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The compilation of the Vercelli Book

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

D. G. Scragg
D. G. Scragg
Affiliation:
The University of Manchester
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Extract

The Vercelli Book, as is well known, is a codex of the late tenth century containing a selection of religious prose and verse in Old English. Of the manuscript's twenty-nine items (some of which are defective owing to loss of leaves), six are alliterative poems and the rest prose homilies. There seems little doubt that one scribe (henceforth referred to as V) was responsible for writing the whole of the codex, even though the size of the writing changes considerably at various points, particularly towards the end of the volume where the lineation also changes. As the earliest of the four extant poetic codices and the earliest surviving collection of homilies in the vernacular, the book is potentially a most important source of knowledge of tenth-century English; most linguistic studies which range over Old English as a whole have included some reference to it. Yet the language of the manuscript is a relatively neglected subject of study, the place of its composition has not been established and the circumstances of its compilation have not been fully explained. This paper seeks to learn more of the book's origin in two ways: firstly, by examining its make-up in an attempt to determine the number and the nature of the sources that V used, and, secondly, by considering the distribution of distinctive linguistic forms in the manuscript in order to find out more about the nature of V's exemplars and about his background and training as displayed in his attitude to the language of his exemplars.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 2 , December 1973 , pp. 189 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

page 189 note 1 A full description of the manuscript is to be found in Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957)Google Scholar; cf. also the facsimile of the manuscript, , II Codies Vercellese (Rome, 1913)Google Scholar, with an introduction in Italian by Max Forster (the facsimile foliated to reproduce the manuscript). The publication of a new facsimile in EEMF, with an introduction by Celia Sisam, is awaited.

The most convenient edition of the poetry in the Vercelli Book is The Vercelli Book, ed. George Philip Krapp, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 2 (New York, 1932)Google Scholar, from which the titles used in this paper are taken. Not all of the prose has yet appeared in a modern edition, and references to it are therefore to folio and line of the manuscript. Max Förster's definitive edition of the homilies was interrupted by the second world war, and only the first eight, together with the opening of the ninth, were published (Die Vercelli-Homilien, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 12 (Hamburg, 1932Google Scholar; rptd without homily ix Darmstadt, 1964)). Another volume, set up in type but not printed, was lost during the war, and Förster handed the project and his materials over to Rudolph Willard of Austin, Texas, before his death in 1955. On the assumption that Willard will not now publish, a new edition is in course of preparation by Paul Szarmach of the State University of New York, Binghamton. Meanwhile, homilies ix, xv and xxu are available in Förster, Max, ‘Der Vercelli-Codex CXVII nebst Abdruck einiger altenglischer Homilien der Handschrift’, Festschrift fiir Lorenz Morsbach, ed. Holthausen, F. and Spies, H., Studien zur englischen Philologie 50 (Halle, 1913), 20–179Google Scholar; and homily xi is available in Rudolph Willard, , ‘Vercelli Homily XI and its Sources’, Speculum 24 (1949), 76–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; homily XIII in Wülker, R. P., ‘Über das Vercellibuch’, Anglia 5 (1882), 451–65Google Scholar; and homily XXIII in Gonser, Paul, Das angelsächsische Prosa-leben des bl. Gutblac (Heidelberg, 1909; rptd Amsterdam, 1966).Google Scholar

page 189 note 2 On the language of the manuscript see below, p. 195, n. 2. With regard to the book's origin the most recent commentator, Gradon, P. O. E. in Cynewulf'sEIene (London, 1958), pp. 3–5Google Scholar, discounts the earlier view of Förster that it was written in Worcester and, by implication, Vleeskruyer's suggestion that it is a Mercian compilation (Tie LifeofStChad (Amsterdam, 1953), p. 58Google Scholar). She concludes: ‘further research … might usefully start from the hypothesis that it is a Winchester or Canterbury book (perhaps with Glastonbury antecedents)’.

page 189 note 1 See discussion below, p. 193.

