Athanasius, Life of St. Anthony the Great, manuscript on parchment [France, 9th century]

Athanasius of Alexandria, Life of St. Anthony the Great, in the Latin translation of Evagrius of Antioch, large cutting from a manuscript leaf on parchment[France, second half of the ninth century] Cutting from the top half of a leaf, with remains of double columns of 20 lines in a fine and rounded Carolingian minuscule with et-ligature used integrally within words and a capital 'q' whose tail curves to the right presumably following Insular influence, remains of upper margin at head of cutting, some losses to edges of columns at sides and upper corners, recovered from a binding and hence darkened, scuffed and with damage, parchment slightly translucent in places, 150 by 240mm.; housed within Rendells' printed paper sleeve and within fitted cloth covered case A hitherto unidentified early-Carolingian witness to one of the fundamental texts of medieval monasticism Provenance: 1. Written most probably for use in a monastery in Carolingian France in the second half of the ninth century; and later reused on the binding of a book.2. Kenneth W. Rendell Gallery, cat. 146 (1979), no. 1.3. Sotheby's, 17 December 1991, lot 2.4. Schøyen Collection, London and Oslo, their MS 1541; acquired in Sotheby's. Text and script:With this lot we begin a short selection of manuscripts in Carolingian minuscule. It is fitting that this new script, so closely associated with the return of Christian study to Europe, should be used here for this work, which was of fundamental importance for the development of monasticism in Western Europe. It was composed in Greek by Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296-373), himself one of the four great fathers of Eastern Christianity, while on his third exile from his episcopacy of Alexandria in the deserts of Upper Egypt. It is the most important source for the life of St. Anthony the Great (251-356), whose life is often thought of as the template for all future monastic callings. The work is thus both a study of a crucial figure for early Christianity, as well as a semi-autographical work of one of the earliest Church fathers to withdraw into a contemplative life in the wilderness. An early Latin translation prepared during the life of the author survives in a single manuscript, and this was superseded by that produced by Evagrius of Antioch in the aftermath of the author's death in 373. In this form it championed the spread of monasticism in the West, and was essential reading in every medieval monastic foundation. It was the subject of a new edition in the Corpus Christianorum series last year by P.H.E. Bertrand and Lois Gandt, and the present cutting contains parts of chapters 80-81 in that edition (chapters 50-51 in Migne, Pat. Lat. 73, cols. 162-3). As Bertrand notes, approximately 400 manuscripts survive from the Middle Ages, but these are overwhelmingly from a boom of interest dating to the eleventh century and later when monastic foundations reached their peak in the Middle Ages. Only fourteen Carolingian witnesses survive, with only Bern, Burgerbibliothek 376 and Munich, Bayerische Statsbibliothek, Clm 6393 (both of c. 800), certainly predating the present witness.