{{italic title ''Liber Scintillarum'' (literally "Book of Sparks") is a late seventh or early eighth-century

florilegium In medieval Latin, a ' (plural ') was a compilation of excerpts or sententia from other writings and is an offshoot of the commonplacing tradition. The word is from the Latin ''flos'' (flower) and '' legere'' (to gather): literally a gathering of ...

biblical The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...

and patristic sayings in Latin. It was compiled by Defensor, a monk who in the preface identifies himself as a member of St Martin's Abbey at

Ligugé Ligugé () is a commune in the Vienne department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region in western France. It is located on the River Clain, south of Poitiers. It is known for its historic monastery, Ligugé Abbey. Twin towns – sister cities Ligug ...

, near Poitiers, and who wrote the work at the behest of his teacher Ursinus, the abbot of St Martin's. Virtually nothing is known of the monk beyond what the preface offers us. The compilation was written sometime between 636, when the important source

Isidore of Seville Isidore of Seville ( la, Isidorus Hispalensis; c. 560 – 4 April 636) was a Spanish scholar, theologian, and archbishop of Seville. He is widely regarded, in the words of 19th-century historian Montalembert, as "the last scholar of ...

died, and about 750, when the earliest extant manuscript appears to have been produced. The "sparks" (''scintillae'') of the title refer to sayings (such as maxims and proverbs) of the Lord and his saints, which have been excerpted from the Bible and the Church Fathers, and rearranged into as many as 81 chapters. The headings of these chapters refer mainly to vices (e.g. avarice, fornication), virtues (patience, wisdom), devotional practices (confession, prayer) and common themes of human life (marriage, feasting). In the early part of the eleventh century, a copy of the Latin text was accompanied by an

interlinear In linguistics and pedagogy, an interlinear gloss is a gloss (annotation), gloss (series of brief explanations, such as definitions or pronunciations) placed between lines, such as between a line of original text and its translation into another l ...

Old English gloss, for which a little space between the lines was available. It is found in

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...

, Royal MS 7 C IV, together with ''De vitiis et peccatis'', again with an interlinear Old English gloss. It belonged to Rochester Cathedral Priory and probably joined the

Old Royal Library The Royal manuscripts are one of the "closed collections" of the British Library (i.e. historic collections to which new material is no longer added), consisting of some 2,000 manuscripts collected by the sovereigns of England in the "Old Royal ...

as part of the spoils of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, like the Rochester Bestiary.

Editions

* J.P. Migne, ''

Patrologia Latina The ''Patrologia Latina'' (Latin for ''The Latin Patrology'') is an enormous collection of the writings of the Church Fathers and other ecclesiastical writers published by Jacques-Paul Migne between 1841 and 1855, with indices published between ...

'' 88. *Rochais, H.M. (ed.). ''Liber Scintillarum''. Corpus Christianorum, series Latina 117. Turnholt, 1957. *Rhodes, E.W. (ed.). ''Defensor's Liber Scintillarum with an interlinear Anglo-Saxon version made early in the eleventh century''. EETS. London, 1889.

Studies

*Bremmer, Rolf H. Jr, 'The Reception of Defensor's ''Liber Scintillarum'' in Anglo-Saxon England', in ''...un tuo serto di fiori in man recando. Scritti in onori di Maria Amalia D'Aronco'', vol. 2, ed. Patrizia Lendinara. Udine: Forum, 2008, pp. 75–89.

External links

Image from Royal MS 6 D V, f. 46v
British Library.

British Library.

British Library. Latin proverbs Wisdom literature Early medieval Latin literature British Library Royal manuscripts