Sancti Bonifacii Epistolae

Manuscript 751 of the Austrian National Library in Vienna, also known as the Sancti Bonifacii Epistolae, is a composite volume consisting of four unrelated parts. Scholars will rejoice at now having at their disposal the facsimile edition of the first part (ff. 1–77) dating from the mid-ninth century and containing a large section of the correspondence of St. Boniface and St. Lullus** (35 letters of Boniface and 12 addressed to him; 16 letters of Lullus and 24 addressed to him) together with other letters by several of their contemporaries. Many of these copies can be shown to have been made directly from the originals which were preserved in the episcopal archives in Mainz. The facsimile edition is of a high quality and almost gives the illusion of having the actual manuscript in hand.

An Important Research Tool

In his short introduction Dr. Franz Unterkircher, the editor, deals successively with the latter history of the manuscript (pp. 9–12), description and physical composition (pp. 13–15), script (pp. 17–21), contents (pp. 23–26), cryptography (pp. 27–29). He ends (pp. 31–35) with a concordance which lists all the letters in the order in which they appear in the manuscript with cross references to the editions of Serarius and of the M.G.H. (the italics used in the section show that the manuscript is our unique source for over 60 of the texts it contains). The present edition is sure to be of great use both to the historian and paleographer and it provides an ideal tool for introducing students to the delights and problems of medieval text studies.