Paschasius Radbertus was a French abbot of the 9^th century. He was the author of several important theological works, including an important treatise on the Eucharist and this commentary on the book of Lamentations. Paschasius’s text (written between 849 and 857) is an exercise in what the Benedictine monks called lectio divina, a reading which dwells on phrases of the Biblical text, allowing their associations to build in the silence of the mind. The script of this manuscript is a late form of Carolingian minuscule, the hand invented in eighth-century Francia to give a clear rendering of the foundation texts of Charlemagne’s political ordering of Europe.

This manuscript was written at the Cathedral Priory in Winchester, one of the leading centres of book production in England between the 10^th and the 12^th centuries. The style of the initials compares closely to several other Winchester books of the early 12^th century, including one (MS2) still in the Cathedral Library. Two different scribes worked on the manuscript; the one whose work is found in the first half of the book was exceptionally skilled.

In the margins of this manuscript are two pen and ink drawings of high quality. These were added around the middle of the 12^th century and are similar in style to some of the drawings in the Winchester Bible. They show a head straight-on, longhaired, staring out; and three other heads, possibly with a satirical edge, caricatural and accomplished in execution. Such marginal drawings are unusual in 12th-century English manuscripts and their purpose is unclear. They may relate to the text. The words immediately above the frontal head speak of Judgment, and the drawing is perhaps the judging Christ; and the three figures in dispute are perhaps representations of the discord mentioned in the nearby text.

 

Literature: Edward Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae in unum collecti, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 1697), p. 31, no. 1349; Neil R. Ker and Alan J. Piper, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, Volume IV: Paisley–York (Oxford, 1969), p. 606; Paul Yeats-Edwards, Winchester College (Warden and Fellows’ Library) Medieval Manuscript Collection: Brief History and Catalogue (London, 1978), p. 3; James M. W. Willoughby, The Libraries of Collegiate Churches, Vol. 2 (London, 2013), p. 815.

Provenance: Given to Winchester College by George Greswold, 1558.

Location: Fellows’ Library