Quedlinburg itala fragments
The Quedlinburg itala fragments are six parchment leaves from a manuscript, probably from the early 5th century. They contain texts and miniatures from the 1st Book of Samuel of the Old Testament ( Tanach ). One sheet contains text in the oldest Latin version of the Bible ( Vetus Latina , formerly also called Itala ) and is written in large uncials . The other sheets each contain two to five colored miniatures with short texts. The illustrations are the oldest known in a biblical manuscript. They are designed in the ancient illusionistic style and are very detailed.
The historian George Adalbert von Mülverstedt discovered the first two pages in 1865 as the bindings of a directory of Quedlinburg parish income from 1617/1618. Four years later, in 1869, Mayor Gustav Brecht found two more pages that were glued to the inside cover of a Quedlinburg police order from the 17th century. In 1888 the archivist Adalbert Düning discovered the fifth and fragments of a sixth page as the binding of a register from 1619 to 1926. The bookbinder Asmus Reitel used all of the pages as binding material in the 17th century.
Four sheets are now in the Berlin State Library , signature Cod. Theol. lat. 285, one in the collegiate church St. Servatius in Quedlinburg.
literature
- Victor Schultze : Quedlinburg Itala miniatures in the Royal Library in Berlin. CH Beck, Munich 1898 ( online ).
- Hermann Degering, Albert Boeckler: The Quedlinburger Italafragmente. Cassiodor Society, Berlin 1932.
- Inabelle Levin: The Quedlinburg Itala. The oldest Illustrated Biblical Manuscript . EJ Brill, Leiden 1985, ISBN 9-004-07093-1 .
Web links
- Quedlinburg Itala Fragments Miniature descriptions