The “Cura pastoralis” Fragment from the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia: A Completely Different Story

The fragment “Cura pastoralis” is the oldest manuscript fragment in Slovenia and is kept in the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia under the file number AS 1073, II–1r. It consists of one bifolium. One side of it is very badly damaged, as the fragment was once used for the binding of a book that served as the marriage register of the town of Trbovlje between 1669 and 1704. The register is still kept in the Diocesan Archives of Maribor. The bifolium is cataloged as a fragment of a ninth-century manuscript containing the “Cura pastoralis” of Gregory the Great. After a thorough examination, however, it turned out to be part of a work by Paterius of Brescia, Gregory the Great’s first secretary, which may have seen the light of day in the Freising scriptorium. There are some physical and content-related similarities between the fragment and the oldest complete manuscript in Slovenia, the Ecloga of Lathcen, which was written in the same period, namely at the end of the first half of the ninth century.