The Medieval Church · c. 830–862
The Letters
Lupus of Ferrières · c. 805 – c. 862
What it is
A hundred and thirty letters, an unusual number of them about books: borrowing a Cicero, complaining that a lent Bede has not come back, asking for a Livy to be copied and warning the copyist about the exemplar's errors, and worrying about carrying a manuscript through country full of Vikings.
Why it lasted
The first person in the Latin West to write like a textual scholar — collating copies, judging exemplars, and caring about the text for its own sake. Much of what survives of classical Latin does so because of people doing exactly this in the ninth century.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
This work is in the public domain and can be read in full, free, at the archives below.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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