Codex Aesinas

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The Codex Aesinas ( Codex Aesinas Latinus 8 = Sigle E ) is a collective manuscript from the 15th century from the former private property of the Count Baldeschi Balleani family from Jesi , Ancona , Italy , which was discovered by chance in 1902. The special value of the manuscript lies in the leg holding to the "minor works" of the Roman historian Tacitus counted, "Agricola" and "Germania" . Through the inclusion of eight sheets in Carolingian minuscule script in the “Agricola”, the Tacitus part of the Codex is generally regarded in research as a direct copy of the lost Codex Hersfeldensis ( H ) of the original (archetype) of the “Opera Minora” by Tacitus and the Carolingian Folia as originals. The owner family Baldeschi Balleani sold the Codex in 1994 to the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma ( Biblioteca Vittorio Emanuele II ) where it is now known as the “Codex Vittorio Emanuele 1631”.

Discovery and Fate

Folio 58r of the Carolingian Quaternio ( Agricola c. 19, 2 - 21, 1)
Folio 69r, Germania c. 14.1 - 16.3 by the hand of Guarnieri

The then Conte Aurelio Guglielmi Balleani commissioned the local philologist and high school professor Cesare Annibaldi to sift through the manuscripts of the count's private library.

In the second half of the 15th century, the manuscripts belonged to the library of the humanist Stefano Guarnieri (1425–1493) - chancellor and diplomat in Perugia - which he had compiled with his brother Francessco. The Guarnieris were born in Osimo , only 15 km from Jesi, and came from an educated, noble old noble family (12th century). This library was inherited through the female line of the count's family in 1793 through the marriage of the last descendant of the brothers, Sperandia Guarnieri, to Gaetano Balleani and remained in the possession until 1994.

Annibaldi discovered the works of Tacitus in one of Guarnieri's manuscripts and, in the Agricola part, a quaternio of eight slides of 16 pages in Carolingian minuscule from the early 9th century (f. 56 to 63). The manuscript also contained a Latin version of the so-called Dictys Cretensis, which, according to the incipit, came from a L. Septimius, also almost entirely in Carolingian minuscule from the 9th century. Since the typeface of the Quaternio corresponded exactly to the description from the year 1455 by Pier Candido Decembrio of the "Agricola" in Hersfeldensis , Annibaldi concluded that there was a fragment of the lost original here. Guarnieri must have acquired the Agricola fascicle from the divided Hersfeldensis and added the missing parts and probably copied the Germania from H. As a result, Annibaldi published his scientifically sensational find; In 1907 a facsimile of the "Agricola" with collations of the "Dictys" and the "Germania" and in 1910 he published a facsimile of the "Germania" with a diplomatically edited text.

In 1929 the family tried to auction the Codex through Sotheby’s in London, but they did not succeed or it was taken out of the sale again. In the 1930s, the Codex came into the focus of Nazi ideologues with reference to the "Germania" it contained as the original of "Germanic-German" history and folklore. Hitler personally informed Mussolini during his state visit to Berlin in 1936 that he asked to hand over the Codex to the German Reich, which Mussolini initially approved. Mussolini later changed his mind and refused to hand it over due to the widespread refusal in Italy to give a handwriting of their own national ancient heritage outside the country. Following diplomatic mediation and Himmler's influence , the Italian government granted Rudolf Till and Paul Lehmann an examination of the Codex for the Research Association of German Ahnenerbe . The results were published in 1943 with photographic images made by the “Istituto di patologia del libro” in Rome from the foils of the “Agricola” and the “Germania”. After the war in 1947, one set of the photographs was transferred to the Widener Library at Harvard University through the agency of the US Embassy in Italy.

In the course of the war and through the coup in June 1943 against Mussolini and through the Allied invasion of Italy, Himmler ruthlessly ordered an SS commando to Jesi in the autumn of that year in order to "confiscate" the Codex. The commando rigorously raided all three of the Count's palazzi , but remained unsuccessful. The anti-fascist family that were warned went into hiding and hidden from the Aesinas in a simple chest that the command had overlooked. In the post-war period, the owners kept the manuscript in their own Florentine bank, where it suffered water damage from the flooding of the Arno in 1966 . In the years that followed, it was restored by a specialized laboratory in Grottaferrata , where it was also re-tied .

The Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel approached the Baldeschi Balleani family in 1987 to purchase the Codex, but ultimately stopped buying it due to the damage. In 1993 the Ministry of Cultural Property was interested in buying a manuscript from the family's private library. In this context, an official examined the Aesinas and another manuscript with works by Cicero. The Italian state made an offer for all three, so the purchase was completed in June 1994. The three manuscripts were added to the holdings of the National Library in Rome, each with a new signature as Vittorio Emanuele 1630, 1631, 1632 .

As part of the 2000th anniversary of the Varus Battle in 2009, the Aesinas was shown to a broad public for the first time in the three-part exhibition “ Imperium - Conflict - Myth ” in the Detmold State Museum in the partial exhibition “Myth”.

Description and structure

Folio 47 r of the "Dictys" Explicit Book 5.
Folio 52r Incipit "Agricola"

The Aesinas comprises 76 parchment films in quart size (27.3 × 22.0 cm; after restoration and rebinding 26.4 × 21.1 cm). The pages show the text in two columns of thirty lines each, the height and width of which vary slightly between 8 and 6 inches.

The parts from the 9th century show in the introductory words letters in capitals - striking in the folia of the Incipite - which are executed in alternating rows in red, gold and green. The Incipite are designed in Unciale in red and gold. In folio 40v a tree is drawn in red ink at the end of the text. Furthermore, the general typeface of the Carolingian parts shows consistent rubrications .

The humanistic parts or additions consciously reflect the appearance of the older parts again show rubricated titles and alternating red and black rubricated capitals in the introductory words. Annibaldi was able to determine the origin of the humanistic parts from the hand of Stefano Guarnieri by comparing them with his other surviving writings. Guarnieri probably compiled the codex in the 1460s. He probably copied the Tacitus parts directly or indirectly from the Hersfeldensis . When copying, he tried to adapt his writing to the Carolingian minuscule.

The codex is structured as follows:

  • Folio 1 to 51 contains the Dictys Cretensis
    • Folia 2v to 4, 9 and 10 and 51 from the hand of Guarnieri
    • Folia 5 to 8 and 11–50 of Carolingian origin
  • Folio 52 to 65 follows the Agricola.
    • f. 52 to 55 and 64, 65 from the hand of Guarnieri,
    • Folio 56 to 63 of the Carolingian quaternio with glosses and corrigenda by a contemporary proofreader from the first half of the 9th century. They contain the text from chapter 14, 1 munia to 40.2 missum . Bernhard Bischoff dates this folia to around the middle of the 9th century; he also suspects a West Franconian origin from the Loire region.
  • Folio 66 to 75 the Germania, which was written entirely by Guarnieri.

Furthermore, Palimpsest -Folia are contained which Guarnieri had initially copied, but then shaved in order to overwrite it; including Carolingian folia, the traces of which, however, remained recognizable. The palimpsests are the following parts:

  • Dictys Cretensis :
    • Folio 1 contained the prologue and I 1–2 (transmissum)
    • Folio 2 contained Dictys I 22 (cunctis) - II 2 (secundo)
    • Folio 2v overwritten by Guarnieri with the Prologue of the Dictys
  • Agricola :
    • Folia 69 and 76 contained Agricola c. 40.2 to 46.4
  • Germania :
    • Folio 69 by Guarnieri overwritten with Germ. c. 14.1 to 19.1
    • Folio 76 Carolingian, unwritten double sheet , further use as cover sheet

