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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Two new manuscripts have come to my attention since I made a study of the MS. tradition of Seneca's Natural Questions. The first is Munich, Bayerische Staats-bibliothek, Clm 18961, part ii (foll. 25–46v), which I shall call Y, a late-ninth-century manuscript from Brittany or the lower Loire. It contains a short collection of theological and philosophical excerpts from a variety of authors, a collection emanating from the circle of Alcuin, probably from the generation after Alcuin himself. Included in the collection are three extracts from the preface of Book 1 of Seneca's Natural Questions. Since the earliest surviving manuscripts of the Seneca work hitherto known are from the twelfth century, it is of considerable interest to see how the text of the Natural Questions in these excerpts relates to the later MS. tradition.
1 ‘Escorial MS. O III 2 and Related Manuscripts of Seneca's Natural Questions’, CQ 28 (1978), 296–311Google Scholar; ‘The Manuscript Tradition of Seneca's Natural Questions: Some Manuscripts Related to Z’, Prometheus 5 (1979), 63–72Google Scholar; ‘The Manuscript Tradition of Seneca's Natural Questions’, CQ 30 (1980), 183–217Google Scholar. I am grateful to the various library authorities who provided me with microfilm of the MSS. discussed in this note.
2 I am grateful to Professor D. A. Bullough for bringing this MS.to my attention; its contents are described in Ineichen-Eder, C., ‘Theologisches und philosophisches Lehrmaterial aus dem Alcuin-Kreise’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 34 (1978), 192–201Google Scholar, with identification of the Seneca passages on pp. 193 and 196; cf. Marenbon, J., From the Circle of Alcuin to the School of Auxerre: Logic, Theology and Philosophy in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1981), p. 57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marenbon edits some of the texts in the MS., but not the Seneca, in Appendix 1. On the date and provenance of Y see Bischoff, B., Die südostdeutschen Schreibschulen und Bibliotheken in der Karolingerzeit, i (Wiesbaden, 1960), pp. 161–2.Google Scholar
3 Taking forms of deminuo and deminutio together, de- is the paradosis at Dial. 3.13.1, 4.14.4, 7.20.5, 10.15.4, Epist. 20.1, 47.8. di- is the paradosis at Ben. 7.6.3. and Dial. 2.5.4 (de- coni. Muretus). The MSS. are divided at Epist. 85.5, Oed. 147, Nat. 6.22.3. At Nat. 1.15.2 Gercke restored deminutionem (re- ζθπ: di- δ).
4 Z's quis is not impossible, but cf. praef. 13 where quid sit deus occurs twice; and in praef. 3 Z could be influenced by quis auctor aut custos just before.
5 See Lehmann, P., Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge Deutschlands und der Schweiz, i (Munich, 1918), p. 266Google Scholar. On possible connections with pseudo-Bede, De mundi terrestris celestisque constitutione see Hine, H. M., ‘Seneca and Anaxagoras in Pseudo-Bede's De mundi celestis terrestrisque constitutione’, Viator 19 (1988), 111–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 For earlier views cf. Southern, R. W., Saint Anselm and his Biographer; a Study of Monastic Life and Thought, 1059–c. 1130 (Cambridge, 1963), p. 59Google Scholar; Nothdurft, K.-D., Studien zum Einfluss Senecas auf die Philosophie und Theologie des zwölften Jahrhunderts (Leiden, 1963), pp. 192–7Google Scholar; Ross, G. M. in Seneca, ed. Costa, C. D. N. (London, 1974), pp. 134–5Google Scholar; Hine, H. M. in Texts and Transmission, ed. Reynolds, L. D. (Oxford, 1983), p. 377Google Scholar; Southern, R. W., Saint Anselm: a Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge, 1990), p. 129Google Scholar. In Y the crucial phrase reads quia nihil maius cogitari potest, as we have seen; Anselm could have divined the correct reading, or could have had a more accurate MS.
7 For a fuller description of the contents of the MS., see Fernández, L. Rubio, Catálogo de los manuscritos clásicos latinos existentes en España (Madrid, 1984), pp. 31–2Google Scholar; I learnt of the MS. from this work. I have not seen Rosell, F. X. Miquel, Cat⋯leg dels llibres manuscrits de la Biblioteca del Monestir de Sant Cugat del Valles existents al' Arxiu de la Corona d' Aragó (Barcelona, 1937)Google Scholar. The MS., which has suffered damage, has at some stage been rebound with folios 249 and 246 transposed, though they retain their original numbers; i.e. the sequence is now 245, 249, 247, 248, 246, 250.
8 Geist, H., De L. Annaei Senecae Naturalium quaestionum codicibus (Diss. Erlangen, publ. Bamberg, 1914), pp. 14–16.Google Scholar
