An Armenian physician at the early tenth-century court of Louis III of Provence? The case of the Autun Glossary

Abstract

At the end of a Carolingian manuscript given to the cathedral church of Autun, in France, sometime between 977 and 1024, is an Armenian-Latin glossary of ninety words, including those for thirty-six body parts. The script is tenth-century and the text probably copied from a prior version. This glossary has provoked interest among Armenianists primarily as testimony to the pronunciation of Armenian. The dialect of the text's informant has been identified, but in other respects he remains anonymous, though it has been suggested that he was a travelling physician. The text thus raises questions about the date, circumstances and purposes of its composition. This article suggests that the likely context for the Armenian informant's presence in the region of Autun was the suite of the Byzantine princess Anna who in c. 900 married Louis III of Provence, whose capital, Vienne, was within easy reach of Autun. Anna's suite most probably included Armenians, since there were Armenians in Constantinople, and she herself may have been of Armenian descent. This putative early tenth-century Armenian presence in the vicinity of Autun occurred not long before the consecration, in 930, in a church at Ta[tacute]ew in eastern Armenia, of paintings that, according to a thirteenth-century Armenian source, were the work of Frankish artists commissioned by Ta[tacute]ew's bishop, and whose iconography and repertory betray links to Carolingian and post-Carolingian art. We know no more about this commission and it would be entirely speculative to suggest a link with the phenomenon of the Autun Glossary. But their temporal propinquity emphasises that the early tenth century was a time of Middle Eastern-Western cultural exchanges, and hints that some of these may still be hidden from us.1 1 This article is based upon a paper delivered at a conference, “Middle Eastern and Islamic Influence on Western Art and Liturgy: Cultural exchanges in late Antiquity and the Middle Ages”, that was held at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, in March 2004. I thank those who participated in the discussion that followed for their comments. I also thank the following: Professor R. I. Moore for his advice and assistance in my preparation of my text; Ms Judy Preece of Print Services, Robinson Library, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, for rendering my sketch maps into good quality maps for reproduction; and Mme Marie-Françoise Poilane for the Bibliothèque Municipale of Autun for permission to publish photographs (provided by the Bibliothèque Municipale of Autun in 2006) of the two pages of the manuscript that contain the Autun Glossary.