The ''Codex Gothanus 84'' is a 10th/11th century Latin law parchment manuscript in two-column Carolingian minuscule and is one of two extant copies of a lost early ninth-century

codex The codex (: codices ) was the historical ancestor format of the modern book. Technically, the vast majority of modern books use the codex format of a stack of pages bound at one edge, along the side of the text. But the term ''codex'' is now r ...

written at Fulda and commissioned by Eberhard of Friuli, probably about 830, from the scholar Lupus Servatus, abbot of Ferrières. It is held by the Gotha Research Library ( Gotha, Forschungsbibliothek, Memb. I 84), hence its name. The manuscript contains laws useful in the administration of Friuli, preceded by a text of the origins of the

Lombards The Lombards () or Longobards () were a Germanic peoples, Germanic people who conquered most of the Italian Peninsula between 568 and 774. The medieval Lombard historian Paul the Deacon wrote in the ''History of the Lombards'' (written betwee ...

, probably compiled before the death of Pepin of Italy (810). According to Walter PohlPohl, "Memory, identity and power in Lombard Italy", in Yizthak Hen and Matthew Innes, ''The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages'' (Cambridge University Press) 2000 p. 20f. it is written from a Carolingian and Christian perspective, substituting for the ''Longobardi'' origin myth concerning Wotan a controlling sense of Providence. The '' Monumenta Germaniae Historica'' version (''MGH SRL'', pp 7-11) calls it '' Historia Langobardorum Codicis Gothani''. The opening and closing of the Codex Gothanus are so different from the '' Origo Gentis Langobardorum'' and

Paul the Deacon Paul the Deacon ( 720s 13 April in 796, 797, 798, or 799 AD), also known as ''Paulus Diaconus'', ''Warnefridus'', ''Barnefridus'', or ''Winfridus'', and sometimes suffixed ''Cassinensis'' (''i.e.'' "of Monte Cassino"), was a Benedictine monk, sc ...

that Thomas Hodgkin
''Italy and Her Invaders'' (vol VI 1880:146, note B)
printed them separately rather than attempt to weave them into a coherent whole.

Notes

External links

* {{cite web , url=https://capitularia.uni-koeln.de/mss/gotha-flb-memb-i-84/ , title=Gotha, Forschungsbibliothek, Memb. I 84 , author= , website=Capitularia - Edition der fränkischen Herrschererlasse Lombard books