Ever since the publication of a pioneering study by Ernst
Dümmler in the Berlin Sitzungsberichte of 1890, the commentary
on the Gospel according to St Matthew by Christian, a teacher at
the Benedictine abbey of Stavelot-Malmedy, has continuously
attracted a great deal of interest. With the exception of only a
few scholars, who had access to a manuscript, most others had to
base their studies on Migne, PL 196, cols. 1261-1504. That text
reproduces the editio princeps of 1514, which was produced
by the well-known humanist Jakob Wimpfeling in Strasburg. In his
much-used work De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis
Sponheim’s famous abbot Trithemius first mentions another
name by which Christian was to become known, viz. Druthmar(us).
Though occasionally adopted by authors and compilers of catalogues
of manuscripts, this other name was more generally assumed to have
been imagined by Trithemius himself; but although it certainly is
not authentic, it really does appear in a fifteenth-century
manuscript he may well have perused. The new edition (CCCM 224),
which is completed by a section Rariora et notabilia and a
set of extensive indexes, is based on no fewer than nine
manuscripts and two ancient editions (1514 and 1530, both
representing lost manuscripts), and since the commentary must have
been written around 865, it is of no small interest that the oldest
of all these hitherto unused manuscripts (W, in Wolfenbüttel)
dates back to as early as the late ninth century.