MARGINALIA FROM MANUSCRIPTS OF RABANUS MAURUS
RABANUS MAURUS et al.
Rabanus de sacramento Eucharistiae. Opus nunc primum recens editum, ex bibliotheca Cuthberti Tunstalli episcopi Dunelmensis. Accessit eiusdem argumenti opusculum Bertrani presbyteri.
Cologne, Johann Quentel, 1551.
8vo, pp. 287, [1, blank]; woodcut initials; light marginal toning, a few corners creased; a good copy in seventeenth-century sheep, rebacked and recornered in the nineteenth century; somewhat rubbed and worn, lettering-piece lost; sixteenth-century marginal annotations (trimmed) to c. 145 pp. in at least one German hand, underlining, occasional manicules.
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Rabanus de sacramento Eucharistiae. Opus nunc primum recens editum, ex bibliotheca Cuthberti Tunstalli episcopi Dunelmensis. Accessit eiusdem argumenti opusculum Bertrani presbyteri.
First edition of a work on the sacrament of the Eucharist by Rabanus Maurus, thoroughly annotated by a contemporary reader, followed by other works on the same subject and on the Trinity.
The celebrated theological and pedagogical writer Rabanus Maurus (c. 780–856) served as Abbot of Fulda and Archbishop of Mainz. His work on the Eucharist, in fifty-seven chapters, is here edited from a manuscript in the library of the bishop of Durham, Cuthbert Tunstall (1474–1559), whose own work on the same subject, De veritate corporis et sanguinis domini nostri Jesu Christi in Eucharistia, composed while in prison, was published at Paris in 1554. Rabanus’s text is followed here by a short treatise on the Trinity; by the influential De corpore et sanguine domini of the ninth-century Carolingian theologian Ratramnus; and by further passages on the Eucharist by Augustine, Ambrose, and Eusebius.
As well as a brief biography of Rabanus on the verso of the title, the annotator of our copy has written a long note regarding the attribution of the De sacramento Eucharistiae, which opens as follows: ‘this work which is here ascribed to Rabanus is attributed to Paschasius in an old book in beautiful handwriting which I acquired from a friend …’ (trans.). The reader clearly had this manuscript exemplar of Rabanus’s text to hand when he was annotating this book: at the opening of chapter one he writes ‘vetus liber meus sic incipit …’, and many of the marginalia highlight differences between the text as printed here and that found in the annotator’s manuscript, prefixed with ‘alias’ and ‘vet.’. On f. 19r he refers to a manuscript ‘qui erat collegii de placy’, perhaps meaning the Collège du Plessis at the university of Paris; marginalia copied from this exemplar appear on f. 87r. But our annotator is not just a textual critic; his notes also engage with the intellectual content of Rabanus’s text; short schematic summaries occasionally appear in the lower margins. There is a reference to ‘Georgius Maior’ on the title verso, presumably the sixteenth-century Lutheran theologian of this name.
USTC 689764; VD16 H 5274; Adams R4.
