolingian music, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment[France (most probably Blois), c. 873 and tenth century]Fourteen leaves (plus a nineteenth-century parchment endleaf at each end), all conserved in nineteenth century and many remounted on guards and thus uncollatable, wanting 2 leaves after fol. 4 and another 2 leaves after fol. 12 as well as an 8-leaf gathering (now Vatican, Reg. Lat. 479: see below), last 4 leaves smaller than others (measuring 245 by 167mm.), the verse added to original endleaf at front in double column of 41 and 20 lines in a small and legible Carolingian minuscule with an extended ct-ligature and the characters' names in margin, one descender in lowermost line extended to form an ornate penwork leaf with a bauble mounted in its stem, and main texts relating to St. Lomer in single column of 29-36 lines in two closely related precise and refined Carolingian minuscules, both with et-ligature used integrally within words (but variant forms of capital 'q'/'Q'), the second with an NT-ligature and an uncial 'N' used in main text, crucial names in capitals, some capitals touched in red and others infilled with yellow wash, text opening major sections in capitals touched with red, rubrics of elongated red capitals, small red initials, larger initials in penwork, some with baubles set within their bodies or coloured in green and red, one large initial in delicate blank parchment penwork touched in red and set within dark brown initials terminating in floral flourishes, seventeenth-century scholarly marginalia, endleaf at front reused from a sixteenth-century French choirbook with music on a 4-line red stave, some stains to areas of text, spots from old mould damage at head, margins trimmed often to edges of text, overall good and solid condition on heavy and good quality parchment, 300 by 190mm.; nineteenth-century French brown calf over pasteboards, gilt-tooled with arched frames with floral sprays at corners, with spine gilt with "De S. Launomaro - MS IXe S" An important Carolingian monastic codex, containing a celebrated verse attributed to Alcuin, the leading intellectual light of the Carolingian renaissance, as well as the earliest witnesses to prose and musical texts relating to the Merovingian saint Lomer; this probably one of the last ninth-century codices to appear on the market Provenance:1. The main texts here on St. Lomer (also Laumer and Laudomarus) must have been written immediately after the translation of the saint's relics to a church in Blois in 874 (an event these leaves record), but before the foundation of the Benedictine abbey dedicated to the saint there in 924. Another eight leaves from the centre of this manuscript are the first part of a sammelband assembled in the seventeenth century in Italy (now Vatican, Reg. Lat. 479; A. Wilmart, Codices reginenses latini, 1937, pp. 651-2, with the whole manuscript reproduced online). Those contain the opening of the life of the saint, which ends abrubtly and is completed by the two words at the top of fol. 10r here.Crucially the opening of the text in the Vatican leaves refers to the saint as 'our patron'. In addition, there is a hitherto unnoticed contemporary or near-contemporary name added to the foot of the first of the present leaves, probably identifying "Raginoldus feldracanum" as an early user or perhaps donor of the codex. The second part of his name is hard to decipher, but a late medieval hand has added "Raginoldus feldra carutasis", suggesting Carnutum/Carnotum or Chartres as his town of origin (the monastery of Saint Martin au Val du Chartres was one of the temporary resting places of the relics and the community on their way to Blois: see N. Mars, Histoire du royal monastère de Sainct-Lomer de Blois, 1646, p. 29). His name does not occur in the published research of Dom Mars, but there is an unpublished and mostly unstudied six-volume cartulary of the eighteenth century for the house in the Archives départementales de Loir-et-Cher, ms. 11 H. 128, and search for this name there may reveal much.St. Lomer was born c. 530 at Neuville-la-Mare, north of Chartres, where he was ordained as a monk, before withdrawing into the forest of Perche where he founded the monastery of Corbion in 575, becoming its first abbot. He died in 593 while visiting Chartres and was buried near there, until monks from Corbion stole his relics a few years later to return him to his own community. Following a Viking attack on Corbion in 873/4 the community and their relics fled to Parigny near Avranches and then Le Mans before being offered sanctuary within the walled town of Blois. In the tenth century they moved outside the city walls to the church of St-Lubin, and then again in 1186 to the larger adjacent site they occupied for the remainder of the Middle Ages.2. Dom Noël Mars (1612-1702), the Benedictine monk and Maurist historian of Blois; with his marginal notes and signature, including one on fol. 10r referring to the Acta Sanctorum ordinis S. Benedicti, Paris, 1668, in which footnote 'a' on p. 338 evidently refers to this manuscript: "Haec ex MS. Historia S. Launomari Monasterii Blesensis a nostro Natale Mars erudite composite didicimus". The central leaves of the manuscript may well have become detached by the seventeenth century (see below), and Dom Mars conducted much antiquarian research in the archive of St-Lomer in the last decades of that century, and this may explain this section of it ending up in his possession. In 1789 the revolutionary government of the region suppressed the abbey, and seized its church for the parish of St-Nicholas two years later. Its goods and library were dispersed at the same time, with the Vatican leaves then beginning their journey towards Rome. Delisle notes four manuscripts in the BnF. as well as another in the collection of Herzog August in Wolfenbüttel from this medieval library (Le cabinet des manuscrits, 1868, II, p. 406).3. Louis de la Saussaye (1801-1878) of the Château de Troussay, near Blois, local historian, archaeologist, and numismatist, with a note of "un manuscrit du Xe siècle ... dant la bibliothèque de M. de la Saussaye" in Dom Mars' Histoire du royal monastère de Sainct-Lomer de Blois, p. 66, n. 2 and 7, n. 2, doubtless referring to these leaves. His sale, 30 September 1887, lot 1148.4. Schøyen Collection, London and Oslo, their MS 5577; acquired Sotheby's, 5 July 2016, lot 57.Text:Alcuin of York (c. 735-804) was the central intellectual figure of the Carolingian renaissance, and was educated in the renowned cathedral school at York under Archbishop Ecgbert (himself a pupil of Bede). By the 750s he was teaching in the school and came to the court of Charlemagne at the emperor's invitation, serving as 'master of the palace school' from 782, taking over the teaching of the emperor himself and his children, and becoming a guiding hand of the religious and intellectual revolution that was to follow. In 796, when entering his old age,... read more.... To view a video of this item, click here.