Bibliography Detail
Rabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis: A Provisional Checklist of Manuscripts
Manuscripta, 33, 1989, page 109-118
A critical edition of De rerum naturis by Rabanus Maurus (c. 780 - 856) has long been a desideratum. Though the work has often been dismissed as a kind of plagiarized Isidore of Seville, recent studies have made abundantly clear that Rabanus did much more than imitate Isidore’s Etymologiae. Moreover, the large number of surviving copies of De rerum naturis, dating from the ninth to the sixteenth century, attests to its continuing popularity throughout the Middle Ages. Indeed, a scant dozen years af- ter Gutenberg’s first Bible, the editio princeps of De rerum naturis appeared from the workshop of Adolf Rusch in Strassburg (1467), becoming one of the earliest printed books (Scholderer 1939, 44 and pl. IV). Unfortunately, the edition by Rusch contains many errors, interpolations and omissions, and is therefore not always a reliable text. Moreover, the text of the work included in the edition of the Opera omnia by Georg Colvener (Rabanus 1627) derives from a defective copy of the edition by Rusch, and is thus undependable as well—as is the edition by Migne, which reprints that of Colvener. - [Author]
Language: English
0025-2603; DOI: 10.1484/J.MSS.3.1306
Last update January 6, 2024