GKS 1588 4°: Abbo Floriacensis, Passio S. Eadmundi

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GKS 1588 4°: Abbo Floriacensis, Passio S. Eadmundi

Parchment, 32 ff. (4 × IV), c. 20 × 13 cm; England (Bury St Edmunds), 1050-1100

The main part of the manuscript, f. 2r-28r, contains the text of Abbo Floriacensis’ Passio S. Eadmundi, introduced by the prefatory letter of Abbo to archbishop Dunstan. The Passio is followed on f. 28r-32v by the liturgical text and notation for the office of St Edmund on the day of his passion. Some folios are missing at the end of the manuscript; the office ends abruptly after the words qui virtutibus ita effloruisti inter in the antiphone O martyr magni meriti. - The text of f. 1r-1v, two sequentiae in honour of St Nicholas, was added later, probably in the 13th century

The manuscript was made in Bury St Edmunds (cf. Gameson). It belonged to the abbey of Saint-Denis in Paris at least since the 13th century when a library signature was added to f. 2r; a new shelf mark of the same abbey was written on f. 1r in the 15th century. Later the manuscript belonged to the library of Gottorp Castle in Schleswig, the manuscripts of which were transferred to Copenhagen in 1735

Bibl.: Ellen Jørgensen, Catalogus codicum Latinorum medii ævi Bibliothecæ Regiæ Hafniensis, Hafniæ 1926, p. 189f. - K. A. de Meyier, Paul en Alexandre Petau en de geschiedenis van hun handschriften, Leiden 1947, p. 116. - Michael Winterbottom, ed., Three Lives of English Saints, Toronto 1972, p. 8 & passim. - Rodney M. Thomson in: Music & Letters, 65:2, 1984, p. 189-193. - Donatella Nebbiai-Dalla Guarda, La bibliothèque de l'abbaye de Saint-Denis en France du IXe au XVIIIe siècle, Paris 1985, p. 188 & passim. - A. Gransden in: Revue Bénédictine, 105, 1995, p. 64f. & pl. II. - John Bergsagel in: Musik & Forskning, 24, 1998-99, p. 45f. - Richard Gameson in: Living Words & Luminous Pictures. Medieval Book Culture in Denmark: Essays (ed. Erik Petersen), Copenhagen 1999, p. 38. - Richard Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England (c.1066-1130), Oxford 1999, p. 78 no. 199. - Henry Parkes, St Edmund between Liturgy and Hagiography, in: Bury St Edmunds and the Norman Conquest, ed. Tom Licence, Woodbridge 2014, p. 131, 133, 138f.

Erik Petersen