The Beneventan manuscripts of Virgil’s works

Among the manuscripts produced after the 9th century, valuable copies of Virgil’s works are preserved in outlying areas, away from the influence of the dominant centre of the Carolingian world.

In fact, distance is a guarantee against contamination. Innovations usually spread from a centre toward the periphery, and did not always manage to reach it. Furthermore, the province, being more backward and conservative than the centre, was more likely to preserve ancient elements. This phenomenon, known in the language of philologists as ‘geographical criterion’ or ‘survival at the periphery’, has been compared to the norm of lateral areas used by ‘neolinguists’[1].

One of the largest marginal areas for medieval manuscript production was Southern Italy, where a very original culture flourished between the 8th and 11th centuries. The development of a national Longobard script that was very different from the Caroline minuscule is a clear sign of geographical and political separation from Northern Italy, France and Germany. This script reached fruition in the territory of Benevento and for this reason is known as the Beneventan script[2].

Books produced in this area deserve much consideration. Thanks to the intense copying activity in 11th-century Monte Cassino Abbey, many classical texts survived after the Carolingian Renaissance, and independently from it. As Cavallo[3] has shown, these manuscripts are often based  on an ancient ancestor, even if sometimes an intermediate step can be traced back to the 8th or 9th century.

For example, today we are able to read some of the major works from Antiquity that were transmitted only by Beneventan manuscripts. These include: Varro’s De Lingua Latina, of which there are two copies (Par. lat. 7530, saec. VIIIex. and Flor. Laurent. 51.10, saec. XIex.), or Tacitus’ Historiae (I-V) and Annales (XI-XVI), based on a single manuscript, Flor. Laurent. 68.2 (saec. XImed.), which itself is our unique source for Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and Florida.

One of the most spectacular of these isolate survivals is represented by thirty-six verses in the sixth satire of Juvenal, discovered in a Beneventan manuscript (Oxford, Bodl. Canon. Class. Lat. 41, s. XI/XII, perhaps from Montecassino) by E.O. Winstedt in 1899. These lines are clearly ancient (the question whether they are genuine or interpolated is still open), and their excision or intrusion took place during the earliest stages of transmission[4].

On the other hand, for texts with a rich manuscript tradition, such as Gregory of Nyssa or the New Testament, the group of manuscripts produced in southern Italy preserve genuine and ancient surviving texts[5].

 

As far as Virgil’s texts are concerned, at present we know of ten codices in Beneventan script, seven complete and three fragmentary, all copied between the 10th and the 11th century.

 

 BENEVENTAN MANUSCRIPTS OF VIRGIL

 

In the first contribution to the study of Virgil’s Beneventan manuscripts, Lowe[6] surveyed eight of them, describing their palaeographical features. He stressed their value as ”witnesses of intellectual activity”, claiming that the renewed interest in classical learning can be considered a consequence of artistic and literary awakening in southern Italy. This revival culminated in the century of Abbot Desiderius (1027-1087), the period to which the majority of Virgil’s Beneventan manuscripts belong. As Lowe observed:

 

                        “ [O]ne is tempted to interpret the centuries-wide gap in the transmission of Virgil as a reflection of a lack of interest in classical learning. Likewise, we should perhaps be not far wrong if we interpreted the survival of the Beneventan manuscripts of Virgil as marking a revival of interest in secular learning.”

 

Besides Lowe’s article, the following works are useful tools to the study of Virgil’s Beneventan manuscripts:

 

Lowe[7] on the origin and the morphology of the Beneventan script, with Brown’s updates to the manuscripts list[8]. In particular, Virginia Brown discovered a new fragment in the Bernard M. Rosenthal Collection (now acquired by the Beinecke Library, Yale University)

 

Newton[9] on the scriptorium and the library in Monte Cassino Abbey, to which he connects five out of the ten manuscripts of Virgil in Beneventan script (Par. lat. 10308; Vat. lat. 1573; Vat. lat. 3253; Vat. gr. 2324; Compact. XV)

 

The catalogue of the exposition of Beneventan manuscripts “Virgilio e il Chiostro”[10] held in Monte Cassino (1996)

 

The on-line bibliography on Beneventan manuscripts available at http://edu.let.unicas.it/bmb/ .

