Gazette 64

The present article reconsidered Jacques Chailley’s hypothesis that the origin of the first libellus of BnF lat. 7211 (f. 1-72) was Luxeuil. His evidence, based on a codicological comparison with BnF lat. 7212, which contains a papal bull on the favor of Saint-Pierre monastery at Luxeuil, is convincing, since these two manuscripts correspond in many details. However, textual differences between these two manuscripts suggest that lat. 7211 is not directly copied from lat. 7212. Instead, these two manuscripts perhaps share a common source written at the scriptorium of Luxeuil or in the northwest of France. Lat. 7211 was bound later with other libelli, in the 12^th century, in a region which used Aquitanian neumatic notation.

Methodological in essence, thi~ paper aims at calling French scholars’ attention to what is referred to as Mitüberlieferung in German academic literature. ‘Ihis concept is largely missing from the realm of French manuscript studies, wherein no faithful rendition of the word exists. The neologism co-tradition is proposed for use in the first part of this paper, while the rest argues, relying on a selection of examples, for the inclusion of co-tradition in the French manuscript scholar’s toolbox, both as a means to describe and characterise historical material and as a way to raise codicological questions and address philological issues.

Scholars have always investigated fragments of manuscripts according to their field of study. A new global perspective Further potential in studying this particular type of sources was brought out by a new global perspective. In this contribution, the interest is particularly directed to fragments of medieval fragments re-used as bindings material, especially from archives bindings. lhe study of bindings including fragments of manuscripts – and notably the analysis of their external characteristics (such as the conditions and circumstances of the reused fragments) – raises the issue of whether and to what exter.t this crafting practice plays a part in selecting manuscripts to be re-used. Specialized researches about the phenomenon of reusing fragments of medieval manuscripts in bindings is supposed to integrate our knowledge in history of books.

Since Theodor Gottlieb’s census inventory of medieval libraries at the end of the 19^th century, similar projects have been developed at national level in most European countries. All these companies share the same objective, to list the sources relating to medieval libraries. As part of our doctoral work devoted to the study of private lay libraries and private collections of secular clerics in northern France and northern and central Italy at the end of the Middle Ages, we have built up a corpus of book collections from disparate sources (mentions in wills, inventories after death, inventories of property, among others) thanks to a systematic examination of the specialized directories devoted to Belgium, France and Italy. However, these three companies return a state of the sources and a geographical and social distribution of the owners somewhat biased by the time damage. Indeed, the serial sources, precious and adapted to the application of quantitative methods, lead to generalize particular situations, in this case those of the Tournai bourgeoisie and that of the Florentine patriciate of the 15^th century, to entire regions, the Northern and central Italy, and one country, France. It is however not possible to do without these sources, essential for the knowledge of private libraries.