Berlin, SBPK, Phill. 1743

Codex unicus of the so-called Collectio Remensis, or, more fittingly, “Sammlung der Hs. von Rheims” (Maassen, Geschichte). According to David Ganz, building on earlier results by Bernhard Bischoff, the codex was written by a collective of scribes in the “middle third of the 8^th century” in the episcopal scriptorium of the bishopric of Bourges (Eber et al. 2022). The codex belonged to the monastery of St-Remi-de-Reims from the ninth (or eighth?) century onward.

The ms. contains 301 folios; these measure 315 x 210 mm each, the text, which is written in a Merovingian minuscule cursive, is laid out in two columns. As is seen from the numbering of the quires, the first three quires are lost (the lost beginning might very well have contained, among other documents, the canons of Nicea, probably in the version found in the Corpus Africano-Romanum). The end of the ms. is also heavily damaged, from fol. 292 onward, textual losses are getting more severe on each folio, consequently the last documents (viz. the Paris edict of Chlothar II, the Paris synod from 614 and a synodus incerto loco postdating the Paris synod) are only partially readable.

The manuscript contains four sections:

1. The Collectio Remensis on fol. 1r-276r.
2. a dossier on the Three Chapter Controversy on fol. 276r-287v (ed. Schwartz, Vigiliusbriefe) and the Gesta de nomine Acacii (fol. 187v-291v) (ed. Günther, Avellana),
3. the book list of the Decretum Gelasiuanum, a papal catalogue, and the Notitia Galliarum, and
4. a dossier of texts only added in the seventh century, including legislation of Chlothar II

In several places in the mss., e.g. on fols. 19va, 273ra or 276rb, Tironian notes are to be found. During the Carolingian period, monks from St-Remi compared the contents of the ms. meticulously to other codices from their library, which can be seen from numerous corrections to the text, but also from marginal remarks, such as: haec epistola non abetur in aliis quodicibus (fol. 171va) or hoc cap(itulum) u(e)l h(aec) sententia minus e(st) in aliis codicib(us) n(ost)ris (fol. 8rb). Specific scribal references to Rheims are found on fol. 294v, where the name of Pope Symmachus is supplemented by the information that under his pontificate s(an)c(tu)s Remigius claruisset Rem(ensi)s ep(iscopu)s, on fol. 34ra in the subscriptions of the council of Arles 314, where a Carolingian scribe added: NOTA Betausiu(m) ep(iscopu)m Remo(rum) te(m)p(o)r(e) C(on)stant(in)i imp(erator)is et Siluestri papę fuisse, or on fol. 159r, where the name of one Bishop Egidius is (erroneously) supplemented by the comment that he was the bishop of Reims.

Links

• A digitized version is planned to be made available online on https://digital.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de

• description https://capitularia.uni-koeln.de/en/mss/berlin-sb-phill-1743/
• CLA 8, Nr. 1060 https://elmss.nuigalway.ie/catalogue/1520

Literature

Older literature is listed in Kéry, Collections p. 50. On the paleographical features of the ms., see Michael Eber, Stefan Esders, David Ganz and Till Stüber, Selection and Presentation of Texts in Early Medieval Canon Law Collections. Approaching the Codex Remensis (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Phill. 1743), in: Creative Selection between Emending and Forming Medieval Memory, ed. Sebastian Scholz and Gerald Schwedler (Millennium-Studien 96, 2022), 105–136 at 109-111. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110757279-008