Augustine. De civitate dei (The City of God). Northern France, 13th century.
The writings of St. Augustine (354-430) formed the foundation of much of Western Christian thought and had a great influence on medieval theologians and philosophers. The City of God was written to defend the Christian religion against pagan charges that the conversion of the Roman empire to Christianity precipitated the sack of Rome.
Gregory the Great. Dialogi (Dialogues). Italy, 14th century.
Pope St. Gregory I, also known as Gregory the Great (d. 604), shaped medieval Christianity through his reforms of the liturgy and ecclesiastical and monastic hierarchy. He was also a popular preacher, and, as pope, sent missionaries to convert the English to Catholicism. His Dialogues recount the lives and miracles of early Italian Church fathers, including St. Benedict.
Bede. Commentarius in evangelium secundum Marcum (Commentary on the Gospel according to Mark). France, ca. 1200
Bede (d. 735) was a Northumbrian monk whose most famous work is an ecclesiastical history of England. Bede’s commentary on the Gospel of Mark is largely drawn from the writings of other early Christian writers.
Cicero, De re publica/Augustine, Enarrationes in psalmos. Italy, 4th century/8th century.
This facsimile reproduces a very famous palimpsest -- a manuscript made from vellum which was taken from another manuscript and then scraped with a knife to create a fresh writing surface. In the case of this manuscript, a classical text (Cicero's "On the Commonwealth") was recycled to create a manuscript of a scriptural commentary by St. Augustine several centuries later. The manuscript was originally held at Bobbio Abbey and now resides in the Vatican LibraryThe vellum was too valuable to waste, and the owners of this medieval book deemed the writings of a Church father more important than the original text, although today, the manuscript is considered very important as it preserves the earliest, and largest, surviving example of De re publica.
The Moore Bede. England, 8th century.
A facsimile of the earliest surviving copy of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English, now held at Cambridge University. Part of the multi-volume "Early English manuscripts in facsimile" series.