Pierre PETITMENGIN --- James P. CARLEY, Malmesbury-Sélestat-Malines: The tribulations of a manuscript of Tertullian in the middle of the 16^th century. Annuaire des amis de la bibliothèque humaniste de Selestat (2003) pp. 63-74 (English translation)

Malmesbury -- Sélestat -- Malines
The tribulations of a manuscript of Tertullian in the middle of the 16^th century. (¹)

By Pierre PETITMENGIN --- James P. CARLEY

I. Editors in search of manuscripts

In the 16th century, the publication of the Fathers of the church was an intellectual and religious matter, but also an economic one.  Assured of substantial sales if their products commanded the market, the publishing houses did not skimp to obtain the services of well-known scholars, and they helped them to obtain access to the manuscripts of the unpublished works (or works already published, but on an insufficient base) that were still to be found in the libraries established during the Middle Ages in abbeys and cathedrals. 

The editions of the Opera omnia of Tertullien, the first Christian Latin writer, offer an exemplary case of the rivalry, lasting decades, between the two centres of the printing press, Basle and Paris.  Beatus Rhenanus gave in 1521 the editio princeps of twenty-one treatises, to Basle at Johann Froben, whose heirs, Hieronymus Froben and Nicolaus Episcopius, working together as the Officina Frobeniana, also published the revised editions of 1528 and 1539. 

In 1545, the flame passed to Paris, where the energetic Charlotte Guillard, widow of the great typographer Claude Chevallon, printed - without specifying the name of the editor - the Opera augmented by eleven unpublished treatises.  The publication was divided between three booksellers, two Parisians, Charlotte Guillard herself and John Roigny, and one at Lyons, the heirs of Aymon de la Porte, which forces us to suppose a wide diffusion.  The ripost of Basle was not long coming, despite the loss of Beatus Rhenanus († July 20 1547) : as early as 1550, the "chief corrector" of the Officina Frobeniana, the Czech humanist Sigismundus Gelenius (²), gave a revised and corrected edition of the collection, which was reprinted at Basle in 1562 and at Paris in 1566 (this time in two volumes in 8°). 

Our history ends with the edition established on a fresh basis, by a theologian of the Counter-Reformation, Jacques de Pamèle.  Prepared for Christophe Plantin, it was finally printed at Paris, in 1583, by his "partner and true friend", the bookseller Michel Sonnius.  The two partners thus divided up themselves the market: for Plantin, 500 copies (finally reduce to 300), the remainder for Sonnius(³).  One is astonished by the importance of the circulation: the numerous reimpressions carried out by the parisian booksellers associated in the "Compagnie de la Navire"(⁴) show that the market was not saturated. 

These editions rested on manuscript sources that have unfortunately all disappeared, with only a single exception: the codex Paterniacensis (Sélestat, Bibl. Hum.  88), a manuscript originating at Payerne, in Switzerland, which Rhenanus had carefully rebound after having supplied it as "copy" for the usage of the typographers(⁵). 

The other witness used for the editio princeps was returned to its legitimate possessor, the abbey of Hirsau in Wurtemberg, from where it has disappeared without trace(⁶).  Another loss, of the Gorziensis (of the abbey of Gorze, close to Metz), of which the lawyer Claude Chansonnette had sent a collation to Rhenanus: it is transcribed in the margins of one of his working copies (⁷) and the essence of it is recorded in the Annotationes which accompanied the original text in the 1539 edition. 

Thanks to the statements of Rhenanus, it is at least known what is lost.  On the other hand, the parisian edition of 1545 remains a mystery.  It is not even known who performed the work of editor.  The table of contents, after having given the list of  treatises already published by Rhenanus, contents itself by adding: "as for the following works, they are edited for the first time thanks to Jean de Gagny, the Parisian theologian and first chaplain of the Very Christian King of France, taken from a very old manuscript." (⁸).  Better knowledge of the role of Gagny († 1547) in the exploration of the French monastic libraries (⁹) does not reveal any further exterior testimony on the uetustissimus codex in question, where besides the eleven new treatises (¹⁰), the text of several treatises already edited by Rhenanus is revealed as considerably modified.  We are reduced to compare each reading of the edition with the other available witnesses for every treatise: a long and heavy philological task. 

I. Preface and summary of the edition of Sigismundus Gelenius Q. S. Fl. Tertulliani scripta, Bâle, 1550, f. † 1v° (special collection) - Photo H. Couratier

Gelenius himself must justify the numerous changes that he brought to the text of Tertullian.  He had a reputation for correcting the antique authors over-enthusiastically ---- a reputation that has pursued him, since in 1984 the more recent editor of the treatise De rebus bellicis did not hesitate to describe him as a "rogue" (homo nequam) and the "impostor of Basle" (praestigiator Basiliensis) (¹¹)!  This is why in his note to the reader (reproduced as figure 1), all while suggesting the importance of his work -- "This is not to emphasize my toil, but you will see yourself, reader, how important this last recension is." (¹²) --, he places his edition under the patronage of a new manuscript witness come from a remote library in England, discovered in the antique cœnobium Masburense, and sent by the illustrious antiquarian John Leland (¹³).  According to Gelenius, this opportune codex contained all the new treatises of the parisian edition and three already published by Rhenanus: The resurrection of flesh, The prescriptions against heretics and Monogamy. 

It has long been supposed that the form Masburiensis, not otherwise attested, was a deformation of Malmesburiensis (¹⁴).  The manuscript would therefore originate at the abbey of Malmesbury, in Wiltshire, with which are associated two authors of the first rank, Aldhelm († 709), the first writer of importance who described the British Isles, and William of Malmesbury († 1143), the greatest English historian of the Middle Ages.  But what could this codex of such a noble origin in fact contain?  It was the great merit of the late Dom Eligius Dekkers to have recognized in it a member of a medieval collection of seven treatises, attested by a Cologne catalogue datable to 833 and a more recent one from Corbie (11th century), and traceable to the 16th century thanks to important variants given for these treaties by the edition of Gelenius, as well as by the readings of another lost witness, the codex Ioannis Clementis Angli, which Pamèle cites for exactly these seven œuvres(¹⁵). 

This remarkable deduction allows us to "deflate" somewhat the advertising of Gelenius (who, for seven of the eleven treatises published in 1545, would not have had any access to manuscript evidence), and especially to add a fourth pillar to the history of the text of Tertullien, which rested until then on a single corpus, that of Cluny-Hirsau, source of the editio princeps, and on two independent manuscripts, the Agobardinus (Paris, BNF, Latin 1622) and the Trecensis (Troyes, BM, 523)(¹⁶).  Unfortunately the text of this "corpus of Corbie", as it is now called, was very difficult to restore, for as the edition of Gelenius gives only a bare text, without the least apparatus, one was reduced to suppose that this addition or that rare reading had to originate from the Masburensis.  The sole indisputable testimonies were those given in the Annotationes of Jacques de Pamèle ---- until a recent discovery(¹⁷). 

