Visigothic script
Grant of Arias Arias, owner of the Castle Moreda, who bequeaths it to the monastery of San Vicente de Pino (at Monforte de Lemos, Galicia) [Spain, Moreda]. A.D. 1111 (era 1149).
A precisely-dated example of one of the rarest and most peculiar of medieval scripts.

c.190 x 390mm. 12 lines in a fine Visigothic script: ‘Sub Christi nomine et divino celestis auxilio sancta et individua trinitas […] Sub ipsius imperio et illius merita sancti Vincenti de Pino et sancti Michaelis et sancte Marie virginis […] ego Arias Arias facio testamentum de hereditate mea de chastru ad ipso loco ubi est habitatio monacorum vel clericorum et abbas Michaeli et servorum dei […] Super illa ęcclesia sancti Salvatoris de Mureda et illa hereditate […] Ego Arias Arias in hunc scriptura testamenti manus meas R […]’, with the sign of the notary Vimara; endorsed by several hands, 12th-century and later (with folds, very small holes, and minor stains, but fully legible)

Provenance:
(1) Endorsements show that the document was kept in at least two archives, filed as ‘Cazon .Z. A.1’ and ‘Leg. 1. num. 22’.
(2) Colker MS 339; acquired in 1985 from H.P. Kraus.

Visigothic script evolved from late Roman hands and was used in the Iberian peninsula from the 8th to the 13th century. Partly for geographical reasons, it remained relatively free from Carolingian influence, which came to dominate across northern Europe and Italy. Peculiarities of this script are the form of ‘t’ that looks like an ‘oc’ ligature or like a reversed ‘3’, and open-topped ‘a’ that looks like a ‘u’.

While examples are plentiful in Spanish institutional archives, they appear on the market very rarely. According to E.A. Lowe, ‘Apart from Paris and London very few libraries in Europe can boast of more than one or two Visigothic manuscripts. The great Bodleian of Oxford has not a single one’, ‘This […] is perhaps the sole Visigothic writing to have appeared on the market for decades' (An Illustrated Check List of Manuscript Leaves in the Collection of Mark Lansburgh ([privately printed], 1962, describing no IV).

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