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The best manuscript of the Vulgate is the CODEX
AMIATINUS, of which a reduced facsimile, showing the lower
half of the page, is given in Plate XXV (above).
This has a special interest for Englishmen, apart from the value of the text
contained in it, as having been produced in England at the beginning of the eighth
century.
Its English origin was only discovered about fifty years ago, and in a curious
way.
On its second page is an inscription stating that it was presented to the abbey
of Monte Amiata by Peter of Lombardy, and it was always supposed to have been
written in Italy.
But Peter's name, was obviously written over an erasure, and, besides, spoilt
the metre of the verses in which the inscription is composed.
Still, the truth was never suspected until a brilliant conjecture by the Italian
G. B. de Rossi, confirmed by a further discovery by Professor Hort, showed that
the original name was not Peter of Lombardy, but Ceolfrid of England.
Then the whole history of the MS. was made clear.
It was written either at Wearmouth or at Jarrow, famous schools in the north
of England in the seventh and eighth centuries (having probably been copied from
MSS. brought from Italy by Ceolfrid), and was taken by Abbot Ceolfrid as a present
to Pope Gregory II in the year 716.
It was used in the revision of the Vulgate by Pope Sixtus V in 1585-90, and its
present home is in the great Laurentian Library at Florence.
It is a huge volume, each leaf measuring 19.5 by 13.5 inches, written
in large and beautifully clear letters.
The passage shown in the Plate is Luke iv.32-v.6.
An example of a correction may be seen in column 2, thirteen lines from the bottom,
where the singular imperative laxa has been altered by a corrector to
the plural laxate, which corresponds more exactly with the original Greek.
The text is carefully and accurately written, and it is taken by Wordsworth and
White as their first and most important authority.
An interesting addition has lately been made to its history.
It is recorded by Bede that Ceolfrid had two other copies of the Bible made,
besides that which he took as a gift to the Pope.
In 1909 a single leaf, in writing closely resembling that of the Amiatinus,
was discovered by the Rev. W. Greenwell in a curiosity shop in Newcastle, and
within this last year eleven more leaves, which had been utilised to form the
covers of estate accounts in the north of England, were (largely through the
agency of Viscount Wakefield and the Friends of the National Libraries) secured
for the nation.
All twelve leaves, which include parts of 1 and 2 Kings, and unquestionably
form part of one of the sister codices of the Amiatinus, are now in the British
Museum, where they are a monument of the time when, under the leadership of
Benedict Biscop, Ceolfrid, and especially Bede, the north of England led the
Western world in scholarship.
Description & picture from 'Our Bible & the Ancient Manuscripts' by
Sir Frederick Kenyon (1895 - 4th Ed. 1939) Page 175
& Plate XXV. (Page selection illustrated: 26 x 21cm. Page-size: 49 x 34cm.
)
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