The Vatican Terence (Terentius Vaticanus), or Codex Vaticanus Latinus 3868, is a 9th-century illuminated manuscript of the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

comedies of

Publius Terentius Afer Publius Terentius Afer (; – ), better known in English as Terence (), was a Roman African playwright during the Roman Republic. His comedies were performed for the first time around 166–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought ...

, housed in the

Vatican Library The Vatican Apostolic Library ( la, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, it, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana), more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City. Formally es ...

. According to art-historical analysis the manuscript was copied from a model of the 3rd century. The manuscript is referred to in the '' apparatus criticus'' of modern editions as "C".

Description

The manuscript was made at

Corvey The Princely Abbey of Corvey (german: link=no, Fürststift Corvey or Fürstabtei Corvey) is a former Benedictine abbey and ecclesiastical principality now in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was one of the half-dozen self-ruling '' princel ...

in about the year 825 by a scribe named Hrodgarius. The illustrations were made by three artists, one of them was named Adelricus. It contains illustrations of 141 scenes. Bischoff dated the manuscript between 820–830. It is an example of

Carolingian art Carolingian art comes from the Frankish Empire in the period of roughly 120 years from about 780 to 900—during the reign of Charlemagne and his immediate heirs—popularly known as the Carolingian Renaissance. The art was produced by and for th ...

, but the illustrations follow an antique model. The text of the manuscript in English translation was edited by George Colman in 1768. The Latin text was edited by Christoph Stiegemann and Matthias Wemhoff. The Vatican has digitized the manuscript and added it to its online library, DigiVatLib, as a part of its project to provide free, online access to the Vatican Library's collections of manuscripts and incunabula.

The archetype of the codex

Since the end of the 19th century many scholars tried to estimate the age of the model from which Vaticanus 3868 was copied. According to Weitzmann the latter is a most faithful copy of a late classical original manuscript. On the basis of the art-historical data the original manuscript was dated to the 5th century by Weitzmann, Koehler, and Mütherich. The artist was schooled in the Greco-Asiatic manner. This point of view dominated before

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. In the 1960s another more detailed art-historical analysis was made. The pictures of female masks were compared with three female masks dated between the years ca. 242ca. 267. The hairstyle of the Terence portrait is close to the one favoured by emperors between the years 238 and 249, suggesting that models from which the codex was copied were made in the 3rd century.

References

;Citations ;Bibliography * * *{{cite journal, last=Morey, first=Charles R., title=The Vatican Terence, journal=Classical Philology, date=1931, volume=26, issue=4, pages=374–385, jstor=265109, doi=10.1086/361395, s2cid=161548323

External links

"The most ingenious and expressive work of narrative art known from all of Late Antiquity" (820)
2004–2012 Jeremy Norman & Co., Inc. 9th-century manuscripts Carolingian illuminated manuscripts Manuscripts of the Vatican Library

Description

The archetype of the codex

References

Further reading

External links