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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2008
Among the fragments in the Newberry Library listed by Michael Masi in 1972,1 his item no. 15 was described as ‘ninth century’ and ‘insular’. When I examined them, the two leaves of this fragment proved to contain portions of three letters of Alcuin, written to Charlemagne in the late 790s.2 Copies of these letters are found in several ninth-century Carolingian manuscripts, but the only copy hitherto known to survive from Anglo-Saxon England is an elegant volume now in the library of Lambeth Palace, bound as the third part of manuscript 218, from the library at Bury St Edmunds.3 Both the Newberry fragments and Lambeth 218 deserve consideration both on palaeographical grounds and for what they reveal about the literary interests of Anglo-Saxon England. This study explores the circumstances in which they were produced, copied and read, in an effort to restore to them ‘the place, the traditions, the influences, the sources which explain the various aspects of its composition and contents; its destination and its purpose; the people who were involved’.4
1 Masi, M., ‘Newberry MSS Fragments s. VII-s. XV’, MS 34 (1972), 99–112, at 103.Google Scholar I am grateful to Paul Saenger of the Newberry Library for photocopies of the leaves, for permission to publish them, and for much assistance in working with them.
2 Epistolae Karolini Aevi II, ed. Dümmler, E., MGH, Epist. 4 (Berlin, 1895);Google Scholar these are Ep. 149, 155 and 136. They are found on pp. 242–3, 205 and 253 of Dümmler's edition, but are consecutive in the extant manuscripts.
3 London, Lambeth Palace 218, 131 r-208v. The earliest provenance may be the same library as the ninth-century continental volumes from Bury: Cambridge, Pembroke College 83, 88 and 308 which were in England in the tenth century.
4 Duplacy, J., ‘Histoire des manuscrits et histoire du texte du NT’, Etudes de critique textuelle du Nouveau Testament, ed. Delobel, J. (Leuven, 1987), pp. 39–54Google Scholar, as quoted by Parker, D. C., Codex Bezae. An Early Christian Manuscript and its Text (Cambridge, 1992), p. 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 Dr M. B. Parkes would assign the origins of this form to Wales, and draws my attention to its presence in Bern, Burgerbibliothek, C. 219. Dr Simon Keynes has kindly drawn my attention to an occurrence in London, BL, Cotton Augustus ii. 31, a charter of Athelstan for Crediton dated 933, surviving in a tenth-century copy (S 421), but not in later charters. The form with two commas is used by one Welsh scribe in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 153 (16v, 19v, 20r and 20v) and in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 30 (11v and 16v).
6 I am grateful to James Hayes, a calligrapher with over fifty years' experience, for his advice about this problem.
7 The omitted text occupies 175 lines of the MGH edition. Each leaf contains about 14 lines of that edition, so that 3 folia with 28 lines of MGH text would contain the portions of Letters 149 and 155 which have not survived.
8 I record that none of the experts on Insular palaeography to whom I have shown photographs of these fragments has offered a date more specific than ‘tenth century’. What follows is offered as a testimony both to my temerity and to the present state of Insular palaeography.
9 The transmission of Alcuin's letters was treated by Professor D. A. Bullough in his 1980 Ford Lectures, which are being revised for publication. I am very grateful to Professor Bullough for extensive and helpful discussion of the Chicago leaves, and for allowing me to use his account of the Troyes and Rheims manuscript from ch. 1 of his forthcoming Alcuin: Achievement and Reputation.
10 For Wulfstan's use of Alcuin's letters, see Whitelock, D., ‘Wulfstan at York’, Franciplegius. Studies in Honor of F. P. Magoun (New York, 1965), pp. 217–30Google Scholar and Ker, N. R., ‘The Handwriting of Archbishop Wulfstan’, in his Books, Collectors and Libraries (London, 1988), pp. 9–26, at 20–1.Google Scholar
11 Thomson, R. M., ‘William of Malmesbury and the Letters of Alcuin’, in his William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 158–73Google Scholar. The best account of the relationship between London, BL, Cotton Tiberius A. xv and Cotton Vespasian A. xiv is now Brett, Caroline, ‘A Breton Pilgrim in England in the Reign of King Athelstan’, France and the British Isles in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Essays in Memory of Ruth Morgan, ed. Jondorf, G. and Dumville, D. N. (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 43–70, at 65–70.Google Scholar Cotton Tiberius A. xv includes a copy of the letters in Royal 8. E. XV (fols. 67–122) and letters 18–31 are also found in Troyes 1165, discussed below.
