« The Earliest Anonymous Exposition of Priscian: Two Manuscripts and their Glosses »
Résumé
Two manuscripts containing Priscian’s Ars grammatica, namely Paris, lat. 7505 and Reims, 1094, transmit more or less completely an anonymous marginal commentary — calling itself an ‘Expositio’ — that it is possible to link to the palace schools.
This contribution to the history of the reception of Priscian attempts to demonstrate the early appearance of this Expositio, which, although it has been diffused through the network of the palace schools, probably goes back in its extant form to the end of the eighth century. However, some indications, for example the Tours origin of the Paris manuscript and the significant presence of explanations depending on or supplemented by a good standard of Greek, suggest an early composition and the participation of several generations of teachers.
The case of this Expositio confirms that prior to Priscian’s first commentators, Sedulius Scottus and John the Scot (around the middle of the ninth century), grammarians who gravitated by the circles of the first Carolingian kings explained the Ars Prisciani directly in the margins of books.