Remember the Hand: Bodies and Bookmaking in Early Medieval ...

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Florentius ended the Bible he copied in 943 with a similar design. All but a
dozen leaves of that codex have since disappeared, 35 but we know what it
looked like because on 20 July, 960, Florentius’s student Sanctius completed a
copy of it (León, Real Colegiata de San Isidoro, MS 2). On folio 514r of
Sanctius’s 960 Bible there is another Omega (figure 8).
Like the Omega at the end of the Moralia, this one is also supported by two little
figures. Here, however, they hold out goblets, presumably of wine. Labels above
their heads tell us who they are: On the right, ‘‘SANCTIUS PRESBITER’’ and on the
left, ‘‘FLORENTIUS CONFESSOR.’’ In the text under their goblets they address each
other: ‘‘O my dearest disciple Sanctius, presbyter, overflowing with joy. Let us
bless the king of heaven who allowed us to come safely to the end of this book’’
[‘‘O Karissimo micique dilecti discipulo pregaudio retaxando Sanctioni presbitero.
Benedicamus celi quoque regem nos qui ad istius libri finem venire permisit
incolumnes. Amen’’]. Sanctius replies: ‘‘I say the same, Master: Let us praise our
God Jesus Christ, that he might lead us to the kingdom of heaven. Amen.’’ [‘‘Et
iterum dico Magister benedicamus Dominum nostrum Iesu Christum in secula
seculorum que nos perducat ad regna celorum. Amen.’’] 36
It is simpler in Florentius’s Moralia: on f. 501r, around the Omega and its
supporting actors, a capital letter in each corner of the page, starting with the
upper left and moving clockwise: F-I-N-IS. Finis. The End.
Gregory’s Stomach
Of making many books there is no end: and much study is an affliction of the
flesh. (Eccles. 12.12)
Read for the meaning, the scribes tell us, but remember the pen. Perhaps it is
time to go back to Gregory, for, oddly enough, it may well be from him that
Florentius and garrulous Iberian scribes like him learned to articulate themselves
with their reading and their writing. 37
Gregory’s works had been in wide circulation in the Peninsula since Taio,
bishop of Zaragoza (d. 683) rediscovered the Moralia on a trip to Rome, and
wrote that was he so entranced by them that he became a book-worker himself:
So when I arrived in Rome I diligently sought those volumes which were lacking
in Spain so that, having found them, I might transcribe them with my own hand,
so much had the sweetness of the words delighted my soul with ineffable
delicacy.
[Igitur quum Rome positus eius que in Hispaniis deerant uolumina sedulus
uestigator perquirerem iuentaque propria manu transcriberem tantaque dulcedo
uerborum animum meum inextimabili suauitate mulceret.] 38
From that transcription, Taio says he made an edition in six volumes [in sex
codicibus], and brought it home to Zaragoza with him. And then began their
274 CATHERINE BROWN
Figure 7. Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de
España, MS 80, f 500v (bottom center detail).
Below Florentius’s explicit (top), a reader adds:
‘‘For the purpose of desiring the kingdom, you
lost the sense [or : Your understanding]. Open
the sense and you shall win the kingdom.’’ [‘‘ad
concupiscendum regnum perdisti sensum. aperi
sensum et adquires regnum’’].
35 – On this lost Bible, see Teófilo Ayuso
Marazuela, La Biblia de Oña: Notable fragmento
casi desconocido de un códice visigótico homogeneo de
la Biblia de San Isidoro de León (Zaragoza:
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Científicas, 1945) and John Williams, ‘‘A
Model for the León Bibles,’’ Madrider
Mitteilungen 8 (1967), pp. 281-86.
36 – Transcription silently resolves
abbreviations.
37 – Elizabeth Sears’s elegant study of a
manuscript of Isidore’s Etymologies copied in
Germany in the early 1160s explores, in a
different chronological and geographical
context, the mutual articulation of scribal self,
scribal labor, codex, and readers that concern
us here (‘‘The Afterlife of Scribes: Swicher’s
Prayer in the Prüfening Isidore,’’ in Pen in
Hand, ed. Gullick, pp. 75-96).
38 – Text from Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz,
‘‘Gregorio Magno y Tajón de Zaragoza,’’ in
Libros y librerías en la Rioja altomedieval (Logroño:
Diputación Provincial, 1979), pp. 344-45.