SOURCE-MARKS IN BEDE MANUSCRIPTS

M. L. W. LAISTNER

In the preface to his commentary on St Mark the Venerable Bede makes the following request to posterity:

– And I humbly pray the reader that, if he should deem these works of ours worthy of copying, he should also carefully preserve in the transcribing the notation of those names which have been placed above in the margin, just as was admittedly done for the commentary on St Luke that we, with the help of God’s grace, composed many years ago.

Until quite recently it was generally assumed that none of these source indications had survived in extant manuscripts of Bede. But in 1926 Father E. J. Sutcliffe drew attention to two manuscripts, now in the Vatican library, of the commentary on St Mark, in which borrowed passages from Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, and Gregory I are indicated by the letters, AV, AM, HR, and GR. The present writer has lately had occasion to examine Bede manuscripts in the British Museum and in half a dozen continental libraries. The fresh evidence obtained shows that the medieval copyists, especially in the earlier period, were by no means as forgetful of Bede’s wishes as used to be supposed. Of twelve codices of the commentary on St Mark no less than ten contain at least some of the marginal source indications which Father Sutcliffe observed in the Vatican manuscripts.

M. L. W. Laistner. ‘Source-Marks in Bede Manuscripts’. The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume os-XXXIV, Issue 136, pp. 350–354. 1933.

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