II.  Two unpublished documents of the Humanist Library

As is known, Beatus Rhenanus was accustomed to write in his books.  He copied unpublished matter onto end-leaves and transcribed in margins the fruits of his philological work on the old texts: reading notes, learned comments, conjectures, variants from manuscripts, etc.  The Bibliothèque humaniste preserved, in editions largely annotated in his hand, the documentation that he had assembled on certain authors, such as Tacitus (¹⁸).  That on Titus Livy, which must have included collations of important vanished witnesses, has itself also disappeared, together with the editions that carried it (¹⁹).  In the case of Tertullian, all the working copies of the humanist are preserved, in particular a copy of his third edition, which appeared in March 1539, to which he affixes his ex-libris in August of the same year (²⁰).  At an indeterminate date, he reported in it, with great care, the variants of an exemplar which he calls Anglicum exemplar (p. 68; see figure II) or Anglicanum (p.  668).  As these collations concern exactly the three treatises already published for which Gelenius invoked the assistance of the Masburensis, it is tempting to suppose that Rhenanus had it in his hands well before Gelenius used it for his edition of 1550. 

II. A page of Rhenanus' collation of the Masburensis.  Sélestat, Bibliothèque humaniste, K 1039, p. 68 (Opera Q. S. Fl. Tertulliani, Bâle, 1539) Tertullien, De resurrectione carnis, 30,1-31,2 - Photo BHS

An autograph letter of John Leland to Beatus Rhenanus (²¹), dated the 1st June <1539> (²²) furnishes us with proof of this.  We give a reproduction of it (figure III), accompanied by a transcription (²³) and translation. 

	Texte recto Joannes (24) Lelandus Antiquarius Beato Rhenano · S · P Ægisti cum quodam Damiano Agoe Hispano ut tuo, immo publico literatorum nomine mecum ageret de transmittendo ad uos Tertulliani exemplari, impresso nuper a Frobenio longe auctiori. Ille mecum nihil egit : scripsit tamen summa cum diligentia ad Richardum Morysinum, uirum ingenio, literis, et fauore nostri principis insignem. Is quod a me rogauit tuo nomine facile impetrauit, et mature ad Pintoum mercatorem Lusitanum in Flandria agentem transmittendum curauit. Pintous suam liberauit fidem, reddito exemplari Damiano Namipse uidi literas Damiani, qui fatetur se codicem accepisse, et breui ad te transmissurum esse. Si iam accepisti bene habet : si non, cura modis ne orbi dispereat tantus et tam rarus thesaurus. Quod si praeterea cognoscere cupias quo loco exemplar inuentum sit, accipe. Est locus in Seueria prouincia Britanniae primae propter ripas Auonae fluminis antiquitus Bladunum dictum, cuius urbis mœnia quanuis semilacera adhuc cernuntur. Saxones hanc, ut Beda in ecclesiastica testatur historia, Ingelburne postea uocabant. Sed postquam Maildulphus Scotus ludum bonarum literarum ibi aperuerat, monasteriumque, fauente Ina Visisaxonum rege, et Agilberto Ventano episcopo, construxerat, incepit dici Maildulphsbyri id est Maildulphi curia : quod nomen hodie quanuis corruptum seruat. Hic ego inter alia uenerandae uetustatis monimenta inueni Tertulliani exemplar nunc ad te missum, quod, ut ego quibusdam coniecturis colligo, Aldelmus proximus a Maildulpho abbas et deinde Shiroburnae Dutrotrigum episcopus ex Italia in Britanniam ante annos octingentos traduxit. Haec habui, quae in praesentia ad te scriberem. Gelenius tuus atque Frobenius de eadem re literas a me accepet (25), et nisi uestris negotiis maxime seriis molestum sit, hoc idem repeterem. Vale. Londini Trenouantum. Cal. Iun.
verso Beato Rhenano Selestadiensi  uiro undecunque eruditissimo

Translation

John Leland, Antiquary, to Beatus Rhenanus, greetings.

   You asked a certain Damian de Góis, a Spaniard, to negotiate with me on your behalf, or rather on behalf of the literate public, concerning the dispatch of a manuscript of Tertullian much more complete than the one recently printed by Froben.  He did not contact me at all; nevertheless he wrote, with the greatest care, a letter to Richard Morison, a man remarkable for his genius, his culture and the favour of our prince.  The latter easily obtained what he asked of me in your name, and promptly arranged for the manuscript to be sent to Pinto, a Portuguese merchant active in Flanders.  Pinto has faithfully filled his mission, and gave the manuscript to Damiao.  In fact I have seen with my own eyes a letter from Damiao, where he affirms that he has received the codex and that he will soon send it to you.  If you have already received it, all is well; otherwise, take care in every possible way that the world is not deprived of a so great and so rare a treasure. 

   If, moreover, you desire to know where this copy was found, learn now.  There is in the province Severia of Britainnia prima, close to the shores of the river Avon, a place formerly named Bladunum, a city of which the ramparts are still visible, although half destroyed.  The Saxons, as Bede attests in his Ecclesiastical History, next called it Ingelburne (²⁶).  But once the Irishman Maildulph had opened a grammar school and built a monastery with the support of Ine, king of the West Saxons, and of Agilbert, bishop of Venta (Winchester), the city began to be called Maidulphsbyri, that is to say, the town of Maidulph, a name that it still retains today, although distorted.  Here in the middle of other monuments of venerable antiquity I found the Tertullian that is now sent to you; as I deduce from various conjectures, it was brought from Italy to Britain, eight hundred years ago, by Aldhelm, the immediate successor of Maidulph as the head of the abbey, who then became bishop of Sherborne of the Durotriges.  This is all I have to write to you for the moment.  Your friends Gelenius and Froben have received from me a letter on the same subject, and if would not be a distraction from your particularly important occupations, I will say more.  Farewell. 

From London of the Trinovantes, 1^st June.

On the verso:  To Beatus Rhenanus of Sélestat, learned in all exceptional subjects. 

