L’apport des manuscrits de Joseph-Marie de Suarès (1599-1677) à l’élaboration du Corpus des inscriptions latines de Vaison-la-Romaine et de son territoire

Joseph-Marie de Suarès (1599-1677), Bishop of Vaison (1633-66), made a substantial contribution to the study of the epigraphy of the Vocontii. His works are gathered in several manuscripts of which the most important are the Codices Barberini and the Codices Vaticani. In incorporating the unspecified pieces, he has counted sixty-seven inscriptions in Vaison and twenty-six in its nearby territory, that is ninety-three texts. Since his death, a great number of the listed inscriptions have been lost. For the town of Vaison only seventeen texts have survived, as well as eight for its territory. It is a tremendous loss, especially since fifty-five at least are only known from Suarès.

La tradizione manoscritta delle epigrafi latine di Tarentum

Manuscripts with texts of Tarantine inscriptions date back to the 15th and 17th centuries and contain transcriptions by foreign and local scholars. The oldest manuscript containing Tarentine inscriptions is the Marucellian Code A 79 1, followed by the Vat. lat. 6039, 5237, 5241. In particular, the Vat. lat. 5241 preserves a trace of A. Paglia’s research on the impulse of Aldo Manuzio the Younger. However, also local scholars dealt with Latin inscriptions in their works: among these we note Giovanni Giovine and Ambrogio Merodio. Merodio’s transcriptions were inadvertently used by Mommsen, through the work of the Abbot Pacichelli. Most of the few inscriptions reproduced in the manuscript tradition (eight epitaphs and two honorary dedications) are now lost and were originally found in churches where they had been reused as spolia.

Fortune de l’inscription du temple d’Isis des manuscrits épigraphiques du Quattrocento aux Antiquités de la Ville d’Andrea Fulvio (1527)

The five books of Antiquitates Vrbis of Andrea Fulvio (1527) contain 40 inscriptions, many of which were previously unknown. From what sources did he dispose to feed this new sylloge? Among these inscriptions, the text of the inscription of the temple of Isis constitutes an especially interesting case of transmission between humanists through the circulation of manuscripts and the first editions. Indeed, not really unpublished but delivered in the first editions of the Roma triumphans (1473, 1482, 1503, 1513), it appears in various forms, especially in the handwritten versions of Felice Feliciano’s sylloge. It is a Dresden manuscript containing Flavio Biondo’s Roma instaurata (after 1459), annotated by one of his sons, which brings insights into the problems that this transmission had posed until Andrea Fulvio and until the Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum.

Una nuova dedica a Ercole da un manoscritto di Bonifacius Amerbach

The manuscript C VI a 77, once belonging to the 16th century humanist Bonifacius Amerbach and now preserved in the Universitätsbibliothek Basel, is not a high quality epigraphic manuscript, but includes at least a couple of Roman inscriptions elsewhere unknown. One of them, already published in the 1980s, is a dedication to Iuppiter Optimus Maximus set by an eques singularis; the other one is a dedication to Hercules Invictus – here published for the first time – set, when he was an urban praetor, by L. Turranius Venustus Gratianus, member of a well-known senatorial family of the 3rd/4th century AD.

L’apport du Lugdunum priscum de Claude Bellièvre à la connaissance de l’épigraphie lyonnaise

The article investigates the first pages of the epigraphic section of the manuscript left by the Lyonese scholar Claude Bellièvre (1487-1557). Specific attention is devoted to the inscriptions of the legatus Ti. Claudius Quartinus and freedman who acted as procurator of the provincia Lugdunensis (CIL XIII 1802 and 1800), as well as an epitaph with a Greek formulaic invocation, which adorned the castle of Yvours, south of Lyon (2074).

Da Vid a Venezia: due reperti antichi tra collezionismo ed interessi eruditi nel sec. XVIII

Two finds of unknown provenance, once in the Nani Museum in Venice, seem to be from Narona, a site that provided, along with other Dalmatian places, most of the ancient material preserved in the famous Venetian collection. The first document is an altar now in Piazzola sul Brenta, identified by Mommsen as coming from Dalmatia, likely Narona, on the basis of the formula mentioning a god which is altogether identical to a dedication, now lost, also from Narona. The second find, now in Avignon, is a relief of the Dioscuri. It certainly comes from Narona as a fragment of a slab from the Museum at Vid, reproducing the same rare decorative motif, demonstrates: snakes face an egg. At Narona the cult of the Dioscuri is well documented epigraphically, but also by a relief in which two snakes, but in another position, appear.

‘Dans les pierres, il ne peut y avoir de fiction’ ?

Rodrigo Caro (1573-1647) has long been considered an unreliable witness of the epigraphic tradition, first and foremost by E. Hübner (CIL II). This article reconsiders his role in the transmission of the Conventus Hispalensis’ falsae vel incertae, after a careful analysis of Caro’s Antigüedades de Sevilla (1634). Within this work, the Sevillian humanist overall appears to be scrupulous: it is only his duty to superior interests, such as those of the archbishopric of Seville, which forces him (as in his defense of the pseudo-Dexter) to reluctantly retain certain falsae included in the Antigüedades.

Bibliotheca epigraphica manuscripta: dal 1881 a oggi

In his well-known Denkschrift (1847), Theodor Mommsen, by then not yet thirty years old, focused on researching extensively the manuscript collections of various libraries, making order in the jumble of papers (Papierwust) dispersed in archival holdings; in short, he was aiming at a systematic ordering, above all for a correct definition of a titulus genuinus and a titulus falsus, a problem with which his scholarly research was always concerned, even in its most minute details. In 1881, Mommsen promoted the foundation of a Bibliotheca epigraphica manuscripta, which should have indexed and described the enormous quantity of handwritten witnesses of Latin inscriptions scattered through various institutions, public and private. One wonders about the possibilities of starting such a pioneering Mommsenian project anew, creating a shared database, through the synergy of the libraries and universities that have shown interest towards this specific research field.

Les inscriptions relatives à Vaison-la-Romaine (Vaucluse, France) à la lumière de Joseph-Dominique Fabre de Saint-Véran

Joseph-Dominique Fabre de Saint-Véran (1733-1812), an abbot, saw and described 57 inscribed stones from Vaison and the territory of the Vocontii, in a catalogue (Ms. 556) now at the Inguimbertine Library at Carpentras. No drawing is provided but the text of the inscriptions is given including its development, with indication of provenance and present location. Readings are good, there are few mistakes, and his manuscript can help researchers in the cases in which the monuments have disappeared. It is a catalogue raisonné.