A remarkable survival of monastic Romanesque book culture, this important twelfth-century copy of Origen’s homilies on the Bible traces its provenance to Lambach Abbey and is illustrated with an exceptional full-page drawing as well as many painted initials.

126 folios on parchment (good quality, evenly finished, but rather thick and slightly velvety, occasional use of cut-offs indicated by irregularities in the lower corners and edges, e.g., ff. 55, 57, 58; some original holes, ff. 70, 106, and sewing, f. 102), modern foliation in ink in the upper outer corner of rectos, last blank cancelled, first blank now serving as the pastedown, complete [collation: i⁸ (1, pastedown; 3 and 6, ff. 2 and 5, are singletons), ii⁸ (3 and 6, ff. 10 and 13, are singletons), iii⁸, iv⁸ (3 and 6, ff. 26 and 29, are singletons), v–xv⁸, xvi⁸ (-8 cancelled blank)], signatures in Roman numerals in the lower center of final pages (now mostly erased but still visible), ruled very lightly in lead or brown crayon, single full-length vertical bounding lines, some prickings remain in upper and outer margins (justification: 192–190 × 116–112 mm), written by two scribes in dark brown ink in a bold square twelfth-century minuscule using the punctus flexus in twenty-eight long lines, some flourished descenders in lower margins, headings in red, sometimes in capitals, diplé in outer margins, capitals touched in red, many explicits and incipits touched in yellow, a few capitals touched in yellow or decorated with fringes of red dots, some nota marks in red, nine three- to two-line red initials, two including whimsical faces (ff. 31 and 110v), some heightened in yellow, FIFTEEN LARGE DECORATED INITIALS, eight- to two-line, drawn in black outline and infilled with vines on yellow and red grounds, one incorporating a dragon (f. 80v), marginal ornaments, perhaps trial sketches, added in the lower margins of f. 86v in pen and f. 120v painted in red and yellow, FULL-PAGE DRAWING on the final page, some stains and signs of use, lower margin of f. 99 cut away, a few early marginal notes slightly cropped, generally in remarkably sound condition. Bound in a FIFTEENTH-CENTURY BINDING of substantial wooden boards extending slightly beyond the bookblock, sewn on three thongs pegged into the boards, covered with white tawed leather with original sewn joints, original tab of the type also found on earlier Lambach bindings at the top of the spine (corresponding lower tab cut away), old (restored) clasps and catches fastening back to front, medieval title-label and shelfmark on upper cover, title written in two lines on paper label (35 × 91 mm), now very rubbed, shelfmark “B.29” in red on a vellum label (21 × 51 mm), paper title label (possibly sixteenth-century) at top of spine, traces of another label removed near bottom of spine, binding slightly rubbed and wormed but sound, housed in a substantial modern black cloth and red leather protective box labelled, “Origen: Homilies on Genesis and Exodus. Upper Austria, Wilhering Abbey? c. 1160–75.” Complete and in remarkably sound condition with parchment generally fresh and well preserved, with occasional natural flaws, minor staining, and signs of use. Dimensions 260 mm × 165 mm,

Provenance
(1) Evidence of the script and decoration suggests a date in the third quarter of the twelfth century, c. 1150–1175. The manuscript was certainly at Lambach Abbey by the fifteenth century, as demonstrated by the evidence of the binding; it includes a Lambach pressmark, “B.29,” written in red on a label on the front cover. It was included in Felix Resch’s unpublished catalogue of the library from the second half of the eighteenth century and assigned the shelfmark “LX.” Like other Lambach books from this period, it does not appear in the early thirteenth-century catalogue of the abbey library. Holter, in his edition of the catalogue, lists the manuscript twice: first (p. 274) as possibly identifiable with no. 115, “Remigius super Genesim,” an identification that seems unlikely since Origen is clearly named as the author in the rubric on f. 1v; and again (p. 275) as no. 144, among thirty-six early manuscripts from Lambach not included in either of the two early thirteenth-century book lists from the abbey (Holter 1954). Lambach Abbey continues as a Benedictine monastery, and many of its medieval manuscripts remain in the abbey library, although some volumes were sold during the 1920s and 1930s.

(2) Sotheby’s, 19 December 1932, lot 73; and 23 March 1936, lot 109, with other manuscripts from Lambach (as recorded in the Schoenberg Database).

(3) Sotheby’s, 23 June 1987, lot 75, from a private collection in Zurich.

(4) Martin Schøyen (b. 1940), Oslo and London, whose collection has been described as the largest private manuscript collection formed in the twentieth century; Schøyen Collection, MS 21, his small bookplate inside the back cover; deaccessioned May 2010.

(5) Private European Collection.

