Carolingian Structures of Logic and Learning: The Evidence of University of Pennsylvania Libraries LJS 101

Abstract

This paper presents preliminary research into how manuscript LJS 101, held in the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection of the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, represents a collective enterprise in its making and in its contents. The evidence of the texts, script, and decoration show that the manuscript was not only made, but also used within a larger community over an extended period of time. The inclusion of Boethius’s early sixth century translation of and commentary on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione alongside shorter texts, such as a sample letter and definitions of words, transforms the manuscript into a useful handbook for studying the first three subjects of the medieval liberal arts–grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic–within an instructional environment of teachers and students. The making of the manuscript also reflects the work of several individuals. At least two distinct phases of work can be identified, the hands of several scribes can be distinguished in the text and annotations, and the diagrams and decoration reflect diverse sources that may relate to the varied visual vocabulary of different artists. In these ways, the texts, script, and decoration of LJS 101 exemplify the community and combined efforts involved in Carolingian systems of education and manuscript production.

Manuscript ljs 101, held in the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, is a remarkable example of a Carolingian monastic textbook (fig. 1).¹ Here I

Figure 1.

Decorated initial P and the beginning of Boethius’s translation of Aristotle’s Peri Hermeneias, north central France, possibly at the abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Fleury, ninth to eleventh centuries. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, LJS 101, fols. 1v–2r. Photograph: University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

present preliminary research into the ways in which the manuscript represents a collective enterprise in its making and in its contents. Evidence drawn from the manuscript’s texts, script, and decoration shows not only that it was made within a larger community over an extended period, but also that it was actively used as part of a larger community. The manuscript’s principal text is Boethius’s early sixth-century translation of and commentary on Aristotle’s De interpretatione, also known as the Peri hermeneias, which was central to the study of logic, or dialectic, in the early middle ages. The juxtaposition of this text with shorter texts, such as a sample letter and definitions of words, further transforms the manuscript into a useful handbook for studying the first three subjects of the medieval liberal arts—grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic—within an instructional environment of teachers and students. The making of the manuscript also reflects the work of several individuals. At least two distinct phases of work can be identified, the hands of several scribes can be distinguished in the text and annotations, and the diagrams and decoration reflect diverse sources that may relate to the varied visual vocabulary of different artists. In these ways, the texts, script, and decoration of LJS 101 show the Carolingian structures of logic and learning, exemplified in the manuscript, to be ones of community and of combined efforts in education and manuscript production.

Texts

Together, the texts contained in LJS 101 present a specific pedagogical system based on the liberal arts. The majority of the manuscript is occupied by the beginning of Boethius’s Latin translation of Aristotle’s De interpretatione (fol. 1v) and Boethius’s commentary on that text (fols. 2r–53r). Boethius wrote two commentaries on Aristotle’s text, the second significantly more extensive than the first. LJS 101 contains the shorter of the two commentaries and the one that Boethius conceived of as simpler and more appropriate to a beginner audience.² These translations and commentaries of De interpretatione were part of a larger effort by Boethius to make Greek philosophical texts, in particular those by Aristotle, available to a Latin-speaking audience. Although he never completed his ambitious goal of producing translations of all the available works of Plato and Aristotle, Boethius did complete translations of Aristotle’s works on logic, which became foundational for the study of the subject in the early middle ages.³ In addition to Boethius’s translation and commentary, LJS 101 also contains the Peri hermeneias, attributed to Apuleius—another logical text closely based on De interpretatione (fols. 53v–59v).⁴

LJS 101 was attributed to the scriptorium of the monastery of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire at Fleury by Carl Nordenfalk and Christopher de Hamel based on textual and art historical evidence.⁵ The major texts in LJS 101 do provide some support for this attribution. A tenth-century library catalog, also possibly from Fleury, lists a copy of “periermenia apulei cum periermeniis asistotelis,” which may refer to LJS 101.⁶ The Peri hermeneias ascribed to Apuleius is a rare text, but there are at least two other copies from the Fleury library that survive: Orléans, Bibliothèque municipale MS 277, and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 6638.⁷ However, the attribution needs to be more fully investigated, especially in light of recent questioning of the centralization of Carolingian manuscript production and a more nuanced understanding of the mobility of artists, scribes, and book making practices during this period.⁸ Nevertheless, as an important Carolingian center of education and book production, Fleury offers a useful starting point for investigation of LJS 101. For this reason, I will be using comparisons from Fleury throughout this article to contextualize LJS 101 with the understanding that other, more compelling, comparisons from different centers of manuscript production may come to light with further study.

