Contents

Data Source: Mmmonk

• Manuscript 161 contains a collection of religious texts and excerpts with no apparent relation. The first third of the volume (ff. 1r-56v) holds the De summo bono by Isidorus Hispalensis. This is followed (ff. 56v-66v) by Exceptiones de libris sancti Augustini, a selection of excerpts from the works of Saint Augustine, among which are the Enchiridion, the Sermones de Scripturis, the Ad inquisitiones Ianuarii, and the De Mysteriis (now understood as a work by Saint-Ambrose). Next (ff. 67r-68r) is the "Carmen de lapsu carnis" a moralising verse in elegiac couplets, which is part of the Hortus Deliciarum by the German abbess Herrad von Landsberg. The following thirty folia (ff. 68r-98r) contain approximately forty letters written by Augustine (with one exception; a response of Jerome to a letter written to him by Augustine). The following item (ff. 98r-149r) is a selection of excerpts. All of these were attributed to Augustine, but the authorship of several has been debunked since then. Excerpts have been identified with the Venerable Bede's commentary on the Proverbs, Sermons by Caesarius Arelatensis, a letter by Gregory the Great, and the Epistola ad Demetriadem virginem (later ascribed to Jerome, although this is now discredited). The final leaves (ff. 149r-152r) include parts of another letter by Gregory the Great, decrees from a council held in 610 by pope Bonaface IV (d. 615) and Mellitus, bishop of London, on matters regarding the newly established Church in England. Scholars are not unanimous in confirming or rejecting the veracity of these decrees. The manuscript dates from the third quarter of the twelfth century and is believed to have been written at Ten Duinen. Despite the highly varied nature of the contents, the volume appears to have been written as a single entity, and has the same external features throughout. Each page contains two columns of texts, with initials in red and green ink. The initials at the beginning of the first two books of De summo bono (f. 1r and f. 14r) are very elaborately executed. Rubrics have also been added in red ink. The manuscript is bound in a seventeenth-century binding of the 'Campmans' type, embossed with the abbatial coat of arms in gold leaf, and with traces of two clasps. [Summary by Dr. Mark Vermeer]