Codices Latini Antiquiores ("The More Ancient Latin Manuscripts"), generally abbreviated CLA, is a catalogue of all surviving manuscripts in Latin (whether codices or scrolls) written before the 9th century. The complete title of the work is Codices Latini Antiquiores:A Paleographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts Prior to the Ninth Century. Elias Avery Lowe founded the project in 1929 and directed it himself until his death in 1969.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the history of Latin script was insufficiently known and based only on partial analyses. Historians strongly felt a need for a complete international catalogue of early manuscripts, to evaluate the differences in importance between the various cultural centres of book production, the transmission of ancient culture, and the creation of new ways of writing.
CLA covers only literary works; this includes legal texts but not documentary texts such as charters. It has 11 volumes, organized according to the current location of the manuscripts; these were followed by a supplement in 1971 and two sets of addenda published in 1985 and 1992. Paleography is the foundational principle of the project: every entry is accompanied by a photograph of the manuscript in black and white, at a 1:1 scale, along with a description of its contents, its state of preservation, the kind of writing used, and the possible date and geographical origin.
Similar works
Two similar projects have appeared: the first one for documentary texts from antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, under the title Chartae Latinae Antiquiores (ChLA). The second, under the title Manuscrits datés, was directed under the auspices of the Comité international de paléographie latine.[1] Unlike CLA and ChLA, it covers the entire medieval period, but is confined to manuscripts bearing a specific date or datable within a narrow period.
Other editorial projects have a more limited scope:
Gamber, Klaus (1919–1989), Codices liturgici latini antiquiores, Freiburg, Universitätsverlag, 1963; 2nd ed. 1968; suppl. and index, 1988.
Reprint of 1988
CLA was reprinted in 1988, though in a reduced format in comparison to the original.
The German palaeographerBernhard Bischoff worked on CLA starting from 1933, and is responsible for many of the descriptions. He subsequently embarked on a comparable catalogue of ninth-century continental manuscripts which remained unfinished at his death; two volumes have since appeared, covering libraries alphabetically from Aachen to Paderborn.
Together with the various supplements, the CLA comprises 1884 codices or scrolls and more than 2,000 works, including a great number of fragments. Before the mid 4th century, only fragmentary scraps of literary texts and ancient classics survive; afterwards, until 800, most works are of a theological character. The copying and production of texts of secular interest stopped almost completely around the 6th and 7th centuries.
The facts found about Italy, in particular, are remarkable. Between 400 and 800 AD, the production of books is constant, and the number of surviving works grows over time. These Italian works, most of which are of theological interest, were exported to all of Europe until such places started production of books of their own. In France, this only occurs in the mid 8th century; in England and Ireland, around 730; in Germany and Switzerland, around 800. From the 5th to the 7th century, the most important movement of books goes from Italy to France. During the 8th century, the transportation of manuscripts from France, Ireland and England towards the continent is culturally and historically important.
However, such statistics[clarification needed] cannot be determined for classical pagan works, which were apparently displaced more recently.
List of volumes
Codices Latini Antiquiores. A Palaeographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts Prior to the Ninth Century. Ed. Elias Avery Lowe:
Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Egypt and Holland
Oxford 1963 (Codices Latini Antiquiores 10).
Hungary, Luxembourg, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, USA and Yugoslavia
Oxford 1966 (Codices Latini Antiquiores 11).
Supplement
Oxford 1971 (Codices Latini Antiquiores 12).
Index of scripts
Comp. by Rutherford Aris. Osnabrück: Zeller 1982.
Addenda to Codices latini antiquiores. Bernhard Bischoff and Virginia Brown. Toronto, 1985 (reprint of Mediaeval Studies 47, p.317 – 366).
Addenda to Codices latini antiquiores (II). Bernhard Bischoff, Virginia Brown, and James J. John. Toronto, 1992 (reprint of Mediaeval Studies 54, p.286 – 307).
Bibliography
J.J. John, "E.A. Lowe and Codices latini antiquiores," American Council of Learned Societies Newsletter 20/5 (1969), pp.1–17.
Jean Mallon, «[review of] E. A. LOWE. Codices latini antiquiores, a palaeographical guide to Latin manuscripts prior to the ninth century. Part VI (France: Abbeville-Valenciennes) [outside Paris]. Part VII (Switzerland). Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1953 et 1956.», Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes, 115/1 (1957) p.198-201. Online (in French).
Julian Brown, "E.A. Lowe and Codices Latini Antiquiores", Scrittura e Civiltà, 1 (1977), pp.177–197.
Palaeography (UK) or paleography is the study and academic discipline of the analysis of historical writing systems, the historicity of manuscripts and texts, subsuming deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysis of historic penmanship, handwriting script, signification and printed media. It is primarily concerned with the forms, processes and relationships of writing and printing systems as evident in a text, document or manuscript; and analysis of the substantive textual content of documents is a secondary function. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and printing of texts, manuscripts, books, codices and tomes, tracts and monographs, etcetera, were produced, and the history of scriptoria. This discipline is important for understanding, authenticating, and dating historic texts. However, in the absence of additional evidence, it cannot be used to pinpoint exact dates.
