Chicago, Newberry Library, Masi Fragm. 14 and the Fate of the Theodulf Bible in the Long Ninth Century

Abstract

Manuscript fragment Chicago, Newberry Library, Masi Fragm. 14 was previously misidentified as containing an unknown sermon or biblical excerpts. It is, in fact, a remnant of large-format deluxe Bible containing a set of Spanish prefaces to the Pauline epistles. These prefaces identify the deluxe codex as a descendant of a Theodulf Bible, a scholarly revision of the biblical text produced in the first decades of the ninth century by Theodulf of Orleans. Only seven copies of the Theodulf Bible are known. It is thus relevant that the Newberry fragment may have been dependent on another, previously unknown copy that was kept in one of the large monasteries of northwestern France, from which the fragment most probably comes. Because of its provenance from Haspres, the deluxe manuscript may have been produced in the nearby abbey of St. Vaast in Arras or perhaps by the community of the abbey of Jumièges.