• Provence
• Avignon (?)

Avignon

• Canon Law
• Computus
• Cosmology
• Exegesis
• Grammar
• Hisperic literature
• Lexicography
• Penitentials
• Monastic rule

In addition to containing a variety of texts on grammar, computus and cosmology, as well as glossaries, Biblical glosses, canon law, one penitential tract (Pseudo-Bede-Egbert, De remediis peccatorum, 60r-72v), and monastic consuetudines from Cluny (110v-123v), this codex is the sole witness for recension E of the Hisperica Famina (59v).

• Certainly not written in Brittany
• Some contents probably derive from a Breton exemplar / archetype

Bischoff discovered in this manuscript the only extant witness for 'recension E' of the Hisperica Famina (cf. Hallinger 1974). Bischoff believed that this copy of recension E dependend on a Breton model (cf. Hallinger 1974: 49). In view of the well documented Breton interest in the Hisperica Famina, this is certainly plausible: the contents of Barb.lat.477 (or some of its contents, or only the Hisperica Famina) may have been copied in southern France—possibly Avignon—from a Breton exemplar, or they may ultimately derive from a Breton archetype (the southern French origin of this MS is widely accepted, cf. e.g. Frantzen 1983: 579; Meens 2014: 233). In this context, it is certainly worth noting that a passage on the various by-forms of the name Uesper, deriving from the writings of Virgilius Maro Grammaticus and excerpted in several Irish and Breton computistical texts (cf. Bisagni 2019: 43–4), occurs at fol. 23r amidst Biblical glosses. Interestingly, such a chain of textual tranmission, from Brittany to Provence, finds an interesting parallel in Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, 9605, a computistical MS written at or near Avignon in AD 1026 but presenting strong Breton affiliations (including one Old Breton gloss, for which see Bisagni 2020b).

CLH §570; Frantzen 1983: 579; Hallinger 1974; Lemoine 2010: 219 (n. 18); L&S §329; Meens 2014: 233.

• https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Barb.lat.477