Medieval Manuscripts in Cambridge Libraries: Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk.5.13

Palladius, De agricultura

Introduction: What did monks at the Abbey of Saint-Denis like to eat a thousand years ago? What might they have grown in their cloister garden? And where did they learn about the right time to sow seeds or how to control garden pests? Answers to these questions lie within this 9th-century copy of De agricultura, a practical guide to estate management and farming techniques that was originally composed in the late 4th or early 5th century by Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus Palladius. The earliest extant manuscript that preserves the text of De agricultura in full, this manuscript is of outstanding importance for our understanding of the dissemination of the text. It belongs to the textual 'ɑ family', the version most prevalent among surviving manuscript witnesses. Text-critical analysis has shown that it preserves a form of the text close to that in the lost exemplar, 'ɑ', from which this family descended; it may even be a direct copy of it. The palaeographical evidence points to the manuscript having been made at Saint-Denis around the second quarter of the 9th century; the running titles were added later, very probably by the same scribe responsible for the running titles in a copy of Jerome's Commentary on the Minor Prophets that was made at Saint-Denis around that same time ( Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, MS Lat. 1838 ). The manuscript contains several inscriptions that confirm its possession by the Abbey of Saint-Denis from at least the 12th and the 14th centuries, including what appears to an annotation by the hand of one or other of two abbots named Hugh, who reigned during the late 12th and early 13th centuries. This close and continuous association with Saint-Denis casts the annotations in this manuscript in a new light. In his seminal 1971 analysis of MS Kk.5.13, R.H. Rodgers suggested that Palladius's 'popularity far beyond the Mediterranean region may be explained by the importance give to ancient technical writers...Book-production for its own sake seems to have been the raison d'être of at least some of the manuscripts'. He concluded, 'The Moore Palladius seems not to have been used extensively in the Middle Ages, although marginal notations and readers' notes have been added here and there.' Closer inspection suggests otherwise. In the margins and peripheries of the manuscript, we find numerous annotations by hands of the 9th and 10th centuries: monks of Saint-Denis copying out excerpts and busily highlighting parts of the text in an apparently systematic manner. The final, originally blank leaf is part-filled with extracts or paraphrases from Palladius, mostly Book 3, Chapter 24, on the cultivation of gardens during the month of February. 'The month of February: fenugreek should be sown,' they begin, as well as nasturtium, coriander and poppy. Dill, too: 'You will sow it in a cool place, and it should be sown thinly.' Cumin, chervil and anise are mentioned, as is coriander, again, which 'may be sown every month up to October...it likes rich soil'. Lettuce should be sown in January, or in December for transplanting in February. There is an extended excerpt on 'cepulae', 'little onions', which are presumably onion sets. They need 'rich, well-worked, well-draining and fertilised soil'. They should also be planted at a specific time: 'Should they be sown under a waning moon, the come forth weak and bitter; if under a waxing moon, of strong and moist flavour.' Brassicas, fennel, leeks, gourds and squashes are also noted. In the corresponding part of the manuscript (ff. 43v-46r), the margins are populated with content markers, a word or two that picks out the subject-matter of the text: lettuces, nasturtiums, coriander, poppy and savoury (f. 43v); onions and dill (f. 44r), brassicas (f. 44v), fennel, chervil and leeks (f. 45r), and cumin and anise (f. 46r). None is obviously written by the same hand as the notes at the end, but they correspond in their selection of plants, suggesting focused reading by multiple individuals, though not necessarily contemporaneously. Palladius's work drew heavily on earlier writers such as Columella's De re rustica and a lost work by Gargilius Martialis. His primary innovation was presenting the work according to a convenient calendrical structure. Book I dealt with 'general principles of rural things', with Books II-XIII dealing month-by-month with the rhythms and routines of the agrarian year under a series of headings: for September, for example, these include ploughing and manuring the soil (ch. 1); planting wheat and spelt (ch. 2); remedying salty soils and controlling pests (ch. 3); creating new meadows or improving old ones (ch. 10); preparing the vintage (ch. 11); gardens (ch. 13); fruit-trees (ch. 14); laying pavements (ch. 15); and storing grapes (ch. 17). A fourteenth book, on veterinary medicine, circulated separately from an early stage, and as such is not included here. Notably, annotations tend to be clustered in each of the monthly chapter concerning gardens - 'De hortis' - with the exception of a few outlying clusters on dealing with pests (ff. 16v-18v) or other chapters in which fruit or vegetables are mentioned. Annotations concerning the same plants recur time and again, indicating that the monks were reading Palladius selectively as a guide to the cultivation of specific plants and herbs at each stage of the growing season. The relevance of such a work for a monastic community need hardly be stated. According to the Rule of St Benedict, 'the monastery should be so established that all the necessary things...may be within the enclosure, so there is no necessity for the monks to go about outside of it, since that is not at all profitable for their souls'. Among other labours, monks were to work in the cloister gardens, and gather in the harvest, 'for then they are truly monks, when they live by the labour of their hands, as did our Fathers and the Apostles'. Except when they were ill, they were also to abstain from meat; the notes in this manuscript suggest how varied a vegetarian diet the monks at Saint-Denis might have enjoyed. As well as bearing witness to the transmission of ancient agricultural knowledge into the medieval world, this manuscript illustrates how it could be applied, as the Benedictines of Saint-Denis put the precepts of Palladius in service of those of their founding saint. Dr James Freeman| Medieval Manuscripts Specialist| Cambridge University Library

