![GREGORY THE GREAT (590-604), Homilia in Evangelia, a leaf from a manuscript on vellum [Germany, perhaps Würzburg, c.800]](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2018/CKS/2018_CKS_16018_0001_001(gregory_the_great_homilia_in_evangelia_a_leaf_from_a_manuscript_on_vel083809).jpg?w=1)
![GREGORY THE GREAT (590-604), Homilia in Evangelia, a leaf from a manuscript on vellum [Germany, perhaps Würzburg, c.800]](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2018/CKS/2018_CKS_16018_0001_000(gregory_the_great_homilia_in_evangelia_a_leaf_from_a_manuscript_on_vel093719).jpg?w=1)
Details
GREGORY THE GREAT (590-604), Homilia in Evangelia, a leaf from a manuscript on vellum [Germany, perhaps Würzburg, c.800]
A rare, idiosyncratic and very early example of caroline script and a survival of a very important text, copied out in the scriptorium of an Irish monastery in Germany at the turn of the 9th century, and later in the ducal library of Arenberg, Brussels: the long-lost sister-leaf to Poole 32, at the Lilly Library in Bloomington, IN.
217 x 143mm. 23 lines of text in a very early 9th-century, flamboyant and somewhat irregular caroline hand, initials touched in green, red and yellow, prickings still visible. The text from Homilia VIII: '[...] in nostra venit ex tempore' and ending 'Quid est quod [ante Redemptoris adventum]' (somewhat thumbed and stained, light creasing, remnants of adhesive on margins).
Provenance: The distinctive script, with the initials infilled with blocks of coloured wash, is characteristic of insular or Irish manuscripts, and the parent manuscript was likely produced in a west German house established by insular monks. A sister-leaf is at the Lilly Library in Bloomington, Indiana (Poole 32; on this leaf see C. de Hamel, Gilding The Lilly: A Hundred Medieval and Illuminated Manuscripts in the Lilly Library, 2010, pp. 12-13, no 3). The same scribe is responsible for a collection of homilies, now in Mersebur, Bibliothek des Domkapitals, MS 89 (see B. Bischoff, Katalog der festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts, I, 1998). Parallels to the initials are found in a number of Würzburg manuscripts (a fragment of a Gospel Book at the Morgan Library, G 26 and an Isidore in Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, M.P. Th. Q.28b, for example), a region with a significant Irish population and one from which several of the oldest copies of texts by St Gregory were disseminated in Germany — the ducal library of Arenberg, Brussels, probably acquired by Duc Engelbert-Auguste d'Arenberg (1824-1875) — one of two leaves sold by the tenth duke, Engelbert-Charles d'Arenberg (1899-1974): Hauswedell, Hamburg, Auktion 52-53, April 1953, lot 7 — W.H. Schab, New York dealer. The second leaf was acquired by George A. Poole from Schab in 1954 and acquired with the Poole collection by the Lilly Library in 1958.
The scribe made frequent mistakes that were – or were not – corrected: see for instance on the verso 'Hic' corrected from 'hinc' by careful erasure.
A rare, idiosyncratic and very early example of caroline script and a survival of a very important text, copied out in the scriptorium of an Irish monastery in Germany at the turn of the 9th century, and later in the ducal library of Arenberg, Brussels: the long-lost sister-leaf to Poole 32, at the Lilly Library in Bloomington, IN.
217 x 143mm. 23 lines of text in a very early 9th-century, flamboyant and somewhat irregular caroline hand, initials touched in green, red and yellow, prickings still visible. The text from Homilia VIII: '[...] in nostra venit ex tempore' and ending 'Quid est quod [ante Redemptoris adventum]' (somewhat thumbed and stained, light creasing, remnants of adhesive on margins).
Provenance: The distinctive script, with the initials infilled with blocks of coloured wash, is characteristic of insular or Irish manuscripts, and the parent manuscript was likely produced in a west German house established by insular monks. A sister-leaf is at the Lilly Library in Bloomington, Indiana (Poole 32; on this leaf see C. de Hamel, Gilding The Lilly: A Hundred Medieval and Illuminated Manuscripts in the Lilly Library, 2010, pp. 12-13, no 3). The same scribe is responsible for a collection of homilies, now in Mersebur, Bibliothek des Domkapitals, MS 89 (see B. Bischoff, Katalog der festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts, I, 1998). Parallels to the initials are found in a number of Würzburg manuscripts (a fragment of a Gospel Book at the Morgan Library, G 26 and an Isidore in Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, M.P. Th. Q.28b, for example), a region with a significant Irish population and one from which several of the oldest copies of texts by St Gregory were disseminated in Germany — the ducal library of Arenberg, Brussels, probably acquired by Duc Engelbert-Auguste d'Arenberg (1824-1875) — one of two leaves sold by the tenth duke, Engelbert-Charles d'Arenberg (1899-1974): Hauswedell, Hamburg, Auktion 52-53, April 1953, lot 7 — W.H. Schab, New York dealer. The second leaf was acquired by George A. Poole from Schab in 1954 and acquired with the Poole collection by the Lilly Library in 1958.
The scribe made frequent mistakes that were – or were not – corrected: see for instance on the verso 'Hic' corrected from 'hinc' by careful erasure.
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