page 189 note 2 Quire 4 is unique in the manuscript in having twenty-nine lines to a page. Throughout the volume lineation varies according to gathering, but there isa basic division between quires 1–14 (excluding 4) with twenty-four lines (increased to twenty-five in quires 2 and 7) and quires 15–19 with from thirty-one to thirty-three lines. Differences in the size of script consequent upon lineation changes led Richard Wiilker, P.(Grundriss zur Geschichte der angelsächsischen hitteratur (Leipzig, 1885), p. 239Google Scholar) to postulate a second scribe for quires 15's part, but the change to twenty-nine lines in quire 4 and then back to twenty-four/twenty-five subsequently shows a curious inconsistency. If, however, quire 4 was ruled (and perhaps partly written) before quires 1–3, the number of radical changes in lineation is reduced to the minimum of three.

page 191 note 1 Eleven quires in the codex consist (or consisted before the loss of odd leaves) of four sheets of parchment folded to make eight leaves. Three more have an extra leaf inserted, making nine leaves, one has only three bifolia (six leaves), two have three bifolia and a single leaf (seven leaves), and one has five bifolia (ten leaves). It is thus unlikely that quire 17 when constituted had less than six leaves. It is clear that the two single leaves do not belong to an adjoining quire but are the remains of a separate one, because the Vercelli Book is unusual in having two signatures to each quire, a numeral at the head of the first page and a letter at the foot of the last. Quire 17's opening numeral remains, though its conclusion is lost.

page 191 note 2 As with quires 3 and 4, there is no proof of the relative order of writing of quires 17 and 18, but two features make it probable that they were consecutive: the increase in number of lines per page which occurred in quire 15 is maintained throughout the rest of the book, and a sequence of four pen trials made by V, which take the form of the abbreviation x??? (cf. Sisam, Kenneth, Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953), pp. 109–10Google Scholar), begins in quire 17 and continues in quire 18.

page 192 note 1 Quires 1 and 2 have four bifolia plus one leaf and quire 3 has three bifolia plus one leaf.

page 192 note 2 The ascender with a ‘ knucklebone’ at the top and bulbous decoration half-way down is the most obvious, though itself faint. Also visible is the rounding of the bow. The lines are thin, but very black, a slight surrounding dusting of the parchment possibly suggesting a form of crayon- or pencil-work rather than ink. The marks appear not to have been noted previously and cannot be seen in Förster's facsimile. Together with the‘ practice’ initial on 109V (and another on 112r which is more likely to be the work of a later copyist), they offer interesting material for the study of manuscript illumination.

page 192 note 3 Cf. Ker, , Catalogue, p. 461.Google Scholar

page 193 note 1 ibid.; Gradon, Cynewulf'sElene, p. 5, n. 3.

page 193 note 2 A number of pages in the manuscript are marked by discoloured areas which coincide with parts of the text which its first known modern transcriber, a German scholar called Maier, found difficult to read. It is normally assumed that reagent was applied by Maier to bring up faded passages, e.g. fol. 1, probably exposed before the present nineteenth-century binding was added, but it should be noted that reagent has sometimes been applied to words which had been scratched out, either by V or by a near-contemporary reader, e.g. at 65r15.

page 193 note 3 Professor Clemoes, to whom I am grateful for a most helpful commentary on the first draft of this paper, has suggested to me that the numbers ii-vi may refer to the homilies above them. This solves the difficulty of the missing homily vi and also explains the absence of a number i at the beginning of the sequence, but leaves the odd circumstance that the scribe copied a sequence beginning with a homily numbered ii.

page 194 note 1 The abbreviation $$$ for the whole phrase also occurs frequently (ten times) within these four homilies. It is interesting to note the repetition of two opening formulae following the M-abbreviation in these items. Homilies xv and xvII have variations on one theme ‘Sæg??? us on byssum bocum hu …’ (xv) and ‘Sæge??? us 7 mynga???) ???is halige godspelle be …’ (xvII); while xvI and XVIII have another: ‘Sceolon we nú hwylcumhwegu wordum secgan be…’ (xvi) and ‘Magon we nu hwylcumhwego wordum asecgan be …’ (XVIII).

page 194 note 2 P. 190, n. 2.

page 195 note 1 Cf. the discussion on the decorated initial to Fates oftbe Apostles above, p. 192 and n. 2.

