St Jerome (d.420); Gregory II (669-731)
Palimpsest: three fragments of a single bifolium from works by Jerome and Gregory II on marriage, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [France, 8th and 9th/10th century].
A barely visible but exceptionally early palimpsest undertext.

Two fragments c. 65 × 135mm and one fragment c. 60 × 260mm. Each piece preserving at least 7 lines of text, written in Caroline minuscule, at right-angles to the erased undertext written in much larger script (recovered from use as pastedowns, with significant consequent losses, damage, darkening, etc., the upper text easily legible the lower text only very faintly visible)

Provenance:
(1) The underwriting is an unidentified text written in 8th-century script, probably legible using modern imaging techniques.
(2) Removed from the binding of a book printed at Strasburg in 1496, suggesting that it may have been discarded from an institutional library in that region.
(3) Colker MS 168; acquired in 1970 from Maggs.

Content:
Comprising three texts, all relating to theological aspects of marriage:
Jerome, Letter 55 to Amandus: ‘maledictum crucis fieri […] sanctorum virtutes omnes’
Jerome, Commentary on Matthew 19:3–8: ‘quacumque de causa […] vitanda coniugia. Non en[im]’
Gregory II, Letter with instructions to delegates about the ecclesiastical organization of Germany: ‘[eunti]bus cum Domino auxilio in Baioaria […] baptismi sacramentum non’

Listed by Bernhard Bischoff and Virginia Brown, ‘Addenda to Codices Latini Antiquiores’, Mediaeval Studies 47 (1985) p. 349 no 1865: ‘Palimpsest of an unidentified text in pre-Caroline minuscule saec. viii, rewritten with a papal letter in early tenth-century minuscule.’

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