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In textual studies, a palimpsest is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off in preparation for reuse in the form of another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid skin and was expensive and not readily available, so, in the interest of economy, a page was often re-used by scraping off the previous writing. In colloquial usage, the term palimpsest is also used in architecture, archaeology and geomorphology to denote an object made or worked upon for one purpose and later reused for another; for example, a monumental brass the reverse blank side of which has been re-engraved.
The Vatican Apostolic Library, more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City, and is the city-state's national library. It was formally established in 1475, although it is much older—it is one of the oldest libraries in the world and contains one of the most significant collections of historical texts. It has 75,000 codices from throughout history, as well as 1.1 million printed books, which include some 8,500 incunabula.
The Skeireins is the second-longest known surviving text in the Gothic language, after Ulfilas' version of the Bible. It consists of eight fragments of a commentary on the Gospel of John which is commonly held to have originally extended over seventy-eight parchment leaves. It owes its title to the 19th-century German scholar Hans Ferdinand Massmann, who was the first to issue a comprehensive and correct edition of it: "Skeireins" means "explanation" in Gothic. The manuscript containing the Skeireins text is a palimpsest.
In the Western Church of the Early and High Middle Ages, a sacramentary was a book used for liturgical services and the mass by a bishop or priest. Sacramentaries include only the words spoken or sung by him, unlike the missals of later centuries that include all the texts of the mass whether read by the bishop, priest, or others. Also, sacramentaries, unlike missals, include texts for services other than the mass such as ordinations, the consecration of a church or altar, exorcisms, and blessings, all of which were later included in Pontificals and Rituals instead.
The Vergilius Vaticanus, also known as Vatican Virgil, is a Late Antique illuminated manuscript containing fragments of Virgil's Aeneid and Georgics. It was made in Rome in around 400 CE, and is one of the oldest surviving sources for the text of the Aeneid. It is the oldest and one of only three ancient illustrated manuscripts of classical literature.
The Vergilius Romanus, also known as the Roman Vergil, is a 5th-century illustrated manuscript of the works of Virgil. It contains the Aeneid, the Georgics, and some of the Eclogues. It is one of the oldest and most important Vergilian manuscripts. It is 332 by 323 mm with 309 vellum folios. It was written in rustic capitals with 18 lines per page.
The Vergilius Augusteus is a manuscript from late antiquity, containing the works of the Roman author Virgil, written probably around the 4th century. There are two other collections of Virgil manuscripts, the Vergilius Vaticanus and the Vergilius Romanus. They are early examples of illuminated manuscripts; the Augusteus is not illuminated but has decorated initial letters at the top of each page. These letters do not mark divisions of the text, but rather are used at the beginning of whatever line happened to fall at the top of the page. These decorated initials are the earliest surviving such initials.
De re publica is a dialogue on Roman politics by Cicero, written in six books between 54 and 51 BC. The work does not survive in a complete state, and large parts are missing. The surviving sections derive from excerpts preserved in later works and from an incomplete palimpsest uncovered in 1819. Cicero uses the work to explain Roman constitutional theory. Written in imitation of Plato's Republic, it takes the form of a Socratic dialogue in which Scipio Aemilianus takes the role of a wise old man.
The Ascension of Isaiah is a pseudepigraphical Judeo-Christian text. Scholarly estimates regarding the date of the Ascension of Isaiah range from 70 AD to 175 AD. Many scholars believe it to be a compilation of several texts completed by an unknown Christian scribe who claimed to be the Prophet Isaiah, while an increasing number of scholars in recent years have argued that the work is a unity by a single author that may have utilized multiple sources.
The Codex Gregorianus is the title of a collection of constitutions of Roman emperors over a century and a half from the 130s to 290s AD. It is believed to have been produced around 291–294 but the exact date is unknown.
Codex Carolinus is an uncial manuscript of the New Testament on parchment, dated to the 6th or 7th century. It is a palimpsest containing a Latin text written over a Gothic one. The Gothic text is designated by siglum Car, the Latin text is designated by siglum gue or by 79, it represents the Old Latin translation of the New Testament. It is housed in the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel in Lower Saxony, Germany.
Anonymus Valesianus is the conventional title of a compilation of two fragmentary vulgar Latin chronicles, named for its modern editor, Henricus Valesius, who published the texts for the first time in 1636, together with his first printed edition of the Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus. The two fragments are not related, one being from the fourth century and the other from the sixth. The only connection between the two fragments is their presence in the same manuscript and their history of being edited together. When Henricus' brother Hadrian re-edited the Anonymus in an edition of Ammianus Marcellinus in 1681, it was the first time that the two excerpts were clearly separated.
The Codex Floriacensis, designated by h in traditional system or by 55 in the Beuron system, is a 6th-century Latin manuscript of the New Testament. The text, written on vellum, is a palimpsest. Another name of the manuscript is Fleury Palimpsest or Palimpsestus Floriacensis. It is one of the eight Old-Latin manuscripts with text of Apocalypse.
The Institutes is a beginners' textbook on Roman private law written around 161 CE by the classical Roman jurist Gaius. The Institutes are considered to be "by far the most influential elementary-systematic presentation of Roman private law in late antiquity, the Middle Ages and modern times". The content of the textbook was considered to be lost until 1816, when a manuscript of it − probably of the 5th century − was discovered.
The Vatican Terence, or Codex Vaticanus Latinus 3868, is a 9th-century illuminated manuscript of the Latin comedies of Publius Terentius Afer, housed in the Vatican Library. According to art-historical analysis the manuscript was copied from a model of the 3rd century. The manuscript is referred to in the apparatus criticus of modern editions as "C".
The Alphabetum Romanum, by Felice Feliciano, published in 1463, is a text that covers how to create Roman square capital letters geometrically based on the subdivision of a square.
The Ars Bonifacii is the title given to a Latin grammar ascribed to Saint Boniface.
The Frankish Table of Nations is a brief early medieval genealogical text in Latin giving the supposed relationship between thirteen nations descended from three brothers. The nations are the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Gepids, Saxons, Burgundians, Thuringians, Lombards, Bavarians, Romans, Bretons, Franks and Alamanni.
The Annales Siculi is an anonymous set of Latin annals covering the island of Sicily between 1027 and 1265. Although it covers the entire period of Norman rule in Sicily and almost the entire period of Staufer rule, the Annales is not concerned with the kingdom of Sicily as a whole but only the island. It is least accurate for the earliest period, down to 1052, and is most substantial for the reigns of the Staufer kings Frederick II (1197–1250) and Manfred (1258–1266). It is conjectured to be the work of a monk, probably from the vicinity of Messina. The quality of the text's Latin is poor. It was probably composed sometime after the Angevin conquest of the kingdom in 1266.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 Simon Corcoran (2012), "Fragmenta Vaticana", in The Encyclopedia of Ancient History (Wiley Online Library). doi : 10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah13104
- 1 2 3 4 Michael H. Hoeflich (1987), "Law Beyond Byzantium: The Evidence of Palimpsests", Zeitschrift Der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Germanistische Abteilung104(1): 261–267, at 264–65. doi : 10.7767/zrgga.1987.104.1.261
- ↑ Stephan Brassloff:Fragmenta iuris Vaticana.(in German) In: Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (RE). Vol. VII,1, Stuttgart 1910, col. 76–80.