page 195 note 2 Cf. for the poetry, Gradon, , Cynewulf's Elene; Andreas and the Fates of the Apostles ed. Brooks, Kenneth R. (Oxford, 1961)Google Scholar; The Dream of the Rood, ed. Michael Swanton (Manchester, 1970)Google Scholar; Sisam, , Studies, pp. 119–39Google Scholar; and Weightman, Jane, The Language and Dialect of the Later Old English Poetry (Liverpool, 1907)Google Scholar. On the prose, apart from the scattered comments of Forster, there are brief but accurate observations by Vleeskruyer,St Chad, valuable pointers by Schabram, Hans, Superbia (Munich, 1965), pp. 77–87Google Scholar, and a circumscribed study of the unpublished homilies by Paul Peterson, W., ‘Dialect Grouping in the Unpublished Vercelli Homilies’, Studies in Philology 50 (1953), 559–65.Google Scholar

page 196 note 1 It is assumed that ???am is not a variant spelling. ??? and ??? are allographs of one grapheme, with a partial complementary distribution in the codex (??? is preferred in initial positions), just as long, low and rounds are part of the grapheme and again one of them, the long form, is preferred initially).

page 196 note 2 See above, p. 190, n. 2.

page 197 note 1 Cf. Campbell, A., Old English Grammar (Oxford, 1957)Google Scholar, §§ 293–7, for further details.

page 197 note 2 Studies, pp. 65–96 (esp. p. 93).

page 197 note 3 ibid. pp. 104–5.

page 197 note 4 Cf. below, p. 202.

page 199 note 1 Studies, pp. 104–5.

page 199 note 2 Cf. bio dœle??? 62V7 written for hetodœle???.

page 199 note 3 Only almost as often, for though he wrote equal numbers of eo and io spellings in the first three words, he wrote beora ten times and hiora only three times.

page 200 note 1 On the value of such verb inflexions for the study of dialect origins, cf. Sisam, , Studies, pp. 123–6.Google Scholar

page 200 note 2 Cf. Brunner, Karl, Altenglische Grammatik nach der angelsächsischen Grammatik von Eduard Sievers, 3rd ed. (Tübingen, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, § 31, n. 2, and § 427.I.

page 200 note 3 Except in common forms like ???one and ???onne, o for CG a before a nasal occurs only sporadically in the codex. A high proportion of the occasional forms in the prose appears in homily v, but the use is perhaps not regular enough for a definite conclusion on it as an exemplar spelling. Instances in Andreas and Fates of the Apostles are also slightly above average, though the spelling is not unusual in poetry.

page 200 note 4 Cf. for example the complete exclusion of in from homilies XIX–XXI, which is consistent with late West Saxon practice and confirms the late West Saxon exemplar of the three homilies as postulated below, pp. 203–5.

page 201 note 1 Sievers-Brunner, § 193.2 and Campbell, § 484. The position is confirmed by an examination of the Ælfric material in Homilies of Ælfric, ed. John C. Pope, Early English Text Society 259–60 (London, 1967–1968)Google Scholar, where the ten instances of-fn- (against a great many of -mn-) are confined to four manuscripts associated with the south-east which have other occasional non-West Saxon forms (CCCC 162 and 303; BM Cotton Vitellius C. v; and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 343).

page 201 note 2 Luick, Karl, Historiscbe Grammatik der engliscben Sprachc (Leipzig, 1914–1940Google Scholar; rptd Stuttgart and Oxford, 1964), §681 and n. 1.

page 201 note 3 Cf. Sievers-Brunner, §§ 41 and 22, n. 2; and Campbell, §380.

page 202 note 1 But -mn- appears once in each of homilies xni and xiv.

page 202 note 2 Full details of the accents and their use in the codex may be found in Scragg, D. G., ‘Accent Marks in the Old English Vercelli Book’, Neuphilologiscbe Mitteilungen 72 (1971), 699–710Google Scholar. Evidence is presented there to show that V took his accents from his exemplars.