12 The provenance of Harley 208, and of its doublet, Paris, BN, nouv. acq. lat. 1096, are discussed by Ferrari, Mirella in her article ‘In Papia conveniant ad Dungalum’, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica 15 (1972), 1–52, at 3–4Google Scholar. The Insular pen trials are illustrated in Drogin, M., Medieval Calligraphy (Montclair and London, 1980), pp. 50–1.Google Scholar The presence of letters to Adalhard of Corbie has caused some to suggest that this collection was originally assembled there.
13 Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, , pp. 1–15. The continental manuscripts are: Troyes, Bibliothèque Municipale, 1165, 1r–86 v (Dümmler's T) copied at Tours in the early years of the abbacy of Fridugis, Alcuin's successor, and Vatican City, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. lat. 273 (Dümmler's T*) copied at Rheims in the mid-ninth century. Bullough's forthcoming account of the textual transmission of Alcuin's letters suggests that T* is not a copy of T, and that T is a copy of an earlier Tours collection, which served as the exemplar for other ninthcentury anthologies of Alcuin's letters. In view of the superiority of the Lambeth text to that of T and T* for one letter, it may be correct to regard Lambeth as a copy (perhaps not a direct copy) of the Tours exemplar of T and T*.Google Scholar
14 The nearest parallel to such washes seems to be in the gospel openings in Boulogne, Bibliothèque municipale, 10: see Temple, E., Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts 900–1066 (London, 1976), pl. 38. Temple does not include Lambeth 218.Google Scholar
15 James, M. R., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in Lambeth Palace Library (London, 1930), p. 351, noting a unique reading in Ep. 145.Google Scholar
16 Chicago reads setus for sextus, but has been corrected, and preserves the correction formulam for the formolam of the uncorrected Chicago in Ep. 155, Lambeth has the spelling Karissime, Chicago carissime.
17 Paris, BN, lat. 10861; cf. Brown, M., ‘Paris Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 10861 and the Scriptorium of Christ Church Canterbury’, ASE 15 (1986), 119–37.Google Scholar
18 In the facsimile by N. R. Ker (The Pastoral Care, EEMF 6 (Copenhagen, 1956)), note the A on 32v and the O on 50v.Google Scholar
19 Professor Jonathan Alexander kindly confirmed that he would date the manuscript, on the evidence of its decoration, to c. 900. Dr M. O. Budny and Dr Richard Gameson have informed me that they agree with this early date for the decoration.
20 Bischoff, B., ‘Panorama der Handschriftenüberlieferung aus der Zeit Karls des Grossen’, in his Mittelalterliche Studien, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1966–1981) III, 5–38.Google Scholar
21 Morrish, J., ‘Dated and Datable Manuscripts copied in England during the Ninth Century: a Preliminary List’, MS 50 (1988), 512–38.Google Scholar
22 Dumville, D. N., ‘English Square Minuscule Script: the Background and Earliest Phases’, ASE 16 (1987), 147–79, at 162–3.Google Scholar
23 Ibid.
24 There is a helpful recent account of these charters by Kelly, S., ‘Anglo-Saxon Lay Society and the Written Word’, The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe, ed. McKitterick, R. D. (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 36–62, at 53–6.Google Scholar
25 Budny, M. O., British Library Manuscript Royal I EVI. The Anatomy of an Anglo-Saxon Bible Fragment (unpubl. PhD dissertation, London Univ., 1984), pp. 546–676.Google Scholar Scribe II, who copied 14vb line 19 to the base of 17r has ‘deplorable spelling and word division’ and is at times guided by scribe I. Scribe IV ‘must have copied to dictation’. For detailed analysis of all of the letter forms, see ibid. pp. 646–70.
