Seventy-Eight Vitruvius Manuscripts

By assembling evidence for the medieval knowledge of Vitruvius's De architectura libri x,* modern students have disproved the old view that Vitruvius was unknown before 1416 when Poggio Bracciolini and Cencio Rustici discovered a Vitruvius text in the monastery library of St. Gall. From the scholars' reports and additional investigations, it has been possible to determine that Vitruvius manuscripts were available to Einhard and to Vussin, a Carolingian student who corresponded with him,2 that Alcuin of York referred to portions of Vitruvius's text,3 and that Hrabanus Maurus drew upon the Roman writer's ideas." Copies of De architectura were in the medieval libraries of Reichenau,5 Murbach,6 Gorze in the south Tyrol,7 Bamberg,s Regensburg,9 Fulda,1o St. Gall,11 and Melk;12 in the eleventh