Text
Inside front cover and f. 1, notes on biblical topics added in the thirteenth century; ff. 1–87, Origen, Homiliae in Genesim; ff. 1–1v, chapter list, incipit, “De initio creaturarum dei, De archa noe … De benedictionibus patriarchum”; f. 1v, text, rubric, Incipit liber omeliarum Origenis ad Amantium in Genesim, incipit, “In principio fecit deus cȩlum et terram. Quid est omnium principium … Filios patris sui quasi in morali loco posuimus,” explicit, Explicit liber omeliarum Origenis ad Amantium in Genesim (Stegmüller 1950–1989, no. 6170); ff. 87–126, Origen, Homiliae in Exodum; ff. 87–87v, chapter list, rubric, Incipiunt capitula libri Exodi, incipit, “Nomina filiorum Israelis qui ingressi sunt in Egiptum … De his qui offeruntur ad tabernaculum,” explicit, Expliciunt capitula; f. 87v, text, rubric, Incipit liber Exodi, incipit, “Videtur mihi unusquisque sermo … ipse nobis revelare dignetur per dominum nostrum Iesum Christum cui est honor et gloria in sęcula seculorum, Amen” (Stegmüller, no. 6174); ff. 125v–126, notes on biblical topics added in the thirteenth century; f. 126v, full-page drawing with a quotation from Theodulus, Ecloga.

Illumination
A remarkably complete vestige of twelfth-century monastic book culture, this manuscript preserves Origen of Alexandria’s Homilies on Genesis and Homilies on Exodus in the Latin translation of Rufinus of Aquileia. Probably copied at the Benedictine Abbey of Saints Mary and Kilian at Lambach in Upper Austria, c. 1150–1175, it emerges from the cloistered world of learned monastic biblical study before the later commercialization and standardization of the Bible in the thirteenth century. Its format, script, decoration, and binding all transmit the intellectual energy of twelfth-century Lambach, propelled by the influential Hirsau reform and its renewed culture of biblical and patristic study.

Origen’s importance to the history of Christian exegesis is difficult to overstate. A teacher at Alexandria and Caesarea, he was the first Christian theologian to develop a systematic approach to the interpretation of Scripture, and his biblical commentaries and homilies profoundly shaped later medieval thought. Although much of his Greek corpus was lost or condemned, his works remained influential in the Latin West through translations such as those by Rufinus. The present manuscript thus preserves not only a major patristic text but also a witness to the twelfth-century monastic revival of early Christian biblical learning as part of major reforms initiated by the Benedictine house in Hirsau in the late eleventh century. The decoration is restrained but highly expressive, complementing the intellectual rigor of the text, with fifteen large Romanesque white-vine initials, painted in red and yellow and drawn in bold black outline, that mark the divisions of the text. Smaller red initials include whimsical faces, revealing the liveliness of the artist’s hand. Particularly intriguing is the full-page drawing on the final leaf: a double-headed dragon formed from interlaced vine stems, accompanied by a second dragon sketch in the margin and a verse from Theodulus’s Ecloga. Its function remains uncertain, but it may have served as a model sheet for other decorative designs, making it an unusually early and important survival of this type.

The manuscript’s association with Lambach is exceptionally strong. It was certainly at the abbey by the fifteenth century, when it received its surviving binding of white tawed leather over wooden boards, complete with a medieval title label and the Lambach pressmark “B.29” on the upper cover. It was later recorded in Felix Resch’s eighteenth-century catalogue of the Lambach library under the shelfmark Cml LX. Although the use of punctus flexus has raised the possibility of a Cistercian exemplar, perhaps connected with nearby Wilhering, the manuscript’s decoration and continuous Lambach provenance make Lambach itself the most convincing place of origin. Complete, substantially preserved, and still in its medieval Lambach binding, the manuscript is a rare and exemplary survival of twelfth-century monastic scholarship and book culture. Its combination of an important patristic text, distinctive Romanesque initials, possible model drawing, early monastic provenance, and historic binding makes it an unusually rich object for the study of twelfth-century biblical exegesis, Austrian manuscript production, and the intellectual culture of the medieval monastery.

The fifteen large eight- to two-line decorated white-vine initials, infilled in bright yellow and red, are notably lively (ff. 1v, 21, 27, 35v, 38, 42, 47v, 52, 59, 67v, 70v, 75v, 80v, 88 [two initials]). The artist’s sense of humor is also revealed in the small faces added to the red initials on ff. 31 and 111. The marginal ornaments on ff. 86v (in pen) and 120v (painted in red and yellow) appear to be trial sketches by the artist. The full-page drawing on the final page presents an elaborate design of a double-headed dragon, its body formed from interlaced vine stems winding around and through a rectangular frame, with a sketch of another dragon in the left-hand margin. Such full-page twelfth-century drawings are rare; their function here remains uncertain, but it may have served as a model. The curling foliage and style of the stem bands are similar to those found in a Psalm commentary by Augustine, also from Lambach and decorated by Gottschalk.

