A half-leaf fragment from Moralia in Iob, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [Italy (central or southern), 11th century].

Gregory the Great (c.540-604)
A half-leaf fragment from Moralia in Iob, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [Italy (central or southern), 11th century].
A substantial example of one of the most curious and distinctive scripts of the Middle Ages.

c. 220 × 310mm. The lower half of a leaf, preserving 2 columns of 21 lines, in Beneventan script with relatively mild breaking of minims, capitals decorated with red and yellow? ink, the text comprising Gregory’s Moralia 4.27.49–53, discussing Job 3:11–12 (‘[ge]neris non ignoratur […] usque ad quanta huius exilii’) (recovered from use as a pastedown, with consequent dirt, cropping, and other damage including two small rust-stained holes probably from the metal fittings of a strap-and-pin binding, but still fully legible)

Provenance:
(1) Sold at Sotheby’s 12 December 1966, lot 156, bought by Maggs:
(2) Colker MS 119; acquired in 1967 from Maggs.

Content:
The text is a commentary on part of Job’s cursing the day that he was born: ‘Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb? Why were there knees to receive me and breasts that I might be nursed?’.

Bibliography:
Listed by Virginia Brown, Medieval Studies 40 (1978), p. 247; E.A. Loew, The Beneventan Script, II: Hand List of Beneventan Manuscripts, 2nd edn. prepared by Virginia Brown, Rome, 1980, p. 33; and in Bibliografia dei manoscritti in scrittura beneventana, II, Rome, 1994, pp. 16, 67.

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