III. From Malmesbury to Sélestat

The author of the letter, John Leland (ca. 1503-1552) (²⁷), was a famous humanist who, after studying at Cambridge and Oxford, followed by a stay at Paris (1527-1528) where he had notably frequented Guillaume Budé and Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples (²⁸) (one remembers that at the start of the century, Rhenanus had been a student of the latter at the high school of Cardinal Lemoine), had devoted himself to the study of English antiquities and old insular writers: "I search for numbers of the manuscripts of the ancients; searching, I pull them out of deep darkness", he wrote from Paris to a friend at Cambridge (²⁹).  The Rerum germanicarum libri tres, which appeared in 1531, must have seemed to him a model.  He cites it in the first version of his De uiris illustribus siue de scriptoribus Britanniae, which dates back to ca. 1535 (³⁰), and he will later compare himself to its author in a poem in elegiac distiches:

Instauratio Britannicae antiquitatis
Quantum Rhenano debet Germania docto,
Tantum debebit terra Britanna mihi.
Ille suae gentis ritus & nomina prisca
Aestiuo fecit lucidiora die.
Ipse antiquarum rerum quoque magnus amator,
Ornabo patriae lumina clara meae.
Quae quum prodierint niueis inscripta tabellis,
Testes tum nostrae sedulitatis erunt. (³¹)

"The Restoration of British Antiquities.  As much as Germany owes to the learned Rhenanus, so much the British land owes to me.  The rites and old words of his country he clarified by a summer light.  For me, that am so great an amateur of the things of times passed, I will promote the brilliant spirits of my homeland.  When they appear registered on tablettes of a snowy whiteness, then they will be the witnesses of our enthusiasm."

It may be supposed that, writing to such a master, Leland told him all that he knew on the name and the origins of Malmesbury, a development that one rediscovers elsewhere in his notebooks of journeys, preparatory materials to the numerous works that he projected and did not have the time to finish: they were published in the 18th century from his manuscripts, gathered at the Bodleian Library (³²).  Whatever may be the validity of the information and reasonings of Leland, this learned letter leaves us frustrated, for it does not explain to us why the antiquary was in possession of this "witness of a venerable antiquity". 

In forcing the treatise, one could say that the discovery of this Tertullian, where the unique marriage ("monogamy") is eloquently advocated, relates to the complicated matrimonial arrangements of the king of England, Henry VIII.  After the attempt failed, in 1529, to obtain recognition of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon as invalid, the King or rather his counselors sought to obtain some records from the English and foreign universities to put pressure on the Pope; they also set out to examine the monastic English collections, searching for documents that would prove the limits of papal authority.  A significant number of documents enter thus into the royal collections in 1530 and 1531 (³³). 

In 1533, after the marriage and coronation of Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, Leland, who had made himself appreciated by Thomas Cromwell, now counsel to the king for matters ecclesiastical, received from the monarch the mission "to examine with diligence all the libraries of the monasteries and colleges of this noble kingdom", in order to save "number of good authors" at risk of perishing in "fatal obscurity" in convents (³⁴) and also to find there arguments against the papacy, of which the Church of England had become independent by the Act of Supremacy (1534).  The resistance made by the monks and the prospect of substantial profits for the Crown led Cromwell to organise the decree for the dissolution of the monasteries, the poorer ones in 1536, the remainder in 1539. 

The consequences were disastrous for the libraries of the abbeys and convents, abandoned, sold or pillaged (³⁵).  Indeed often the sole testimony that we have on the English medieval collections is exactly the note taken of them by Leland, that constitutes an essential source for the Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues in course of publication.  The one concerning Malmesbury is preserved for us: a Tertullianus (without other precision) is listed (³⁶).  The notes date back to 1533, when one of his first tours took him to Glastonbury, Wells, Bath, Malmesbury, Cirencester and elsewhere (³⁷).  Leland came back to Malmesbury in 1542 (³⁸), but by then the codex Masburensis was long since at Sélestat. 

Leland must have "borrowed" it in the summer of 1533 with some other manuscripts, in particular an anthology of the letters of Alcuin that he annotated in his own hand (now British Library, Cotton Tiberius A.XV, f. 1-173, copied around the year 1000) (³⁹).  The community was weakened by the death of its abbot, and Leland must have taken advantage of the power that his royal mission implicitly gave him as well as of his good relations with the all-powerful Thomas Cromwell who, just at that very moment, imposed his own candidate as the head of the abbey (⁴⁰). 

The codex Masburensis is therefore in the hands (or should we say, the claws?) of Leland.  How did it arrive in Sélestat; but first, how did Rhenanus gain knowledge of it?  The initiative must come from Leland who, after he had received a copy of the new edition that had just appeared in March 1539, notes that his manuscript contains unpublished treatises (Tertulliani exemplari, impresso nuper a Frobenio longe auctiori).  He must have signalled the fact to the officina Frobeniana, making contact with the head of business, Hieronymus Froben, and the "director of scholarship", Sigismundus Gelenius.  This latter notifies Rhenanus, as he should, and sets out, in the name of the latter, in search of an intermediary able to persuade Leland to lend so precious a manuscript.  His choice falls on the Portuguese humanist Damião of Góis (1502-1574), to whom he had dedicated his Castigationes in Plinium in 1535 (⁴¹).  The latter then resided at Louvain, but the trips that he had done all over Europe had obtained for him a vast network of contacts. He was even considered to edit the Opera Omnia of Erasmus; he declined the offer and, as is known, it was Beatus Rhenanus that was charged with watching over the task and wrote the preface for it, in 1540 (⁴²). 

In fact, Góis had met during his study stay at Padua (1534-1538) a young Englishman, "elegant, scholarly, ingenious" and destined for a successful career, Sir Richard Morison (1514?  -- 1556) (⁴³).  The latter had left the circle of Reginald Pole, whom he would later accuse of treason (⁴⁴), for the service of Thomas Cromwell, who  assured him honours and influence.  Then in turn, Morison had no difficulty in overcoming the reluctance of Leland (facile impetrauit), and he entrusted the precious manuscript to a Portuguese merchant active in Flanders, a certain Pintous, whom it is surely necessary to identify as Sebastian Roderigo Pinto, ennobled by Henry VIII (⁴⁵).  Pinto fulfilled his mission.  Góis wrote, doubtless to Morison, that he has the manuscript and that he will transmit it shortly to Rhenanus.  Leland learned this, but as he was concerned about the whereabouts of the manuscript, he attracted the attention of Rhenanus to this treasure (tantus et tam rarus thesaurus) by his letter of the 1st June <1539>, published above.  Góis contacted the officina Frobeniana; on the 23rd of the same month, Gelenius thanked him for the sending of the Tertulianicus thesaurus and for the tempting promises of collaboration (⁴⁶).  Góis destined the manuscript expressly for Rhenanus, and in fact the latter received it at Sélestat, but he delayed thanking the Portuguese humanist, who on October 24th 1540 expresses his  astonishment faced with this negligence, but sends him anyway his last book, Fides religio moresque Aethioporum, which had appeared the preceding month at Louvain (⁴⁷).  The thanks of Rhenanus finally arrived a year and half later, in a letter of March 21st 1542 which Góis judged worthy of the publication(⁴⁸).  He himself replied as early as the 1st June 1542: he was especially happy that Rhenanus took the trouble to read the opuscules that he had addressed to him, but he also has a paragraph on the Masburensis.

