Western Medieval Manuscripts : Euthymius Zigabenus

Western Medieval Manuscripts

<p style='text-align: justify;'> This Greek manuscript contains a commentary on the Psalms by <i>Euthymius Zigabenus</i>, a Byzantine theologian of the early 12th century, and a commentary on the biblical canticles attributed to the same author, but with less certainty. The texts are both incomplete. In the commentary on the Psalms there are three lacunae, each occurring between two quires: they could therefore originate from a loss of quires. The commentary on the canticles is incomplete at the end, as the scribe states in an annotation.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'> The texts were written by Bernardinos Sandros from Cremona, a scribe working in Italy in the first half of the 16th century.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'> The manuscript belonged to the sixteenth-century archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker, who ascribed it, along with other Cambridge manuscripts he owned, to his predecessor as archbishop Theodore of Tarsus (d. 690). An annotation on the <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(2);return false;'> left pastedown</a> says that the codex was brought to England from Rome by Theodore of Tarsus in 668. This assumption is clearly incorrect, given the age of the manuscript, and was rejected on these ground first by the English palaeographer and librarian Humphry Wanley (1672-1726) (see Easterling 1977, pp. 183-186; Easterling 2000, pp. 110-111).</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Dr Erika Elia</p>