Città del Vaticano, BAV, Vat. lat. 3791

Place	Città del Vaticano (Vatican City)
Library	Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
Shelfmark	Vat. lat. 3791
Century	s. XI-XII (catalogue), s. XIex (Kéry)
General region of origin	France (catalogue), Northern France (Kéry)
ISIL no.	unknown
Collection	Collectio XXX capitulorum (De ratione matrimonii)
Main author	Bruno Schalekamp

Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 3791 is a late eleventh or early twelfth-century manuscript of 308 fols., plus eight later added folios (V^a-h), an extra ‘bis’ folio (CCXXXIII^bis) and eight folios beforehand (Ir-Vv), minus 37 removed (?) fols. (VII-XIII, XCII-CI, CXC-CXCIC, and CCXC-CCXCIX) in 1 col (252 x 165 mm (179 x 103 mm)). Its preliminary codicological composition reads as follows: 35-37 quires, (III + 2)⁸ + IV¹⁶ + 35 x IV³⁰⁸, quire signatures from I^V to XXXIIII³⁰², with quire signature II missing and quire 35 (XXXV) not numbered; the late medieval to early modern foliation numbering in Latin numerals is interpolated and difficult to interpret due to insertion and removal of quires. It was written by multiple (but unknown amount of) hands in late Caroline minuscule and proto-Gothic. The manuscript's origins can be traced to (northern) France according to Kéry and its catalogue. Its provenance, however, is unknown. The codex's former shelf-mark number, which reads 602 on fol. 1r, might be an indication of earlier storage or archival interest. Nothing else is known about the changes in whereabouts of this manuscript.

Contents

The manuscript is a large-sized codex with a bulky amount of folios and contains almost exclusively canonical material (including the Collectio XXX capitulorum (De ratione matrimonii)), which is dominated by Pseudoisidore's False Decretals. The manuscript also includes a very small unknown collection of canonical material. Other works included are (excerpts of) epistles by pope Gregory the Great and Pseudoisidore's Capitula Angilramni, and a few forged epistles of Isidore de Seville. Lastly, (excerpts of) works by Cassiodorus and Polemius, as well as the Notitia Galliarum have been included.

Fol. 306v of the manuscript, showing a few canons of the unknown short canonical collection

The manuscript seems to have enjoyed a particular early modern interest, as exemplified in the added picture of fol. CCCVIv. Especially in the marginalia of Pseudoisidore's works, many small early modern annotations, clarifications, and commentaries can be found. The unknown canonical collection, interestingly, seems to also have drawn some interest. This may have been due to its contents, which draws from the councils of Antioch, Nicaea, Laodicea, Chalcedon and the capitula of Martin of Braga, and decretals of popes Innocent I, Hilarius, Celestine and Leo I.

Concerning the codicology of the manuscript, it is a rather hard to trace compilation. Various folios seem to have been cut shorter at a later stage, but before the late medieval and early modern hands penned down the various marginal additions. Also note that fols. V^a-h are probably a 14th-century replacement of the original material, according to the catalogue. This makes reproducing its composition an arduous endeavour and it would benefit from more research.

See the digitized version: https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.lat.3791.

folios	texts
	Front cover and flyleaf
Ir-CCLXXIIIr	Pseudoisidore's False Decretals, book three
CCLXXIIIr-v	Epistle of pope Gregory the Great to Secundinus
CCLXXIIIv-CCLXXVIIIv	Various excerpts of epistles of pope Gregory the Great
CCLXXVIIIv-CCLXXXIIr	Pseudoisidore's Capitula Angilramni
CCLXXXIIv-CCLXXXIIIr	Forged epistle of Isidore of Seville, Epistola ad Leudefredum
CCLXXXIIIr-CCLXXXIIIbisr	Forged epistle of Isidore of Seville, Epistola ad Massonam
CCLXXXIIIbisr-v	Collectio XXX capitulorum (De ratione matrimonii), chapters I-VIII
CCLXXXIIIbisv-CCLXXXVIv	Excerpts of Isidore de Seville's Etymologiae, book 8, chapters 5-6
CCLXXXVIv-CCLXXXVIIIr	Excerpts of Cassiodorus' Historia ecclesiastica tripartita
CCLXXXVIIIr-CCCVIr	Pseudoisidore's False Decretals, Nonnullae sanctiones sancti et magni Calcidonensis concilii
CCCVIr-CCCVIIv	Unknown collection of excerpts of conciliar canons
CCCVIIv-CCCVIIIr	Polemius Silvius' Laterculus
CCCVIIIr-v	Notitia prouinciarum et ciuitatum Galliae
	Flyleaf and back cover

Literature

Kéry, Canonical Collections (1999), p. 77, 81, 105, and 115; Mordek, Kirchenrecht und Reform (1975), p. 227 n. 62, 239, and 259; Reynolds, Studies on Medieval Liturgical and Legal Manuscripts (2023), p. 105.

An edition of the Collectio XXX capitulorum (De ratione matrimonii) is currently being prepared by Sven Meeder, Gideon de Jong, and Bruno Schalekamp.