Through the LIBRARY it is possible to consult the data sheet of several important codices that enable to reconstruct the written culture of the patriarchate of Aquileia. Moreover, for many codices, the complete reproductions are made available, which makes this site a true virtual library of patriarchal Friuli.

Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum

  • 10th century; parchment; mm 245 × 182; ff. I, 102.
  • Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 11256.

The provenance of the codex from Cividale is due to marginal notes evidencing its local use among the twelfth and sixteenth century.

The codex containing another copy of the Historia Langobardorum evidences, even more than the manuscript kept at the Museum of Cividale, the interest Paul the Deacon’s work aroused in medieval Friuli. It is written by three different hands that use a Caroline minuscule script datable to the tenth century. The presence of this book in the region, and namely at Cividale, is continuously documented since the beginning of the fourteenth century: a note on f. 101v actually informs that «Iste liber est fratris Iacobi ordinis predicatorum conventus Civitatensis», maybe the same Dominican quoted with some brethren in a Cividale document of 1309. The convent library inventory drawn out in 1440 evidences its location on the seventh bench together with other fourteen books of more or less grammar content and school destination. A relevant number of marginal notes by different hands, datable to twelfth-sixteenth century, proves that the codex was quite diffusely read and studied, with a certain attention paid to the local toponyms or to events and personalities tied with the history of Friuli. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, after the Cividale convent cessation, the codex started a series of peregrinations that would have eventually lead it to the ‘Biblioteca Vaticana’.

Country of locationCittà del Vaticano
LocationCittà del Vaticano
Library / CollectionBiblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
ShelfmarkVat. lat. 11256
AuthorPaul the Deacon
LanguagesLatin
Support materialParchment
Extentff. I, 102
Formatmm 245 × 182
Age10th century
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