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3 Greta Austin 1  Were There Two Arsenal Collections? Arsenal 713B and the Ivonian Panormia The so-called Arsenal Collection played an important role in providing canons to at least three late eleventh- and early twelfth-century collections : the Decretum and the Panormia attributed to Ivo, bishop of Chartres (d. 1115), and the Collectio Caesaraugustana. The Arsenal Collection is preserved only in one manuscript, that of Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal MS 713. It appears in the second part of the composite manuscript, from folios 117 to 192, which Somerville dubbed ‘713B.’1 To describe this set of materials as a ‘collection’ almost seems like a misnomer, at least upon first glance. It consists of many canons written in a small hand, without any immediately transparent organizing principle, and with few line breaks or spaces. Although early modern editors knew about Arsenal 713B, only in the last twenty years have scholars studied the manuscript seriously. Robert Somerville and Martin Brett brought to light the significance of Arsenal 713B. Somerville has mined Arsenal 713B for the texts and information it provides about the eleventh-century reform movements and the reforming popes, particularly Pope Urban II. When Somerville investigated Pope Urban II’s letters as preserved in the Collectio Britannica,2 he concluded I thank Robert Somerville, who first introduced me to Arsenal 713B and who provided invaluable guidance in explaining it to me. I am also grateful to Martin Brett, who commented on a version of this article, and who generously loaned me his extensive draft collations and a copy of his annotated copy of Arsenal 713B. Thanks are also due to Christof Rolker, for discussing Arsenal II and this article and for generously making available an advance copy of chapters of his book, Canon Law and the Letters of Ivo of Chartres (Cambridge, 2010). The errors that remain are solely my own. 1. For what is known of the manuscript’s history, see Robert Somerville, with the collaboration of Stephan Kuttner, Pope Urban II, the Collectio Britannica, and the Council of Melfi (1089) (Oxford, 1996) 16. 2. In what follows, the Collectio Britannica will be abbreviated as CB, Arsenal 713B as LP, 4  Greta Austin that ‘the compiler of MS 713B made extensive use of a collection very similar to CB, but which contained fuller inscriptions and better texts than in the surviving version of that book.’3 Part of the collection copied in Arsenal 713B was, in its original form, probably made as a preliminary step to making the Ivonian Decretum.4 Martin Brett found that Arsenal 713B contains long rows of canons which also occur in the Ivonian Decretum—canons which were not taken from Burchard’s collection by the same name. Brett demonstrated that these rows of canons in Arsenal were probably not copied from the Decretum. Rather, these sequences comprise a preliminary working collection which Ivo utilized in making the Decretum. As Brett writes, Arsenal 713B probably represents ‘in part a moment in the compilation of the Decretum....It must preserve almost the last stage before a complete Decretum was copied out.’5 At the same time, Arsenal 713B itself does not represent that ‘last stage’ , but was itself a later copy.6 Arsenal 713B thus does not preserve exactly what Ivo used. Furthermore, some earlier form of Arsenal 713B contributed canons to the Ivonian Panormia. The Panormia editors dramatically cut down the number of canons in the Ivonian Decretum, and then added approximately 130 more canons.7 The Collection in Four Books provided about 40 of these 130.8 Brett identified Arsenal as the source of another 57 canons which were new to the Panormia.9 Furthermore, these Panormia canons occur in particular sections in Arsenal, sections which do not have ‘sequences shared with the Decretum.’10 These canons were already ‘sorted thoroughly by topic’ in these sections, which appear to be part of ‘the preparation for a larger enterprise.’11 Brett’s discussion can be read as suggesting that the sections of Arsenal which contributed to the Panormia were compiled sepBurchard ’s Decretum as BD, Ivo’s Decretum as ID, and the Ivonian Panormia as IP. For the texts of ID, the working edition made by Martin Brett has been consulted, and for the texts of IP, the working edition of Brett and Bruce Brasington has been checked; both are available on-line at http://project.knowledgeforge.net/ivo/ [last accessed November 15, 2011]. 3. On the use of the Collectio Britannica, see...

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