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Homiliary

Latin homilies by Origen and Bede

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Odense, Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek, RARA M 196

Charlotte Epple, Fragmentarium, 2026 (Born Digital)

General Information

Title Homiliary
Shelfmarks RARA M 196
Former Shelfmarks Herlufsholm 71.7
Page/Folio Reference Pastedowns
Material Parchment
Place of Origin Germany, Rhineland?
Date of Origin 801-900
Script, Hands

Carolingian minuscule from the German Rhineland area, with pronounced, club-shaped ascenders and sharp descenders. Each leaf was written by a different hand.

Original Condition

Number of Columns 2
Number of Lines at least 31
Ruling Faint drypoint ruling on the Bede fragment. Both leaves are pricked in the surviving side margin, marking out the lines.
More about the Condition

The difference in scribal hands and ruling could point to this homiliary originally having been a composite manuscript.

Current Condition

Extent 2 partial leaves
Dimensions 311 x 199 mm (Origen) and 312 x 20 mm (Bede)
More about the Current Condition

About one and a half columns of text survive on each fragment, with a few lines likely lost at the bottom of the leaf. The Origen fragment is marked with a faint diamond pattern of triple Streicheisenlinien, suggesting it may have been used as a buffer or underlay for tooling other bindings in the bindery where it was cut up. Both fragments are partially obscured by paper exlibris pasted onto them. 

The exlibris of collector Otto Thott (front pastedown) and Herlufsholm Skole (back pastedown) were glued onto the leaves, obscuring a considerable amount of text. 

Content

  • Content Item
    • Persons Bede
    • Text Language Latin
    • Title Homily 2,XIX, 12th Sunday after Pentcost
    • Back pastedown
    • Edition Giles, The Complete Works of Venerable Bede, in the Original Latin, Collated with the Manuscripts, and Various Printed Editions, and Accompanied by a New English Translation of the Historical Works, and a Life of the Author., 5:280–81.
  • Content Item
    • Persons Origen
    • Text Language Latin
    • Title Homily 4, on the Gospel of Matthew, for the fourth Sunday after the feast of the apostles Peter and Paul.
    • Front pastedown
    • Edition Origenes Werke. Bd. 12.1: Matthäuserklärung. T. 3: Fragmente und Indices, ed. by Erich Klostermann (Leipzig: C. Hinrichs Verlag, 1941), p. 264, l. 30-265, l. 30.
    • Remarks

      Klostermann (p. VIII) notes that the attribution to Origen of four homilies on Matthew preserved only in Latin was already made by Paul the Deacon in the 8th century, but is likely spurious. 

History

Origin

The manuscript was likely written in the Rhineland area based on a comparison with similar homiletic fragments that Bernhard Bischoff assigned to Lorsch (Copenhagen, Royal Library, Fragm. 2801 and Innsbruck, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Tirol, Fragm. 2).
Provenance

The binding was made for Jacob Del Rio (died 1610), abbot of Boudelo Abbey in Flanders. Boudelo was a Cistercian abbey, and the Origen fragment exhibits certain punctuation marks associated with the Cistercian positurae system (namely the punctus flexus to indicate a medium-length pause). Parkes notes that the punctus flexus fell out of favour over the course of the 12th century, so the marks may in fact be older than Boudelo, which was founded around 1200. The manuscript could have been used in a different Cistercian monastery before it came to Boudelo.

Host Volume

Title Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni: Opera omnia
Date of Origin/Publication 1557
Place of Origin/Publication Basel, [per Heinrich aus Basel Petri]
Shelfmark RARA M 196
Remarks

Blind-tooled leather armorial binding over wooden boards. It bears the coat of arms of Boudelo abbot Jacob Del Rio, a single tower, along with that of Boudelo, two crossed croziers with a star in between. Both are in diamond-shaped frames topped with a mitre, indicating Del Rio's status as a mitred abbott. Between them, a ribbon contains the words CONCVSSA MANET ('shaken, it remains'), a motto associated with Jacob and several other members of the Del Rio family. The armorial stamps are framed with blind-tooled grapevine motifs that were also used to decorate the back cover.

In modern times, the host volume belonged to Herlufsholm Skole, a private Latin school located in Næstved, Sealand founded in 1565 on the grounds of a secularised Benedictine monastery, St Peders Kloster. The old library of Herlufsholm was transferred to the University Library of Southern Denmark in 1968-69. This book is part of a donation made to the school by count Otto Thott (1703-1785), who became warden of the school in 1763 until his death in 1785. Well-known for his book collecting, he gave about 6000 volumes to Herlufsholm’s library in several shipments beginning in 1777. 

Bibliography

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