Volume / Number: 11 / 1629

• San Lorenzo Spain El Escorial Camarin De Las Reliquias without number

Origin uncertain, but possibly the region that produced the Eutropius fragment with which it is bound. The Tironian 'contuli' suggest Italy, but the uncial script and the abbreviations are unlike those of manuscripts known to be Italian. Was at a centre with Anglo-Saxon connections in the eighth century, probably in Western Germany, as is proved by probationes pennae in both parts of the volume. Copied in the ninth century at Lorsch (the copy came to Eberbach in the Rheingau, as did other Lorsch products, and from there it came to Oxford where it is now Bodl. Laud. Misc. 130 [1558]). Acquired by Abbot Johannes Trithemius of Spanheim about 1500 as seen from the ex-libris on fol. 1: '. . . et pertinet sancto martino in spanheym quod mutatus pro alio.’ Where he obtained the manuscript is hidden in the erased fifteenth-century ex-libris on fol. 172v: '. . . e . (?codex) mo . . sterii S . . .', etc., probably St Peter (and Paul) in Weissenburg. Given to the Escorial in 1566 by King Philip II, who received it from his aunt, Queen Mary of Hungary. Treated as a relic because it was considered an autograph of St Augustine, at least since the time of Trithemius (cf. the notes on foll. 4v and 1).

Script is a rather pleasant uncial, yet curiously irregular in form, size, spacing, and alineation: the bow of A is small; F and P are narrow; G has a long tail; the foot of L and T makes a right angle; the top of T is sinuous; the first stroke of U is angular; z is prancing and usually goes below the line; descenders often end in a corkscrew-like hook; numerous ligatures at line-end (e.g. AE, RE, UI, UNT, UR, US). Scribe copied his exemplar by groups of letters regardless of sense. Script seems cut by the ruling as in the prefixed Eutropius leaves and in the Cyprian manuscripts and the Codex Bobiensis presumably of African origin (cf. the preceding item but one, 1628a, and CLA 4.**458, 464, 465). Corrections in uncial. Early marginalia containing summaries or lively appraisals by several hands: some in sloping uncial, apparently by the hand that inserted a gamma-shaped sign (e.g. foll. 62v, 116) and the φ-shaped sign (e.g. foll. 6, 42, 62v) in the margins; most in sloping half-uncial tending toward cursive and boxed by dotted lines by a reader who also collated the manuscript (cf. 'contuli' at the ends of books; fol. 172v: 'contuli quantum mihi dns opitulatus est'). The form of XL in serial numbers in the margins of foll. 153v ff. recalls the later Spanish form without necessarily being Spanish. Other entries: Merovingian cursive ca. saec. VII–VIII on foll. 166v, 167v, 168, 169; Notae Tironianae on foll. 2, 26v, 48, 76; 'hic' frequently; probationes pennae in tiny Anglo-Saxon minuscule saec. VIII on foll. 153 and 172v and in a German hand saec. X on fol. 172v—the same hand seen on fol. 4v of the Benedictio cerei paschalis in the preceding item.

☛Index Tironianorum.

• Script: MSS with sloping uncial, half-uncial, or quarter-uncial marginalia