Ars Bonifacii


The Ars Bonifacii is the title given to a Latin grammar ascribed to Saint Boniface.

Textual history

The text survives in three manuscripts.
  1. The so-called Kaufunger Fragment, named for Kaufungen Abbey; this may have been copied in the south of England even during the saint's lifetime.
  2. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. Lat. 1746, a codex deriving from Lorsch, Hessen, consisting of a number of varied texts, including the Rule of St. Augustine and Isidore's Etymologiae, as well as another Anglo-Saxon grammar, by Tatwine.
  3. Bibliothèque nationale Paris, Lat. 17959, a composite codex whose second part, containing the grammars by Boniface and Tatwine, is possibly from the abbey of Saint-Riquier.
The latter two date from the late eighth-early ninth centuries, and both also contain the grammar of Tatwine, though Vivien Law notes that the two did not share a transmission history and came to the two codices by different ways—Tatwine's likely from England to the court of Charlemagne, and Boniface's from the areas in Germany where Anglo-Saxon missionaries were active.