1r-121r

De agricultura Palladius

Language(s): Latin

1.1. 1r-1v

Table of contents

Rubric: Palladii Rutili Tauri Aemeliani vir inlustris opus agriculturae incipit fecliter tituli

1.2. 2r-121r

Text

Incipit: 2r: Pars est prima prudentiae ipsam cui precepturus es aestimare personam neque enim formator

Explicit: 121r: Decembrem ianuario in horis causa dispar adiunxit cum linea simili ille augeatur iste decrescat (followed by a table)

Final rubric: 121r: Palladi Rutili Tauri Aemeliani uiri inlustri opus agriculture explicit

Rodgers (1975)

Physical Description

Secundo Folio: de praeceptis (2r)

Secundo Folio: lapidosa macies (3r)

Form: codex

Support: Parchment (HFFH)

Extent: ii + 121 + i leaves. 275 × 195 mm.

Foliation:

19th-/20th-century foliation:

[i-ii] + 1-121 + [iii]

Written in pencil in the upper right-hand corner of the recto of each leaf.

Collation

Quires 1-14⁸ (ff. 1-112)
Quire 15⁸⁺¹ (ff. 113-121: 9th leaf, f. 121, inserted)

No leaf signatures.

Contemporary or early signatures in the lower margins of the verso of the last leaf of each quire, some preceded by ' . q . ' (some truncated and other probably cut off). Also, in the lower margins of the recto of the first leaf of each quire, enclosed by frames.

No catchwords. 1-14⁸ 15⁸⁺¹ (9 inserted)

Layout

200 × 140 mm. Ruled in hardpoint, frame and line, in one column of 25 or 26 lines, written above top line.

Hand(s)

'[W]ritten throughout by one scribe in sloping medium-sized Caroline minuscule.' Further detailed description and analysis of the script provided by T.A.M. Bishop (see Source).

Headings in half-uncial, uncial and rustic script. Square capitals for the title-page and some book-headings. According to Rodgers, Bernhard Bischoff has identified one of the hands responsible (see f. 38r) as 'very probably that of the same scribe who wrote running titles in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 1838, a MS in many respects very close to the Palladius and written at St.-Denis probably in the second quarter of the ninth century'.

Rodgers (1971), pp. 206, 215

Additions

Marginal headings and content-markers, some in the vernacular (f. 29v), and many concerning the cultivation of herbs, vegetables and fruit, and a few running titles across the upper margins, all added by scribes of the second half of the 9th century and turn of the 9th/10th century. One of these hands also added notes on sowing to the originally blank f. 121v.

Outline sketch in plummet of a figure (not tonsured) in robes, and with right hand raised in blessing (f. 90r) and a more faint outline of a figure and an unidentifiable object (f. 86v).

Binding

Marbled paper sides, spine covered with brown Morocco, title and classmark tooled in gold on the spine.

