Detail map of Speyer, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany,Innere Stadt, Wien, Wien, Austria Overview map of Speyer, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany,Innere Stadt, Wien, Wien, Austria

A: Speyer, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany, B: Innere Stadt, Wien, Wien, Austria

The Codex Spirensis, of which Only a Single Leaf of the Original Survives

Circa 860 CE to 920 CE
Bodleian Library MS. Canon. Misc. 378. Cosmogrpahia Scoti, Notitia dignitatum. Etc., dated 1436.

Bodleian Library MS. Canon. Misc. 378. Cosmogrpahia Scoti, Notitia dignitatum. Etc., dated 1436.

The Codex Spirensis, an illuminated Carolingian copy written in the middle Rhine area of Germany in the late ninth or early tenth century, of a late antique manuscript, and discovered at the Cathedral Library at Speyer in the fifteenth century, no longer survives except for a single leaf (Thompson 11). Because of the copies made of this codex in the fifteenth century, the codex preserved thirteen different texts, of which perhaps the most significant were the Notitia Dignitatum, Dicuil's De mensura orbis terrae, and the Anonymous, De rebus bellicis

The four primary copies of the Codex Spirensis are:

(C). The copy made for the bibliophile Pietro Donato, bishop of Padua, in January 1436, while Donato was presiding over the Council of Basel. Now at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. This is Bodleian MS. Canon. Misc. 378, of which a digital facsimile is available from the Bodleian at this link. This is the earliest copy of this text to survive complete.

(P) A copy in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Cod. Paris. lat. 9661).

(V) A copy written in 1484 and first found at Speyer where it was copied in 1529 for Cardinal Bernhard von Cles (Clesius), Archbishop of Trento, who visited the city that year. The manuscript can later be traced to Salzburg, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century to Vienna (Cod. Vindob.lat. 303). As a result of the peace settlement of Europe in 1919 it was transferred from Austria to Italy, and is now at Trento.

In June 2017 Dr. Ingo G. Maier informed me of the extensive research on the single leaf referrred to by Thompson published as:

Maier, I.G. & Zäh, H.,
Das Itinerarium Antonini: Eine Abschrift aus der Bibliothek Konrad Peutingers und ein 
Fragment von deren Speyerer Vorlage: in Laube, R. & Zäh, H. (eds.), Gesammeltes Gedächtnis. 
Konrad Peutinger und die kulturelle Überlieferung im 16. Jahrhundert. (Luzern, Quaternio
2016), pp.132-137. This may be read online at http://notitiadignitatum.org/602-augs.pdf.

(M) A copy made in June 1550 for the Elector Palatine of the Rhine Otto Heinrich. This had been offered to the prince instead of the original. In 1552 the prince acquired the original Codex Spirensis, and it remained in his family collection until disappearing mysteriously. It is now preserved at the Munich Staatsbibliothek.

Thompson, A Roman Reformer and Inventor. Being a New Text of the Treatise De Rebus Bellicis with a translation and introduction (1952) 6-12.

(This entry was last revised on 06-12-2017.)

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