 

In their material features and layout, the Beneventan books resemble the Carolingian manuscripts (see THE EARLY MEDIEVAL BOOK). For example, the layout of the following volumes is similar to commented editions: Neapolit. Vind. lat. 5 (ν); Canon. Class. lat. 50 (o); Compact. XV. The codices Neapolit. Vind. lat. 6 (n), Par. lat. 10308 (δ),Vat. lat. 1573 (ε), Reg. lat. 2090 (η) instead present the layout of the glossed edition. Furthermore, neums typical of southern Italy have been detected in the manuscripts Neapolit. Vind. lat. 5 (ν); Neapolit. Vind. lat. 6 (n); Reg. lat. 2090 (η): see Riou[11].

 

Virgil’s Beneventan manuscripts as witnesses to the text have usually been neglected by the editors. Butler[12] collated the Canon. Class. lat. 50 (o), but the results of his examination were not taken into account by Ribbeck[13]. In his edition,  Geymonat[14] reported the variant readings of the Neapolit. Vind. lat. 6 n, but only the recent edition of the Bucolics and the Georgics (Ottaviano-Conte 2013[15]) included all the complete Beneventan manuscripts in the recensio.

 

THE TRANSMITTED TEXT

The philological value of the Beneventan manuscripts of Virgil can be measured in two ways. On the one hand, they occasionally preserve genuine readings and ancient variants. On the other hand, they share many conjunctive errors, which allow us to consider them as a consistent group depending on a common source, or at least on a common ‘Beneventan vulgata’.

The agreement between the Beneventan manuscripts is indicated as Λ (codd. Longobardici) in the recent Teubner edition of the Eclogues and the Georgics[16]. The siglum Φ refers to the codd. Carolingi, and the siglum ω indicates the agreement between ΦΛ or between the majority of the manuscripts belonging to these two groups.

 

SCHOLIA

 

The Beneventan books display interesting exegetical materials appended to Virgil’s text.

 

For example, the Harvard editors assert that Neap. lat. 5 (ν for Virgil’s text, N for Servius’ text) and Vat. lat. 3317 (V for Servius’ text), which come from the same area, represent a particular group in the transmission of Servius’ commentary: see Stoker[18]. The position of N in Servius’ stemma has been more precisely determined by Murgia[19]: it represents an independent branch (σ) bearing some relationship with the vulgate text (γ).

Vat. lat. 3317, on the contrary, bears witness to an isolated tradition, as shown by the commentary to the Georgics published by Thilo[20] under the title of Scholia Vaticana.

 

The exegetical notes contained in o (Can. Class. lat. 50) conflate Servian materials and glosses ascribable to Phylargirius: see Savage[21], but further investigation is needed.

ILLUMINATION

 

The Beneventan manuscripts are scarcely illuminated, according to the predominant practice in the production of medieval manuscripts until the 12th century.

 

Initials are decorated with interlaced straps, ribbons and tendrils, geometrical ornaments and occasionally with animal and human figures. Sometimes the decoration includes narrative elements, imaginary beasts and grotesque characters. Religious images seldom appear.

 

The Reg. lat. 2090 (η) is adorned with two female figures that have been tentatively identified as images of the Virgin Mary. The Par. lat. 10308 (δ) is decorated with Christ and the evangelists Luke and John, while animals unrelated to the text are depicted on the margins of the book.

 

The Neap. Vind. Lat. 6 (n), written in Campania around the middle of the 10th century, perhaps on request from John III, duke of Naples, is exceptionally embellished with a series of miniatures that serve as illustrations to the text.  Initials are richly decorated with natural and figurative elements. a typology that has parallels in late Gothic illumination. Moreover, two miniatures are located at the beginning of Aen. 1 (f. 45r: Aeneas reaches Carthage) and of Aen. 12 (f. 168v: the duel between Turnus and Aeneas).

Other initials decorated with relevant scenes appear at the beginning of the Eclogues, each book of the Georgics and the Aeneid, and the Argumenta before each book of the Aeneid. Five portraits of Virgil located in these books perhaps represent the vestige of ancient systems of illumination customary in papyrus scrolls.

Courcelle[22], Belting[23] and Bertelli[24] have demonstrated that various figurative traditions, combining influences from ancient models and medieval features, contributed to the ornamentation of n.

 

Can. Class. lat. 50 (o), f. 113v, also displays decorated initials that are connected to the text. At the opening of Aeneid 8, Turnus is represented as he lifts up military insignia under Juno’s protection (see Courcelle[25]).