"I am overjoyed that you have received safely the volume of Tertullian that I had sent you.  I was very concerned about this matter, for I had not received for months any letter from you or from Froben, whom I had charged to transmit it to you.  Think of all the scholars in great number that await, with extreme impatience, this same Tertullian, quickly corrected by your efforts.  Also you must do everything possible not to disappoint the hopes of such great personnages (⁴⁹)."

Rhenanus collated, we have seen, three treatises against the English manuscript.  Did he take a copy of those that were then unpublished?  Such a copy is not, in any case, preserved at Sélestat.  We have nevertheless indications that he had read the new witness.  In his working copy (p.  511), he corrects an annotation to the treatise Of the crown, 6, 3 «Intellegit autem duos libros of spectaculis» in «Intellegit autem librum de spectaculis» : the Masburensis showed him that the treatise De spectaculis (which he had already searched for in vain (⁵⁰)) was but a single book.  And on p. 702, where he corrects in Apologeticum 9, 11 trucidantibus in cruditantibus, he notes in the margin:

Sic Tertullianus de ieiunijs <16,1>, 'Vbi sepultus est, inquit, populus carnis auidissimus vsque ad choleram ortygometra cruditando'. In Scorpiaco <5,12>, 'Et transgressione, inquit, saturatus in mortem cruditauit'.

The title De ieiuniis, that never appears in the editions, is nevertheless unsurprising, as this is the title in the Cologne and Corbie catalogues (⁵¹), and in the Masburensis itself.  On the other hand, the reference to Scorpiace is surprising: must we accept that Rhenanus was able to consult the Parisian edition of 1545, where this treatise appears for the first time, and so correct his reading, eruditauit? 

Whatever the truth, Rhenanus publishes nothing, and the collations slumber at Sélestat until the moment, at the beginning of the last century, when Alfred Holder (1840-1916), the famous librarian of Karlsruhe, makes a transcription that, it seems, was never exploited. (⁵²)

IV. From Sélestat to Malines

In 1546, as we have already said (⁵³), Leland presented to king Henry VIII, by way of étrennes, a treatise in which he describes his "laborious search for British antiquities", started thirteen years earlier at the request of his sovereign.  The text was published at London by his friend John Bale (1495-1563), who had returned from an exile of eight years "among the Germans with an unshakeable faith"(⁵⁴) (the climate had changed in England: Edward VI, who favoured the Protestants, had succeeded his father in 1547).  Bale, a great bibliographer (⁵⁵),  added explanations to Leland's text.  Thus, when the latter indicates that:

"Certain of the manuscripts that I had looked for carefully and fortunately found in different places of your kingdom were printed in Germany, and are located now in the workshops of the printers, in particular that of Froben" (⁵⁶).

Bale notes that Leland must refer to the De bello Troiano of Joseph of Exeter, of which the edition published at Basle in 1541 seems to him otherwise particularly defective (⁵⁷);while as for the manuscripts awaiting publication, he can only say:

"About the books that must have ended up in the hands of Froben, I can say nothing.  Nevertheless I made most insistent enquiries over there through various confidants, to obtain at least their titles; but I was never able to obtain them.  This leads me to think that they may have perished in the journey, or  they were thrown in some corner, and thus forgotten. "(⁵⁸)

Indeed, Leland has at the head of his Tertullien, and doubtless of other texts, such as  the Notitia dignitatum, the following text, "retrieved from the ends of Britain by the learned devotedness of the antiquarians", as says the title page of the editio princeps, published by Gelenius in 1552 (⁵⁹).  Paradoxically the death of Rhenanus brought and end to the problem.  The Masburensis was without any doubt one of the exemplars, manuscript and printed, of which on January 19th 1549 the Magistrate of Basle demands restitution from the Magistrate of Sélestat, to satisfy the complaint of Hieronymus Froben and Nicolaus Episcopius who during the lifetime of Rhenanus the had put them at his disposal for his work (⁶⁰).  Still the two printers published, as early as the following year, the edition prepared by Gelenius on the basis of this manuscript.  The number and the importance of the gaps filled sufficed for Dom Dekkers to show that this could not be a case of corrections done only ope ingenii and camouflaged by a publicity announcement (⁶¹). 

The Masburensis did not share the sad fate of the archives of the Officina Frobeniana.  It is necessary in fact to identify it with one of the sources used by Jacques de Pamèle for his edition of 1583/84, "an English manuscript, that Ioannes Clemens Anglus formerly preserved at his place, as his treasure" (⁶²).  This witness comprised the seven treatises of the "corpus of Corbie", and the readings signalled by Pamèle in his Annotationes correspond almost perfectly to the variants noted by Rhenanus for the three treatises that figured in his edition of 1539.  There is better: the working copy of Pamèle is preserved, a Geleniana of 1566 arrived at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève with the books of the archbishop of Reims, Charles-Maurice Le Tellier (⁶³).  The earliest layer of manuscript annotations, in an applied hand which is not that of Pamèle, is constituted by a collation of the Masburensis, completed by conjectures, introduced by f. (ortasse), and by biblical references (plate IV).  The treatise that opened the manuscript, De resurrectione carnis, is provided with a revealing note (v.  1, p. 78; plate V) :

Collatio huius libri facta est ad veterem MS. codicem bibliothece cenobii Maliuesburensis [sic pour Malmesburensis] nunc Ioannis Clementis Angli (⁶⁴)

"The collation of this book was made from an old manuscript codex of the abbey of Malmesbury, which now belongs to John Clement the Englishman".

A note of the same kind but without specifying the medieval provenance appears at the head of the notes on the other six treatises.