page 202 note 3 Sixteen ctvom forms but only four com. Cf. Sisam, , Studies, p. 103.Google Scholar

page 202 note 4 Of forty-four instances of beora in the codex, thirty-three appear in the homilies of group B3. The variant spelling hiora also appears in B3 three times, but is more frequently found elsewhere (especially in group A). The usual spelling of the word throughout, however, is hira or byra, occasionally biera.

page 202 note 5 As against the long and low forms. This may not be dialectally significant, but perhaps shows V influenced by the script of his source.

page 202 note 6 The dialectally significant linguistic forms referred to throughout this paper are, in the main, those generally agreed, and only limited references to the grammars are given. In the case of spellings and accidence quoted here, cf. Campbell, §§ 222, 220, 747 and 743. On dialect vocabulary, the studies by Jordan, Menner, Rauh, Scherer, Vleeskruyer and Sisam listed by Campbell, p. 367, have been cautiously relied upon, together with Schabram, Superbia. The work of Meissner (references in Campbell) is less reliable; some of the Ælfric‘ coinings’ he lists, for example, can be paralleled in the Vercelli Book.

page 203 note 1 That the spellings and accidence are late West Saxon, cf. the following (references are in the order of the features cited): Sievers-Brunner, §22, n. 2; Sisam, , Studies, pp. 123–6Google Scholar; Campbell, §751.3; Sievers-Brunner, §413, n. 2; Vleeskruyer, , St Chad, p. 133Google Scholar; Sievers-Brunner, §§ 293, n. 3, 92,2a and 214.3; and Campbell, §767, n. I.

page 204 note 1 Cf. the rather awkward introduction of ???asgangdagas in 107V5.

page 204 note 2 For example, on I4r a contemporary copyist marked a short section for omission because no sense could be discerned. The excision marks appear suprascript in lines 23 and 24.

page 204 note 3 In homily xx, for example, there are only six errors. Two are dittographic: weg ge gelœdde 110V12 and beafod leab leabtras 110V15; two are minor omissions: of bi??? at 111r8, and of is at 111 v8; in III 19 eallum forbæfdnes was written for eall unforbafdnes, and in the same line idelneplegan occurs as a nominative phrase.

page 205 note 1 The Mercian element of Cynewulf's language is now recognized; cf. Gradon, Cynewulf's Elene. The Life of St Guthlac, an east Mercian saint, was probably translated in that area; Mercian linguistic forms are frequent in the homily, e.g. the lexical items hkodrian, stral and unmanig, and the spelling of caldan and leglican.

page 206 note 1 The controlled conditions in Winchester are admirably demonstrated by Gradon, Pamela,‘ Studies in Late West Saxon Labialization and Delabialization’, English and Medieval Studies presented to J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Davis, Norman and Wrenn, C. L. (London, 1962), pp. 63–76.Google Scholar

page 206 note 2 Cf. Pope, Homilies of Ælfric, passim.

page 206 note 3 Cf. Sisam, , Studies, pp. 109–10 and 113Google Scholar, n. 2. Sisam thought that the word sclean was not in the hand of the main scribe, but it is not clear if he thought so only because the spelling scl- for si- does not occur elsewhere in the manuscript. If the word was written later, it would indicate that the Vercelli Book remained in the south-east rather than that it was written there.

page 207 note 1 Turville-Petre, Joan, ‘Translations of a Lost Penitential Homily’, Traditio 19 (1963), 51–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 207 note 2 Homilies of JElfric, p. 23, n. 3.

page 207 note 3 On Canterbury connections cf. Ker, , Catalogue, p. 56Google Scholar, and Pope, , Homilies of Ælfric, pp. 23–4.Google Scholar

page 207 note 4 CCCC 198 has Worcester connections, especially in the glosses by the‘ tremulous hand’, but there is reasonable indication that it originated in the south-east, or at least had‘ a south-eastern book… in its pedigree’ (Sisam, , Studies, p. 155Google Scholar, n. 4); cf. also Pope, , Homilies of Ælfric, p. 22.Google Scholar

page 207 note 5 CCCC 303 was written at Rochester; cf. Ker, , Catalogue, p. 105.Google Scholar

page 207 note 6 Bodley 340 was written at Canterbury or Rochester; cf. Sisam, , Studies pp. 150–3. 189–207Google Scholar