Note on rear pastedown by the hand of A.E.B. Owen , 'rebound, Cockerell, 1972', most likely by Sydney Morris ('Sandy') Cockerell (for a similar example, see Cambridge, University Library MS Dd.12.23 ).

Light-brown reverse calf, blind tooled with fillet, central panel with foliage/filigree along the inner edge and corner fleurons, 18th-century: a portion of these former covers has been preserved on the front pastedown. The manuscript had formerly been bound together with what is now Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff.3.34: it is described in the handwritten catalogue compiled by Thomas Tanner (see Provenance) as '988. 1. Palladius de Agricultura. 2. Eucherii liber de quaestionibus difficilioribus Vet. et Novi Testamenti...' (repeated on f. 1r). They presumably remained bound together until at least 1760, since they were also listed together in the catalogue compiled by Frances Sawyer Parris (d. 1760), Protobibliothecarius 1750-1760 (now MS Oo.7.53-55). However, Parris repeated Tanner's descriptions verbatim, which raises some doubts as to whether his catalogue is an accurate reflection of the arrangement of the volumes at that time. Certainly, the manuscript was rebound during the 18th century, at the same time apparently as a number of other University Library manuscripts that bear the same covers: among them MS Ee.4.29 .

Two things seem to have occurred at this juncture. Six leaves from MS Ee.4.29, having become separated from their original manuscript, made their way into MS Kk.5.13 and were bound into it - and their connection with MS Ee.4.29 was forgotten about: when F.J.A. Hort wrote his description of MS Ee.4.29 a century or so later in 1857, he was unaware of their existence. Only when Churchill Babington described MS Kk.5.13 a year later was the connection re-established. In unpublished notes, Charles Sayle recorded the leaves as being still in place during the period when he was revising descriptions of manuscripts in the two-letter classmark sequence (c. July 1911 to c. late 1920), and it appears that they were separated from MS Kk.5.13 and rebound at some point during that period. The binding is of a contemporary style and the classmark written therein is apparently by Sayle's hand. Certainly, they were separate by 1926-30, when MS Ee.4.29* was the subject of an unpublished description by M.R. James: see UA ULIB 7/3/74/18). The discrepancy between Babington's note of four leaves (repeated by Sayle) and the six leaves found in MS Ee.4.29* is most likely the result of miscounting, since the leaves are part of a conjoint quire.

The second occurrence is that the leaves of Eucherius that had been separated from MS Kk.5.13 appear to have gone temporarily astray. They were evidently not rebound at the same time as MSS Kk.5.13 and Ee.4.29, since they do not share the same style of cover. They may have remained as loose leaves, perhaps in some sort of temporary folder or wrapper. Nothing after the classmark Ff.3.31 was recorded in Parris's catalogue, nor in that compiled by James Nasmith during 1794-96 (now MS Nn.6.42-45). However, as David McKitterick observed, the manuscripts that bear classmarks either side of the Eucherius - MSS Ff.3.33 and Ff.3.35 - are known to have been found among the effects of Richard Farmer, Protobibliothecarius from June/July 1778, following his death in 1797. It may be that the Eucherius was there too, or else happened to be re-absorbed into the collection at the same time, and placed into the binding that still houses it today.

History

Origin: Second quarter of the 9th century (Rodgers), or 1st or 2nd third of the 9th century (Bischoff). ; France, probably at the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Denis.

'The presumption that the Moore Palladius was written at St.-Denis is confirmed by the script, which may be placed at an intermediate point in the spectrum extending from the script of certain St.-Denis MSS of the late ninth century to that of MSS written there under Abbot Fardulf (793-806)... One help in dating the MS is its consistent use of the 2-form for abbreviations of -ur. This new form had appeared at Corbie before the end of the eighth century, and it gradually supplanted the archaic ur-symbol, identical with that used elsewhere for -us. So important a centre as St.-Denis is unlikely to have been slow in adopting the new and eventually universal 2-symbol: the use of the archaic ur-symbol for -us (as well as for -ur) was already a feature of the Fardulfus type. According to Lindsay, the old use of the symbol was generally obsolete by 820, and we may with some confidence place the Palladius in the second quarter of the ninth century' (see Rodgers (1971)).