26 The clearest account of what constitutes a scriptorium known to me is Parkes, M. B., The Scriptorium of Wearmouth-Jarrow, Jarrow Lecture 1982Google Scholar. Cf. his ‘The Palaeography of the Parker Manuscript of the Chronicle, Laws and Sedulius, and Historiography at Winchester in the Late Ninth and the Tenth Centuries’, in his Scribes, Scripts and Readers: Studies in the Communication, Presentation and Dissemination of Medieval Texts (London, 1991), p. 155Google Scholar. For a masterly account of how an English cathedral scriptorium with one master scribe created a library of some sixty-four volumes in the decades after 1075, see Ker, N. R., ‘The Beginnings of Salisbury Cathedral Library’, in his Books, Collectors and Libraries (London, 1988), pp. 143–73Google Scholar and Webber, T., Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury (Oxford, 1992). Salisbury had access to important ninth- and tenth-century Insular and Carolingian volumes.Google Scholar
27 Keynes, S., ‘King Athelstan's Books’, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Lapidge, M.and Gneuss, H. (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 143–201, at 193–6Google Scholar. This manuscript is no. 7 in Dumville's Phase II list (‘English Square Minuscule’, p. 176).Google Scholar
28 I know this manuscript only from the plates in Mynors, R. A. B., Durham Cathedral Manuscripts to the End of the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1939). Because it is probably not a southern English manuscript, and because it is possible that Alcuin's works were copied in Northumbria, I include it here.Google Scholar
29 This manuscript is no. 13 in Dumville's Phase I list (‘English Square Minuscule’, p. 171)Google Scholar; for bibliography, see ibid. n. 133.
30 This open p is also found in Cambridge, Trinity College B. 15. 33 (Isidore) (Dumville ‘English Square Minuscule’, pl. VII) and the Insular portions of London, BL, Royal 13. A. XV (Felix, Vita S. Guthlaci), fols. 1–8 and 36v–38.
31 Parkes, M. B., ‘A Fragment of an Early-Tenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Manuscript and its Significance’, in his Scribes, Scripts and Readers, pp. 171–85 and pl. 29.Google Scholar
32 For an illustration, see Dumville, ‘English Square Minuscule’, pl. V.
33 Torkar, R., Eine altenglische Ubersetzung von Alcuins de Virtutibus et Vitiis, Kap. 20 (Munich, 1981).Google Scholar
34 Leyser, K., ‘Die Ottonen und Wessex’, FS 17 (1983), 73–97.Google Scholar
35 Bullough, D. A., ‘The Educational Tradition in England from Alfred to Aelfric: Teaching Utriusque Linguae’, SettSpol 19 (Spoleto, 1972), 453–94Google Scholar; Keynes, ‘King Athelstan's Books’. Of the several recent surveys of Alfred's educational achievement, I am most in sympathy with Gneuss, H., ‘King Alfred and the History of Anglo-Saxon Libraries’, Modes of Interpretation in Old English Literature. Essays in Honour of Stanley B. Greenfield, ed. Brown, P. R., Crampton, G. R. and Robinson, F. C. (Toronto, 1986), pp. 29–49.Google Scholar
36 Parkes, M. B., ‘The Contribution of Insular Scribes of the Seventh and Eighth Centuries to the “Grammar of Legibility”’, in his Scribes, Scripts and Readers, pp. 1–18.Google Scholar
37 Amalarius: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 192, imported from Brittany; Cambridge, Trinity College B. 11.2 from St Augustine's; and Boulogne 82. Hrabanus's De laudibus sancti crucis: Cambridge, Trinity College B. 16. 3. Alcuin's De orthographia in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 221. In Ecclesiasten and In Canticum Canticorum in a continental copy in London, BL, Harley 213, perhaps of Winchester provenance. In Ecclesiasten in a ninthcentury copy written at Tours, Salisbury, Cathedral Library, 133. In Genesin in a tenthcentury continental copy in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Barlow 35. A ninth-century Rheims manuscript of Hrabanus In ep. Pauli had reached Ely (Cambridge, Pembroke College 308). Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, 8558–63, a Square minuscule manuscript of the short Rule of Chrodegang with material added in 816. Copies of Remigius on Martianus Capella survive from Winchester and in a tenth-century Rheims copy which came to Worcester (London, BL, Royal 15. A. XXXIII). Colette Jeudy has recently identified a early tenth-century Insular copy of Priscian, Institutio de nomine in St Petersburg, Public Library, O. v. XVI. 1 (Scriptorium 38 (1984), 147–8).Google Scholar