Codex Usserianus Primus is an early 7th-century Old Latin Gospel Book. It is dated palaeographically to the 6th or 7th century. It is designated by r.
The Book of Armagh or Codex Ardmachanus, also known as the Canon of Patrick and the Liber Ar(d)machanus, is a 9th-century Irish illuminated manuscript written mainly in Latin. It is held by the Library of Trinity College Dublin. The document is valuable for containing early texts relating to St Patrick and some of the oldest surviving specimens of Old Irish, and for being one of the earliest manuscripts produced by an insular church to contain a near complete copy of the New Testament.
CLA may refer to:
The Acts of Peter is one of the earliest of the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles in Christianity, dating to the late 2nd century AD. The majority of the text has survived only in the Latin translation of the Codex Vercellensis, under the title Actus Petri cum Simone. It is notable for a description of a miracle contest between Saint Peter and Simon Magus, the first record of the tradition that Saint Peter was crucified head-down, and as the origin of the saying Quo vadis?
Visigothic script was a type of medieval script that originated in the Visigothic Kingdom in Hispania. Its more limiting alternative designations littera toletana and littera mozarabica associate it with scriptoria specifically in Toledo and with Mozarabic culture more generally, respectively.
Merovingian script or Gallo-Roman script was a medieval variant of the Latin script so called because it was developed in Gaul during the Merovingian dynasty. It was used in the 7th and 8th centuries before the Carolingian dynasty and the development of Carolingian minuscule.
British Library, Harley MS 1775 is an illuminated Gospel Book produced in Italy during the last quarter of the 6th century. The text is in Latin and is a mixture of the Vulgate and Old Latin translations. This text is called "source Z" in critical studies of the Latin New Testament.
British Library, Add MS 40618 is a late 8th century illuminated Irish Gospel Book with 10th century Anglo-Saxon additions. The manuscript contains a portion of the Gospel of Matthew, the majority of the Gospel of Mark and the entirety of the Gospels of Luke and John. There are three surviving Evangelist portraits, one original and two 10th century replacements, along with 10th century decorated initials. It is catalogued as number 40618 in the Additional manuscripts collection at the British Library.
The Saint Petersburg Bede, formerly known as the Leningrad Bede, is an Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscript, a near-contemporary version of Bede's 8th century history, the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. Although not heavily illuminated, it is famous for containing the earliest historiated initial in European illumination. It is so named because it was taken to the Russian National Library of Saint Petersburg in Russia at the time of the French Revolution, by Peter P. Dubrovsky.
The Vespasian Psalter is an Anglo-Saxon illuminated psalter decorated in a partly Insular style produced in the second or third quarter of the 8th century. It contains an interlinear gloss in Old English which is the oldest extant English translation of any portion of the Bible. It was produced in southern England, perhaps in St. Augustine's Abbey or Christ Church, Canterbury or Minster-in-Thanet, and is the earliest illuminated manuscript produced in "Southumbria" to survive.
The Moore Bede is an early manuscript of Bede's 8th-century Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. It was formerly owned by Bishop John Moore (1646–1714), whose collection of books and manuscripts was purchased by George I and donated to Cambridge University.
Elias Avery Lowe, originally surnamed Loew, and known in print as E. A. Lowe, was a Lithuanian-American palaeographer at the University of Oxford and Princeton University. He was a lecturer, and then reader, at the University of Oxford from 1913 to 1936, and a professor at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study from 1936.
Guglielmo Cavallo is an Italian palaeographer and Byzantinist, Emeritus Professor of the Sapienza University of Rome.
British Library, Add MS 17212 is a double palimpsest, with three successive writings: a Syriac translation of St. Chrysostom's Homilies of the 9th/10th century covers a Latin grammatical treatise from the 6th century, written in cursive, which in turn covers the Annales of Roman historian Granius Licinianus. It is a rare example of a double palimpsest. The manuscript has survived in incomplete condition.
Bernhard Bischoff was a German historian, paleographer, and philologist; he was born in Altendorf, and he died in Munich.
Johan Peter Gumbert, known in print as J.P. Gumbert, was a Dutch academic who specialised in medieval European manuscripts. From 1979 to 2001 he was Professor, and then Professor Emeritus, of Western Palaeography and Codicology at Leiden University.
The Triennial E. A. Lowe Lectures are an ongoing series of lectures held at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, in memory of the noted palaeographer E. A. Lowe who was an Honorary Fellow of the College from 1954 until his death in 1969. They are delivered by prominent palaeographers, with each scholar giving a trio of lectures on a topic within the field. Oxford University Press sometimes publishes revised versions of the lectures. Lecturers have included N. G. Wilson, A. C. de la Mare, Anthony Grafton, and Michael Lapidge.
Gerard Isaäc Lieftinck, known in print as G.I. Lieftinck, was a Dutch academic specialising in medieval European manuscripts.
The Codex Heidelbergensis 921 or Codex Palatinus Latinus 921 is a parchment codex dated to the 8th–9th century, containing a copy of the Romana and Getica of Jordanes. It was destroyed in a fire on the night of July 15–16, 1880.
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