People write all sorts of things in their books and it’s always fascinating to see what former owners of the items in our collection have jotted down in the margins and on the endpapers.
Our 12th-century manuscript of Priscian‘s De constructione has quite a few marginal notes, but the two neat lines of text on one of the back endpapers have always particularly intrigued us. It took a bit of work, especially as the text includes lots of abbreviations, but we think we have more or less figured them out.
With abbreviations expanded, the first line begins:
Doleo super te frater mi Jonathan
This is a quotation from the Vulgate Latin version of the Hebrew Bible (2 Samuel 1.26), and translates as “I am pained for you, my brother Jonathan“. The next word looks like it could be amabilis (”amiable/lovable”), a word which occurs in the same verse of the Vulgate, but not immediately after the word Jonathan. The final word of the first line we haven’t been able to make out, but it looks like it ends in -ae (which, as the Latin buffs will have noticed, would work well as a dative going with amabilis).
Dum sis in mensa primo de paupere pensa.
This is a line taken from a piece of popular verse that reminds the reader to think of others less fortunate, and translates as “While you are at the table think first of the poor man“.
The word on its own looks like Sis (”you should be/may you be”).
Quite why someone chose to write this and how it all fits together remains something of a mystery!
Priscianus. De constructione. South Germany: c. 1150. MU Ellis Special Collections Rare Vault PA6624 .A4 1150
