Manuscript: Julius B. XIII

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Notes

1 DB: The scribe originally wrote precipitator followed by a punctus; he has later changed the final r to a long s, and added est after the punctus (without deleting the punctus or adding another punctus after est). This is also an instance when pre- is spelt out. It is notable because of this scribe’s otherwise frequent use of ‘tailed e’. See the editorial principles for further discussion.
2 DB: The superscript o is barely legible.

Notes

1 DB: Amiterninę in the manuscript. Usuard’s martyrology (5 September: ed. Dubois, 297) has Amiternae, and refers to Amiterna (or Amiternum), an ancient city in Abruzzo, central Italy.
2 DB: The scribe has followed Usuard’s martyrology here (1 February: ed. Dubois, 172–3, abbreviated rather than verbatim), instead of the brief account of the same event in CM (ed. Mommsen, §309).
3 DB: There is an obvious error (mensibis duodecim, ‘twelve months’) in the length of Clement’s pontificate. Liber Pontificalis (ed. Duchesne, vol.i, 123) reads sedit ann. VIIII m. II d. X. Perhaps at some stage annis ix mensibus duo decem diebus (‘9 years, 2 months and 10 days’) has been misread as if duo decem was one word (perhaps they appeared close together in the exemplar), and after this error had occurred, xi was added in order to provide a number to go with diebus.
4 DB: The account of how Balbina, daughter of Quirinus, released Pope Alexander I from the chains worn originally by St Peter is not found in Usuard’s martyrology (see 30 March (St Quirinus), 31 March (St Balbina), 3 May (Pope Alexander): ed. Dubois, 203, 204, 223). It is, however, found in the martyrology of Ado of Vienne (d. 875) (PL, cxxiii, col.244: from Heribert Rosweyde, SJ (ed.), Martyrologium Romanum (Antwerp, 1613)), although without any striking verbal parallels with the Chronicle of Melrose. This reinforces the likelihood that a version of Usuard’s martyrology, rather than a copy of Usuard’s text itself, was one of the main sources used by the scribe.