Book XVIII of Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei in Four Carolingian Witnesses

Despite the crucial role of Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei in shaping Christian identity and its influence on Western culture, we are still far from understanding the paths of its medieval transmission and dissemination. This paper aims to list a number of loci critici supporting the hypothesis of the genealogical relatedness – limited to book XVIII, in the current state of knowledge – of four 9th-century witnesses, namely Brescia, Biblioteca Queriniana, G.III.3; München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 6267 (pars recentior); Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud misc. 135; and Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare, LXXI (52). These loci have been singled out by collating randomly selected sample passages from the sole book XVIII, which is the longest in the entire work and the most frequently equipped with tabulae capitulorum. This enquiry is to be intended as a first attempt to shed some light on a largely unexplored topic, which deserves to be examined in much more depth and on the basis of a broader array of data.