Scholarly Practices

Abstract

Despite the wide profusion of Canon Tables in Latin gospelbooks from the fourth century onwards, evidence of readers or exegetes making use of the apparatus in this period is almost non-existent. The one great exception is the early Irish exegetical tradition, which shows a remarkable scholarly interest in the Eusebian paratext, though much of the relevant primary literature remains little known, and some even unpublished. This chapter examines four representative texts. The poet Ailerán of Clonard explored the symbolic significance of the Canon Tables in poetry. Two anonymous school texts, known as Pauca de libris and The Irish Reference Bible, analysed the Eusebian parallels to classify kinds of similarity and difference that exist between parallel passages. Finally, the Carolingian scholar Sedulius Scottus commented extensively on the functioning and history of the Canon Tables.