GKS 444 2°: Solinus, Collectanea

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GKS 444 2°: Solinus, Collectanea

Parchment, 16 ff. (1 + 1bis + 2-15), 37,5 × 24,8 cm; 9th century

The manuscript contains C. Julius Solinus’ Collectanea rerum memorabilium, preceded by a table of contents and the dedicatory letter to Adventus ("Solinus Advento salutem"). It consists of two quaternions. By a mistake the 2nd folio was not counted in the modern foliation of the manuscript. Two pieces of parchment with variant readings are inserted between f. 2 and 3 and between 3 and 4. The text is copied in 3 columns by two scribes who are not named in the manuscript

Mary E. Milham dates the manuscript to the 9th century, and is supported by Hartmut Hoffmann and Veronika von Büren. Veronika von Büren suggests that the manuscript was made in Fulda while Walafrid Strabo stayed there 827-829. She believes that the manus secunda of the Solinus manuscript is identitical with the main hand of St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek cod. 878, that was identified by Bernhard Bischoff as that of Walafrid Strabo [see Mittelalterliche Studien II, 1967, 34-51; Bischoff's identification was corroborated by Hartmut Hoffmann in Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 57.1, 2001, 32-35]. More recently David Ganz has argued convincingly against the theory of Fulda as the origin and Walahfrid as one of its scribes. - Birger Munk Olsen dates the manuscript to the 10th century, while Mommsen, Jørgensen and Rouse date it to the 11th century. It is not included in Bernhard Bischoff, Katalog der festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts, Wiesbaden 1998

The parchment of the two outer pages is significantly darker than the rest; f. 1r is worn, partly illegible, probably because the manuscript was not protected by a binding for an unknown period. It got its present binding in the 19th century. The medieval history of the manuscript is not known. In the early modern period it belonged for a while to the library of Gottorp Castle in Schleswig, the manuscripts of which were transferred to Copenhagen in 1735

Bibl.: C. F. Lüdecke, Mittheilungen über zwei wichtige Handschriften des C. Julius Solinus, Bremen 1866. - C. Iulii Solini collectanea rerum memorabilium, ed. Theodor Mommsen, Berlin 1895 (siglum N). - Ellen Jørgensen, Catalogus codicum Latinorum medii ævi Bibliothecæ Regiæ Hafniensis, Hafniæ 1926, p. 329. - Richard Rouse in L. D. Reynolds (ed.), Text and Transmission. A Survey of the Latin Classics, Oxford 1983, p. 392. - Mary Ella Milham in Scriptorium, 37, 1983, p. 126. - Birger Munk Olsen, L'Étude des auteurs classiques latins aux XIe et XIIe siècles, II, Paris 1985, p. 496; IV.1, 2009, p. 288; IV.2, 2014, p. 125, 162. - Veronika von Büren in Scriptorium, 50, 1996, p. 25, 40-42. – Hartmut Hoffmann in Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 55.2, 1999, p. 556. - David Ganz, Does the Copenhagen Solinus contain the autograph of Walahfrid Strabo?, in: Medieval Autograph Manuscripts (= Bibliologia, 36, 2013), p. 79-86

Erik Petersen