Back to the Marginalia in the Manuscript 1002 from the Municipal Library in Reims: a Parisian Reading of the Isagoge Iohannitii

Abstract

This commemorates a scholarly and friendly morning spent with Klaus-Dietrich Fischer at the Carnegie Library in Reims to study the ms. 1002 (13th century). On that occasion we returned to analysis of the rich marginalia present in this university codex, which is of Parisian origin and which includes an Articella. Having already commented upon the marginal notes to the Liber urinarum Theophili in this same manuscript, we chose here to read and interpret the remarks coming from the “main annotator” (likely to be the scribe himself) in the margins of the Isagoge Iohannitii, one of the main texts in this collection and, more generally speaking, in the university teaching of medicine. In the typology and matter of these notes, one can recognize the didactic approach already revealed by the scribe/annotator in his marginal remarks to the Liber urinarum: we find again the links with the Salernitan tradition, mainly illustrated here by a mysterious Geraudus (who can probably be identified as Geraudus Bituricensis, commentator of the Viaticum) but also his new perspective as Parisian magister: once more these marginalia give an interesting insight into the oral university teaching in 13th century Paris.