I.5.2
TWO HANDS REPRESENTING TWO
STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT IN THE
SCRIPTORIUM OF REICHENAU
A careful paleographical analysis by Bernhard Bischoff
of the textual annotations of the Plan established the
monastery of Reichenau as the scriptorial home of the
Plan.[91]
Bischoff distinguishes two hands, working in close
co-operation but representing two different developmental
stages of writing within the scriptorium of the abbey of
Reichenau: that of a younger man, the "main scribe,"
who is responsible for 265 of the 340 entries, and that of an
older man, the "second scribe," who wrote the remainder.
The main scribe rendered his legends in a deep-brown
ink almost bordering on black. He wrote in a small, crisp,
and finely articulated Carolingian minuscule, making use
of relatively closely spaced and nearly perpendicular
letters with long ascenders.[92]
This scribe is also responsible
for the letter of transmittal on the upper margin of the Plan
(fig. 2) and for ten legends written in capitalis rustica.[93]
The second scribe rendered his legends in a pale-brown
ink. He wrote a minuscule of more rigid perpendicularity,
spacing his letters a little farther apart and using shorter
ascenders. The entries of this scribe are confined to the
designations of the trees and plants in the two monastic
gardens (figs. 414 and 426),[94]
the names of the trees in the
Cemetery (fig. 430),[95]
the titles of the ten altars in the aisles
of the Church (fig. 93),[96]
the titles for the altars in the
Church towers;[97]
as well as some lines which look like
additions, such as the supra camera et solarium in the
Abbot's House (fig. 251),[98]
the infra supra tabulatum in the
House for Horses and Oxen (fig. 3),[99]
and the first three
lines of the verse that identifies the function of the Porch
connecting the western paradise of the Church with the
grounds of the House for Distinguished Guests (fig. 4).[100]
Bischoff was able to identify the hand of the main scribe
as that of a monk who, at an earlier stage of his career,
wrote a Vita sancti Bonifatii on fols. 2v-19 (fig. 5) of a
hagiographical ms. (Karlsruhe, Codex Augiensis CXXXVI)
written in the monastery of Reichenau under the direction
of its erudite librarian, Reginbert. His script suggests that
he is a younger man, whose style of writing has been
influenced by a temporary sojourn in Fulda.[101]
The script of the second scribe is that of an older man,
and its basic paleographical features are so similar to those
of Reginbert himself—the last among the classical Carolingian
writers to use this type of script (he died in 846)—that
Bischoff feels it might well be the product of Reginbert's
own hand.[102]
From the nature of his textual entries, which
have the appearance of what Bischoff calls "katalogartige
Nachträge," Bischoff infers that the second hand acted in
a supervisory capacity, filling in and completing where the
knowledge of the main scribe ended. Contrary to this
general relationship, however, there is one entry—the
legend that defines the function of the Porch connecting
the western paradise of the Church with the grounds of the
House for Distinguished Guests—in which the first three
lines are written in the ductus and pale-brown ink of the
"supervising" hand (the hexameter, Exi & hic hospes uel
templi tecta subibit), whereas the three lines that complete
this verse are written in the style and dark-brown ink of
the main hand (the pentameter, Discentis scolae pulchra
iuuenta simul). The co-operation between the main scribe
and the supervising scribe, Bischoff infers from this, must
have been extremely close.