IV. The working copy of Jacques de Pamèle Q. S. Fl. Tertulliani operum tomus primus, Paris, 1566, p. 108-109 (Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, CC 8° 1097, inv. 1046) Tertullien, De resurrectione carnis, 29,8-31,2 Note, on the last line of page 108 (Res 30, 4), the variant redadunatione already suggested by Rhenanus (pl. II, l. 14) Photo N. Boutros

John Clement is not an unknown; quite the contrary (⁶⁵).  Humanist and doctor (he  presided in 1544 over the "Royal College of Physicians"), he was part of the circle of  friends of Thomas More, and married his adopted daughter, Margaret Gibbs, in 1526 (⁶⁶).  On this occasion, Leland composed a poem in his honour.  The two men had been educated at St Pauls School, and shared the same interest in ancient literature and the collection of manuscripts.  The library of Clement was excellent.  In the dedication of the De motu of Proclus, of which Clement had furnished him a manuscript, Simon Grynaeus celebrates, almost in the same terms to be used by Pamèle, the jealous passion of the collector for the "monuments ... preserved as a rich treasure" (⁶⁷).  One conceives that Clement was anxious to recover the precious manuscript of Tertullien, about which his friend Leland doubtless had spoken to him before sinking into madness.  Exiled for the first time to Louvain during the reign of Edward VI, he must have obtained the restitution of the manuscript from Froben between 1550, the date of the edition of Gelenius, and 1554, the date of his return to England (⁶⁸).  Leland dying in 1552, Clement kept the manuscript.  He took it with him, with the remainder of his very rich library when he went into exile a second time, for reasons of conscience, in the reign of Elizabeth I (doubtless in 1560). 

Clement, installed first at Berg, then at Malines, must have maintained good relations with the Catholic scholars of Flanders, who surely appreciated the former "fiery doctor of good memory of the very Catholic Queen of England." (⁶⁹).  One is sure of it in the case of Pamèle, to whom he communicated some readings of a manuscript of Cyprian for the edition that appeared in 1568 (⁷⁰).  The collation of the Masburensis must have been carried out between 1566, the date of the edition in which it is entered, and the death of Clement in 1572.  It is likely that he did not allow a "treasure" he valued so much to be taken to Bruges, where Pamèle then resided.  The work must have been done at his house, and in a serious manner: it is thanks to him that we know precisely the lacunae in the manuscript, where De resurrectione was mutilated at the beginning (it began in 2, 9 depreciantur) and also victim of a material accident which induced the loss of 8,5 fide until 13, 3 documentum. 

V. The source revealed: Q. S. Fl. Tertulliani operum tomus primus, Paris, 1566, p. 78 (Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, CC 8° 1097, inv. 1046) Tertullian, De resurrectione carnis, 1, 1-5 Photo N. Boutros

The library of Clement disappeared in the two sackings of Malines.  After the first one, by Spanish troops, that took place in October 1572, his son Thomas was still able to draw up, at the invitation of Cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto, a list of Greek manuscripts (⁷¹); the second sack, carried out by the Orangists in April 1580, involved the destruction or dispersion of all that still remained.  When in 1607 his grandson Caesar Clement gave a Greek manuscript to his friend Pierre Pantin, he notes that this is all  that remains to him "of the numerous Greek and Latin manuscripts of my grandfather John Clement, of blessed memory, unfortunately lost in these troubles of Belgium" (⁷²). 

The Masburensis has disappeared, but thanks to the work of the scholars of the 16th century, there remains the two collations to which we have referred, and which will allow a partial reconstruction of it (⁷³).  Even if this witness is not certainly one of the precious manuscripts retrieved from Italy by Anglo-Saxon scholars, as Leland thought, yet it will still allow us to improve, even today, the text of Tertullian and to lift a little the of the mystery that surrounds the Parisian edition concurrent with that of Basle. 

(1) A parallel article, but with the accent on the English side, will appear under the title "Tantus et tam rarus thesaurus : John Leland's letter to Beatus Rhenanus and the lost manuscript of Tertullian's works from Malmesbury". [Note to the online text: in Anglo-Saxon England vol. 33, pp.195-223]

(2) He had himself overseen the impression of the third edition, for which Rhenanus thanks him in the note to the reader, dated the 1st March 1539: "Non licuit adesse Basileae dum editur opus. Verum Sigismundus Gelenius, homo magni in literis iudicii et eruditione summa praeditus, in recognoscendo opere uicariam operam in offina praestitit, qui merita laude sua non est fraudandus" (f. a* 2r°).

(3) Cf. L. Voet, The Plantin Press. A Bibliography of the Works printed and published by Christopher Plantin at Antwerp and Amsterdam, t. 5, Amsterdam, 1982, p. 2175-77.

(4) This editorial phenomenon has been studied by D. Pallier, "Les impressions de la Contre-Réforme en France et l'apparition des grandes compagnies de libraires parisiens", dans Revue française d'histoire du livre, 11, 1981, pp. 215-273.

(5) Cf. P. Petitmengin, "Comment on imprimait à Bâle au début du XVIe siècle : à propos du "Tertullien" de Beatus Rhenanus (1521)", dans Annuaire des amis de la Bibliothèque humaniste de Sélestat, 30, 1980, p. 93-106.

(6) State of the question by F. Heinzer, Bibliotheksgeschichte und Buchkultur Hirsaus, dans Hirsau. St Peter und Paul 1091-1991, Stuttgart, 1991, t. 2, Geschichte, Lebens- und Verfassungsformen eines Reformklosters, p. 286.

(7) Sélestat, Bibliothèque humaniste, K 1040 (édition de 1528).

(8) "Haec vero sequentia opuscula nunc primum eduntur in lucem beneficio Ioannis Gangnei Parisini theologi, et Christianissimi Galliarum regis primi eleemosynarii, ex vetustissimo codice desumpta" (f. † 1v°).

(9) See A. Jammes, "Un bibliophile à découvrir, Jean de Gagny", dans Bulletin du bibliophile, 1996, n° 1, p. 41-52.

(10) Among them two of Novatien, le De trinitate et le De cibis iudaicis, qui circulaient alors sous le nom de Tertullien.

(11) Anonymi auctoris de rebus bellicis, rec. R. I. Ireland, Leipzig, Teubner, 1984, p. XX et XXIV. These invectives have not convinced everyone : cf. J.  Ceska, "Robert I. Irelands textkritische Akribie und seine anachronistische Verdammung des Gelenius", in Studia minora facultatis philosophicae universitatis Brunensis, E 32, 1987, p. 135-140.

(12) Q. S. Fl. Tertulliani scripta (Bâle, 1550) , f. † 1v° "Meum laborem imputare non libet, senties tamen lector quanto postrema haec cura sit potior".

(13) The title page pricked the curiosity of the potential buyer: among the numerous manuscripts that had been used for the edition, it specified a "by far the most correct one, that one had sent for from the depths of England" (in quibus praecipue fuit unus longe incorruptissimus in ultimam usque petitus Britanniam).  The following page gives the explanation, and justification. 

