Beschreibung:

Anastasius bibliothecarius, Historia Ecclesiastica, fragment of a leaf from a manuscript, in Latin, on parchment [France, twelfth century] Top half of a leaf, with single column, remains of 18 lines in a good and small early gothic bookhand, part of running title "Liber" in red at head, chapter number and rubric in red, recovered from a binding and hence scuffing and folds making some areas of text hard to read on front, the reverse scrubbed blank but with some later pentrials, overall fair condition, 175 by 132mm. Anastasius ‘the librarian’ (d. c.878) held office as chief archivist and bibliothecarius of the Vatican, and perhaps later briefly as an antipope. During his early career as a monk and occasional papal secretary he came into contact with monks of the Eastern Empire and learnt Greek from them, going on to be an important early medieval translator in this field in a period in which knowledge of this language was almost unheard of in the West. This text was the product of that study, a historical chronicle known as the Historia Ecclesiastica or Chronographia tripartita, compiled from the works of the Greek authors St. Theophanes the Confessor (c.758-817/18), Nicephorus I (c.758-828) and the Palestinian scholar George Syncellus (d. after 818). Hincmar of Reims states that Anastasius was elected pope after the death of Leo IV in 855 by the imperial party, but ejected later by Benedict III.