A Lombard epigram in Greek

Ms. Einsidlensis 326, fol. 79^r, offers the text of a Greek verse inscription in Pavia which, as I shall argue,¹ accompanied an image of St Peter that had been set up by King Liutprand (712–744) in the monastery of Sanctus Petrus in Caelo Aureo (nowadays better known as San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro).² The Einsidlensis is kept in the Swiss monastery of Einsiedeln – hence its name. It is a composite manuscript: the epigram that interests us is found in the fourth codicological unit, fol. 67^r–97^v, which was probably copied in the famous scriptorium of Fulda around 850.³ This part of the manuscript contains a collection of inscriptions from Rome and Pavia, a set of itineraries of Rome, a description of the city walls of Rome, a treatise on the liturgy in Rome, and various late antique and early medieval poems, the last of which is the epitaph of Bernold bishop of Strasbourg († 840).