(14) It was, if I'm not mistaken, J. M. Lupton who was the first to formulate this hypothesis in his edition of De baptismo of Tertullian (Cambridge, 1908), p. xxxv-xxxvii.

(15) Cf. E. Dekkers, "Notes sur les fragments récemment découverts de Tertullien", dans Sacris Erudiri, 4, 1952, p. 372-383.

(16) The history of the text of Tertullian is presented in a clear and concise fashion by H. Tränkle in the Handbuch der lateinischen Literatur der Antike, t. 4, Die Literatur des Umbruchs, München, 1997, p. 510-511 (French translation : Nouvelle histoire de la littérature latine, t. 4, Turnhout, 2000, p. 569-571). Account is not taken here of the small corpus, much more recent, of which evidence is found in a manuscript of the Vatican, Ottobonianus latinus 25.

(17) It has been presented briefly by P. Petitmengin, "John Leland, Beatus Rhenanus et le Tertullien de Malmesbury", in : Studia Patristica, XIX, t. 2, Papers of the 1983 Oxford Patristic Conference, Critica, Classica, Ascetica, Liturgica, Kalamazoo - Leuven, 1989, p. 53-60.

(18) Cf. P. Petitmengin, "Beatus Rhenanus et les manuscrits latins", in : Annuaire des amis de la Bibliothèque humaniste de Sélestat, 35, 1985, p. 242-245.

(19) Hence the difficulty of reconstituting the lost manuscript of Worms using only the testimony of the printed Annotationes of 1535 established by M. Reeve, "Beatus Rhenanus and the lost Vormaciensis of Livy", in Revue d'histoire des textes, 25, 1995, p. 217-254.

(20) Sélestat, Bibliothèque humaniste, K 1039 ; the title page, which carries the ex-libris "Sum Beati Rhenani. Nec muto dominum. Mense Augusto MDXXXIX. Selati Tribonorum", has been reproduced in Humanismus im deutschen Südwesten. Biographische Profile, hrsg. von P. G. Schmidt, Sigmaringen, 1993, p. 212.

(21) Sélestat, Bibl. humaniste, Corr. B.Rh 223. It is surprising that it escaped the editors of the Briefwechsel des Beatus Rhenanus (1886), A. Horawitz et K. Hartfelder: it had been signaled in the Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques des départements, série in 4°, t. 3, Paris, 1861, p. 546.

(22) The date is necessarily posterior to the publication of the edition (March 1539), prior to the thanks of Gelenius (23 June of the same year ; cf. infra, n. 46).

(23) We have placed in brackets the letters or words added by Leland himself above the text which he had written.

(24) The autograph reads Joannes, which corresponds to one of the three following.

(25) Leland first used the singular, accepit.

(26) This statement does not come from the Ecclesiastical History of the Venerable Bede, where it is merely said that Aldhelm was "abbas monasterii quod Maildubi Urbem nuncupant" (V, 18). Leland must have attributed to Bede something he had read in a chronicle of Malmesbury (cf. infra n. 32).

(27) Up to date presentation by J. P. Carley, to appear in the new Dictionary of National Biography.

(28) Cf. J. P. Carley, "John Leland in Paris: the Evidence of his Poetry", in Studies in Philology. 83, 1986, p. 1-50.

(29) "Veterum multa exemplaria quaero, / Exploro, crassis eruo de tenebris" (from  Carley, art. cit., p. 25).

(30) It will be accessible in the critical edition of this "Dictionary of British Authors" which Caroline Brett and James Carley are preparing for the Oxford Medieval Texts. That given by Anthony Hall under the title Commentarii de scriptoribus Britannicis, Oxford, 1709, 2 vol., does not permit the reader to follow Leland's process of revision.

(31) Collectanea, ed. Hearne, t. 5, p. 120 (and before that in J. Bale, Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytanniae ... catalogus, Basileae, 1557, p. 672-673).

(32) Information relating to the history and the manuscripts has been assembled by Thomas Hearne in Joannis Lelandi Antiquarii de rebus Britannicis collectanea, Oxford, 1715 (we cite the second edition, London, 1774, 6 vol.) ; the topographical notes, in English, published by Th. Hearne at Oxford in 1710, are now accessible in the edition of Lucy Toulmin Smith, The Itinerary of John Leland in or about the years 1535-1543, London, 1906-1910, 5 vol. On the etymology and history of Malmesbury, see the Collectanea, v. 4, p. 157-158 ("Ex libro antiquitatum Meldunensis cœnobii ad verbum transcripta"), The Itinerary, t. 1, p. 131, and the Commentarii de scriptoribus Britannicis, ch. LXXI, De Aldhelmo (ed. Hall, p. 98).

(33) Cf. J. Carley, ed., The Libraries of King Henry VIII, London, 2000, p. XXXIII-XXXIX (Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues,7).

(34) This mission is referred to by Leland himself in the treatise which he offered in 1546 by way of étrennes to Henry VIII : The laboryouse journey & serche of Johan Leylande, for Englandes antiquitees geuen of hym as a New Yeares gyfte to Kynge Henry the VIII. in the XXXVII. yeare of his reygne, with declaracyons enlarged by Johan Bale (London, 1549 ; reprint : Amsterdam & Norwood, N. J., 1975), f. B.viiir. The text (minus the commentaries of Bale) is easily accessible in the reprint given by L. T. Smith at the head of The Itinerary of John Leland, v. 1, p. xxxvii-xliii.

(35) The situation was different for the cathedrals, including those already served by a Benedictine prior and then refounded. Many suffered relatively little; thus the library of Exeter remained practically intact until the middle of the 17^th century. The surviving inventories will be the object of one of the next volumes of the corpus of the catalogues of the medieval libraries of Great Britain. 

(36) English Benedictine Libraries: the Shorter Catalogues, ed. R. Sharpe, J. P. Carley, R. M. Thomson & A. G. Watson, London, 1996, p. 265 (Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 4).

(37) His itinerary is revealed by the order in which the catalogues of the group in question follow one another as they appear in the Collectanea, v. 4, p. 153-159.

(38) See The Itinerary of John Leland, ed. L. T. Smith, v. 1, p. 130-133.

(39) On this manuscript and other vestiges of Malmesbury, see our article Tantus et tam rarus thesaurus (cited n. 1), which corrects and completes the ground covered in R. M. Thomson, "Identifiable Books from the pre-Conquest Library of Malmesbury Abbey", in Anglo-Saxon England, 10, 1981, p. 1-19 (repeated and revised in William of Malmesbury, Woodbridge, 1987, p. 98-116).

