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A fragment of an Anglo-Saxon liturgical manuscript at the University of Missouri

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Linda Ehrsam Voigts
Linda Ehrsam Voigts
Affiliation:
University of Missouri, Kansas
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Extract

A single leaf may be a valuable witness to an early manuscript that does not otherwise survive, even when it raises as many questions as it answers. Such is the case of the first fragment in a collection of some 217 leaves and fragments of medieval manuscripts owned by the University of Missouri and housed in the Rare Books Department of the Ellis Library on the Columbia, Missouri, campus. This collection, titled Fragmenta Manuscripta, derives largely from that assembled in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century by John Bagford (d. 1716), an eccentric shoemaker-turned-bookseller. Bagford was, however, not responsible for the first two leaves in the collection. They were added to the collection by the trustees of Archbishop Tenison's School in preparation for sale on 3 June 1861. The first fragment and the second, an Insular leaf of not later than tenth-century date containing grammatical excerpts, had both been removed from the binding of another volume owned by the Tenison Library. That manuscript, now London, British Library, Add. 24193, a continental codex containing the poems of Venantius Fortunatus with replacement quires supplied in two tenth-century English Caroline minuscule hands, has attracted the attention of Anglo-Saxon scholarship, but the early Insular binding fragments removed from it have remained largely unknown.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 17 , December 1988 , pp. 83 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

1 See, for example, Parkes, M. B., ‘A Fragment of an Early-Tenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Manuscript and its Significance’, ASE 12 (1983), 129–40. I am deeply grateful to three scholars who have been particularly generous of their time and advice during the preparation of this study: Dr M. B. Parkes on matters of paleography and codicology; Professor H. Gneuss on Anglo-Saxon service books; and Mr P. Meyvaert on the Vulgate text Or Lamentations. I am also grateful for the comments and suggestions of Mrs L. Brownrigg, Dean M. McC. Gatch, Dr M. T. Gibson, Professor K. D. Hartzell, Dr M. Lapidge, Professor R. W. Pfaff and Dr N. Webb.Google Scholar

2 On John Bagford, see two articles by Gatch, M. McC.: ‘John Bagford as a Collector and Disseminator of Manuscript Fragments’, The Library 6th ser. 7 (1985), 95–114; andCrossRefGoogle Scholar‘John Bagford, Bookseller and Antiquary’, Brit. Lib. Jnl 12 (1986), 150–71.Google Scholar

3 A full account of the collection will be published by Gatch in his historical introduction to a catalogue of Fragmenta Manuscripta prepared by K. Gould and L. Voigts. Dean Gatch kindly provided this information in advance of his publication of the history of the collection.

4 Fragmenta Manuscripta 2 has been the subject of detailed study by Webb, N.H., ‘Early Medieval Welsh Book-Production’ (unpubl. Ph.D. dissertation, London Univ., forthcoming).Google Scholar

5 Hunt, R. W., ‘Manuscript Evidence for Knowledge of the Poems of Venantius Fortunatus in late Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE 8 (1979), 279–87; with ‘Appendix: Knowledge of the Poems in the Earlier Period’ by M. Lapidge, pp. 287–95.Google Scholar

6 Bishop, T. A. M., English Caroline Minuscule (Oxford, 1971), p. xii.Google Scholar

7 Parkes, M. B., The Scriptorium of Wearmouth–Jarrow, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow, 1982).Google Scholar

8 See Bishop, English Caroline Minuscule, p. 24 and pl. xxiv.

9 Ibid. p. 2 and pl. 11; see also below, pp. 91–2.

10 On the positura, see Parkes, M. B., ‘The Contribution of Insular Scribes of the Seventh and Eighth Centuries to the “Grammar of Legibility”’, Grafia e interpunzione del latino nel medioevo, ed. Maierù, A. (Rome, 1987), pp. 15–30.Google Scholar

11 On word separation, see Ibid. pp. 24–6; see also Gneuss, H., ‘Guide to the Editing and Preparation of Texts for the Dictionary of Old English’, A Plan for the Dictionary of Old English, ed. Frank, R. and Cameron, A. (Toronto, 1973), pp. 11–23, esp. p. 18.Google Scholar

12 Hunt,‘Manuscript Evidence’, p. 280, provides a transcription of the pen trials in Add. 24193.

13 ‘Liber Hieremiae et Lamentationes’, Biblia sacra iuxta latinam vulgatam versionem ad codicum fidem iussu Pauli PP. VI (Rome, 1972), pp. 295–301.Google Scholar

14 Hughes, A., Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office (Toronto, 1982), pp. 60–3, andGoogle Scholarvan Dijk, S. J. P., ‘The Bible in Liturgical Use’, Cambridge History of the Bible, ed. Ackroyd, P. R. et al. , 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1963–1970) 11, 220–52. Also very helpful, although it concentrates on the Office after the 970s, isGoogle ScholarGatch, M.McC., ‘The Office in late Anglo-Saxon Monasticism’, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Lapidge, M. and Gneuss, H. (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 341–62.Google Scholar

15 Andrieu, M., Les ordines Romani du haut moyen âge, 5 vols. (Louvain, 1931–1961) 11, 469–88.Google Scholar

16 Ibid. pp. 482–3.

17 H. Gneuss, ‘Liturgical Books in Anglo-Saxon England and their Old English Terminology’, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Lapidge and Gneuss, pp. 91–141.

