Add MS 73494

MEROVINGIAN DOCUMENT: leaf of the Rental of St Martin’s Abbey, Tours; France; second half of 7^th cent. Latin. Used as binding fragments of a MS. of Philippus on Job in the Tours library in 15^th cent (MS. 56 in Tours’ 18^th-cent. library catalogue, see L. Delisle, ‘Notice sur les manuscrits disparus de la bibl. de Tours’, Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibl. nat., 31, pt 1, 1884, p. 215). Other fragments from same source mention Agrycus, Abbot of Tours in 7^th cent. Fragments first recognised by the palaeographer Bernard de Montfaucon in early 18^th cent (see his Palaeographica Graeca, 1708). His interest was aroused by attached fragments of Greek papyri, furnishing important evidence of Tours’ early relations with the eastern Mediterranean. Transferred, still as part of the binding of MS. 56, to Bibl. Municipale de Tours during the Revolution. Around 1830 the book was dismantled. The Philippus on Job was sold at auction in Paris, Feb. 1832, and purchased by Baron de Westreenen. It is now MS. 10.A.I in the Meerman-Westreenen Museum in the Hague (see E. A. Lowe, CLA 10.1571). The fragments were described as lost by Delisle in 1884, but 31 pieces were purchased by Sir Thomas Phillips (1792-1872). They were re-identified by Bernhard Bischoff in 1934 and sold at Sotheby’s, 28 Nov. 1967, lot 84, and purchased by H. P. Kraus who presented them to the Bibl. nat. de France in 1968 (now B.N., MS. nouv. acq. lat. 2654). However, the present leaf, and another (now possibly in the Schøyen collection), were apparently sold separately by a French bookseller around 1830. See Gasnault in Bull. Soc. Nat. Antiquaires de France, 1994. Purchased of Sam Fogg, 1997 (sale catalogue 16, Text Manuscripts and Documents from 2200 BC to 1600 AD, 1995, no. 14). The text is a list of tenants of St. Martin’s Abbey, accompanied by amounts of produce, usually grain, for which each was liable. The personal names are amongst the earliest examples of Germanic forms.

Vellum; f. 1. 188 x 283mm. Originally part of a set of single sheets or part of a series of rolls. Script is a rare and early example of Merovingian Chancery cursive.