(40) This episode in the history of the abbey is clearly exposed by Dom Aelred Watkin in A History of Wiltshire, ed. by R. B. Pugh and E. Crittall, v. 3, 1956, p. 225-226 (The Victoria History of the Counties of England).

(41) He has been the object of a monograph by E. F. Hirsch, Damião de Gois. The Life and Thought of a Portuguese Humanist, 1502-1574, The Hague, 1967 (Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, 19). The fifth centenary of his birth, in 2002, resulted in numerous popular tributes in Portugal, including a 0,45€ stamp, according to a biography, richly illustrated : L. F. Barreto, Damião de Goes. Os caminhos de um Humanista (taken from 8000 copies!).

(42) Cf. E. F. Hirsch, op. cit., p. 86-87. On the 23rd June 1540, Rhenanus presented to the "editorial committee" of Boniface Amerbach, Gelenius, Froben and Episcopius a first draft of this preface (dedicating the work to Charles V, dated 24 May 1540 ; reproduced partially in Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi, ed. P. S. Allen, v. 1, 1906, p. 56-71), soliciting their critique of it. This important letter, edited in 1621 and then forgotten, has been republished by F. Hieronymus, Annuaire des amis de la Bibliothèque humaniste de Sélestat, 37, 1987, p. 159, and in the Amerbach-Korrespondenz, t. 10/1, 1991, p. LXXIII-LXXIV.

(43) See on him the notice of J. Woolfson to appear in the new Dictionary of National Biography, and also J. Liedl, "Richard Morison (1514?-20 March 1556)", in Sixteenth-Century British Nondramatic Writers. Second Series, ed. D. A. Richardson (Dictionary of Literary Biography, 136), Detroit, 1994, p. 255-258. The praise that Leland gives of  Morison, "iuuene cum eleganti, tum docto, et in primis ingenioso", can be found in his anti-papist treatise Antiphilarchia, composed around the end of the year 1530 (Cambridge University Library, ms. Ee.V.14, f. 184v°).

(44) On the links between Pole (cousin of king Henry VIII, and future cardinal), Morison (who in 1539 accused him of being an "archtraitor") and Góis himself, see our article Tantus et tam rarus thesaurus (cited n. 1) and the classic study by M. Bataillon, "Damião de Góis et Reginald Pole", in his Etudes sur le Portugal au temps de l'humanisme, 2e éd., Paris, 1974, p. 115-119.

(45) It appears in the correspondance of the governor of Calais, Viscount Lisle ; cf. The Lisle Letters, ed. by M. St. Clare Byrne, Chicago & London, 1981 (6 vols), nos 132, 269, 825, 829-830, 1020.

(46) Letter published by Góis in his Aliquot opuscula, Lovanii, December 1544, fol. f 2v°-3r°.

(47) Bibliothèque humaniste, Corr. B.Rh 74, published in Briefwechsel des Beatus Rhenanus, p. 467-468. Leland's comments confirm the commentary made on this letter by A. Torres, As cartas latinas de Damião de Góis, Paris, 1982, p. 343-345 : Góis had indeed brought a manuscript of Tertullian to Froben, and not a commentary  on this author (as was supposed by E. F. Hirsch, op. cit., p. 88). -- The copy of the Fides dedicated by Góis ("Beato Rennano Damianus A Goes / D. M.") is still preserved at Sélestat (Bibl. hum., K 903a).

(48) Aliquot opuscula, f. . K 2rv°.

(49) Bibliothèque humaniste, Corr. B.Rh 73 (Briefwechsel des Beatus Rhenanus, p. 485) : "Quod Tertulliani librum a me tibi missum acceperis, maximopere laetor. Eram huius rei anxius, cum nihil literarum a te nec a Frobenio, cui eum tibi tradendum commiseram, a multis diebus accepissem. Eundem Tertullianum propediem a te repurgatum multi uiri docti auidissime expectant. Quare fac, uti tantorum uirorum spem ne fallas."

(50) As noted in the preface of his second edition :"Expectabam avide ... a Treveris Spectaculorum libros, sed frustra" (Briefwechsel des Beatus Rhenanus, p. 375).

(51) Reproduced by Dekkers, art. cit. (supra n. 15), p. 373 et 375. On the other hand, if the collation used by Pamèle indeed read De ieiuniis, Leland himself, in his notice on Aldhelm, has the singular form when he lists the rare manuscripts of Malmesbury : "Vidi etiam atque adeo ibidem inueni his multo praestantiora [que les reliques du saint] : Tertulliani librum De spectaculis, De ieiunio..." (Commentarii de scriptoribus Britannicis, ed. Hall, p. 100-101).

(52) His notebook is to be found at the Badische Landesbibliothek de Karlsruhe, shelfmark K 1576. An exemplar of the edition of E. F. Leopold (Leipzig, 1839-1841, 4 vol.), copiously annotated by Holder, was bought in 1932 by Aberdeen University Library, where it has shelfmark : MS 1011.

(53) See supra n. 34.

(54) Illustrium maioris Britanniae scriptorum summarium, Ipswich, 1548, f. 244v° : "fugiens ab impiissimae Romanae Iesabelis facie, quae hucusque sitit prophetarum sanguinem, apud Germanos in Christo fidelissimos octennio cum uxore ac liberis delitui".

(55) On this convinced protestant, friend of Conrad Gesner (the Zurich "pope" of  bibliography), consult H. McCusker, Bale: Dramatist and Antiquary, Bryn Mawr, 1942 ; L. P. Fairfield, John Bale : Mythmaker for the English Reformation, West Lafayette, Indiana, 1976, et P. Huppé, John Bale, New York, 1996.

(56) The laboryouse journey, f. C 4r° (=The Itinerary of John Leland, ed. L. T. Smith, v. 1, p. xxxviii) : "part of the exemplaries, curyously sought by me, and fortunately found in sondry places of this youre dominion, hath bene emprynted in Germany, and now be in the presses chefely of Frobenius".

(57) He notes in his Commentarii de scriptoribus Britannicis, in the chapter "Joseph of Exeter" (ed. Hall, p. 239) : "Haec cum scripsissem, prodiit Iosephi opus interpretis de Bello Troiano typis excusum Germanicis, sed tam corrupte ut si pater ipse in prolem redivivus oculos conuerteret tam informem, cognosceret plane nunquam. Vtque fucus aedito praefigeretur libro, Cornelii Nepotis Romani nomine inscriptus est."

