Editions
According to a study made by Laura Pani in 2000 there are 115 surviving copies of Paul's work. A popular work in the Middle Ages, as indicated by the number of copies and their dissemination throughout Western Europe, more than twenty of these manuscripts precede the 11th century while another eighty or more were copied later. The relations between these manuscripts were studied in 1876 by Georg Waitz, who identified 11 different families of the Historia Langobardorum.
The most ancient of these is the Palimpsest of Assisi, written in the uncial script towards the end of the 8th century, almost immediately after Paul's work had been completed. The palimpsest is far from complete as it contains only parts of the II and V book. The earliest complete manuscript of Paul's history is the F1 Codex Sangallensis 635, made sometime between the 8th and the 10th century. According to Georg Waitz, this is due to its age the most reliable of the Historias codices, a view which has been opposed by Antonio Zanella and Dante Bianchi, both not believing that the F1 reflects correctly Paul's original.
It was largely used by subsequent writers, was often continued, and was first printed in Paris in 1514. Among the editions of the Latin the best is that edited by Ludwig Konrad Bethmann and Georg Waitz, in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores rerum langobardicarum et Italicarum (Hanover, 1878).
Read more about this topic: Historia Langobardorum
Famous quotes containing the word editions:
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)