literature

expenditure
  • Cesare Annibaldi (Ed.): L'Agricola e la Germania di Cornelio Tacito nel MS. latino n.8 della biblioteca del Conte G. Balleani in Iesi. Citta di Castello 1907.
  • La Germania di Cornelio Tacito nel ms. Latino n.8 della biblioteca del conte G. Balleani in Jesi. Edizione diplomatica. Critica a cura di Cesare Annibaldi. Leipzig 1910.
  • Rudolf Till : Handwritten studies on Tacitus Agricola and Germania, with a photocopy of the Codex Aesinas. Berlin-Dahlem 1943. ( archive.org )
Research literature
  • Bernhard Bischoff : Benedictine monasticism and the tradition of classical literature. In: Studies and Communications on the History of the Benedictine Order 92 (1981), pp. 165–190, here p. 181.
  • Dictys Cretensis: Ephemeridos belli Troiani libri . Published by Werner Eisenhut . Teubner, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-8154-1301-X ( Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana ; reprint of the 2nd edition from 1973).
  • Heinz Heubner : The tradition of the Germania of Tacitus. In: Herbert Jankuhn , Dieter Timpe (Hrsg.): Contributions to the understanding of the Germania of Tacitus. Report on the colloquia of the commission for the antiquity of Northern and Central Europe in 1986. Part 1. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1989, ISBN 3-525-82459-9 , pp. 16-26.
  • Sven Lundström: Review by W. Eisenhut (1973). In: Gnomon 47, (1975), pp. 802-804.
  • Giuseppina Magnaldi: Svetonio, Tacito e il codice Hersfeldense. In: Prometheus 23, 2 (1997), pp. 118-144; Issue 3 pp. 229–246.
  • CW Mendell: Manuscripts of Tacitus' Minor Works. In: Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 19 (1949), pp. 133, 135-145.
  • Harald Merklin: 'Dialogus' problems in recent research . In: Wolfgang Haase et al. (Ed.): Rise and Fall of the Roman World, Second Principal, Volume 33.3. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1991. ISBN 3-11-012541-2 , pp. 2255–2283 ( fee required from de Gruyter Online).
  • Charles E. Murgia: Review Article: The Minor Works of Tacitus. A Study in Textual Criticism Cornelii Taciti Opera minora by M. Winterbottom, RM Ogilvie. In: Classical Philology 72, 4 (1977), pp. 323-343.
  • Charles E. Murgia, RH Rodgers: A Tale of Two Manuscripts. In: Classical Philology 79, 2 (1984), pp. 145-153.
  • Francesca Niutta: Sul codice Esinate di Tacito, ora Vitt. Em. 1631 della Biblioteca Nazionale di Roma. In: Quaderni di storia 43/22 (1996), pp. 173-202.
  • Egert Pöhlmann : Codex Hersfeldensis and Codex Aesinas on Tacitus' Agricola. In: Georg Heldmann (ed.): Present past: Selected small writings. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2008, pp. 153–160 ( fee required from de Gruyter Online).
  • Rodney P. Robinson (Ed.): The Germania of Tacitus. A critical edition. (= Philological Monographs published by the American Philological Association, 5). Middletown, Connecticut 1935.
  • Franz Römer : Critical problem and research report on the transmission of the Taciteic writings. In: Wolfgang Haase et al. (Ed.): Rise and Fall of the Roman World, Second Principal, Volume 33.3. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1991, ISBN 3-11-012541-2 , pp. 2299-2339.
  • David Schaps: The Found and Lost Manuscripts of Tacitus' Agricola. In: Classical Philology 74, 1, (1979), pp. 28-42.
  • Rudolf Till (Ed.): Tacitus. The life of Iulius Agricola. Berlin 1976.
  • Michael Winterbottom : The Manuscript Tradition of Tacitus' Germania. In: Classical Philology 70, 1 (1975), pp. 1-7.
  • Michael Winterbottom, RM Ogilvie: Cornelius Tacitus. Opera minora recognoverunt brevique adnotatione critica instruxerunt. (= Scriptorum classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis ). Oxford 1975.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ R. Sabbadini (Ed.): Milano, Bibl. Ambros. R 88 sup. In: RFIC 29, 1901, pp. 262-264 . After: Franz Römer: Critical problem and research report on the transmission of the Taciteic writings. 1991, pp. 2325f. Est alius about eiusdem de vita Julii agricole soceri sui. In quo continetur descriptio Britanie Insule, nec non populorum mores et ritus. Incipit: Clarorum virorum… Opus foliorum decem et quattuor in columnellis.
  2. ↑ 1474 at the latest, after 1455 at the earliest, based on the description of Decembrio, who last saw H undivided