Bede, Homilies, in Latin, manuscript on parchment [most probably France, 9th century]

Bede, Homilies, in Latin, cuttings from a manuscript in a fine Anglo-Saxon minuscule on parchment[most probably north-eastern France (perhaps Arras), first quarter of the ninth century]Large fragment of a single leaf bisected laterally into two equal halves, remains of double column of 25 lines in a pointed Anglo-Saxon minuscule, with an open 'g' with a zig-zagging tail, an oversized 'e', uncial style 'd', an 'r' descending below the line and both pointed and 'oc' forms of 'a' (for the same features cf. the contemporary hands of Basel, UB F III 15a and Kassel, 2o Ms. theol. 25: reproduced in Fuldische Handschriften aus Hessen, 1994, nos. 19 and 29), containing parts of book 2, homily 7, of the text, areas partly painted blue-green and tooled with fillet on outside and traces of red staining inside (probably from reuse around in north-European binding around outer board edges of a later book), together 180 by 180mm.; set individually in glass and within fitted case These are substantial cuttings from a copy of a work by Bede, the foremost Anglo-Saxon author, here in Anglo-Saxon miniscule, copied on the Continent in a house under English influence or by a visiting English scribe Provenance: 1. Written for use in a Continental scriptorium, perhaps by an English scribe, in the first quarter of the ninth century. In 1994 the script was identified by Prof. G. Schrimpf, Herrad Spilling and Wesley M. Stevens of the Theological Faculty of Fulda as from a centre in north-east France.2. Private American collection, dispersed by Quaritch in 1993.3. Schøyen Collection, London and Oslo, their MS 1654; acquired from Quaritch. Text and scriptorium:The use of Anglo-Saxon script in Continental Europe during the close of the Early Middle Ages is a testament to the influence of English missionaries there in the eighth century. At the close of the seventh century, Ecgberht of Ripon inherited the proselytising ambitions of the Irish and sent monks to convert Frisia, followed by the missions of SS. Wihtberht, Willibrord and Boniface, each of whom founded monasteries and established connections to early Anglo-Saxon England. Soon after the death of Bede in 735, his scriptorium in Wearmouth-Jarrow was supplying copies of crucial Christian texts to communities there, and annotations to the celebrated Moore Bede reveal that it was in France perhaps as early as the reign of Charlemagne. Bischoff studied the Continental houses producing Anglo-Saxon script, with the majority in German scriptoria and only a handful in France (B. Bischoff, Mittelalterliche Studien, III, 1981, pp. 5-38), but the influence of these Anglo-Saxon hands and scribes did not widely survive the script reforms of the early Carolingian era, and by the early ninth century the practise was kept on only in the larger German centres such as Lorsch, Echternach and St Gall, and "[f]rom 820 on, Fulda is the only stronghold of Anglo-Saxon script in Germany" (B. Bischoff, Latin Palaeography, 1990, p. 94). If the identification of the present cuttings as French in origin is correct, then these would be a remarkable witness to the survival of the script in at least one house in France in the early ninth century.No surviving manuscript of the text definitively predates this witness to the text, and it is one of only nine recorded manuscripts of the ninth century. Of these, two are connected to Arras in north eastern France (Arras, Bibliothèque municipale, 739 [olim 333], & Boulogne-sur-mer, Bibliothèque municipale, 75 [83], both of the second quarter of the ninth century), with further French examples in nearby Cambrai (Bibliothèque municipale, 365), and much further afield near the German and Austrian borders in Lyons, Bibliothèque municipale, 473. This suggests that a house in the north eastern corner of France may have been behind the earliest distribution of the text there, and lends weight to the palaeographical suggestion that a scriptorium there was the origin of this fragment. The choice of text and script makes it likely that the scribe of our manuscript was working from an exemplar sent from England, and may himself have been a monk visiting from there. Published: K. Gugel, Welche erhaltenen mittelalterlichen Handscriften dürfen der Bibliothek des Klosters Fulda zugerechnet werden? Teil II: Die Fragmente aus Handschriften, Fuldaer Hochschulschriften 23a-b, Frankfurt, 1995-1996, pp. 51-52 (as "Fulda?" and based on description made before the work of Schrimpf, Spilling and Stevens).