The short texts added at the beginning and end of the manuscript have received less attention than the main ones. There is a grammatical text; the verse “Primus in orbe dies . . . ,” by Saint Eugenius, Archbishop of Toledo; and a definition of rhetoric attributed to Isidore of Seville on fol. 1r (fig. 2).⁹ On folio 60r is the Carmen de mensibus by the fourth-century scholar and poet Decimus Magnus Ausonius.¹⁰ Following this text is a specimen letter

Figure 2.

Excerpt of grammatical text, definition of rhetoric, and poem “Primus in orbe dies,” north central France, possibly at the abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Fleury, ninth to eleventh centuries. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, LJS 101, fol. 1r. Photograph: University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

from a monk to an abbot, which begins on folio 60v and continues to folio 63r.¹¹ On folios 63v–64r are other short verses and definitions of various words, including serpens, publicans, and peccatore.

The fact that these texts appear in conjunction with each other in LJS 101 suggests that the manuscript was used as part of an educational curriculum centered on the liberal arts. The texts relate to the study of the trivium—the literary subjects of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. The primary texts in the manuscript, the commentaries by Boethius and Apuleius on Aristotle’s De interpretatione, are essential texts for the study of logic in the early Middle Ages. Although they represent a much smaller portion of the manuscript, the short texts placed alongside the logical texts relate directly to the subjects of grammar and rhetoric. Representing the subject of grammar are the fragment of grammatical text and the Carmen de mensibus on the first folio, as well as the definitions on the final four pages of the manuscript. Relating to the subject of rhetoric are the definition adapted from Isidore of Seville on folio 1r and the specimen letter on folios 60v and 63r, which demonstrates rhetorical techniques in epistolary form.¹² Although a full course of study in grammar or rhetoric would have involved more extensive texts, such as those of Donatus, Priscian, and Cicero, these inclusions might be seen as a brief review of the two subjects before the subject of dialectic is introduced. The thoughtful assembly of texts with a clear pedagogical purpose allows us to classify LJS 101 as a miscellany and, more specifically, to place it within the group of Carolingian bibliographical handbooks defined by Rosamond McKitterick as manuscripts containing compilations of texts intended to be treated as a unit and serving as a guide to the organized acquisition of knowledge.¹³ Carolingian bibliographical handbooks and educational miscellanies, like LJS 101, are further defined by the communal and organic process of their making and use.

The individuality of LJS 101 and its suitability for the study of the trivium is highlighted by its comparison to the two other compilations of texts that include Boethius’s translation and commentary of the Peri hermeneias that have been attributed to tenth-and eleventh-century Fleury. Orléans, Bibliothèque municipale MS 80, contains Boethius’s second, more extensive, commentary paired with the Historia apostolica by Arator.¹⁴ Arator and Boethius were contemporaries and both were connected to the statesman and scholar Cassiodorus and to the court of the Ostrogothic ruler Theodoric. The pairing of their works perhaps emphasized the historical significance of the texts and the interest in Greek scholarship that developed in the intellectual circles of the sixth-century Ostrogothic court.¹⁵ Orléans, Bibliothèque municipale MS 277, on the other hand, pairs Boethius’s commentary on the Peri hermeneias with a variety of other logical texts, including Porphyry’s Isagoge, Aristotle’s Categories, Abbo of Fleury’s work on syllogisms, and Apuleius’s commentary on the Peri hermeneias.¹⁶ This manuscript, therefore, goes into greater depth on the subject of logic than LJS 101, but does not reference the trivium more broadly. These two comparisons provide illuminating contrasts to the Schoenberg manuscript, and I hope to continue this line of inquiry by finding other similar compilations of texts. It is, however, already clear from these initial comparisons that the compilation of texts found in LJS 101 was formed with a deliberate educational purpose. Furthermore, examination of the variations in scribal hands, as discussed in the next section, shows how the pedagogical system formed through the texts was not part of a singular vision underlying the copying of the Boethius text, but was instead developed communally and organically.

Script

LJS 101 is written in Carolingian minuscule, but its script exhibits temporal and personal variations. The majority of the manuscript (fols. 5–44) uses an aerated version of Carolingian minuscule that Paul Saenger compared to script from Tours and the region of Orléans dating to the mid-tenth century. In this portion of the text, the spacing between words is inconsistent and often minimal (fig. 3).¹⁷ The first four folios of the manuscript and the final twenty are written in a word-separated format that Paul Saenger found comparable to that in manuscripts containing similar texts and dating to circa 1000. These sections of the text use clear word separation (fig. 4).¹⁸ The two distinct scripts have been used to support an argument that the central section of the manuscript was made in the ninth century, and then the first four folios and the last section were added a century and a half later.¹⁹ However, the analysis of the script is fundamentally an imprecise way to date the two sections, as script styles could endure longer or develop earlier than is commonly believed, and the two sections could have been produced much closer together in time, perhaps in the late tenth century. This argument was made by Paul Saenger when he studied the manuscript and it is one that should be considered seriously.²⁰

Figure 3.

