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An Unknown Late Anglo-Saxon Text About old St Peter's in Rome
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2011
Extract
Ms Royal 2. B.V. in the British Library, London, is a tenth-century Psalter from Winchester, possibly from Nunnaminster. On the last folios of this MS (189-190) were added in the late tenth century, miscellaneous computistical entries, which include the years ofChrist, the ages of the world, the ages and generations, the numbering and reckoning of years and the number of years from the Creation to the foundation of Rome. Two texts, the ‘De longitudine mundi’ (fol. 189) and ‘Longitudo, latitudo et altitudo templi et tabernaculum (sic)’ (fols. 189r and v) precede, and another, ‘De area Noe’ (fol. 189v) follows a short text entitled ‘De aedificatio (sic) ecclesie sancti Petri apostoli’ at folio 189v.With the exception of this last, all these texts are also found in a ninth-century MS, British Library, Cotton Vespasian B.VI (fols. 106-70). To the best of my knowledge, the ‘De aedificatio[ne]’ does not exist in any other manuscript, and there is no known source for it. The present note aims solely at bringing this text to light and providing an edition of it; an examination of its implications for English history and architecture will be provided elsewhere.
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- Copyright
- Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1990
References
1 I am most grateful to Professor Richard Krautheimer, Dr Judith McKenzie, Professor Philip Grierson, Dr Henry Mayr-Harting and Dr John Wilkinson for their advice and suggestions for this article.
2 Warner, G. W. and Gilson, J. P. (eds.), Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King's Collections, 4 vols. (London, 1921), 1, 41.Google Scholar
3 Krautheimer, R., Corbett, S. and Frazer, A. K., Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum Romae. The Early Christian Basilicas of Rome, 4th-9th Centuries, 5 vols. (Vatican City, 1977), v, 206-7 and 245.Google Scholar
4 Ibid., 206-7.
5 Ibid., 206-8, 210, 257-9 and 261-4.
6 Two of the twelve columns by the altar were set in the walls of the apse and were less visible than the others, which led some authors of texts describing the basilica, such as Gregory of Tours, to overlook them; see Toynbee, J. and Perkins, J. Ward, The Shrine of St Peter and the Vatican Excavations (London, 1956), 213.Google Scholar
7 Ibid., 207 and 262.
8 R. Krautheimer in a letter to the author, 25 January 1988.
9 Ibid.
10 Duchesne, L. (ed.), Le Liber Pontificalis, 2 vols. (Paris, 1886), I, 465Google Scholar. We do not know the height of the gatehouse.
11 The idea of using long cubits and palmi (both used in the early Middle Ages), and the formula for these calculations, were suggested to the author by Dr Judith McKenzie, whose help is gratefully acknowledged.
12 It is worth noting that the numbers in the text seem to bear no relation to the biblical dimensions of the Temple as given in one of the texts in the same manuscript. These are given in cubits, 30 for the length, 30 for the width and 10 for the height.
13 Edited by Stubbs, W. (ed.), Memorials of St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, Rolls Series 63 (London, 1874), 391–5Google Scholar ; see also the author's article in Anglo-Saxon England 19 (1990), 197–246Google Scholar.