38 There is a fragment of Bede, De temporum ratione in the Public Record Office in early Square minuscule; cf. Roper, M., ‘A Fragment of Bede's De temporum ratione in the Public Record Office’, ASE 12 (1983), 125–8 and pl. 1Google Scholar. The copies of Bede's works made on the Continent are the De orthographia in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 221, in a ‘curious subcaroline script’ dated ninth-century and ascribed to an Insular scribe on the Continent by T. A. M. Bishop, from the library of St Augustine's Canterbury. Cambridge, Pembroke College 81 and 83 are ninth-century continental copies of Bede, De templo and In Lucam, which came to Bury. London, BL, Cotton Vespasian B. vi, Royal 15. B. XIX and Salisbury, Cathedral Library, 158 are ninth-century continental copies of De temporum ratione. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 849 is an early ninth-century Tours copy of In ep. catholicas which came to Exeter, and Oxford, Oriel College 34 another continental copy. I have not been able to ascertain when these volumes reached their destinations, but Gneuss, H. ‘A Preliminary List of Manuscripts Owned or Copied in England up to 1100’, ASE 9 (1981), 1–60, lists them as in England by 1100.Google Scholar
39 Dumville, , ‘English Square Minuscule’, p. 177Google Scholar. For the models for this script much may be learned from close study of London, BL, Cotton Tiberius C ii. In view of Dr Morrish's silence, it should be emphasized that this manuscript was copied at Canterbury, probably at St Augustine's (cf. Budny, , British Library Manuscript Royal I EVI, pp. 782–6). Dr Budny tells me that she would regard the decoration of Lambeth 218 as a development from that in Tiberius C. ii and the Paris manuscript of saints' lives, BN, lat. 10861; cf. Brown, ‘Paris Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 10861’.Google Scholar
40 I have tried to sketch this development in ‘The Preconditions for Caroline Minuscule’, Viator 17 (1987), 23–44.Google Scholar
41 Hoffmann, H., Buchkunst und Königtum im ottonischen und frühsälischen Reich, 2 vols., Schriften der MGH 30 (Stuttgart, 1986), 127–9.Google Scholar
42 Bischoff, B., Latin Palaeography, Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 118–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
43 On the development of written norms in vernacular prose, cf. Busse, W. G., ‘Written and Oral Traditions in the Late Tenth Century’, Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im englischen Mittelalter, ed. Erzgräber, W. and Volk, S. (Tübingen, 1988), pp. 27–38.Google Scholar
44 On the creation of Sherborne, Welis, Crediton and Ramsbury under Edward the Elder, c. 908, see Brooks, N. P., The Early History of the Church of Canterbury (Leicester, 1984), pp. 210–13.Google Scholar
45 Campbell, J., ‘The Church in Anglo-Saxon Towns’, in his Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London, 1986), pp. 143–5.Google Scholar
46 The library lists from Anglo-Saxon England discussed by Lapidge, M., ‘Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England’, in Learning and Literature, ed. Lapidge, and Gneuss, , pp. 33–89, record twenty-one books given to Peterborough in the 960s. No list contains more than sixty-five books, of which the bulk are liturgical. I see little evidence that most English libraries owned more than seventy volumes. It should be noted that none of the lists edited and discussed by Lapidge is earlier than c. 950.Google Scholar
47 It is impossible to exclude the possibility that the manuscripts were copied on the Continent by Insular scribes.
48 Earlier accounts of this find were presented to a session organized by Tom Hill at Kalamazoo, and in London at the invitation of Janet Nelson. I am grateful to my hosts and audiences on both occasions, and to Malcolm Parkes, Joseph Wittig, Abby Wolfson and Patrick Wormald for detailed criticism and advice on the presentation of this article. The extensive revisions suggested by Michael Lapidge to meet the style of this journal have improved it greatly. None of the above are responsible for any errors which may remain.
