6 - Manuscripts, previous editions and editorial policy

Summary

Old English text

Manuscripts

Ælfric's translation of the Life of Saint Basil survives in three manuscripts, one complete (J) and two fragments (O and V). Part of the O fragment is now in Oxford, and I treat it together with the codex from which it became separated in 1731.

J = London, BL, Cotton Julius E. vii (S England, s. xiin; provenance Bury St Edmunds; Ker 162, Gneuss 339).

This codex is the most complete version of Ælfric's Lives of Saints. It is from Bury St Edmunds and has been dated by Ker 162 to the beginning of the eleventh century. The only complete edition of the texts found in this manuscript is Skeat's Lives of Saints. The written space measures ca. 232 x 125 mm. Large decorated initials are in red and green, and the largest one is about four lines long. LB is found at folios 15v–26r. The square looking, large script has been described in Ker as ‘influenced by Anglo-Saxon minuscule’ (p. 210). Capitalisation is regular: upper-case letters are used to introduce new sections or a turn in the narrative. Punctuation is frequent and used to mark the rhythmical units of Ælfric's style. In fact, it seems that the scribe was particularly sensitive to Ælfric's style because the points are used fairly regularly to identify both rhythmical and sense units.

ÆLFRIC's LIFE OF SAINT BASIL

This manuscript is notorious for its idiosyncratic spellings and for its use of rare orthographical variants. For example, æ is used instead of e (færde line 10, wær line 62, astræhte line 66, æffrem, line 521), e instead of æ (messode lines 349 and 617, fec line 468), gc for g (cnæplingc line 9), æ instead of ea (ræf line 68, gær line 22, sæp line 161, dædlicum line 280). Morphologically, there is confusion of verbal endings between -an, -on, -en: gebugan instead of gebugon (line 56), beheolden instead of beheoldon (line 133), and confusion of final e with a: feminine and dative singular article is regularly þæra, worhta for worhte (line 21), arwurðe for arwurða (line 489). Confusion of i and y is also a distinctive characteristic of this scribe, generating a group of idiosyncratic spellings only attested in the Lives of Saints: for instance the group uðwyta (and inflected forms) and uðwytegunge (see Appendix II).