<p style='text-align: justify;'>What did monks at the Abbey of Saint-Denis like to eat a thousand years ago? What might they have grown in their cloister garden? And where did they learn about the right time to sow seeds or how to control garden pests? Answers to these questions lie within this 9th-century copy of <i>De agricultura</i>, a practical guide to estate management and farming techniques that was originally composed in the late 4th or early 5th century by Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus Palladius. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The earliest extant manuscript that preserves the text of <i>De agricultura</i> in full, this manuscript is of outstanding importance for our understanding of the dissemination of the text. It belongs to the textual 'ɑ family', the version most prevalent among surviving manuscript witnesses. Text-critical analysis has shown that it preserves a form of the text close to that in the lost exemplar, 'ɑ', from which this family descended; it may even be a direct copy of it. The palaeographical evidence points to the manuscript having been made at Saint-Denis around the second quarter of the 9th century; the running titles were added later, very probably by the same scribe responsible for the running titles in a copy of Jerome's Commentary on the Minor Prophets that was made at Saint-Denis around that same time (<a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc1035233'>Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, MS Lat. 1838</a>). The manuscript contains several inscriptions that confirm its possession by the Abbey of Saint-Denis from at least the 12th and the 14th centuries, including what appears to an annotation by the hand of one or other of two abbots named <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(80);return false;'>Hugh</a>, who reigned during the late 12th and early 13th centuries.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>This close and continuous association with Saint-Denis casts the annotations in this manuscript in a new light. In his seminal 1971 analysis of MS Kk.5.13, R.H. Rodgers suggested that Palladius's 'popularity far beyond the Mediterranean region may be explained by the importance give to ancient technical writers...Book-production for its own sake seems to have been the <i>raison d'être</i> of at least some of the manuscripts'. He concluded, 'The Moore Palladius seems not to have been used extensively in the Middle Ages, although marginal notations and readers' notes have been added here and there.' Closer inspection suggests otherwise. In the margins and peripheries of the manuscript, we find numerous annotations by hands of the 9th and 10th centuries: monks of Saint-Denis copying out excerpts and busily highlighting parts of the text in an apparently systematic manner. The <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(248);return false;'>final, originally blank leaf</a> is part-filled with extracts or paraphrases from Palladius, mostly Book 3, Chapter 24, on the cultivation of gardens during the month of February. 'The month of February: fenugreek should be sown,' they begin, as well as nasturtium, coriander and poppy. Dill, too: 'You will sow it in a cool place, and it should be sown thinly.' Cumin, chervil and anise are mentioned, as is coriander, again, which 'may be sown every month up to October...it likes rich soil'. Lettuce should be sown in January, or in December for transplanting in February. There is an extended excerpt on 'cepulae', 'little onions', which are presumably onion sets. They need 'rich, well-worked, well-draining and fertilised soil'. They should also be planted at a specific time: 'Should they be sown under a waning moon, the come forth weak and bitter; if under a waxing moon, of strong and moist flavour.' Brassicas, fennel, leeks, gourds and squashes are also noted. In the corresponding part of the manuscript (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(92);return false;'>43v-46r</a>), the margins are populated with content markers, a word or two that picks out the subject-matter of the text: lettuces, nasturtiums, coriander, poppy and savoury (f. 43v); onions and dill (f. 44r), brassicas (f. 44v), fennel, chervil and leeks (f. 45r), and cumin and anise (f. 46r). None is obviously written by the same hand as the notes at the end, but they correspond in their selection of plants, suggesting focused reading by multiple individuals, though not necessarily contemporaneously. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Palladius's work drew heavily on earlier writers such as Columella's <i>De re rustica</i> and a lost work by Gargilius Martialis. His primary innovation was presenting the work according to a convenient calendrical structure. Book I dealt with 'general principles of rural things', with Books II-XIII dealing month-by-month with the rhythms and routines of the agrarian year under a series of headings: for September, for example, these include ploughing and manuring the soil (<a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(195);return false;'>ch. 1</a>); planting wheat and spelt (<a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(196);return false;'>ch. 2</a>); remedying salty soils and controlling pests (<a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(196);return false;'>ch. 3</a>); creating new meadows or improving old ones (<a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(199);return false;'>ch. 10</a>); preparing the vintage (<a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(200);return false;'>ch. 11</a>); gardens (<a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(201);return false;'>ch. 13</a>); fruit-trees (<a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(202);return false;'>ch. 14</a>); laying pavements (<a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(203);return false;'>ch. 15</a>); and storing grapes (<a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(203);return false;'>ch. 17</a>). A fourteenth book, on veterinary medicine, circulated separately from an early stage, and as such is not included here. Notably, annotations tend to be clustered in each of the monthly chapter concerning gardens - 'De hortis' - with the exception of a few outlying clusters on dealing with pests (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(38);return false;'>16v-18v</a>) or other chapters in which fruit or vegetables are mentioned. Annotations concerning the same plants recur time and again, indicating that the monks were reading Palladius selectively as a guide to the cultivation of specific plants and herbs at each stage of the growing season.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The relevance of such a work for a monastic community need hardly be stated. According to the Rule of St Benedict, 'the monastery should be so established that all the necessary things...may be within the enclosure, so there is no necessity for the monks to go about outside of it, since that is not at all profitable for their souls'. Among other labours, monks were to work in the cloister gardens, and gather in the harvest, 'for then they are truly monks, when they live by the labour of their hands, as did our Fathers and the Apostles'. Except when they were ill, they were also to abstain from meat; the notes in this manuscript suggest how varied a vegetarian diet the monks at Saint-Denis might have enjoyed. As well as bearing witness to the transmission of ancient agricultural knowledge into the medieval world, this manuscript illustrates how it could be applied, as the Benedictines of Saint-Denis put the precepts of Palladius in service of those of their founding saint.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Dr James Freeman<br /> Medieval Manuscripts Specialist<br /> Cambridge University Library</p>
