| Popis: |
Manuscript 111 holds one of Augustine's many polemical works, this one directed against Faustus of Mileve. The latter was a Manichaean bishop whom Augustine, at that time consorting with Manichaeism in search for knowledge and a purpose in life, met in Carthage. Despite initial admiration, Augustine soon got disillusioned due to a lack of answers. After his famous conversion to Christianity, Augustine vehemently attacked Manichaeism, with Faustus as the face of this heresy. The manuscript itself was written in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, probably in Ten Duinen. It is a typical Cistercian manuscript, executed soberly with monochrome, but elaborately decorated initials. The latter is especially the case with the initials on fols. 1v and 2r, opening respectively the 'retractio' Augustine had written later, and the first book of the polemic itself. The text is written in two columns with hardly any decoration: solely the initials - alternately red and blue, chapter numbers and references to Biblical texts have been added in red ink. Since its creation, the manuscript has remained at Ten Duinen. The cross-shaped stamp of Ten Duinen is found on the first and the last verso leaves. The manuscript is bound in a seventeenth-century binding of the 'Campmans' type. [Summary by Dr. Mark Vermeer] |