Aerated script, north central France, possibly at the abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Fleury, ninth to eleventh centuries. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, LJS 101, fol. 5r. Photograph: University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

Figure 4.

Word-separated script, north central France, possibly at the abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Fleury, ninth to eleventh centuries. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, LJS 101, fol. 2r. Photograph: University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

In addition to these two major variations in the script, there are also minor variations that may indicate different individuals at work, suggesting that the manuscript was produced by a team of scribes. This is a plausible scenario in an early medieval monastery, where it was common practice for several scribes to contribute to a single manuscript.²¹ One clear example of a change in hands can be seen between folios 20v and 21r. The hand of the scribe of folio 20v, for example, displays nearly closed tails on the gs, tall es, and tall fs with long descenders, distinguishing it from the hand of the scribe of folio 21r. This change in hands also occurs at a quire break, a logical place for a new scribe to pick up the writing.²² Another notable shift occurs at a different quire break between folios 36v and 37r. First, on folios 37r and 37v is a copy of the text on the previous folios. Second, folio 37r is written in a very condensed hand compared with folio 36v. The script becomes more comfortably spaced on folio 37v and then continues in this manner through the rest of the quire. Not only does this shift come at a quire break, but the page layout, which has remained consistent since folio 5r where the “earlier” section begins, also changes. The margins become smaller, and an extra line of text is included in the ruling. For these reasons, the pages of this quire show that the manuscript does not fit neatly into one “early” and one “late” section.

In addition to the main text, with its changes in hands, are the annotations. The majority of the annotations appear to be in a hand similar or identical to that which wrote the “later” sections at the beginning and end of the manuscript. One prominent addition on folio 17v, for example, is strikingly similar to a section of the Apuleius text. The shorter texts also show evidence of having been added at different moments and by different individuals. For example, the Carmen de mensibus on folio 60r is in a different hand and darker ink than that of the excerpt of a commentary on Isaiah by Haimo of Auxerre (previously attributed to Haimo of Halberstadt) written at the top of the page (fig. 5).²³ This discrepancy perhaps reflects a later scribe taking advantage of the empty space on the page to add the poem. Overall, the variations in the script and their relationships to the texts and codicology of the manuscript suggest that LJS 101 was produced as an organic process where different sections were not created by one person in one moment, or

Figure 5.

“Versus de Singulis Mensibus,” north central France, possibly at the abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Fleury, ninth to eleventh centuries. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, LJS 101, fol. 60r. Photograph: University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

even by two people in two moments. Rather, the manuscript was in a continual state of evolution.

Figure 6.

Decorated initial P and the beginning of Boethius’s translation of Aristotle’s Peri Hermeneias, north central France, possibly at the abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Fleury, ninth to eleventh centuries. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, LJS 101, fol. 1v. Photograph: University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

Decoration

Like the texts and the script, the decoration of LJS 101 is closely tied to the educational nature of the manuscript and the communal process of its production. Folio 1v is the most lavishly ornamented page of the manuscript, with a large decorated initial P occupying the full height and half the width of the text block (fig. 6). The initial is colored with a palette of gray-blue, bright blue, orange, brownish-red, and brownish-green. These colors are enhanced with black accents and light pink highlights. Fantastical beasts and luscious acanthus leaves spring from the letter. These are complemented with interlace and other geometrical patterns. In addition to the main initial, other initials throughout the manuscript are decorated with some pigmentation or calligraphic flourishes. There are also four diagrams of the square of opposition (fig. 7). The square of opposition illustrates logical relationships between specific negative and positive propositions discussed by Aristotle in De interpretatione. The decorative program of the manuscript further expands the community potentially involved in producing the manuscript since individuals other than the scribes could have added the main initial, the minor initials, and the diagrams.

Figure 7.

Square of opposition, north central France, possibly at the abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Fleury, ninth to eleventh centuries. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, LJS 101, fol. 36v. Photograph: University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

The main initial has been discussed within the context of eleventh-century Fleury as part of the dating and localization of the manuscript. Carl Nordenfalk and Christopher de Hamel have compared it in particular to the initials in Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, MS W.3, a late tenth-century gospel book, with its similar combination of leaves, knotwork, and creatures (fig. 8).²⁴ I also note a comparable design of acanthus leaves, though on a more modest scale, in another Fleury manuscript from the eleventh century, Orléans Bibliothèque municipale MS 333 (fig. 9).²⁵ While these comparisons are significant, the search for artistic comparisons should be extended to include manuscripts from northern France more broadly in order to more thoroughly investigate the localization of the manuscript.