Bischoff, by contrast, dates the manuscript to 'IX. Jh., 1./2. Drittel'. In his introduction to Palladius (1975), Rodgers states that the manuscript 'was written at St.-Denis in the first third of the ninth century', but in his description maintains the date of 'probably the second quarter of the 9th century'.

Rodgers (1971), pp. 205-06

Rodgers, 'An introduction' (1975), pp. 66, 155

Bischoff (1998), p. 186

Provenance and Acquisition

'Liber sancti Dyonensi [...] in ei furauerit aut abstr[...]rit uel istas literas deleuerit anathema sit': ownership inscription and anathema relating to the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Denis , written by a hand of the 10th century (f. 1v).

Ownership inscriptions relating to the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Denis , written by hands of the 12th century:

'explicit liber beati dyonensi...' (f. 121v)
'Hugo dei gratia beati Dyonensii abbas', probably Hugh V Foucault , abbot of Saint-Denis 1186-1197, or his successor Hugh VI of Milan (fl. 1197-1204) , abbot 1197-1204 (f. 37v).

Further names were inscribed by hands of similar period, presumably those of monks of Saint-Denis:

'adam derichebore' ( ?Adam de Richebourg ), presumably a monk of Saint-Denis (f. 37v)
'adam de biarruaisius' ( ?Adam de Biarritz ) (f. 41v)

Shelfmark ('PA + . xxiiii . vii^c . lxx .') and ex libris inscription ('Iste liber est beati dyonensi') (both on f. 2r) confirm that the manuscript remained at the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Denis until at least the fourteenth century.

John Moore, (1646-1714), bishop of Ely: no. 988 (ff. [ii] verso and 1r) in the handwritten supplementary list of Moore's manuscripts, now Oo.7.50.2, compiled by Thomas Tanner (1674-1735) after the publication of Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliæ et Hiberniæ (c. 1697). A note concerning the contents of the volume by Tanner, in the upper margin of f. 1r.

Presented to the University Library in 1715 by George I : donation bookplate engraved by John Pine in 1736 on the front pastedown.

Additional Information

Record Sources

This catalogue entry draws on the description provided by R.H. Rodgers, 'The Moore Palladius', with appendix by T.A.M. Bishop in Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society (1971), 203-216.

Availability

Entry to read in the Library is permitted only on presentation of a valid reader's card. For information on eligibility and admissions procedures, see Joining the Library). For further enquiries, and to confirm the availability of the manuscript, please contact the Special Collections Reading Room.

Bibliography

A catalogue of the manuscripts preserved in the library of the University of Cambridge, (Cambridge, 3: Gg-Kk, Cambridge University Press, 1858)

Mittelalterliche Studien: ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte, Bischoff, Bernhard (Stuttgart, 3, Hiersemann, 1966)

The Moore Palladius Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, Rodgers, R.H. (5, 3, 203-216, 1971, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41154504)

Palladii Rutilii Tauri Aemiliani viri inlustris Opus Agriculturae; De veterinaria medicina; De insitione Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana, (Leipzig, Teubner, 1975)

An introduction to Palladius Bulletin Supplement (University of London. Institute of Classical Studies), Rodgers, R.H. (35, iii-179, 1975, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43768333)

Texts and transmission: a survey of the Latin classics, (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1983)

Manuscripts and libraries in the age of Charlemagne Cambridge studies in palaeography and codicology, Bischoff, Bernhard (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Katalog der festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts: (mit Ausnahme der wisigotischen) Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften: Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für die Herausgabe der mittelalterlichen Bibliothekskataloge Deutschlands und der Schweiz, Bischoff, Bernhard (Wiesbaden, I: Aachen-Lambach, Harrassowitz, 1998)

Western illuminated manuscripts: a catalogue of the collection in Cambridge University Library, Binski, PaulZutshi, Patrick (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011, https://doi-org.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/10.1017/CBO9780511780479)

Digital Images

Cambridge Digital Library

Abbreviations

View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.

Medieval Manuscripts in Cambridge Libraries

Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk.5.13

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