18 Ibid. p. 110; see also p. 120, and Tolhurst, J. B. L., ‘Introduction to the English Monastic Breviaries’, The Monastic Breviary of Hyde Abbey, Winchester, 6 vols., HBS 69, 70, 71, 76, 78 and 80 (London, 1932–1942), vi.Google Scholar

19 Gneuss, ‘Liturgical Books’, p. 111. I have undertaken the following comparison of readings from Lamentations at Nocturns during the triduum:

Although these breviaries are all later than the Anglo-Saxon period, they may shed some light on the Missouri lectionary leaf. Note that manuscripts three to six include readings from Lamentations IV, a situation apparently different from that of the Missouri leaf, which seems to have given inclusive readings for Lamentations I–III, but not IV.

20 On the homiliary of Paul the Deacon, see Gneuss, ‘Liturgical Books’, pp. 122–3.

21 I am grateful for the advice of Helmut Gneuss regarding this comparison, as well as that of breviaries described in n. 19. It should be noted that two other codices containing homiliary material from Paul the Deacon, London, BL, Harley 652, and CUL Ii. 2. 19, are not relevant here because they are instances of the sumerrædingboc, providing readings from Easter vigil to the fourth Sunday after Epiphany and fifth Sunday after Christmas respectively.

22 Gneuss, ‘Liturgical Books’, p. 122; see also pp. 120–1, and Gatch, ‘The Office’, p. 346.

23 Gneuss points out that imprecise terminology may reflect the varying contents of manuscripts, for example, a homiliary-cum-legendary that survives in fragmentary form from the eleventh century (Ibid. p. 120).

24 On the Old English nomenclature, see Gneuss, ‘Liturgical Books’, p. 121, and ‘Linguistic Borrowing and Old English Lexicography: Old English Terms for the Books of the Liturgy’, Problems of Old English Lexicography: Studies in Memory of Angus Cameron, ed. Bammesberger, A., Beiträge, Eichstäter 15 (Regensburg, 1985), 107–29, esp. 112, 119 and 122.Google Scholar

25 See, for example, M. Lapidge, ‘Surviving Booklists from Anglo-Saxon England’, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Lapidge and Gneuss, pp. 33–89, esp. pp. 78 and 81, n. 44.

26 Gneuss, ‘Liturgical Books’, p. 120.

27 It is difficult to assess precisely when Caroline manuscripts began to influence Anglo-Saxon book production; see below, nn. 31 and 32.

28 S. Keynes, ‘King Athelstan's Books’, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Lapidge and Gneuss, pp. 143–201, esp. 197.

29 Ibid. p. 200; see also pl. xv (p. LXX of the Zürich manuscript).

30 Michael Lapidge has suggested to me that this could have happened in the eleventh century as well, although presumably my reservations about the copying out of a lectionary would be applicable late as well as early.

31 English Caroline Minuscule, pp. xiv and xix.

32 See, for example, Hartzell, K. D., ‘The Early Provenance of the Harkness Gospels’, Bull. of Research in the Humanities 84 (1981), 85–97, esp. 93.Google Scholar

33 Bishop, English Caroline Minuscule, p. xv, cautions that more than half of the surviving instances of the script derive from seven scriptoria.

34 It should be acknowledged that N. R. Ker accepted only three tenth- and eleventh-century attributions to Glastonbury, and of those three only Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. F. 4. 32, is considered here; see Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, 2nd ed. (London, 1964), pp. 90–1.Google Scholar

35 For the facsimile, see Hunt, R. W., Saint Dunstan's Classbook from Glastonbury: Codex Biblioth. Bodl. Oxon. Auct. F. 4.32, Umbrae codicum occidentalium 4 (Amsterdam, 1961). See also Bishop, English Caroline Minuscule, p. 1, pl. 1.Google Scholar

36 Parkes, M. B., ‘A Note on MS Vatican, Bibl. Apost., lat. 3363’, Boethius, His Life, Thought and Influence, ed. Gibson, M. T. (Oxford, 1981), pp. 425–7. I am particularly grateful to Dr Parkes for providing me with photocopies of many leaves from this codex.Google Scholar

37 English Caroline Minuscule, p. 2, pl. 11, and Bishop, ‘An Early Example of Insular-Caroline’, Trans. of the Cambridge Bibliographical Soc. 4 (1964–1968), 396–400.Google Scholar

38 Hunt, ‘Manuscript Evidence’, p. 286. This codex must have been, however, only one of a number of Fortunatus manuscripts in Anglo-Saxon England; see, in addition to Hunt, Lapidge, ‘Appendix: Knowledge of the Poems’, and ‘Surviving Booklists’, pp. 46–8.