8 - Poetry in the Worcester Chronicula (TCD MS 503)

Summary

The Worcester Chronica Chronicarum (hereafter CC) was compiled in a number of stages with new layers of text from a range of sources being added at each stage, and with emendations of the main text and marginal and interlinear additions made throughout. As noted elsewhere in this volume, comparison of OCCC MS 157, the archetype of CC, with other extant manuscript copies of the same text, allows for these different stages to be identified with a degree of precision; and some of the stages can be closely dated. In its current form, the CC in OCCC MS 157 extends to 1140. It represents one branch of a major historical enterprise (alongside the production of various cartularies) undertaken by members of the Worcester religious community in the early to mid-twelfth century. The CC uses the universal chronicle of Marianus Scotus (an Irishman based on the continent at Mainz) as its template, and onto that template were added various passages (some of them unique) about British history. An important source for domestic events was a version (or versions) of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (hereafter ASC). In one annal of the CC a monk named Florence is given a degree of credit for CC 's creation, but it is clear that another monk, John, also had a role in its authorship and indeed John's own hand has been identified as writing and rewriting parts of the CC and making additions in its margins.

Although the CC is mainly a prose account of historical events arranged annalistically, it also contains small insertions of poetry, for instance in annals 1113, 1118, 1124, 1136 and 1138. None of these examples of poetry is significant in length or content. In the context of the CC, these particular poems mark the deaths of Worcester monks (Prior Thomas and Coleman in 1113, Florence in 1118 and Prior Nicholas in 1124) and the death of a king, Henry I. The poem inserted in annal 1138, consisting of two and a third hexameter lines, reads:

Hoc tamen oro:

Quisquis Christicola sub summa pace quiescat,

Corrigat ista legens offendit siqua Iohannes.

This however I do entreat:

May every Christian rest in total bliss!

Let the reader here correct John if he errs!