LITERATURE
Published: Felix Resch, “Handschriften-Katalog des Stiftes Lambach,” unpublished manuscript, Lambach, Stiftsbibliothek, p. 35; Kurt Holter, “Zum gotischen Bucheinband in Österreich. Die Buchbinderwerkstatt des Stiftes Lambach/OÖ,” Gutenberg-Jahrbuch (1954), pp. 280–89, this manuscript cited p. 283, n. 7, Cml LX (reprinted in Holter, 1996, vol. 2, pp. 324–33); Kurt Holter, “Zwei Lambacher Bibliotheksverzeichnisse des 13. Jahrhunderts,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 64 (1956), pp. 274–75; Kurt Holter, “Die Handschriften und Inkunabeln,” in Die Kunstdenkmäler des Gerichtsbezirkes Lambach. Mit Beiträgen von Kurt Holter und Walter Luger, ed. Erwin Hainisch, Österreichische Kunsttopographie 34, Vienna, 1959, pp. 213–70, at p. 241; Online catalogue of the Martin Schøyen Collection (Online Resources); listed in the Databank of Illuminated Austrian Manuscriptsas Schøyen MS 21 (Online Resources); Lisa Fagin Davis, The Gottshalk Antiphonary, Cambridge, 2000, p. 138, recording MS LX as no longer at Lambach but untraced; Origen, Origenes Werke, Sechster Band: Homilien zum Hexateuch in Rufins Übersetzung, Teil 1: Die Homilien zu Genesis (Homiliae in Genesin), ed. Peter Habermehl, 2nd ed., Berlin and Boston, 2012, p. xxvi, listing this manuscript; Laura Light and Christopher de Hamel with Sandra Hindman, The Idda Collection: Romanesque and Biblical Manuscripts c. 1000 to 1240, Paris and New York, 2015, pp. 189–210, no. 10; Related literature: H. J. Hermann, Diedeutschen romanischen Handschriften, Beschreibendes Verzeichnis der illuminierten Handschriften in Österreich VIII/2, Leipzig, 1926, p. 375; Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catharine Misrahi, New York, 1961; Kurt Holter, “Beiträge zur Geschichte der Stiftsbibliothek Lambach,” Jahrbuch des Musealvreines Wels 15 (1969), pp. 96–123; Ronald E. Heine, trans., Origen, Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, Patristic Series 71, Washington, D.C., 1982; Robert G. Babcock and Lisa Fagin Davis, “Two Romanesque Manuscripts from Lambach,” Codices Manuscripti 15 (1990), pp. 137–147; Robert Gary Babcock, Reconstructinga Medieval Library: Fragments from Lambach, New Haven, 1993; Lisa Fagin Davis, “Two Leaves of the Gottschalk Antiphonary,” Harvard Library Bulletin 5.3 (1994), pp. 38–44; Kurt Holter, Buchkunst, Handschriften, Bibliotheken: Beiträge zur mitteleuropäischen Buchkultur vom Frühmittelalter bis zur Renaissance, ed. Georg Heilingsetzer and Winfried Stelzer, Linz, 1996; Roland Anzengruber, “Bibliotheksgeschichte Lambach,” in GermaniaBenedictina 3,2: Die benediktinischen Mönchs- und Nonnenklöster in Österreich und Südtirol, ed. Ulrich Faust, St. Ottilien, 2001, pp. 291–294; Reinhold Dessl, “Zisterzienserstift Wilhering,” in Zisterzienser in Österreich, Salzburg, 2004, pp. 87–93; Peter Habermehl, ed., Origenes Werke, Sechster Band: Homilien zum Hexateuch in Rufins Übersetzung, Teil 1: Die Homilien zu Genesis (Homiliae in Genesin), 2nd ed., Berlin and Boston, 2012.

ONLINE RESOURCES
Martin Schøyen Collection, “Patristic Literature Collection, MS 21.” http://www.schoyencollection.com/patristic-literature-collection/ms-021; Illuminated Austrian Manuscripts, this manuscript listed as Schøyen MS 21 (formerly Lambach, Cml LX). http://homepage.univie.ac.at/martina.pippal/Oslo.htm#Ms.21; manuscripta.at: Mittelalterliche Handschriften in Österreich, Lambach, Cml LX. http://manuscripta.at/m1/hs_detail.php?ID=25108; George Rigg, “The Eclogue of Theodulus: A Translation.” http://medieval.utoronto.ca/ylias/web-content/theoduli.html

We thank Senior Consultant Sandra Hindman and Peter Bovenmyer for their assistance in preparing this sale, and we are grateful to Laura Light and Christopher de Hamel for permission to quote from their catalogue for this entry.