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A Canterbury classbook of the mid-eleventh century (the ‘Cambridge Songs’ manuscript)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

A. G. Rigg  and
G. R. Wieland
G. R. Wieland
Affiliation:
The University of Toronto
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Extract

Cambridge, University Library, Gg. 5.35 is known to scholars principally for the contents of fols. 432–41, the lyric anthology known (somewhat mis-leadingly) as the ‘Cambridge Songs’. Important though this group of poems is for the history of the Latin lyric, it has diverted attention from the contents of the manuscript as a whole, which presents a remarkable range of texts, mainly poetic, from the Early Christian, Carolingian and Anglo-Latin periods. Physical description, moreover, has generally been confined to the section containing the ‘Cambridge Songs’ and consequently the method of compilation of the whole codex has been neglected. The Cambridge University Library catalogue, for instance, gives the impression of forty-four works entered sequentially in the manuscript, and leaves unexplained such curiosities as no. 41 ‘Prose treatise on medicine’ and no. 44 ‘Certain medical prescriptions’, which appear to sandwich between them the ‘Cambridge Songs’ and another group of ‘hymns’. This article describes the compilation as a whole, its physical appearance, its genesis, and its contents in detail.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 4 , December 1975 , pp. 113 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

page 113 note 1 The standard edition is by Karl, Strecker, Die Cambridger Lieder, Monumenta Germaniae Historica 40, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1955)Google Scholar; see also Carmina Cantabrigiensia, ed. Bulst, W. (Heidelberg, 1950).Google Scholar Facsimile and commentary by Breul, K., The Cambridge Songs: a Goliard's Song Book of the Eleventh Century (Cambridge, 1915).Google Scholar The ‘Songs’ have been edited many times see also Philipp, Jaffé, ZDA 14, n.F. 2 (1869), 449–95Google Scholar, and Paul, Piper, Nachträge zur älteren deutschen Literatur, von Kürscbners deutscber National Literatur 162 (Stuttgart, n.d.), 206–34.Google Scholar

page 113 note 2 The whole manuscript was described by Robert, Priebsch, Deutscbe Handschriften in England (Erlangen, 1896) 1, 20–7.Google Scholar Priebsch collated the leaves but did not observe the division of parts I, II and III.

page 113 note 3 Catalogue of the Manuscripts preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge III (Cambridge, 1858), 201ff.Google Scholar

page 113 note 4 The article has been written in collaboration: the physical description and account of the compilation are mainly by A. G. Rigg and the detailed contents list is mainly by G. R. Wieland. We are extremely grateful to Professor Clemoes and Dr Michael Lapidge for their vigilance and expert advice on the compilation and the bibliography. We would also like to thank Professors Leonard Boyle, O.P., Virginia Brown and Angus Cameron for palaeographical advice and for their helpful reading of the article.

page 114 note 1 Alternation between the hands is as follows (if no line number is given, the new hand begins at the top of the page): 1r A, 52V30 B, 53r12 A, 56v B, 56v24 A, 58r10 B, 59v A, 63r B, 64r A, 66r B, 66v A, 67r B, 68r A, 70v B, 71v A, 73r B, 73v A, 75v B, 76v A, 78r B, 79r A, 83v22 B, 84r20 A, 84v18 B, 86v A, 88r B, 88v A, 89v B, 90v A, 111r B, 116r12 A, 126v15 B, 144v7 A, 144v19 B, 170r A, 172r B, 173v A, 175r B, 176r A, 184v B, 195r A, 303r B, 303v A, 370r B, 380r A, 380v B and 389v A. B also wrote the inscription on 219v in part I(b).

page 114 note 2 See below.

page 115 note 1 See Robinson, Fred C., ‘Syntactical Glosses in Latin Manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon Provenance’, Speculum 48 (1973), 443–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; both alphabetical and dot-sequence systems are used. On the Old English glosses (in the texts of Juvencus, Sedulius, Prudentius, Aldhelm, Milo and others), see Napier, A. S., Old English Glosses, Anecdota Oxoniensia, Med. and Mod. Ser. II (Oxford, 1900)Google Scholar. A full-length study of the glosses in this manuscript is being prepared by G. R. Wieland.

page 117 note 1 See Bishop, T. A. M., English Caroline Minuscule, Oxford Palaeographical Handbooks (Oxford, 1971), esp. pl. iv(b).Google Scholar Bishop's plates from manuscripts of both St Augustine's and Christ Church, Canterbury, all show a similar hierarchy in the punctuation, but the addition of the periodus (.,) in ULC Gg. 5.35 adds a further sophistication to the system.

page 118 note 1 Probably one of Alcuin's famous poems on the cuckoo (MGH Poetae I, 270; nos. 57 and 58).

page 118 note 2 If scribe E completed his medical text on fol. *455, the Cicero must have been written by E or later. It is more likely, however, that the Cicero was in a quite separate booklet, and that, if E finished his text at all, he did so on other blank leaves.

page 118 note 3 See above, p. 117, n. 1.

page 119 note 1 Kemble's conjecture (on 448r) that the manuscript ‘must have been written in France’ has no basis. Despite the title of his book (see above, p. 113, n. 2), Priebsch did not believe that the manuscript was German; he accepted, as most scholars since have done, that the ‘Cambridge Song's section was copied in England from an exemplar written in the area of the Lower Rhine, as is evident from the contents of the ‘Songs’. James, M. R. (Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover (Cambridge, 1903), pp. lxx, lxxxv and 521)Google Scholar identifies Gg. 5. 35 with no. 1437 in the late-fifteenth-century catalogue of St Augustine's, Canterbury. The entry reads: ‘Juuencus poeta infra in colleccionibus cum A. 2° fo. Illius. D G.’ The description of the contents corresponds to our manuscript, in which Juvencus is the first item and in which the twelfth-century contents list is headed, in another hand, ‘Collectiones cum A’ (see pl. II), a typical St Augustine's letter-mark. The pressmark of Gg. 5. 35, on iiiv, is ‘Di xj Gra ij’, that is, Distinctio xi, Gradus ii, the second shelf of the eleventh stack: the pressmark for no. 1437 (‘D G’) is unfortunately incomplete. On the other hand, the secundo folio reference (‘Illius’) does not match Gg. 5.35, which has Visceribus at this point. The identification is not made by Ker, Neil R., Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, 2nd ed. (London, 1964), p. 40Google Scholar. The St Augustine's catalogue entry no. 1438 appears at first sight to be closer to Gg. 5. 35, but in fact can be firmly identified with BM Royal 15. A. xvi. James (pp. 503–4) also prints Leland's description (from Collectanea iv.7) of a St Augustine's manuscript clearly identical with Gg. 5. 35.

page 119 note 2 See no. 33 in Strecker's edition.

page 128 note 1 See above, p. 113, n. 1.

page 128 note 2 A brief notice of some of these poems is given by Priebsch (Handscbriften, p. 24).