Title

Corsini Beatus

Scriptorium of Sahagún Monastery

Generic classification

Object

Date

Century

Cultural context / style

Dimensions

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Provenance

Current location

Inventory Number in Current Collection

Object history

This manuscript was produced in the scriptorium of the Monastery of San Benito de Sahagún (León). It is written in Visigothic script and can be dated to around the second quarter of the 12th century (Shailor, 2017). According to Andrés (1978), the manuscript was in the possession of the Count-Duke of Olivares, who had stripped“many cathedrals and some monasteries of their most precious codices.” The court favorite is known for being an insatiable bibliophile; in fact, he devotes several paragraphs to this in his 1642 will: 

“And it is my will that the library I have assembled be set aside as an endowment, and I hereby set it aside, by virtue of the powers I possess to do so, and I unite, incorporate, and add it to the entailed estate of my house in San Lúcar and to the others that I leave established, so that neither all nor part of it may be sold, donated, or alienated, and that it be placed in the location I have designated for my burial”(Marañón, 1935).

However, after his death, the library was dispersed and sold to various private individuals. It must have been at that time that Juan Lucas Cortés, a member of the Royal Council of Castile and a great bibliophile, purchased the codex. In 1693, Cardinal José Sáenz de Aguirre mentioned that the codex was in Cortés’s possession:“Several copies of those commentaries of the Blessed One, written in the most ancient script, remained in the hands of the most learned men toward the end of the preceding century […] D. Joannem Lucas Cortesium Majestatis Catholicae Consiliarium”(Andrés, 1978).

In 1701, Cortés’s estate was sold at auction, at which time Cardinal Acquaviva acquired it. The nuncio was visiting Spain for the coronation of Philip V and took the opportunity to acquire several copies before returning to Italy. Upon his death in 1725, the manuscript became part of Cardinal Andrea Corsini’s collection, joining the family library (Williams, 2017). Neri Maria Corsini donated all the copies in her possession to the Biblioteca dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei e Corsiniana, including this one. Today, the Beato Corsini is housed at that institution in Rome, Italy.

Description

The Beato Corsini has several distinctive features that set it apart from the other Beato manuscripts that have survived to the present day: first, it is copied in a single column, and there are considerable variations in the amount of text per page. The folios are not in the correct order, and some pages have been torn out—likely those that contained illuminations. It was produced by several scribes; one of them was responsible for most of the manuscript, although other hands have been identified. Similarly, the Beato’s small size and physical format are striking, since codices of this type were generally large. It stands to reason that the Beato Corsini was crafted to be easily carried while traveling. As for the illustrations, the following stand out: the coming of Christ in the clouds, the message to the church in Sardis, the first angel of the trumpets, and the two witnesses killed by the Antichrist (Shailor, 2017; Williams, 2017).

Locations

• Second quarter of the XII^th c.

  monastery

  Monastery of Saints Facundo and Primitivo, Sahagún (Spain)

• XVII^th c. - ca. 1645

  private collection

  Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, Madrid (Spain) *

• Mid XVII^th c. - 1701

  private collection

  Juan Lucas Cortés, Madrid (Spain) *

• ca. 1701 - ca. 1725

  private collection

  Francesco Acquaviva d’Aragona, Roma (Italy) *

• ca. 1725 - ca. 1795

  private collection

  Andrea Corsini, Roma (Italy) *

• XVIII^th c. - present

  library

  Library of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and the Corsiniana, Roma (Italy)