Antwerp Plantin-Moretus Museum 16.8 Boethius, "De consolatione philosophiae;' with commentary by Remigius of Auxerre

Abstract

5. Antwerp, Plantin-Moretus Museum 16.8

( 190; Salle iii, no. 55)

Boethius, "De consolatione philosophiae;' with commentary by

Remigius of Auxerre

[Ker 3, Gneuss 776]

HISTORY: The manuscript has been dated to the late 10c or early 11c on the basis of textual and paleographical evidence (Bishop 1971: xii; also stated by J. Wittig in a comment [1981/82] kept with the manuscript), and was written in England, almost certainly Abingdon (Ker, Cat., p. 3). Ker deduces that this manuscript was certainly from the same scriptorium as Antwerp, Plantin-Moretus Museum 16.2 [4] (Priscian) and Brussels, Bibliotheque Royale 1650 [18] (Aldhelm) and probably originally part of the same manuscript; however, Gwara (1997) has shown connections of the "Abingdon group" with Canterbury (see the description of [18]). Most of the glosses are contemporary, or near contemporary, with the text of Boethius's "De consolatione;' and contain a commentary ascribed to Remigius of Auxerre which is considered of a distinctly English type, containing variants found only in two other English manuscripts from the 11c (comment by J. Wittig kept with the manuscript). Occasionally, later glosses occur, dating from the 12c to the 14c. There are 15c notes referring to "Trivet" (f. 36r) and "Richard Swineshead" (f. 111v), showing that the manuscript was still in England at that time (Ker, Cat., p. 3). At the bottom of the first folio, Balthasar Moretus (1574-1641) wrote 'BOETHIUS | DE CONSOLAT Several corrections dating from the 16c are presumably by Theodore Poelman, who probably used this manuscript for his Boethius edition entitled Anicii Manlii Torquati Severini Boethii de consolatione philosophiae, lib. V, printed at the Plantin presses in 1562. Poelman bequeathed the manuscript to Christopher Plantin in 1581 (Smith 2001: 108).