Composed in about the year 725, the Liber Questionum in Euangeliis (LQE)
is a comprehensive reference commentary on Matthew intended for
ecclesiastics in the writing, teaching, and preaching
professions. Its anonymous Irish redactor gathered together all
the relevant patristic and native material available, adding to and
adapting much of a still largely unpublished commentary on Matthew by
the Hiberno-Latin writer Frigulus (fl. ca. 700). LQE's well-attested manuscript
tradition and its far-flung exegetical influence make it one of the
more intriguing texts to appear in the Scriptores Celtigenae
series. Although LQE's origins are in Ireland (and
one Irish fragment still survives), its manuscript families also
include witnesses from England and the Continent. Not only is LQE a typical product of the
early Irish church, but its considerable length, the variety of its
sources, and its influence on later writers further reveal the work to
be central to the entire early medieval Gospel commentary
tradition. In addition to exegetes in England, the Carolingian
writers Haimo of Auxerre (ob.
853), Rhabanus Maurus of Fulda (780-865), and especially Paschasius
Radbertus of Corbie (ob. ca.
865) adapted it for their own works on Matthew. Rittmueller's
painstakingly researched edition and introduction will serve as an
invaluable resource in early medieval Biblical studies for decades to
come.