Corpus subscriptionum: Verzeichnis der Beglaubigungen von spätantiken und frühmittelalterlichen Textabschriften (saec. IV–VIII) by Kirsten Wallenwein

Abstract

Reviewed by: Corpus subscriptionum: Verzeichnis der Beglaubigungen von spätantiken und frühmittelalterlichen Textabschriften (saec. IV–VIII) by Kirsten Wallenwein Aaron Pelttari Corpus subscriptionum: Verzeichnis der Beglaubigungen von spätantiken und frühmittelalterlichen Textabschriften (saec. IV–VIII) Kirsten Wallenwein Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann Verlag, 2017. Pp. xvi + 402. ISBN 978-3-777-21714-7 How do you control a text? In manuscript societies, the orphaned word found many kinds of guardians. Remarkably, [End Page 436] in Late Antiquity this included some of Rome's most prominent men, who spent their time correcting Latin texts. Sometimes they worked alone with their texts, and sometimes with a teacher of grammar or rhetoric. We know about their activity because later scribes copied out the notes that they appended to the end of their books, notes that highlighted their own names and illustrious positions. For example, a handful of manuscripts of Livy preserve the following two subscriptions for books 1–9 (with some important differences): Nicomachus Flavianus vir clarissimus ter praefectus urbis emendavi apud Hennam (I, Nicomachus Flavianus, vir clarissimus, three times prefect of the city, have corrected [the text] near Henna); Victorianus vir clarissimus emendabam domnis Symmachis (I, Victorianus, vir clarissimus corrected it for the lord Symmachi). The families of Symmachus and Nicomachus are known to everyone who studies the late antique West, and it happens that one of the extant letters of Quintus Aurelius Symmachus mentions a request for a complete copy of Livy delayed because of the diligence of its correctors (Symm. ep. 9.13). These are outstanding actors, and it is not surprising that the Latin subscriptions have attracted a great deal of scholarly interest: they offer a window onto ancient scribal practices and, in some cases, elite cultural posturing. However, the subscriptions are also a byword for misunderstandings of Late Antiquity. Otto Jahn introduced much of that misunderstanding with a brilliant but flawed edition of twenty-three of those subscriptions that he published in 1851. Jahn did his best to ignore the Christian examples, and he concluded that the subscriptions were evidence of a reactionary classicism promoted by pagan intellectual elites at the end of the fourth century. We have Kirsten Wallenwein to thank for the fact that we can now finally see the evidence clearly. Wallenwein's new edition includes the Latin subscriptions extant from 395–800, along with an extensive introduction; it is a revised version of her dissertation submitted to Heidelberg University in 2014. The sheer labor involved caused more than one scholar to leave similar projects unfinished. Wallenwein notes that the great medievalist Ludwig Traube left behind 300 pages of material (now lost) on the subscriptions and that Bruno A. Müller had planned to publish an edition of them (10–11). Likewise, although James Zetzel published twenty-seven of the subscriptions in some detail, he put off the full, critical edition that he once planned. Therefore, it is a real accomplishment that Wallenwein has now edited the extant subscriptions to eighty-eight Latin texts, in which seventy-six subscribers are named, from 363 manuscripts, of which she calculates that twenty-three are autographic (133). Wallenwein offers an introduction, a critical text, German translation, and bibliography for each subscription, as well as full indices. A very useful feature of her book is that she includes twenty color images of different manuscripts as well as a single black and white image for each set of subscriptions. The introduction comprises a short section on the term "subscription," another short one on previous bibliography, a long section on the subscriptions organized by location, and then a short conclusion. This organization highlights the importance of Rome and Ravenna as centers of scholarship and text transmission, but it leaves most questions associated with the subscriptions unanswered. [End Page 437] The only real discussion of the contemporary Greek subscriptions comes from a quotation of Guglielmo Cavallo to the effect that the Greek ones are usually anonymous whereas many Latin inscriptions foreground the name of the subscriber (18). Most of the subscriptions survive because they were copied by generations of scribes. Some of them were copied in order to preserve a record of the text's history; others were copied mistakenly...