The Authority of the Fathers: Patristic Texts in

Early Medieval Libraries and Scriptoria1

by Bernice M. Kaczynski
In the 1100s Bernard of Chartres described himself and his contemporaries
in words that have since become familiar. He said they enjoyed a legacy
bequeathed to them by earlier generations: We are like dwarfs perched on
the shoulders of giants. We can see more and farther than our predecessors,
not indeed because of the acuteness of our own vision or bodily size, but
because we are lifted up and raised on high by their gigantic stature.2 Over
time this vivid image came to describe what many have viewed as a
characteristically medieval attitude towards authority, particularly towards
the authority of the Fathers of the Church. Medieval scholars have often
been seen as no more than guardians of an inherited tradition, content to
perch comfortably on the shoulders of greater men on the shoulders of
Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Gregory the Great, and other writers of
Christian Antiquity.
1

This is a revised and annotated version of a paper with the same title, given as the
Thirteenth Annual J.R. ODonnell Memorial Lecture in Medieval Latin Studies at the
University of Toronto on 24 March 2006. I thank Michael Herren and his colleagues at the
Centre for Medieval Studies for the opportunity to present this work, which is part of a series
of inquiries into the production and circulation of patristic texts in the Carolingian Empire.
I am also grateful to Prof. Dr. Ernst Tremp, Stiftsbibliothekar, and his colleagues in the
Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen, for assistance in obtaining photographs and for permission to
publish them here. The topographical map (Plate 1) was designed by David Arthur.
2
John of Salisbury (ca. 11151180), addressing the contemporary debate on the proper
relationship between antiqui and moderni, gives the quotation. See the Metalogicon 3.4, ed.
J.B. Hall and K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, CCCM 98 (1991), p. 116: Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis
nos esse quasi nanos gigantum umeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora uidere,
non utique proprii uisus acumine aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subuehimur et
extollimur magnitudine gigantea. The literature on the topos is vast. See douard Jeauneau,
Nani gigantum humeris insidentes. Essai dinterprtation de Bernard de Chartres, Vivarium
5 (1967), 7999; repr. in Jeauneau, Lectio Philosophorum. Recherches sur lcole de
Chartres (Amsterdam, 1973), pp. 5173. For more recent discussion, see Tobias Leuker,
Zwerge auf den Schultern von Riesen Zur Entstehung des berhmten Vergleichs, MJ 32
(1997), 7176.

Kaczynski

But this assumption can be challenged. Early medieval scholars, far from
being heirs to a tradition, might more readily be seen as its creators. Books
were not simply gifts one generation handed to the next. The transposition of
the textual culture of late antiquity to the libraries and writing-rooms of early
Europe was complex; it was sustained and of long duration. Throughout the
seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, books moved northward across the
Alps, in erratic and often incomprehensible patterns.3 These were important
years in the cultural history of the West, and they were formative in the
determination of patristic authority.
It is clear that the scholars of early medieval Europe did not inherit the
arrangement of Latin Fathers familiar to us now that is, Ambrose,
Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great, nor did they inherit a list of
works that made up a canon. In their own time, the writers of Christian
antiquity had been a quarrelsome lot, and each had had his critics. The
language used to describe them was varied: Fathers, Teachers,
Doctors, Defenders of the Faith. The ways of classifying them were
varied too. In a letter of about 600 written by Bishop Licinianus of
Cartagena to Pope Gregory the Great, it was Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose,
Augustine, and Gregory of Nazianzus who were called the holy ancient
Fathers, the teachers and defenders of the Church. Elsewhere, in about 680,
a Milanese bishop wrote a letter to the emperor mentioning four Greek and
four Latin witnesses to the faith. He placed in the first group Athanasius,
Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, and Cyril of Alexandria; and, in the
second, Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine.4
The Venerable Bede seems to have been the first to have arranged the
Latin Fathers in a distinctive group of four: Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome,
and of special interest to the English Pope Gregory the Great. Bede put
forward the fourfold arrangement in his commentaries on the Gospels of
Luke and Mark, written in the early 700s.5 The texts circulated widely in
3

For a stimulating account of the phenomenon, see L.D. Reynolds, Introduction, in

Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford, 1983), pp. xiiixliii (with an
emphasis on classical texts).
4
For references to the sources mentioned here and for further discussion of the
terminology, see Johannes Quasten, Patrology, 4 vols. (Westminster, MD, 19501986), 1: 9
12, and Berthold Altaner and Alfred Stuiber, Patrologie: Leben, Schriften und Lehre der
Kirchenvter, 8th ed. (Freiburg, 1978), pp. 36. See also the essential discussion of Henri de
Lubac, Exgse mdivale: Les quatre sens de lcriture, 2 vols. in 4 (Paris, 195964), 1:26
32.
5
On this theme, see Bernice M. Kaczynski, Bedes Commentaries on Luke and Mark
and the Formation of a Patristic Canon, in Anglo-Latin and its Heritage: Essays in Honour

The Authority of the Fathers

England and on the continent, but Bedes was not the only such list, and the
inclusion of Gregory, especially, was variable.
The process of canon formation was the work of generations of scholars.
It is part of the story of the textualization of Latin Christianity, of the efforts
of so many very different kinds of people who studied and commented on
Sacred Scripture. A consensus emerged over time. Bedes notion of four
Fathers, calqued on the list of the four Evangelists, spread through writingrooms and libraries in the monasteries of the Frankish kingdoms. By the
eleventh century, it had become commonplace for writers to associate the
four Fathers with the four major prophets, the four senses of Scripture, the
four cardinal virtues. Indeed, the quaternary symbols of the Bible came to be
applied quite generally, to four rivers, four winds, four shores, four corners
of the world.6 In a decretal of 20 September 1295, Pope Boniface VIII gave
them official recognition when he instructed the faithful to celebrate
Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great as preeminent Fathers
of the Church.7
The scholars of the early Middle Ages, then, did not inherit a patristic
canon. They helped to shape it. What they received from their predecessors
was an abundance of texts. Some sense of this can be gleaned from the
eleven volumes of the paleographer E.A. Lowes collection of Latin
manuscripts copied before 800 and supplemented by Bernhard Bischoff,
Virginia Brown, and James J. John.8 About 2,000 Latin manuscripts and
of A.G. Rigg on his 64th Birthday, ed. Sin Echard and Gernot R. Wieland, Publications of
The Journal of Medieval Latin 4 (Turnhout, 2001), pp. 1726.
6
The Glossa ordinaria confirms the symbolism. See de Lubac, Exgse mdivale, p. 29.
7
Corpus iuris canonici, Liber sextus decretalium, lib. 3, tit. 22, cap.1: Egregios quoque
ipsius Doctores ecclesiae, beatos Gregorium, qui meritis inclytis sedis apostolicae curam
gessit, Augustinum et Ambrosium, venerandos antistites, ac Hieronymum, sacerdotii
praeditum titulo, eximios confessores summis attollere vocibus, laudibus personare praecipuis
et specialibus disponit honoribus venerari. Cited by Eugene F. Rice, Jr., Saint Jerome in the
Renaissance (Baltimore, 1985), p. 218.
8
E.A. Lowe, Codices Latini antiquiores: A Palaeographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts
Prior to the Ninth Century, 11 vols. and Supplement (Oxford, 193471); Bernhard Bischoff
and Virginia Brown, Addenda to Codices Latini antiquiores <I>, Mediaeval Studies 47
(1985), 31766; Bernhard Bischoff, Virginia Brown, and James J. John, Addenda to Codices
Latini antiquiores <II>, Mediaeval Studies 54 (1992), 286307. To the 1884 items listed by
the editors of CLA, we may add at least twenty-nine papyri from Herculaneum described by
Paolo Radiciotti, Osservazioni paleografiche sui papiri latini di Ercolano, Scrittura e Civilt
22 (1998), 35370. For a survey of the manuscripts in their cultural context, see Bernhard
Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. Dibh Crinn and
David Ganz (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 190201 (The Early Middle Ages).

Kaczynski

manuscript fragments from this early period survive today. Of course it is

impossible to give exact statistics of authors and works, but the pattern
seems consistent from one volume of CLA to the next. The largest group of
surviving manuscripts comprises the works of Latin Church Fathers.
Patristic writings make up over 50 percent of the items. They are followed
by large groups of biblical and liturgical manuscripts, with secular works
forming a very small proportion of the whole. Smaller still is the proportion
of classical literary texts.9 These statistics are not new, but they are worth
considering.
The sheer size of the patristic deposit, I think, has made modern scholars
wary of approaching it. The long lists of names and works, the problems of
attribution and misattribution, the nuisance of distinguishing complete works
from fragments, the arcane and endless permutations of texts in the florilegia
these things are discouraging. And it can be difficult even to enumerate the
items in medieval booklists with any precision. Descriptive terms like
volumen, codex, and liber may be absent, or may shift in meaning, even
within the catalogues of a single library.10 Patristic materials are particularly
susceptible to misinterpretation, because they are transmitted in so many
variable forms Jeromes prologues along with the relevant biblical books,
as well as separate sets of his commentaries, for example, or collections
containing one or two letters of Augustine along with other patristic works.
Sometimes, too, patristic sources come to us through the mediation of
figures who seem strange and remote remoter even than the Fathers
themselves. What are we to make, for instance, of Eugippius and his massive
compendium of extracts from the writings of Augustine?11 Such works

For some interesting calculations of the survival of classical works, see Reynolds, Texts
and Transmission, pp. xvxvi.
10
On this problem, see Johannes Duft, Die Handschriften-Katalogisierung in der
Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen vom 9. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert, in Beat Matthias von Scarpatetti,
Die Handschriften der Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen: Codices 17261984 (14 19. Jahrhundert),
(St. Gall, 1983), 9*99*, at p. 14*. See Michael Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library (Oxford,
2006), pp. 5860, for a comparison of the descriptive terminology in continental and AngloSaxon booklists.
11
Eugippius (ca. 455ca. 535) collected extracts from Augustines writings and arranged
them in a way that emphasized their use in the exposition of Scripture. It was a massive work,
some one thousand pages in length. The Excerpta ex operibus sancti Augustini, ed. P. Knll
CSEL 9.1 (1885), is now sadly outdated, and a new critical edition would be welcome. On
Eugippius generally, see James J. ODonnell, Eugippius, in Augustine through the Ages: An
Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids, MI, 1999), pp. 33839. Also of interest
in this context: Joseph T. Lienhard, Florilegia, in Augustine through the Ages, pp. 37071.

The Authority of the Fathers

present another set of complications.12

It is the very exuberance of the manuscript transmission, however, that
makes the point. People in the early Middle Ages preserved and copied and
reworked the texts because they were stimulated by them. In Frankish
society, in Anglo-Saxon society, there was genuine engagement with the
works of Christian Antiquity. The Frankish emperor himself was interested
in Augustine. As Einhard famously observed in his Life of Charles the
Great, Charles was fond of Augustines books, especially the one entitled
The City of God, and liked to have it read to him as he ate his dinner.13
Nowadays, of course, the mention of Church Fathers probably makes
more people think of duty than of pleasure. Perhaps it should not be
surprising that many scholars content themselves with generalities. E.A.
Lowe himself, surveying the items in CLA, remarks that they reflect the
usual medieval predilection for the Church Fathers.14 Medievalists very
often resort to such phrases as the usual patristic texts when, for example,
they summarize the contents of libraries. But it is evident that, in the matter
of patristic texts, the Carolingians had literally hundreds of choices
available. So in fact it is perfectly reasonable to ask: who were the usual
authors? What were the usual texts? And how did they become so?
One way to move beyond generalities is to look at the manuscripts. It has
long been commonplace for scholars surveying centres of Carolingian
learning to attempt to tabulate the presence of patristic material. And
certainly, modern editions of patristic texts draw attention to the important
Carolingian books. There are limits to the usefulness of such editions
though, because their editors are naturally concerned to identify the oldest
and best witnesses to the text. They do not necessarily convey to the reader
information about the other manuscripts that contain it. Fortunately a new
research instrument promises more ready access to the manuscript tradition
of at least one Church Father. The Kommission zur Herausgabe des Corpus
der lateinischen Kirchenvter, based in Vienna, is preparing inventories of
12

Historians of the classical tradition, on the other hand, seem to have a more direct route
to their sources. Editors in search of Roman literary texts may occasionally pursue their
quarry through medieval commentaries, grammars, and glossaries, but rarely must they
contend with such vexing and multiple routes of transmission.
13
Vita Caroli Magni 24, in MGH Rer. Germ. 1.29: Delectabatur et libris sancti
Augustini praecipueque his qui de ciuitate dei praetitulati sunt. Moreover, Alcuin tells us that
Charles kept many of Augustines works in the court library; see Bernhard Bischoff, Die
Hofbibliothek Karls des Grossen, in Mittelalterliche Studien 3 (Stuttgart, 1981), pp. 14969,
at p. 150.
14
CLA 7:vi.

Kaczynski

all known manuscripts of the works of Augustine.15 Nine volumes have

appeared so far, with several more in progress, and these books will make it
possible to do new kinds of research on Augustines medieval afterlife. The
realm of patristic manuscripts is vast, and there are many discoveries still to
be made.
I should like to begin with the assumption that the decision to copy
manuscripts was an active one: that to copy some books meant that there
would not be the time or the resources to copy others; that choices had to be
made about what would be copied and what would not; and that these
choices had consequences, for they determined what might come to be
considered a desirable, or possibly even a canonical, complement of texts.
It makes sense, then, to look more closely at the role of the scholars,
editors, and scribes who organized the writing projects. For the most part,
they were members of religious communities. The production of manuscripts
was primarily, though not exclusively, a monastic phenomenon. As
Rosamond McKitterick remarks, it is clear that the monasteries, as centres
of book production, played a vital part in the promotion of the written
word.16 They were guided in their work by the Rule of St. Benedict.
Benedict had encouraged his monks to read the expositions of Scripture by
those he called the reputable and orthodox catholic Fathers.17 In the final
chapter of the Rule he wrote that for anyone hastening on to the perfection
of monastic life, there are the teachings of the holy Fathers, the observance
of which will lead him to the very heights of perfection. What page, what
passage of the inspired books of the Old and the New Testaments is not the

15

Nine volumes of Die handschriftliche berlieferung der Werke des Heiligen

Augustinus have appeared to date, surveying the libraries of Italy; Great Britain and Ireland;
Poland (with an appendix on Denmark, Finland, and Sweden); Spain and Portugal; Federal
Republic of Germany; Austria; the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic; Belgium,
Luxembourg, and the Netherlands; Switzerland. Still in preparation are volumes on France,
the former German Democratic Republic, Hungary, and Russia. The publisher is the Verlag
der sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, whose website provides information on
the current status of the project: http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kvk/.
16
The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989), p. 167.
17
Regula S. Benedicti 9; see RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English with
Notes, ed. Timothy Fry, associate eds. Imogen Baker et al. (Collegeville, MN, 1981),
pp. 2045. See also the essential discussion by Jean Leclercq, The Ancient Traditional
Spirituality, in The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture,
trans. Catharine Misrahi (New York, 1961; repr. 1988), pp. 89111.

The Authority of the Fathers

truest of guides for human life? What book of the holy catholic Fathers does
not resoundingly summon us along the true way to reach the Creator?18
The work of copying manuscripts was carried out across early Europe,
from Anglo-Saxon England in the West to the far reaches of the Carolingian
Empire in the East (see Plate 1). These centres were scenes of a remarkable
development that began around the year 800. Their scriptoria, or writingoffices, began to copy increasing numbers of manuscript books, and the rate
of production quickened as time went on. About 7,000 manuscripts and
manuscript fragments have survived from the late eighth and ninth
centuries.19 It is not known how many manuscripts were in circulation at the
time, though Bernhard Bischoff once gave an estimate of about 50,000.20
There are many questions one might ask about the production of patristic
texts. What lay behind the copying of texts at any particular scriptorium?
What, precisely, was copied, and when? Did centres specialize were there,
in other words, pockets of production for rarer works?21 And there is
another issue. Early medieval scholars inhabited a world that was very
different from the one known to the early Church Fathers. Theirs was a
manuscript culture. To what extent did the distinctive features of early
medieval intellectual life imprint themselves on the patristic sources? These
are large questions, impossible to answer fully in the brief span of a
scholarly essay. What I hope to demonstrate here is that they are questions
worth pursuing, for the early medieval scriptoria offer a unique perspective
on the history of patristic authority.
The experience of one institution suggests some of the possibilities.
The Benedictine abbey of St. Gall was an important centre for the
production and circulation of books throughout much of the Carolingian
period, and its records are exceptionally complete. The abbey has several
types of evidence for an inquiry into the provision of patristic texts. There

18

Regula S. Benedicti 73; see RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English,
pp. 29497. The books Benedict seems to have meant were those that guided the monastic life
the works of John Cassian, for example.
19
The figure is given by Bischoff, Latin Palaeography, p. 208. For a survey of the
manuscripts in their cultural context, see pp. 20211 (The Carolingian period). The
essential catalogue is Bischoff, Katalog der festlndischen Handschriften des neunten
Jahrhunderts (mit Ausnahme der wisigotischen), aus dem Nachlass herausgegeben von Birgit
Ebersperger, 3 vols. (Wiesbaden, 1998, 2004, and forthcoming).
20
Cited in McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word, p. 163.
21
The expression pockets of production is McKittericks. See The Carolingians and the
Written Word, p. 19.

Kaczynski

are the manuscripts.22 Over three hundred of them remain a very high
number to have survived from a single place.23 There are ninth-century
library catalogues and booklists.24 There is a bibliographical guide to
patristic literature written in 885 by Notker the Stammerer, and there are
marginal notes in his hand in some of the manuscripts that contain patristic
material.25 There are, finally, many details in the manuscripts of St. Gall that
show us how they were used by monastic scholars.26
The abbey traces its beginnings to a sentimental foundation date of 612,
when the Irish pilgrim Gall set himself up in a hermits cell in the valley of
the Steinach. The earliest record of an organized community of monks on
the site dates from 719, with the installation of Otmar, the first abbot.27 The
place got off to a slow start; under Charles the Great it seems to have been
22

Albert Bruckner, Scriptoria medii aevi helvetica: Denkmler schweizerische

Schreibkunst des Mittelalters, vols. 2 and 3 (Geneva, 19361938). The nineteenth-century
catalogue by Gustav Scherrer, Verzeichnis der Handschriften der Stiftsbibliothek von St.
Gallen (Halle, 1875; repr. Hildesheim, 1975), is at long last being replaced. See Beat Matthias
von Scarpatetti, Die Handschriften der Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen, Bd. 1: Abt. IV: Codices
547669: Hagiographica, Historica, Geographica, 818. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden, 2003),
and Beat Matthias von Scarpatetti, Die Handschriften der Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen, Bd. 2:
Abt. III/2: Codices 450546 (Wiesbaden, in preparation). The Codices Electronici
Sangallenses (CESG) project, directed by Christoph Fleler, is making digital reproductions
of manuscripts available online: http://www.cesg.unifr.ch.
23
Bischoff, Latin Palaeography, p. 208. Bischoff notes that the only centre to have more
manuscripts is Tours, with some 350 surviving specimens. Forty-five of them are (or were)
pandects.
24
The medieval catalogues are edited by Paul Lehmann, Mittelalterliche
Bibliothekskataloge Deutschlands und der Schweiz (Munich, 1918), 1:55148. See also Duft,
Die Handschriften-Katalogisierung, pp. 9*26*.
25
Erwin Rauner, Notkers des Stammlers Notatio de illustribus uiris. Teil I: Kritische
Edition, MJ 21 (1986), 3469. There is an earlier edition by Ernst Dmmler, Das
Formelbuch des Bischofs Salomo III. von Konstanz (1857; repr. Osnabrck, 1964), pp. 6478.
For Notkers hand in the manuscripts, see Susan Rankin, Ego itaque Notker scripsi, Revue
bndictine 101 (1991), 26898. For more on Notker and patristics, see Bernice M.
Kaczynski, Reading the Church Fathers: Notker the Stammerers Notatio de illustribus
viris, JMLat 17 (2007), in press.
26
See, for instance, Beat von Scarpatetti, Schreiber-Zuweisungen in St. Galler
Handschriften des achten und neunten Jahrhunderts, in Codices Sangallenses: Festschrift fr
Johannes Duft zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. Peter Ochsenbein and Ernst Ziegler (Sigmaringen,
1995), pp. 2556.
27
For a brief historical survey, see Johannes Duft, Geschichte des Klosters St. Gallen im
berblick vom 7. bis zum 12. Jahrhundert, in Das Kloster St. Gallen im Mittelalter: Die
kulturelle Blte vom 8. bis zum 12. Jahrhundert, ed. Peter Ochsenbein (Stuttgart, 1999),
pp. 1130, 223230.

The Authority of the Fathers

relatively obscure. The scriptorium came into operation in the mid-700s. In

the 820s, as a result of the favour of the emperor Louis the Pious, the
scriptorium, library, and school enjoyed a period of expansion. Thereafter St.
Gall enjoyed the patronage of the east Frankish kings, especially Louis the
German, second son of Louis the Pious, who appointed its abbot Grimald as
his chancellor and archchaplain. The abbacies of Grimald (841872) and his
successor Hartmut (872883) marked a turning-point in the history of the
abbey. Both men sought to supply the library with books, and the
scriptorium flourished. The era of the two abbots is known today by the
lovely phrase die erste Bltezeit, or first flowering, of the abbey.28
What did this mean for the provisioning of patristic texts? I should like to
compare two phases of scribal activity: the first from about 750 to 840, and
the second from about 841 to 920. The initial phase moved slowly. From
about 750 to 820 some forty manuscripts survive.29 About half of them
contain patristic material. Three manuscripts are dedicated to works of
Gregory the Great. One manuscript is dedicated to Prosper; five are
dedicated wholly to Jerome. The remaining manuscripts contain patristic
texts, but they are either excerpts from works of several authors or they are
prologues of Jerome copied in biblical manuscripts alongside biblical texts.30
From about 820 to 840 the rate of production quickened. Some seventy
manuscripts survive.31 These were the years of Abbot Gozbert (816837).
Nearly half contain patristic material. There is an increase in the number
of manuscripts dedicated to the works of a single author: two are dedicated
to Ambrose, five to Augustine, one to Prosper, one to Origen. Fifteen are
dedicated to Jerome. The remaining books contain either excerpts from the

28

See the important study by Beat von Scarpatetti, Das St. Galler Scriptorium, in Das
Kloster St. Gallen im Mittelalter, pp. 3167, 23137, at pp. 5055.
29
See Bruckner, Scriptoria 2:1426, and Scarpatetti, Das St. Galler Scriptorium,
pp. 4448. The manuscripts are being newly catalogued; for current updates on individual
items, consult the CESG website (see n. 22 above).
30
These are rough-and-ready calculations, based primarily on the items listed in
Bruckners Scriptoria 2:5383, but they will do to demonstrate general trends. Manuscripts
that contain texts by the Fathers, all now in St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek:
Gregory the Great: MSS 210, 212, 217(I).
Prosper: MS 185.
Jerome: MSS 109, 120, 125, 126, 127.
Other patristic texts: MSS 11, 40(I), 40(II), 44(I), 125, 133, 189, 213, 216, 238, 907.
31
See Bruckner, Scriptoria 2:2630, and Scarpatetti, Das St. Galler Scriptorium,
pp. 4850.

10

Kaczynski

writings of several authors or prologues of Jerome copied in biblical

manuscripts.32
For examples of manuscripts from this time, one copied in St. Gall itself,
the other an early import, see Plates 2 and 3. Stiftsbibliothek, MS 109 was
copied in St. Gall between 760 and 780. It is a large codex, 524 pages in
length, and contains Jeromes Commentary on the Psalms (see Plate 2).
Stiftsbibliothek, MS 110, on the other hand, was copied under Bishop Egino
of Verona (796799) either in Verona or in Reichenau by scribes from
Verona. It too is a characteristic book of the early period, for it is a
collection of excerpts from patristic writers, mostly from Jerome, Benedict,
and Augustine (see Plate 3).
A different way to look at the same material is to list the number of
manuscripts containing texts by a particular author. In this way, the count
can include authors represented in collections of excerpts. The figures are
approximate, for patristic materials are transmitted in variable forms, and
more precise identification and dating of the manuscripts must await
publication of the new catalogues. But if we reassemble the figures given
above, and add the number of times particular authors are cited by name in
codices containing works by more than one Father, we come up with a
consistent pattern. At least thirty-eight manuscripts dating from about 750 to
840 include the writings of Jerome. Some fourteen include the writings of
Augustine. Nine manuscripts contain works by Gregory the Great. Three
manuscripts include works by Ambrose, and another three include works by
Prosper. Origen appears in two books. Athanasius and John Chrysostom are
represented in one manuscript each.33
32

These are again rough-and-ready calculations, based primarily on Bruckners

Scriptoria 2:5383. Manuscripts that contain texts by the Fathers, most now in St. Gall,
Stiftsbibliothek:
Ambrose: MSS 94, 99.
Augustine: MSS 143, 146, 168, 170, 180.
Prosper: MS 186.
Origen: MS 87.
Jerome: MSS 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 122, 123, 124, 128, 129, 191, and
Zurich, Zentralbibliothek, C 41.
Other patristic texts: MSS 14, 28, 29, 39, 43, 90, 105, 130, 145, 224, 241, 255, 422.
33
These are again rough-and-ready calculations, based primarily on Bruckners
Scriptoria 2:5383. To the figures listed in notes 30 and 32 above have been added the
following manuscripts, which contain texts by more than one Father:
Jerome: MSS 11, 14, 28, 39, 40(I), 40(II), 43, 44(I), 90, 125, 130, 133, 145, 189, 216,
238, 241, 255.
Augustine: MSS 11, 29, 125, 145, 213, 224, 241, 422, 907.

The Authority of the Fathers

11

Whatever the method of reckoning used and all are provisional it is

clear that Jeromes works were the most frequently copied. Jeromes
prologues were transcribed alongside the relevant biblical books, and his
commentaries were copied in separate volumes. The most likely explanation
for the interest in Jerome is that during this time the abbeys scholars were
concerned to secure the text of the Bible. Their priorities are reflected in the
mid-ninth-century library catalogue, the Breviarium librorum. The very first
entry in the catalogue reads Bibliotheca una, and shows that, by the time
of its composition, the library had acquired the pandect, a manuscript copy
of the whole Bible something that cannot be taken for granted in
Carolingian monasteries.34 At St. Gall, therefore, Jeromes biblical
scholarship formed the earliest patristic substrate.
The second major phase in the history of the scriptorium occurred
between 841 and 920.35 In the years between 841 and 883, Abbots Grimald
and Hartmut saw to a rapid increase in the number of manuscripts. Hartmut,
especially, was active in the direction of the scriptorium and the acquisition
of books for the library. Abbot Solomon III (890920) continued the policy
of expansion. Their activity resulted in great changes, both in terms of the
quantity of material copied and in terms of the range of authors and texts
represented. The number of manuscripts dedicated to the works of a single
author increased. Thirty-four are attributed to Augustine, ten to Gregory the
Great, eight to Jerome, six to Ambrose, two to Ephraem, and one each to
Clement and Origen. An additional twenty-five manuscripts contain either
works by two or three authors or collections of excerpts.36

Gregory the Great: MSS 11, 125, 189, 213, 216, 422.
Ambrose: MS 422.
Prosper: MS 29.
Origen: MS 422.
Athanasius: MS 105.
John Chrysostom: MS 190.
34
St. Gall, Stiftstbibliothek, MS 728, p. 5; printed in Lehmann, Mittelalterliche
Bibliothekskataloge, 1:71. The pandect is listed first in the catalogue, followed by individual
books of the Old and New Testaments. On the abbeys biblical texts, see Rupert Schaab,
Bibeltext und Schriftstudium in St. Gallen, in Das Kloster St. Gallen im Mittelalter,
pp. 11936, 24853, at pp. 11924.
35
See Bruckner, Scriptoria 3:2446, and Scarpatetti, Das St. Galler Scriptorium,
pp. 5055.
36
These are rough-and-ready calculations, based primarily on the items listed in
Bruckners Scriptoria 3:2446, but they will do to demonstrate general trends. Manuscripts
that contain texts by the Fathers, most now in St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek:

12

Kaczynski

If we take into account authors cited by name in the codices containing

works by more than one Father, a similar pattern emerges. At least fortythree manuscripts dating from between 841 and 920 include the writings of
Augustine. Some fourteen include the writings of Jerome. Eleven contain
works by Gregory the Great, and seven contain works by Ambrose. Prosper
is represented in three manuscripts, Ephraem in two, and Basil the Great in
another two. There is one manuscript each for works by Clement, Cyprian,
Origen, Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, and Athanasius.37
The shift in emphasis is unmistakable. Augustine is now the dominant
figure in the scriptorium; works by and about him constitute the
largest group of surviving manuscripts.38 It appears too that the provision of

Augustine: MSS 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 144, 147, 151, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158,
160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 178, 181, 274,
317.
Gregory the Great: MSS 204, 206, 207, 208, 209, 211, 218, 219, 220, 359.
Jerome: MSS 110, 111, 112, 117, 118, 119, 131, 159.
Ambrose: MSS 95, 96, 98, 100 (Ps. Ambrose), 101 (Ps. Ambrose), 102.
Ephraem: MSS 92, 93.
Clement: MS 86.
Origen: MS 88.
Other patristic texts: MSS 69, 89, 90, 97, 103, 132, 145, 148, 184, 187, 254, 255, 261,
269, 279, 280, 281, 431, 571, 574, 575, 576, 670, 926, and St. Gall, Stadtbibliothek, MS 317.
37
These are again rough-and-ready calculations, based primarily on Bruckners
Scriptoria 3:2446. To the figures listed in n. 36 above have been added the following
manuscripts, which contain texts by more than one Father:
Augustine: MSS 69, 145, 148, 184, 269, 279, 280, 281, 571.
Gregory the Great: MS 670.
Jerome: MSS 90, 132, 145, 254, 255, 261.
Ambrose: MSS 97.
Prosper: MSS 148, 184, 187.
Cyprian: MS 89.
Basil the Great: MS 926 and St. Gall, Stadtbibliothek, MS 317.
Gregory of Nazianzus: MS 89.
John Chrysostom: MS 103.
Athanasius: MS 90.
38
For a precise listing, see Sara Janner and Romain Jurot, Die handschriftliche
berlieferung der Werke des heiligen Augustinus 9: Schweiz. Teil 1: Werkverzeichnis, Teil
2: Verzeichnis nach Bibliotheken. Unter Mitarbeit von Dorothea Weber. sterreichische
Akademie der Wissenschaften, Verffentlichungen der Kommission zur Herausgabe des
Corpus der lateinischen Kirchenvter 1920, Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen
Klasse 688 (Vienna, 2001), 2:119158.

Captions for Plates

1. Map. Early Medieval Libraries and Scriptoria. Map designed by David
Arthur.
2. St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 109, p. 5. Copied in St. Gall between 760
and 780.
Jerome, In psalmos (159): Incipit dispositio sancti Hieronimi presbiteri
super Psalmos.
3. St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 110, p. 307. The Egino-Codex. Patristic
miscellany, ca. 800.
An excerpt from Augustines Enarrationes in Psalmos: Sancti Augustini
principium in decadis.
4. St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 162, p. 3. Time of Abbot Grimald (841
872).
Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos (135). Beginning of Augustines
Commentary on the First Psalm: Beatus vir qui non abiit in consilio
impiorum.
5. St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 728, p. 8. Breviarium librorum, or main
library catalogue.
Listing of Augustines works: De libris sancti Augustini episcopi.
6. St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 728, p. 9. Breviarium librorum, or main
library catalogue.
Listing of Augustines works, followed by listings of works by Ambrose,
Prosper, and Bede.

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Plate 1a

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Plate 1b

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Plate 2

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Plate 3

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Plate 4

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Plate 5

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Plate 6

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The Authority of the Fathers

21

Augustines works has been carried out with some forethought.39 The monks
seem to have been most interested in works that assisted in the study of
Scripture. What monasticism sought [in the works of the Latin Fathers],
writes Jean Leclercq, was all that could be helpful in leading the
monastic life.40
The treatment of Augustines Enarrationes in Psalmos, or Expositions on
the Book of Psalms, provides a prime example. It is the longest of his major
works, written between 392 and 418. Today it is probably the one of his
books that is least read.41 Not so in the ninth century, for the recitation of the
Psalms was an integral feature of communal Benedictine life. The text has
already been seen at St. Gall in MS 110, a patristic miscellany (see Plate 3).
There it appears in excerpt form, along with selections from works by other
Fathers.
By the middle of the ninth century, however, such collections of excerpts
were being augmented by more scholarly books. Abbot Grimald directed the
scriptorium in a series of ambitious projects, including Augustines
Enarrationes in Psalmos (see Plate 4). Numerous scribes worked on the
lengthy text, and in its final form it comprised six volumes: MSS 162166;
the last volume is missing.42 This page from MS 162 shows part of
Augustines Exposition on the First Psalm. The books were intended to be
used in study. Marginal notations in the hand of Ekkehard IV (ca. 980ca.
1060) are to be seen in several of them.43 Grimald added to the deposit of
39

For a fuller account of these manuscripts, see Bernice M. Kaczynski, Reading and
Writing Augustine in Medieval St. Gall, in Insignis sophiae arcator: Medieval Latin Studies
in Honour of Michael Herren on his 65th Birthday, ed. Gernot R. Wieland, Carin Ruff, and
Ross G. Arthur, Publications of The Journal of Medieval Latin 6 (Turnhout, 2006), pp. 107
23.
40
The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, p. 98. The impulse to collect texts that
furthered monastic spirituality also led to the translation of some Greek; see Bernice M.
Kaczynski, A Ninth-Century Latin Translation of Mark the Hermit's Peri Nomou
Pneumatikou (Dresden, Schsische Landesbibliothek, Mscr. A 145b), Byzantinische
Zeitschrift 89 (1996), 37988 and plates XIIIXIV.
41
Michael Cameron, Enarrationes in Psalmos, in Augustine through the Ages, pp. 290
96, at p. 290.
42
For the manuscripts, see Janner and Jurot, Die handschriftliche berlieferung, 1:4748,
2:13233; and Bruckner, Scriptoria, 3:7677.
43
MSS 162, 164, 166. See Bruckner, Scriptoria, 3:7677. For more on Ekkehard IVs
marginal notations, see Peter Osterwalder, Ekkehardus glossator. Zu den Glossierungen
Ekkehards IV. im Liber Benedictionum, in Variorum Munera Florum. Latinitt als prgende
Kraft mittelalterlicher Kultur. Festschrift fr Hans F. Haefele, ed. A. Reinle, L. Schmugge,
and P. Stotz (Sigmaringen, 1985), pp. 7382.

22

Kaczynski

works on the Psalms with Cassiodoruss Expositio in Psalmos, or

Commentary on the Psalms, in three volumes: MSS 201202.44
(Cassiodoruss commentary relied upon Augustines, as he acknowledged in
his preface.) The production of two such comprehensive series represented a
considerable investment of the abbeys resources. And such an investment
shows a commitment on the part of its scholars to engage intensively with
the Psalms and their early Christian interpreters.
What of Augustines more well-known works, the Confessions, and The
City of God? To us, the Confessions is Augustines masterpiece, the most
familiar of all his books.45 Yet in the monasteries of early Europe, relatively
few people seem to have read it. Its manuscript tradition is sparse.46 In the
Stiftsbibliothek today, traces of the text survive in only one ninth-century
codex. MS 156, pp. 16264, includes a fragment of Confessions 9.2326.47
(The manuscript otherwise contains excerpts from Augustines sermons.)
References to the Confessions in two of the ninth-century booklists attest to
its presence in the medieval library.48 The transmission of The City of God,
on the other hand, was very full, both at St. Gall and elsewhere in the
Carolingian realms. Because the work was long, it was transmitted in several
different forms. The complete text might be copied in multiple codices, parts
of it might be contained in a single codex, or as frequently happened
parts might appear in collections of excerpts. At St. Gall the monks had
access to the work in all of these forms.49 Notker the Stammerer admired it
greatly.50
Might there have been, in the Carolingian world, pockets of production
for certain authors or texts? The distribution of Augustine manuscripts is
44

See Bruckner, Scriptoria, 3:8182.

For an overview of the reception, see Frederick Van Fleteren, Confessiones, in
Augustine through the Ages, pp. 22732, at p. 227.
46
Michael M. Gorman, The Manuscript Traditions of St. Augustines Major Works, in
The Manuscript Traditions of the Works of St. Augustine (Florence, 2001), pp. 31546, at
p. 336.
47
See Janner and Jurot, Die handschriftliche berlieferung, 1:36, 2:13031; and
Bruckner, Scriptoria, 3:75.
48
Lehmann, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge, 1:74, 84.
49
For a listing of St. Gall manuscripts that contain the text or portions of it, see Janner
and Jurot, Die handschriftliche berlieferung, 1:3335. See also Gorman, A Survey of the
Oldest Manuscripts of St. Augustines De civitate dei, in The Manuscript Traditions,
pp. 17890, at p. 183.
50
Notatio, line 15, ed. Rauner, Notkers des Stammlers Notatio de illustribus uiris,
p. 59. For further discussion of the transmission of the Confessions and The City of God, see
Kaczynski, Reading and Writing Augustine, pp. 11421.
45

The Authority of the Fathers

23

certainly spottier than one might initially suppose. The cathedral school of
Laon, for instance, had large holdings of his works, but it was without some
of the titles most familiar to readers today. It did not have the Confessions,
The City of God, or On Christian Doctrine.51 If there were surprising gaps,
there were also surprising concentrations. Michael Gorman observes that
early manuscripts of the Confessions were limited to the area of the Loire
Valley and to centres like Tours, Ferrires, and Auxerre.52 He remarks on the
great diversity of surviving book collections: St. Galls collection of
Augustines major works, he finds, is the most complete.53 St. Galls
collection is exceptional, too, in that it preserves copies of some works rarely
found elsewhere.54
A review of the St. Gall scriptorium, then, points to a clear shift in
priorities before and after the middle of the ninth century. In the first period,
the concern was to secure the text of the Bible, and the emphasis was on
Jerome, for his textual scholarship and exegesis.55 A few manuscripts were
dedicated to other Fathers, but collections of excerpts were more common.
The second period saw the production of a greater number of dedicated
volumes representing a greater variety of authors. It also saw the completion
of more ambitious projects, such as the set of six volumes that comprised
Augustines commentary on the Psalms, and the set of three that made up the
commentary of Cassiodorus. This seems to reflect a more intense and
scholarly engagement with the thought and works of the early Church
Fathers. It was during this period as well that Notker the Stammerer
composed his bibliographical guide to patristic literature.
A comparison of St. Gall with other monasteries, moreover, raises the
possibility that there were regional differences in the provision of patristic
texts. It therefore becomes more and more difficult to see the Carolingians as
people who simply inherited or received some well-defined tradition.56

51

John J. Contreni, The Cathedral School of Laon from 850 to 930: Its Manuscripts and
Masters (Munich, 1978), p. 75.
52
The Manuscript Traditions of St. Augustines Major Works, p. 336.
53
Ibid.
54
De musica, for instance; see Janner and Jurot, Die handschriftliche berlieferung, 1:9,
80.
55
See also Bernice M. Kaczynski, Edition, Translation, and Exegesis: The Carolingians
and the Bible, in "The Gentle Voices of Teachers": Aspects of Learning in the Carolingian
Age, ed. Richard E. Sullivan (Columbus, OH, 1995), pp. 17185 and frontispiece.
56
Why do so many scholars seem to subscribe to uniform paradigms for the period? See
Richard E. Sullivan, The Carolingian Age: Reflections on Its Place in the History of the

24

Kaczynski

They exercised choices about the books they would copy, and their choices
had consequences.
At St. Gall the evidence of the manuscripts is complemented by a series
of ninth-century library catalogues.57 The main catalogue, or Breviarium
librorum, was drawn up in the middle of the ninth century, with a series of
marginal notes added in about 880. The notes comment on the books and
their borrowers, and they remind us that an interest in the Fathers extended
beyond the monastery walls. For instance, among the borrowers were King
Charles III and his wife Richardis. Each had taken a volume of Gregory the
Greats homilies, and Richardis also had a copy of Jerome on the Prophets.58
A second catalogue listed books acquired under Abbot Grimald; a third,
books commissioned from the scriptorium for the library by Abbot Hartmut.
The private libraries of two abbots were registered in a fourth and fifth. The
lists of books acquired for the monastery library by Grimald and Hartmut
confirm the impression of the surviving manuscripts, for the dominant
author in each is Augustine.59 The private libraries of the abbots, on the other
hand, included few patristic texts.60
Medieval library catalogues are naturally attractive to scholars. One of
the most interesting recent discussions is that of Rosamond McKitterick,
who draws attention to the role of the catalogues in shaping contemporary
definitions of knowledge.61 Ninth-century librarians attempted to standardize
the catalogues, and began to arrange their contents in the order of Bibles,
church writers, secular writers. Within these classifications, however, the
order of the patristric authors remains a puzzle. At St. Gall, the main
catalogue, or Breviarium librorum, gives them in this sequence: Gregory
the Great, Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, Prosper, Bede, Isidore, Origen,

Middle Ages, Speculum 64 (1989), 267306, at p. 305, who stresses the cultural plurality
that characterized the Carolingian world.
57
See n. 24, above.
58
Lehmann, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge, 1:7273.
59
The Breviarium librorum presumably included all the books copied or acquired up to
the time of its composition, whereas the lists of Grimald and Hartmut reflected more recent
acquisitions: Lehmann, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge, 1:8286. See also Duft, Die
Handschriften-Katalogisierung, pp. 18*22*.
60
Lehmann, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge, 1:8689. See also Duft, Die
Handschriften-Katalogisierung, pp. 22*26*.
61
The Carolingians and the Written Word, pp. 165210. See also Wolfgang Milde, Der
Bibliothekskatalog des Klosters Murbach aus dem 9. Jahrhundert. Ausgabe und
Untersuchung von Beziehungen zu Cassiodors Institutiones, Beihefte zum Euphorion,
Zeitschrift fr Literaturgeschichte 4 (Heidelberg, 1968).

The Authority of the Fathers

25

Pelagius, Cassiodorus, Eusebius (see Plates 5 and 6).62 These pages from MS
728 show the listings of works by Augustine, Ambrose, Prosper, and Bede.
But there were different arrangements elsewhere. Scholars sometimes seem
bewildered by the apparently haphazard ordering of the names.63
Perhaps the development of a canon of patristic authors was more
complex than that of other segments of a Carolingian catalogue because it
was more fluid. By the ninth century the order of the biblical books had
settled.64 That canon had been closed. In the same way, the order of classical
authors could be set; the store of classical texts was finite. But the canon of
Latin Fathers was still in the process of formation.65 New names like Bede
and Isidore were being added. Many different scholars took part in the
process, and a consensus emerged over time. The Venerable Bedes list of
four Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory assumed a special status.
In the years to come, the notion that there were four great Fathers of the
West and four of the East would seem almost commonplace.
The most assiduous reader of patristic texts at St. Gall was Notker the
Stammerer, who served as the abbeys librarian and annotated its main
catalogue. In 885 he wrote a handbook that has come to us under the name
Notatio de illustribus viris, or Notation on Famous Men.66 It is the only
critical handbook of patristic writing that we have from the Carolingian
period.67
Notker wrote it in the form of two letters to his pupil Solomon, a newlyordained deacon who would later become bishop of Constance and abbot of
St. Gall. The Notatio sets out a plan for the study of Scriptures and other
religious subjects. It may be that even Notker occasionally wearied of the
Fathers. Though he admired Augustine, he referred several times to his
62

Lehmann, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge, 1:7276.

McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word, pp. 19798.
64
Hans von Campenhausen, Die Entstehung der christlichen Bibel (Tbingen, 1968),
trans. J.A. Baker, The Formation of the Christian Bible (Philadelphia, 1972). More recently,
see Jed Wyrick, The Ascension of Authorship: Attribution and Canon Formation in Jewish,
Hellenistic, and Christian Traditions (Cambridge, MA, 2004).
65
Whereas in the Greek church the canon had closed after Chalcedon; see Patrick Gray,
The Select Fathers: Canonizing the Patristic Past, Studia Patristica 23 (1989), 2136.
66
See n. 25, above.
67
Walter Berschin, Lateinische Literatur aus St. Gallen, in Das Kloster St. Gallen im
Mittelalter, pp. 109117, 24448, at pp. 11314: Notkers Notatio de illustribus viris
represents der einzige Versuch der karolingischen Epoche, die altehrwrdige, auf
Hieronymus zurckgehende Tradition der christlichen Literaturgeschichtsschreibung De viris
illustribus fortzusetzen.
63

26

Kaczynski

countless books, and, indeed, to his thousand other books.68 Notker was
not insensible to the paralysing effect his recitation of so many authors and
so many texts might have on his readers. Near the end of the first letter he
wrote, If you wish to know all the writers of the church, you will consume
yourself in fruitless labour, since from today until the end of the world, there
will always be those who can write useful things.69 For that reason, if not
for any other, it was time to think about closing the canon.
In monasteries, courts, and cathedrals across early Europe, scholars gave
sustained attention to the deposit of patristic materials that had survived
from late antiquity (see Plate 1). The men of the ninth century were
responsible for the production of a remarkable number of new manuscripts
and for the formation, in their own and other institutions, of impressive and
sometimes highly idiosyncratic collections of the writings of the Fathers of
the Church. To a great extent, their actions were governed by their own
priorities: the reading of Sacred Scripture, the conduct of monastic life. Yet
the body of texts they left behind was surprisingly capacious.
There would be another intense phase in the making and gathering of
patristic texts at the end of the eleventh century, and it would continue
through the twelfth.70 The patristic movement of the high Middle Ages was
more broadly based, because it included England as well as the continent.71
68

Notatio, lines 11824, ed. Rauner, Notkers des Stammlers Notatio de illustribus
uiris, p. 63: Augustinus in libris innumeris, quos conscripsit.et in aliis mille libris
ipsius Also Notatio, lines 23233, p. 67: ex innumeris sancti Augustini et aliorum patrum
libris In the early Middle Ages references to Augustines prolixity were not always
intended as compliments; see Steven Muhlberger, The Fifth-Century Chroniclers: Prosper,
Hydatius, and the Gallic Chronicler of 452 (Leeds, 1990), pp. 15859. I am indebted to
Alexander C. Murray for the reference.
69
Notatio, lines 18789, ed. Rauner, Notkers des Stammlers Notatio de illustribus
uiris, p. 65: Quod si omnes scriptores ecclesiasticos scire desideras, inani labore tabescis,
cum hodieque et usque in finem saeculi non desint, qui utilia scribere possint.
70
For a survey of the manuscripts in their cultural context, see Bischoff, Latin
Palaeography, pp. 21223 (From the tenth to the twelfth century). Bischoff observes on
p. 218: The twelfth century marks a second highpoint after the carolingian era for the
transmission of many classical authors & patristic literature
71
Anglo-Saxon book collections seem to have been modest in comparison with those on
the continent. See Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, pp. 5860, and pp. 275342
(Catalogue of Classical and Patristic Authors and Works Composed before AD 700 and
Known in Anglo-Saxon England). Teresa Webber, Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury
Cathedral c. 1075 c.1125 (Oxford, 1992), p. 32, comments: Manuscripts containing
patristic texts, which can be shown to have been copied in, or imported to, England before the
Conquest form only a small proportion of the items in the handlist of manuscripts copied or
present in England before 1100, compiled by H. Gneuss. A similar conclusion is reached by

The Authority of the Fathers

27

By the end of the eleventh century, across Europe, the works of the Fathers,
both in full as well as in collections of extracts, were being subjected to
analytical scrutiny for all sorts of purposes, intellectual and polemical as
well as devotional and ethical.72 Certainly, the later period saw an
expansion of the patristic base for canon law, especially on the continent.73
But the patristic researches of the high Middle Ages, and the patristic studies
of every era since, were, in the first instance, made possible by the work
undertaken in the Carolingian scriptoria.
This essay began with the familiar image of dwarfs seated on the
shoulders of giants, an image confected by Bernard of Chartres. Bernard was
being self-deprecatory, in the graceful manner of his age. To take him
literally, and to see him and his contemporaries as no more than guardians of
an ancient legacy, would be an error. Medieval scholars did not inherit any
sort of tradition. The tradition took shape slowly in the courts and
monasteries, scriptoria and libraries of early Europe. And the process by
which it happened is worth exploring, because it shows us how the thinkers
of the early Middle Ages acted to generate knowledge of the past and, as a
consequence, to establish a canon of authority.
Bernice M. Kaczynski, McMaster University

David Ganz, Anglo-Saxon England, in The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and
Ireland, Vol. 1: To 1640, ed. Elisabeth Leedham-Green and Teresa Webber (Cambridge,
2006), 91108, at pp. 9496.
72
Teresa Webber, The Diffusion of Augustines Confessions in England during the
Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, in The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History
in Honour of Barbara Harvey, ed. John Blair and Brian Golding (Oxford, 1996), pp. 2945,
at p. 41. See also Webber, The Patristic Content of English Book Collections in the Eleventh
Century: Towards a Continental Perspective, in Of the Making of Books. Medieval
Manuscripts, their Scribes and Readers: Essays presented to M.B. Parkes, ed. Pamela
Robinson and Rivkah Zim (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 191205; and Webber, Monastic and
Cathedral Book Collections in the late Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, in The Cambridge
History of Libraries, 1:10925, at pp. 11115.
73
This has probably been the most widely studied aspect of the phenomenon. See Martin
Brett, Canon Law and Litigation: The Century before Gratian, Medieval Ecclesiastical
Studies in Honour of Dorothy M. Owen, ed. M.J. Franklin and C. Harper-Bill (Woodbridge,
1995), pp. 2140.