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

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Figure 3. Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia, MS 29, f. 273v. (detail). ‘‘Remember Aloysius the presbyter’’
[ALOITII PRESBITERI MEMORIA].
beginning and the end, saith the Lord God, who is, and who was, and who is to
come’’. 20 Once our memory has thus glossed the Alpha with the Biblical passage,
the codex is cast into Apocalyptic time, over which rules Christ in Majesty. There
he is, opposite the Alpha, on the facing page’s apotheosis of the Book (f. 2r). Turn
the page to 2v and there Christ is again---represented alphabetically by his
monogram, the chrismon, from the arms of which dangle the alpha and omega
that represent him metaphorically. Facing this page is the alphabetic labyrinth
that evokes the unworthy scribe Florentius and interpellates his faithful reader.
Perhaps the unfolding harmonies of this invocation evoked the glorious spread of
the peacock’s tail on f. 3v (facing an expensive blank page) as much as did the
bird’s proverbial association with the beauties of scripture. 21
Florentius’s Moralia begins with Alpha and ends 501 folios later with Omega
(for the closing sequence, see table 3). 22
Before that last letter can close the book, however, Florentius has some
things to say. On f. 499r, Florentius begins his ending thus:
Here ends the Moralia of Pope Gregory the Roman, era 983 [=945 CE], Friday,
April [11 th ] in the Easter season, at prime. In the reigns of King Ramiro and
count Fernando and bishop Basilio. Blessed be the kingdom of heaven which has
permitted me to reach the end of this book safely. AMEN. 23
[Explicit liber moralium Gregorii romensis pape era DCCCCLXXXIIIa [III] idus
aprilis VI feria pasce hora prima. deo gratias. regnante rex Ranemiro et comite
Fredenando necnon et Basilio episcopo. Benedicto caeli quoque regem me qui
ad istius libri finem uenire permisit incolomem. AMEN.]
This conclusion is followed by the shocking silence of two facing pages left
expensively blank. Then you turn the page and encounter another two-page
spread: a full-page colophon on the left (f 500v, Color Plate 2) and the Omega
on the right (501r).
This second colophon is very carefully lettered and laid out: a full-page
composition (remember how big these pages are!) made up of two major text
blocks, each written in alternating lines of black and red display uncials,
framed with a border of interlace and trompe-l’oeil cubes and squares. The
268 CATHERINE BROWN
Figure 2. Madrid, Real Academia de la
Historia, MS 29, f. 170v (detail). ‘‘Remember
Moterrafe the deacon’’ [MEMORIA
DIACONUM MOTERRAFE].
Figure 4. Madrid, Real Academia de la
Historia, MS 29, 276v. (detail). ‘‘Here
Aloysius the presbyter stopped writing’’
[‘‘Hic cessavit Aloitius presbiter de scribere’’].
20 – (Apoc 1.8, Douay).
21 – Cassiodorus compares the Psalms to the
peacock’s fanned tail in Institutiones I.iv.3. That
early Iberian bookmakers were aware of this
connection is attested by the peacocks accompanying
Psalms 85 and 126 in a copy of
Cassiodorus’s Commentary on the Psalms made
at San Millán in the late tenth century
(Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia MS 8).
22 – On this common practice in Iberian
luxury codices of the period, see Mentre,
Illuminated Manuscripts, pp. 97-8.
23 – Text from Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz, ‘‘Los
prólogos y colofones de los códices de
Florencio,’’ in Códices visigóticos en la monarquía
leonesa (León: Centro de Estudios de
Investigación ‘San Isidoro,’ 1983), p. 516.
Though Florentius’s two colophons from MS
80 are often cited, the entire text has never, to
my knowledge, been published in translation.
I have supplied the date in April (the 11th)
from Florentius’s second colophon, where he
gives the date as ‘‘III idus aprilis’’ (f. 500v.). He
omitted the ‘‘iii’’ here, perhaps misled by the
three ‘‘I’’s at the end of the year 983.