Instalment Three

A Voice from a Thousand Years Ago
The Oldest Manuscript in the Collections of the Kórnik Library

On the first page of a 9th-century manuscript devoted to the Rule of Saint Benedict appears an extraordinary text. An anonymous scribe placed there a poetic account of a battle crucial to the history of Europe, fought in 841 at Fontenoy in Burgundy. The story of the clash between brothers – the grandsons of Charlemagne – which determined the division of the continent’s borders for centuries to come, is considered a masterpiece of Carolingian poetry.

Of the three surviving copies of this work in the world, the version preserved in the Kórnik Library is the most complete and contains the fewest errors. The otherwise little-known Angilbertus, a participant in the battle, composed moving verses whose message remains strikingly relevant today:

The battle deserves neither praise nor song,
East, south, west, and north
Let them mourn those who perished in that destruction.
translated by Tomasz Jasiński

The fifteen stanzas were written in an even Carolingian script on parchment that today bears visible marks of time, full of abrasions and losses. The power of this manuscript lies above all in its endurance – after all, it is older than the history of the Polish state itself.

A

BK 124
Angilbertus (?)
Versus de bella quae fuit acta Fontaneto
IX w.
Wiersz o bitwie pod Fontenoy jest abecedariuszem – każda strofa zaczyna się od kolejnej litery alfabetu.

B

BK 124
Smaragdus
Expositio in Regulam S. Benedicti
IX w.
Popularny w okresie karolińskim komentarz do reguły św. Benedykta, autorstwa opata klasztoru Saint-Mihiel (koło Verdun)