Scholia Bernensia : an edition of the scholia on the Eclogues of Virgil in Bern Burgerbibliothek manuscript 172

The central feature of this dissertation is an edition of the marginal notes, or glosses, on the Eclogues of Virgil, to be found in Bern Stadtbibliothek MS 172, a ninth-century manuscript written in carolingian minuscules and known as the 'floriacensis' after its place of origin, the monastery of Fleury. Together with a clearly related set of glosses in MSS 165 and 167 of the same Library, these commentaries have long borne the collective name Scholia Bernensia. Central to my thesis is the proposition that commentaries were not copied and transmitted with the same type of 'reverence' that was accorded to classical literary works, but that they were constantly subjected to modification, deletion and interpolation at the discretion of the scholar or scribe who copied them, in accordance with the perceived needs of those for whom they were intended. It follows, then, that the established methods of textual criticism, by which an ancient and original literary work is restored or established from the extant manuscripts, cannot be employed in the handling of commentaries and glosses, for no single antique original may ever have existed. To put it another way, each commentary may indeed be derived largely from original sources, and they may well be legion, but it is itself a new and unique composition assembled from a diversity of sources of varying age and value, at the compiler's discretion. It further follows from all that has been said above that the final printed edition of a commentary ought to reflect something of the character of the manuscript (or family of manuscripts) from which it is derived, that the often composite nature of the manuscript version ought not to be obscured, and that the modern editor ought to resist the temptation to fabricate a coherent and integrated commentary by padding it out with borrowings from such as Servius, whenever echoes of the older and respected commentator fall upon the ear. The modern edition should, then, be closer in character to a diplomatic version, for the precise nature of the text as transmitted through the ages is of very much more importance to the modern student of commentaries than to the scholar whose primary interest lies in the classics themselves; to the latter the actual process of transmission will only ever be incidental. This dissertation will also assess the evidence for an Irish 'interlude' in the tradition of the Scholia Bernensia and related commentaries, and in particular for the now well-established proposition that an immediate precursor of our commentary was one compiled by Adamnan, Abbot of Iona (ob. 704), incorporating a body of material which he in turn derived from Filargirius (or Philargyrius), an otherwise unknown pagan commentator of the putative Milan school.