(58) The laboryouse journey, f. C 4v° : "Of the bokes which shoulde be in the handes of Hieronymus Frobenius, can I nothyng heare. Yet haue I made thydre most instaunt sute and labour by diuerse honeste men, at the least to haue had but theyre tytles; but I neuer coulde obtayne them. Whiche maketh me to thinke, that eyther they haue peryshed by the waye, or els that they are throwne a syde in some corner, and so forgotten".

(59) The mention "haec Notitia ... cum caeteris spoliis in barbarorum manus delata, nunc demum ex ultimis Britannis studiis antiquariorum repetita" is exactly like that of the "invention" of the Masburensis. In fact Rhenanus was waiting for some assistance from Leland for the edition of this text : "Si Ioannes Lelandus aliquid miserit, curate diligenter ut ad me perferatur. Nam in quibusdam Notitiae Occidentis locis eius mihi auxilio opus" (letter of 23 June, 1540 ; references given supra n. 42).

(60) Document published by B. R. Jenny, "Zwei Basler Quellentexte zu Beat Rhenans Lebensende und Nachlass", in Annuaire des amis de la Bibliothèque humaniste de Sélestat, 35, 1985, p. 285-286.

(61) Art. cit. (supra n. 15), p. 382, n. 2. Especially noteworthy, outside the treatises for which we dispose of the collation of Rhenanus, are those "jumps from the same to the same" which have been repaired in De pudicitia, 6, 7-8 : si ideo [hodie concedetur moechiae uenia quia et aliquando concessa est. cui emolumento] hodie, et 14, 27 : doc[torem nationum in fide et ueritate, uas electionis, ecclesiarum condi]torem.

(62) Dedication to Gregory XIII, dated 14 September 1579 : "Nec parum ad hanc rem contulerunt MS. libri Monasteriorum S. Amandi ac Bauonis, & Anglicus quidam, quem thesauri loco penes se adseruabat quondam Ioan. Clemens Anglus. Quibus accesserunt coniecturae doctissimorum virorum, Latini Latinii Itali, et Ioan. Harrisii Angli [John Harris, former secretary of Thomas More], ab ipsis mecum communicatae...' (Opera omnia, Paris, 1584, p. 8). There is the same indication in the Notarum explicatio (p. 21) : "Anglicus codex antiquissimus Ioannis Clementis Angli, e quo VII castigati sunt Libri".

(63) Shelfmark : CC 8° 1097-98 ; inv. 1046-47. This edition had already been signalled in the Bibliotheca Telleriana siue Catalogus librorum bibliothecae... D. D. Caroli Mauritii Le Tellier, Paris, 1693, p. 31-32.

(64) One may hesitate over the reading cen(obii).

(65) On Clement, the article of C. F. Gunderson and P. G. Bietenholz in Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, v. 1, Toronto, 1985, p. 311-312, furnishes a starting point ; for the  aspect which interests us specially here, refer to R. W. Hunt, "The Need for a Guide to the Editors of Patristic Texts in the 16th Century", in Studia Patristica, XVIII, v. 1, Oxford-New York, 1982, p. 368-370.

(66) She appears in the famous depiction of Hans Holbein the Younger, preserved at the  Graphische Kunstsammlung of Basle, which represents the family of Thomas More at the beginning of 1528 ; cf. J. B. Trapp, H. Schulte Herbrüggen, 'The King's Good Servant'. Sir Thomas More 1477/8-1535, London, National Portrait Gallery, 1977, p. 84-86 (n° 169).

(67) Compendiaria de motu disputatio, Basileae, per Io. Bebelium et Mich. Ysingrinum, 1531, p. 3-4: Clement wanted to make this little gem (gemmula) known, for the benefit of everyone (utilitati publicae) "huc enim tu, tuopte sponte non monumenta solum, quae plurima ueterum apud te habes, mira diligentia peruestigata, mox ingenti cum labore et sumptu conquisita, ac diuitis demum thesauri instar conseruata destinasti, sed studium praeterea omne tuum eodem conferre libenter soles". The connection with Pamèle is due to R. Hunt, art. cit., p. 370.

(68) He lists a Tertullianus among the books of which he demands restitution in 1555 (cf. A.W. Reed, "John Clement and his Books", The Library, 4th ser., 6, 1926, p. 329-339, spécialement p. 339). This is surely a printed book, however.

(69) Plantin's terms can be seen in a letter of 29 January, 1568 to Cardinal de Granvelle (Correspondance de Christophe Plantin, éd. par M. Rooses, t. 1, 1883, p. 227). He there informs him that Clement had submitted to him "ung catalogue de quelques livres rares en grec" -- of which the Octateuch now at Glasgow, which was effectively used by Arias Montanus for the Polyglotte of Anvers. The Queen in question is of course Marie Tudor († 1558).

(70) Antuerpiae, apud vid. et haer. Ioannis Stelsii, 1568, dedication to Viglius Zuichemus : "neque minus [que Jean Harris] (me iuuit) vir utriusque linguae peritissimus Ioannes Clemens Medicus, etiam Anglus" (f. a 3r°) ; Indiculus codicum : "Angl. Codex anglicus Ms. Io. Clementis, qui ad me quasdam inde castigationes misit" (f. d 6v°).

(71) This document was published and remarkably explained by Cardinal G.Mercati, "Sopra Giovanni Clement e i suoi manoscritti", in La Bibliofilia, 28, 1926, p. 81-99 (reprinted in his Opere Minori, v. 4 [Studi e Testi, 79], Città del Vaticano, 1937, p. 292-315).

(72) Brussels, Bibliothèque royale, 11337-41, f. 1 : "Admodum Rdo Dno. D. Petro Pantino linguae graecae peritissimo hunc unicum ex multis libris ms. gr. atque latinis fœlic. record. D. Johannis Clementis avi mei in his tumultubus Belgii infœliciter amissis, fortuito reservatum, Caesar Clemens nepos amico optimo D. D. D. 1607" (cité par Mercati, op. cit., p. 296, n. 19).

(73) One of us has already published the variants of the Masburensis for the De trinitate of Novatien (cf. P. Petitmengin, "Une nouvelle édition et un ancien manuscrit de Novatien", dans Revue des Études Augustiniennes, 21, 1975, p. 266-272). He is preparing now for the publication of the entirety of the dossier.

[Note to the online text: this translation made by Roger Pearse.  All errors and omissions are my own.  Many thanks to the authors for their permission to place this online, and likewise to Dr Hubert Meyer of the Bibliothèque humaniste in Sélestat (BHS) for his permission.  The original French text can be found online at the website of the BHS.  However I have rescanned the images to make them easier to read.]

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