The Cura sanitatis Tiberii a Century after Ernst von Dobschütz

Abstract

The Cura sanitatis Tiberii (cst) is generally assumed to be the earliest textual witness to the legend of Veronica’s image of Christ. Attested in manuscripts since the eighth century (the Lucca codex), it was critically edited by Ernst von Dobschütz in 1899 as part of his Christusbilder. Impressive and magisterial, Dobschütz’s cst has been adopted as a point of reference by most modern scholars on Saint Veronica’s legend. More than a century after its publication, however, there are reasons to reassess its reliability and to confront it with the actual texts preserved in manuscripts. During the last three decades, more than ninety new manuscripts of the cst have come to light - over twice the number used by Dobschütz, including two ninth-century and two tenth-century copies; one of the tenth-century manuscripts preserves a version very close to the Lucca text. This paper offers a critique of Dobschütz’s edition, arising from the ongoing project of a new collation of cst manuscripts.