In the Margins of the Predestination Controversy: The Manuscript Context of the Hincmar Mock Epitaph

The predestination controversy, which involved some of the most important figures of Europe between 848–860, also made literary victims. A distich, found in the margins of five manuscripts copied from the ninth to the eleventh century, reads “Here lies Hincmar, a fiercely avaricious thief; the only noble thing he did was to die.” By looking afresh at the manuscripts, their context, and their relationships, the present study investigates the vexed question of the authorship of the Hincmar mock epitaph. It also offers the first edition of the text to take into account all manuscript variants.