Western Medieval Manuscripts : Etymologiae

Isidore of Seville

Western Medieval Manuscripts

This fragment contains a section from book IV of the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville, one of the most important Latin medieval encyclopaedias. Compiled originally in the first half of the seventh century in Spain, the Etymologiae quickly became a bestseller across Europe: within perhaps fifty years of its composition, copies had reached Ireland and France and soon enough also became available in England and Italy. The present fragment is one of more than 400 surviving manuscripts and fragments of Isidore's encyclopaedia that were made before the year 1000. This exceptionally large number of surviving witnesses confirms that the Etymologiae was one of the most popular Latin texts of the early Middle Ages.The fragment preserved in the University Library is a single leaf measuring approximately 258 x 203 mm. This is all that is known to survive from what must have once been a codex containing the entire encyclopaedia, and thus comprising perhaps two or three hundred leaves. The fourth book of the Etymologiae, dealing with medicine, was also commonly transmitted separately as a medical handbook. Excerpts from it can be found in early medieval medical compendia. In this case, however, we can be fairly sure this is not a remnant of such a manuscript. In the upper margin on the verso of the leaf, one can see a decorated running header ‘IIII’, a feature that would be found only in manuscripts transmitting the entire encyclopaedia. Nevertheless, the codex, from which the single leaf comes, was fairly small for a copy of the entire Etymologiae. Such copies usually have leaves with the height of at least 300 mm.The script of the fragment is full of ligatures and other features that suggest that it was produced at the end of the eighth century. Bernhard Bischoff and Virginia Brown, who produced its first description, thought that it was copied in France. The fragment was acquired by the University Library in 1916. Earlier, it had belonged to the famous nineteenth-century collector, Sir Thomas Phillipps. Phillipps’s old classmark 151052 is still visible on the recto.Dr Evina SteinovaPostdoctoral Researcher, Dutch Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://db.innovatingknowledge.nl/#detail/M0065'>Innovating Knowledge</a>: database of early medieval copies of Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae