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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 March 2016
Modern knowledge of the grammarian Consentius’ De barbarismis et metaplasmis, a work valuable for the study of the Latin language, dates back to a relatively recent past: it was only in 1817 that its editio princeps was published by Ph.C. Buttmann, just a few years after the legal scholar A.W. Cramer came across a mention of the then unknown treatise in a ninth-century MS in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek of Munich, numbered Clm 14666. Based on this solitary manuscript, H. Keil published the short treatise in the fifth volume of his Grammatici Latini. With no little enthusiasm did W.M. Lindsay announce his unearthing of what, in his own words, had ‘long been a “desideratum”, a second authority’ for this text, in the MS F 15 III d at the Universitätsbibliothek Basel; this was followed by E.O. Winstedt's complete collation and M. Niedermann's critical edition. After about a century now there comes to light a third authority, surprisingly enough in a codex which has enjoyed such fame in the past decades that one might wonder how Consentius could have gone unnoticed in it for so long: this is the eleventh-century MS of Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana Lat. Z. 497 (= 1811), in which the De barbarismis et metaplasmis is contained on fols. 84vb 39 - 90va 39; moreover, a so-far-unnoticed quotation from it (32.9-14), together with one from Consentius’ De nomine et uerbo (Consent. gramm. V 353.6-7), is found on fol. 41vb 16–21 of the same manuscript in a famous grammatical florilegium. The codex, written in Romanesque minuscule and probably originating in Rome, is regarded as a handbook of liberal arts designed by Lawrence Archbishop of Amalfi, formerly a monk at Montecassino, thereafter a teacher in Florence and Rome, where he died in about 1049. Based on palaeographical evidence, F.L. Newton rightfully assumed as an exemplar for this codex a MS in Beneventan script, as some features can be detected that betray the scribal imitation of that typical South Italian script, namely the use of the distinctive abbreviation for eius as ‘ei in ligature with stroke through the descender of the i’, the Beneventan ti ligature for the assibilated sound, and the 2-shaped Beneventan interrogation sign, to which I would add the typical abbreviation for in as a long i cut by a horizontal stroke and the confusion of a and t. Interestingly enough, none of these features is found on fols. 66–95, those containing the new Consentius: from a codicological point of view, this is an autonomous section, written by a different scribe from the rest of the MS and preserving some grammatical texts generally attributed to insular authors, such as Smaragdus’ Liber in partibus Donati (fols. 66–81vb) and part of the compilation entitled Pauca de barbarismo (fols. 81vb - 84vb), which precedes the De barbarismis et metaplasmis; not surprisingly, the new text of Consentius displays numerous features of the Insular script, such as the symbols for enim, autem, eius, est, nihil and et. On this basis it is most likely that this whole section was never included in the Beneventan exemplar, but was added at the time and place of copying of our MS in order to enrich the grammatical content.
I should like to thank Wolfgang de Melo for patiently reading and commenting on an earlier version of this article. The expertise of Giulia Ammannati and Ernesto Stagni has been crucial for addressing palaeographical and stemmatic issues: to them goes my sincere gratitude. I also wish to thank the anonymous referee and Bruce Gibson for helpful suggestions.
1 See e.g. J.N. Adams, The Regional Diversification of Latin 200 BC - AD 600 (Cambridge, 2007), 203-5 and 244-50.
2 Ph.C. Buttmann, Ars Consentii v. c. de barbarismis et metaplasmis (Berlin, 1817).
3 This MS, which I shall refer to as M, is now available online on the website of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek at http://bildsuche.digitale-sammlungen.de/index.html?c=viewer&lv=1&bandnummer=bsb00082357&pimage=00001&suchbegriff=&l=de/.
4 H. Keil (Leipzig, 1868), 5.386-404.
5 Lindsay, W.M., ‘A new MS of Consentius’, Berliner philologische Wochenschrift 24 (1904), 283.Google Scholar This MS, which I shall refer to as B, is now available online on the Swiss e-codices website, at http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/ubb/F-III-0015d/.
6 Winstedt, E.O., ‘A Bâle MS of Consentius’, AJPh 26 (1905), 22–31 Google Scholar.
7 M. Niedermann, Consentii Ars de barbarismis et metaplasmis (Neuchâtel, 1937). All my references to the text of the De barbarismis et metaplasmis are given according to the page and line in Niedermann's edition.
8 I shall refer to this MS as V. On it see the recent article of S. Ammirati, ‘Intorno al Festo Farnesiano (Neap. IV A 3) e ad alcuni manoscritti di contenuto profano conservati presso la Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana’, Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae XIV (Vatican City, 2007), 7-93, at 48-51; for the most detailed description with bibliography see C. Zanatta, ‘Astronomia e astrologia medievale latina nella Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. Fondo’, Atti. Classe di scienze fisiche, matematiche e naturali. Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 162 (2004), 725-1006, at 887-950; a fundamental study is Newton, F.L., ‘Tibullus in two grammatical florilegia of the Middle Ages’, TAPhA 93 (1962), 253–86Google Scholar, at 258-80.
9 The inscriptio (De barbarismo et metaplasmis) is in minuscule script and does not mention the author; the subscriptio, which indeed names Consentius, is transliterated in Greek: these may be some reasons why this work had never been detected here before.
10 Newton (n. 8), 260-1.
11 But P. Supino Martini, Roma e l'area grafica Romanesca (secoli X-XII) (Alessandria, 1987), 128 n. 74 remarks that the ti ligature and the 2-shaped interrogation sign are not exceptional in the Romanesque minuscule.
12 Cf. E.A. Lowe, The Beneventan Script. A History of the South Italian Minuscule (Oxford, 1914), 204.
13 For example, aritiora instead of tritiora in an extract from Mart. Cap. 3.308 on fol. 25rb 28; cf. Lowe (n. 12), 133.
14 Cf. M.-H. Jullien, F. Perelman, Clavis des auteurs latins du Moyen Age: Territoire français 735-987 (Turnhout, 1994), 280. This unpublished work is one of the main sources of indirect tradition for Consentius’ De barbarismis et metaplasmis. The others are, to the best of my knowledge, the so-called Donatus Ortigraphus (ed. J. Chittenden, Turnhout, 1982); Cruindmelus’ Ars metrica (ed. J. Huemer, Vienna, 1883); Sedulius Scottus’ In Donati Artem maiorem (ed. B. Löfstedt, Turnhout, 1977); Murethach's In Donati Artem maiorem (ed. L. Holtz, Turnhout, 1977); the so-called Ars Laureshamensis: expositio in Donatum maiorem (ed. B. Löfstedt, Turnhout, 1977); a collection of excerpts contained in the famous MS Par. Lat. 7530 (fols. 125v-127r) and partially published in F.A. Eckstein, Anecdota Parisina Rhetorica (Halle, 1852), 26-9; the Adbreuiatio artis grammaticae of Ursus Beneventanus, contained in the MS of Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, 1086; the grammatical florilegium quoted on p. 2. I intend to investigate how the direct and the indirect tradition are related in the new critical edition of Consentius’ De barbarismis et metaplasmis that I plan to produce. Some valuable observations are already in Niedermann (n. 7), xl-xlvii, although he only knew the Anecdota Parisina, the Pauca de barbarismo (which he referred to as Clemens Scotus) and Cruindmelus.
15 Regrettably, the quotation from Consentius in the florilegium on fol. 41vb is too short to allow a detailed textual comparison between it and the full text in V. None the less, that the florilegium did not draw on V as its source is made clear by the errors of the latter that the former avoids: at 32.13, for example, where Consentius quotes Verg. Aen. 1.744 pluuiasque Hyadas (not G. 1.138, as Niedermann thought), the florilegium's reading pluuiasque yadas is surely more correct than V's plouiasque aquam addas.
16 Cf. W.M. Lindsay, Notae Latinae: An Account of Abbreviation in Latin Mss. of the Early Minuscule Period (c. 700-850) (Cambridge, 1915), 114: ‘The true “inter” symbol would easily be omitted, as if an obliterated i longa, by a transcriber.’
17 For an account of spelling variants in the other MSS, see Niedermann (n. 7), xiv-xviii and xxii-xxiv.
18 As to the list of the passages in which Niedermann (n. 7), xxv-xxvii finds a corruption in the archetype, V agrees with BM in all cases but two, where a further corruption is to be seen in the Venice MS: at 1.4 V has constant instead of BM's conueniunt (most probably the correct reading is Buttmann's proueniunt or Keil's eueniunt); at 1.18, where BM show the wrong order ad detractionem et adiectionem, V leaves out et adiectionem.
19 I shall not list the variants not relevant to the case.
20 Needless to say, as the agreement of M and V against B does not necessarily represent the reading of the original, for the reading of the archetype may be corrupt, or said agreement may be a polygenic error, things are never quite so mechanical and thought must be applied to the textual choice. Here I provide a limited sample of explicative cases.
