A text possibly inscribed at the monastery of Marmoutier, near Tours (north-west Gaul), or written in a manuscript copied at the monastery, mentioning *Martin (ascetic and bishop of Tours, ob. 397, S00050), and possibly seeking intercession from unnamed saints. Written in Latin at Marmoutier, c. 660/680).
Evidence ID
E08360
Type of EvidenceInscriptions
InscriptionsLiturgical texts - Invocations, prayers and spells
Sylloge Turonensis 39
Conditor deus statuit conditor rerum excelsum montem preclarum maiori eminentem monasterio sacri summique antistitis Martini Turonice urbis quo visantur mirifica cuncta munima poli ubi nunc excelsus presul nobilis prosapia nempe Chrodobertus pontifex pater pius prefulget. Parvulus pie precor dominum dignentur ut orent viribus veloces vocibus; vota vovissent Jonathan qui vocor eorum tutus in evum orationibus vehar celorum regnibus altis crure sum infirmus dolore oppido quidem.
'The founder God the founder of things [sic] has established the high glorious hill, outstanding for the Great Monastery of the holy and highest bishop Martin of the city of Tours, where all the magnificent ramparts [munima = munimina] of heaven may be seen, where now the highest bishop, truly noble in lineage, Chrodobert the pontiff, the pious father, shines. [Like] a child, piously I pray to the Lord they deign to pray with strength, swift in voice; may they pray prayers [for me] who am called Jonathan, saved for ever by their prayers may I be carried to the high realms of heaven, I am infirm in the leg, indeed very much in pain.'
Text: De Rossi 1888, 69-70 (capitalisation regularised).
Translation: David Lambert.
Liturgical ActivitiesPrayer/supplication/invocation
Protagonists in Cult and Narratives
Liturgical invocation
Cult PlacesCult building - monastic
Non Liturgical ActivityPrayer/supplication/invocation
Transmission, copying and reading saint-related texts
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - monks/nuns/hermits
Source
The Sylloge Turonensis is one of several early-medieval collections of inscriptions from the city of Rome (for a general account of the syllogae see the entries in this database on the poems of Damasus). The original collection consisted of 37 inscriptions from the city of Rome, dating up to the pontificate of Honorius I (625-638), but in its extant form it contains additional material, some of it from Tours in north-west Gaul: it is for this reason that De Rossi named it the Sylloge Turonensis (De Rossi 1888, 60). The Tours material names the current bishop of the city as Chrodobert, who is known from various sources to have been bishop from the early 660s to about 680: notably he was in office when a papal privilege (E06977) was granted to the monastery at Marmoutier by Pope Adeodatus (672-676).The text discussed here is part of the material from Tours. While it is evident from its content that the Tours material consists of at least two and possibly three originally independent texts, it is written in the manuscripts as a solid block of text, as if it was all a single item. It begins with the epitaph of an aristocrat and donor to the church named Ebracharius (Sylloge Turonensis 38, not reproduced here), followed by the text in this entry (Syll. Tur. 39), which contains a sentence praising the monastery of Marmoutier and the bishop of Tours, Chrodobert, followed by a prayer for healing by an author who names himself as Jonathan. De Rossi suggested that this was placed at Marmoutier on a votive tablet, though he considered that the reference to Bishop Chrodobert was probably an interpolation inserted when the text was copied into the manuscript (De Rossi 1888, 59-60); he also raised the possibility that the entire text was a marginal annotation by the scribe copying the manuscript (De Rossi 1888, 70, n. 41).
More recently Inés Warburg has argued that Sylloge Turonensis 39 originates from the copying at Tours of the Roman sylloge, but differs slightly from De Rossi by arguing that the first sentence, referring to the monastery of Marmoutier and Bishop Chrodobert, is in effect a colophon, which the scribe copying the text wrote deliberately as a conclusion to the collection (Warburg 2017, 48). She regards the second sentence, in which Jonathan prays for healing, as a marginal note which later became incorporated into the text (Warburg 2017, 49).
The Tours material in the Sylloge Turonensis does not survive elsewhere. The first, and until recently only, edition was by De Rossi in his edition of the syllogae (1888). In 2017 a new edition, with a Spanish translation, was published by Inés Warburg.
Discussion
The 'great monastery' (maiori ... monasterio) mentioned in the text is St Martin's foundation of Marmoutier (it is from this phrase that the name Marmoutier derives). It is likely that its author, Jonathan, was a monk there, regardless of whether this text actually was a votive inscription of some kind, as De Rossi suggested, or whether it was written in a manuscript of the Sylloge Turonensis when the original collection of inscriptions from Rome was copied at Tours/Marmoutier, as per De Rossi's alternative suggestion and the more recent analysis by Warburg. The identity of Jonathan is unknown: his name is very unusual, if not unique, in early medieval Francia (it may be a nickname or a name taken in religion rather than a given name).The reference to Martin may or may not have direct relevance to Jonathan's plea for intercession, depending on whether one believes it was part of the same text (De Rossi) or that the two halves of the text were originally independent, even if written by the same person (Warburg). When Jonathan says that he is praying that 'they' will deign to pray for him (dignentur ut orent), it is possible that he is referring to the saints, even if he is not specifically referring to Martin. An interesting possibility, if Jonathan's prayer was originally a marginal note in a manuscript of the sylloge, is that 'they' are the Roman martyrs commemorated in many of the inscriptions that made up the sylloge.
Bibliography
Editions:De Rossi, G.B., Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae sepitmo saeculo antiquiores, vol. 2.1 (Rome, 1888), 69-70.
Warburg, I., "La interpolación de Tours en la síloge epigráfica romana Turonensis," Anales de Filología Clásica 30:1 (2017), 43-55, with Spanish translation and commentary.
Record Created By
David Lambert
Date of Entry
13/12/2022
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00050 | Martin, ascetic and bishop of Tours, ob. 397 | Martinus | Certain | S00518 | Saints, unnamed | Uncertain |
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Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
David Lambert, Cult of Saints, E08360 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E08360