Early Beneventan manuscript of Priscian Institutiones, Italy, C11th

PRISCIAN. Institutiones Grammaticae.  In Latin with three words in Greek capitals, in early example of Beneventan minuscule, manuscript on parchment.
[Southern Italy, late 11th century]

217 x 86 mm.

Description
Long and thin strip reconstituted from four smaller squares all cut from a single leaf and used to strengthen the spine of a later book, remains of about half of a single column with 31 lines visible of a small and early Beneventan hand.  Recovered from a binding and hence with stains, scuffs and holes (the larger with modern repairs), overall fair and presentable condition.
In modern cloth-covered binding.

Text
When the Carolingian script reforms swept away almost all other early medieval regional hands, the alluring and visually baffling Beneventan script survived in Montecassino and its subject houses almost exclusively as a liturgical script. Few examples contain anything other than liturgical and Biblical texts, but that here is a late Roman text of the early sixth century, entirely secular in character and perhaps used in teaching Latin to young members of a monastic community. Montecassino played an important role in the preservation of a number of Classical and late Antique texts, and this fragment sits alongside only two other such examples that have come to the market in recent decades: a late eleventh-century fragment of Virgil, Georgics, sold in Sotheby’s, 10 July 2012, lot 18, for £32,000 hammer, and a cutting with Pseudo-Hegesippus, De bello Judaico sold in Bloomsbury Auctions, 7 December 2021, lot 7, for £8000 hammer.

Priscianus Caesariensis
Priscian (more properly Priscianus Caesariensis) lived at the opening of the sixth century AD., during the final collapse of the Roman Empire. He was a native of Caesarea in North Africa, and was educated and taught in Constantinople. This text was one of the fundamental text books of the medieval West for those wishing to learn Latin, and no monastery, cathedral or secular school could be without a copy. Thus some 527 extant manuscripts are recorded today (M. Gibson, in Scriptorium 26, 1972), but only five of these are in Beneventan minuscule, all apart from this one in institutional ownership.

Provenance
Sotheby’s, 6 December 1993, lot 7, thence to Martin Schøyen (his MS. 1778).

Published
V. Brown, ‘A Second New List of Beneventan Manuscripts (III)’, Mediaeval Studies 56 (1994), p. 319.