Figure 8.

Decorated initial Q, gospel book, late tenth century. Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, MS W.3, fol. 86r. Photograph: Walters Art Museum.

To expand our understanding of the decoration of LJS 101 further, I would also like to briefly consider the decoration of LJS 101 according to two other paradigms besides the context of Fleury. First, while it was common to add a lavish initial at the beginning of an important religious text, such as a gospel book or psalter, it was unusual for a commentary on a classical text to be treated in this manner. One striking example of a comparable text similarly decorated is the copy of Boethius’s De institutione arithmetica made at Tours around 845 and now held at the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg (Msc. Class. 5). Not only does this manuscript display an elaborately decorated initial at the beginning of the text, but it also includes a unique image of the personifications of the quadrivium and a dedication portrait (fig. 10).²⁶ Other manuscripts with classical texts featuring ornate decorated initials on their opening pages include a copy of Apicius’s De re coquinaria from Tours and dated to the mid-ninth century (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Urb. lat. 1146) and also a copy of texts by Cicero similarly dated to the mid-ninth century and likely from the monastery of

Figure 9.

Decorated initial D, works of St. Ephrem, eleventh century. Orléans, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 333, fol. 64v. Photograph: Médiathèques d’Orléans.

Figure 10.

Decorated initial I, Boethius, De institutione arithmetica, Tours, ca. 845. Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc. Class. 5, fol. 4r. Photograph: Staatsbibliothek Bamberg.

Corbie (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, San Marco 257).²⁷ The attention devoted to the decorative initials in these manuscripts and in LJS 101 emphasizes the importance placed on these types of secular texts in Carolingian monastic communities.

Second, the decorative function of the diagrams and their art historical potential should be considered.²⁸ Through the addition of decorative flourishes and geometric forms, the diagrams in LJS 101 become more than mere illustrations of logical principles. The square on folio 36v, for example, has leaves and tendrils extending from each corner, which accentuate the border. A comparison between the squares of opposition in LJS 101 and those in the other copies of Boethius’s commentary of De interpretatione from Fleury cited earlier illustrates the possibilities of analyzing the diagrams as a form of decoration. The first diagram in Orléans MS 80 (p. 121) incorporates acanthus leaves into the border, extending the classicizing vegetal decoration of decorative initials in the text to the diagrams (fig. 11). On page 144 of the same manuscript, the diagram maintains these connections to convey the correct logical principals, but re-forms them into a more flowing design of curving lines and circular forms. Then, on page 208, the diagram is pared down into a more elemental form. With the third diagram on page 208, this has the effect of emphasizing the geometric shapes of triangles and quadrilaterals. The square of opposition in Orléans MS 277 (p. 10) uses the border as a space for the display of ornamental designs of dots and scrolling vegetal forms. In addition to these two examples, the Bamberg copy of De institutione arithmetica discussed earlier displays uniquely elaborate diagrams, with decorative figures embellished with gold, silver, and painted details including interlace, leaves, rosettes, birds, and vases. Overall, the diagrams in all of these manuscripts create a visually dynamic ordering of the ideas in the text. A consideration of the decoration of LJS 101 in relation to the decoration of other secular texts and to the decorative use of diagrams elsewhere expands our knowledge of the possible sources that the manuscript’s artist (or artists) were drawing upon, and reflects a diverse visual vocabulary gained from individual training and experience.

Figure 11.

Square of opposition, works of Arator and Boethius, ninth to eleventh centuries. Orléans, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 80, p. 121. Photograph: Médiathèques d’Orléans.

Conclusion

The texts, script, and decoration of LJS 101 reflect its making and use within a dynamic monastic community. The manuscript was written and decorated by a team of artists and scribes for use by groups of students and teachers. The deliberate compilation of its texts, the evolutionary nature of its writing, and the varied sources of its decoration represent the work of many individuals contributing to the manuscript over the course of its existence within the monastery. Conceiving of the manuscript in this way can add a new, human, dimension to future research on the manuscript. It introduces individual pedagogical approaches to the choice of texts, allows for a more nuanced approach to the dating of scribal hands, and recognizes that artists with distinct backgrounds and visual vocabularies brought together a wide range of artistic ideas in one manuscript. In sum, seeing LJS 101 as a communal enterprise opens new possibilities for understanding the richness and significance of this manuscript.