Ratramnus of Corbie

Ratramnus of Corbie (800s-860s) is one of the leading figures of the third generation of the Carolingian Renaissance. Reputed to be the most famous master in Francia (nominatissimus in Francia magister), his work embraces a wide panel of topics such as Eucharist, predestination, the nature of the soul, cynocephaly, degrees of kinship and the guilt of parents who accidentally suffocated their babies. Since the pioneering studies of David Ganz and Georges Folliet, both his hand and the method of his workshop are known. Ratramnus frames his future quotations in his manuscripts with hic-usque tironian notes. Some of the marginal notes written in the margins next to the framed quotations are reused as headings in the final treatise.
Many personal manuscripts matching this method have been identified so far. This paper proposes the identification of a new one. This manuscript, today in Berlin, was used for the preparation of Ratramnus' treatise on predestination (849). The identification provides a starting point for further discussions on how Carolingian scholars work. Modern scholarship tends to identify a way of annotating with a particular scholar or his circle. Florus, with his hooks, provides a perfect case study: a name, a team, a place, a time span. However, others scholars did change method and adapt their technique to specific needs. Only that can explain why we found so few manuscripts annotated by Prudentius of Troyes or Pseudo-Isidore, although they litteraly used hundreds of books.
Ratramnus changed his way of annotating over his career. His basic annotation was a Nota sign, which he used for his treatise on the Eucharist (early 840s) and for his treatise against the Greeks (late 860s). Hic-usque notes are a hapax in his carrier. Why did he use them in the context of the treatise on predestination? Where did he find the idea of using them? What does this hapax reveal of his workshop and of the particular circumstances of the predestination controversy in which he wrote his book? The only historical scenario of the genesis of the De praedestinatione was proposed by Jean-Paul Bouhot in 1976 – before the discovery of the marginal notes. It lays on mere textual basis and asserts that Ratramnus originally wrote the first book of his treatise for Gottschalk, then sent it to the Charles the Bald after receiving his command, and swiftly wrote the second book. This scenario has to be challenged with the help of the new codicological evidence. The two books were composed as a whole : the different shapes of the first and the second book are the consequences of the different matters they deal with.

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The Letter on the Dog-headed Creatures Ratramnus's of Corbie (died c. 870)
The presented article quotes the content of the Carolingian correspondence devoted to the living - according to applications - somewhere on the periphery of the ecumene of dog-headed. The document was edited in the middle of the 9th century in one of the leading literary culture centers at that time - in the Abbey of Corbie. The author of the letter was a valued Benedictine theologian - Ratramnus, who undeterred participated in all religious polemics of his time. In the 9th century, the western church, after a period of relative theological silence, lived to see an unusually debatable moment. The development of ecclesiastical culture and the advancement of theological teachings have caused internal movements in the sphere of Christian reflection. Scholars representing various centers of Carolingian culture gradually began to speak on liturgical matters and, finally, theological matters as well. It turns out that the subject of their disputes, divagations and polemics was not only the problem around the cult of images, adoptionism, the origin of the Holy Spirit, the Eucharist and predestination. Ratramnus from Corbei, editing an extraordinary letter about a curious nation of people with dogs' heads, touched the topic related to the definition of humanity and its border. The letter about dog-headed presents to the reader a rare attempt an early medieval conceptualization of rationality.