I. The Interpolated Hispana and the Origins of Pseudo-Isidore

Abstract

This article aims to resolve persistent questions about the date and early manuscript tradition of Pseudo-Isidore by investigating the relationship between the Pseudo-Isidorian collection and its most important formal source, long known to scholarship as the Hispana Gallica Augustodunensis, or the Autun Hispana. This investigation reveals that the Pseudo-Isidorian forgeries were assembled from a pre-existing collection of components - including the Autun Hispana and an early dossier of papal letter forgeries - on two occasions, by two distinct teams. At least some of these components were developed by Louis the Pious's opponents at Corbie, as Klaus Zechiel- Eckes has argued. Paschasius Radbertus was almost certainly involved at this early stage, which likely extended from the early to the later 830s. A series of distractions and setbacks, however - including Wala's exile to Bobbio after the failed coup in 834; Louis the Pious's own death in 840; and the subsequent Carolingian civil war from 840 to 843 - prevented any widespread use or circulation of the forgeries. lt was left to a later generation of scholars and legal theorists to blend the papal letter forgeries with the Autun Hispana, and, finally, to realize the full Pseudo- Isidorian collection. This was done by two distinct and largely independent assembly teams, working from a common pool of components, most probably during the pontificate of Nicholas I (858-867). The unusually diverse early manuscript tradition of the forgeries reflects these two separate efforts to put the full collection of Pseudo-Isidore into circulation. One assembly team, responsible for the A/B recension of the Pseudo-lsidorian forgeries, appears to have worked at Corbie. The location of their counterparts, responsible for the A 1 recension, is impossible to determine, though two key early manuscripts have been associated with diocesan centers.