The Goths Got a Long Run

The Goths, an eastern Germanic people, have had a fabulously long run. Of their own culture we know comparatively little, but we know much of the glories of Latin Spain under their rule.

Later, a revival of what was fancied to have been Gothic took medieval art by storm. Of the Gothic Revival in the 19th century (properly a revival of a revival) we find traces in the whole globe. And the Goths who now meet every year in Leipzig to hear Gothic rock music pay their own tribute.

So what are we to make of the Missale Gothicum, a fabulously old book of Christian liturgy made in France about 700 which the Vatican Library placed online this week in one of the major gifts of the year to historical scholarship?

Reg.lat.317 is not Gothic at all and its traditional title is entirely false, as Henry Bannister noted a century ago in his introduction:

... for it is not a missal, but a pure sacramentary, and the word Gothic in its time has borne many different meanings; at any rate, it was so called about five centuries ago, when someone inserted this title at what was then, and is still, the first page of the ms. One cannot say what he intended by it; it may ... have simply meant that to him Gothicum was synonymous with "ignotum" ...

This codex, collected by Vossius and formerly at Stockholm, is of such huge importance that four editions of it have appeared: by Giuseppe Maria Tomasi in 1680, by Bannister in 1917, by Leo Mohlberg in 1961 and most recently and authoritatively by Els Rose in 2004.

Described by Bannister as "the oldest and nearly perfect sacramentary of the Church in the West", the manuscript was presumably written in a Burgundian scriptorium, and was most probably in use in the church of Autun. As an important source of the Gallican liturgy, and of early medieval Latin, a language in a transitional stage, it naturally has its own entry in Wikipedia. Enjoy it now online.

It is among 106 new manuscripts placed online on October 3, bringing the total to 5,585. Here is the full list:

1. Chig.C.VI.163, autograph by Bernardino of Siena (died 1444)
2. Patetta.1621
3. Reg.lat.317, above, TM 66201 in the Trismegistos database.
4. Urb.lat.151
5. Vat.ebr.45
6. Vat.ebr.46
7. Vat.ebr.47
8. Vat.ebr.57
9. Vat.ebr.407
10. Vat.ebr.438
11. Vat.ebr.444
12. Vat.ebr.445
13. Vat.ebr.450
14. Vat.ebr.452
15. Vat.ebr.454.pt.1
16. Vat.ebr.454.pt.2
17. Vat.ebr.455.pt.1
18. Vat.ebr.455.pt.2
19. Vat.ebr.455.pt.3
20. Vat.ebr.456
21. Vat.ebr.457
22. Vat.ebr.458
23. Vat.ebr.461
24. Vat.ebr.462
25. Vat.ebr.463
26. Vat.ebr.464
27. Vat.ebr.465
28. Vat.ebr.466
29. Vat.ebr.468
30. Vat.ebr.469
31. Vat.ebr.475
32. Vat.ebr.478
33. Vat.ebr.482
34. Vat.ebr.484
35. Vat.ebr.494
36. Vat.ebr.497
37. Vat.ebr.500
38. Vat.ebr.501
39. Vat.ebr.502
40. Vat.ebr.503
41. Vat.ebr.504
42. Vat.ebr.505
43. Vat.ebr.506
44. Vat.ebr.508
45. Vat.ebr.516
46. Vat.ebr.523
47. Vat.ebr.546
48. Vat.ebr.564
49. Vat.ebr.565
50. Vat.ebr.566
51. Vat.ebr.571
52. Vat.ebr.572
53. Vat.ebr.581
54. Vat.lat.175
55. Vat.lat.217
56. Vat.lat.265
57. Vat.lat.439
58. Vat.lat.539
59. Vat.lat.544
60. Vat.lat.692
61. Vat.lat.822
62. Vat.lat.857
63. Vat.lat.859
64. Vat.lat.868
65. Vat.lat.871
66. Vat.lat.876
67. Vat.lat.883
68. Vat.lat.885
69. Vat.lat.891
70. Vat.lat.893
71. Vat.lat.900
72. Vat.lat.902
73. Vat.lat.907
74. Vat.lat.910
75. Vat.lat.915
76. Vat.lat.918
77. Vat.lat.919
78. Vat.lat.924
79. Vat.lat.928
80. Vat.lat.938
81. Vat.lat.940
82. Vat.lat.941
83. Vat.lat.944
84. Vat.lat.946
85. Vat.lat.948
86. Vat.lat.956
87. Vat.lat.967
88. Vat.lat.968, Johannes de Capistrano (patron saint of jurists), Speculum Conscientiae, in 15th-century writing. Lowe: The final fly-leaves, fols. 151-2 (part of a missal), are in a 12th-century Beneventan hand:
    
89. Vat.lat.974
90. Vat.lat.975
91. Vat.lat.978
92. Vat.lat.980
93. Vat.lat.1001
94. Vat.lat.1015
95. Vat.lat.1016
96. Vat.lat.1018
97. Vat.lat.1019
98. Vat.lat.1036
99. Vat.lat.1041.pt.1
100. Vat.lat.1041.pt.2
101. Vat.lat.1647
102. Vat.lat.1742, a 15th-century manuscript of the Orationes of Cicero. Anthony Grafton's Rome Reborn catalog notes of fol. 2v below: Gaspare di Sant'Angelo's manuscript of Cicero portrays the Roman orator and his audience in contemporary dress before a gilt background:
     
     The image is framed in interlacing white vines or branches, one of the most common ornamental devices of the Italian illuminated manuscript of the Renaissance.
103. Vat.lat.1766, Quintilian, Epistola
104. Vat.lat.1860, Livy
105. Vat.lat.7320, Valerius Maximus, De Dictis et Factis, with this wheel of fortune at fol. 145v:
     
106. Vat.lat.10305, Giovanni Battista Natali, with many sample drawings like this baby
     

This is Piggin's Unofficial List number 70. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to DigiVatLib.