medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Friday, April 16, 2010, at 8:57 am, christopher crocjett wrote:
> the issue has come up on my little Chartres discussion list of whether
> or not
> there were scriptoria capable of producing whole books (not just charters)
> attached to cathedral chapters.
>
> specifically, of course, we were considering the case of Chartres,
> particularly in the period before 1200.
>
> England, with its curious, peculiar and kinky institution of monastic
> cathedrals,
Not that these are peculiar to England alone, of course.
> would not be relevant for comparison <snip>
>
> does anyone know of documented examples of continental cathedral chapter
> scriptoria producing *whole books* (pontificals, ordinals and suchlike
> service
> books in particular) before the 13th c.?
>
> or, even after that time?
>
> many thanks for any thoughts/suggestions/examples.
A couple of fairly well studied examples from secular cathedrals are Verona from the sixth century to the ninth and Albi from the seventh century to the twelfth. The data come from codices with subscriptions identifying the scribe as e.g. lector in a cathedral, deacon, or archdeacon; from later codices that have copied such a subscription; and from contemporary codices analyzed paleographically as having been written by a known episcopal scribe.
For Verona, there's a conveniently brief survey in W. Telfer, "The Codex Verona LX(58)", _Harvard Theological Review_ 36 (1943), 169-246, at pp. 176-78. Or you could look for articles on its sixth-century scribe Ursicinus and its earlier ninth-century scribe Pacificus.
For Albi, see Matthieu Desachy, ed., _Le scriptorium d'Albi : les manuscrits de la cathédrale Sainte-Cécile, VIIe-XIIe siècle_ (Rodez: Eds. du Rouergue, 2007) and the specimens shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/y4qhqh4
See also Thomas H. Connolly and Jeanne Krochalis, "The Archdeacon Sicardus, a Twelfth-Century Scribe of Albi ", _Manuscripta_ 24 (1980), 106-13.
M. B. Parkes has some other examples in his _Their Hands Before our Eyes: A Closer Look at Scribes_ (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p. 11.
Another possible instance is Vercelli, where however the existence of an episcopal scriptorium is iffy for late antiquity and not clear even for the episcopate of Atto in the tenth century (the student scribes of his canon collection _Anselmo dedicata_ may have been working under monastic supervision). See Philip Levine, "Historical Evidence for Calligraphic Activity in Vercelli from St. Eusebius to Atto," _Speculum_ 30 (1955), 561-81.
Best,
John Dillon
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