GOSCELIN OF SAINT-BERTIN’S MATINS LESSONS FOR THE ABBESS-SAINTS OF BARKING ABBEY IN LONDON, BRITISH LIBRARY, COTTON MS OTHO A XII

Abstract

In the late eleventh century, Goscelin of Saint-Bertin (ca. 1040–d. after 1099) composed the most extensive collection of hagiographical writings known to have been assembled for a community of religious women in medieval England. At the behest of Abbess Ælfgifu (ca. 1037–ca. 1114) of Barking Abbey, he definitely wrote the following texts to honor the community’s three principal saints: a uita of its founder and first abbess, Æthelburh (d. after 686); Matins lessons for her immediate successor, Hildelith (d. after 716); a uita and an account of the first translation of their later tenth-century successor Wulfhild (d. after 996); Matins lessons and a longer account of the three abbess-saints’ translation on Laetare Sunday, 7 March 1092; and a report of a vision Ælfgifu received seven years after the event. This article makes the case for Goscelin’s authorship of the Matins lessons for Sts. Æthelburh and Wulfhild as well, and for their preservation in London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho A XII (Part 6). Paleographical analysis of these lessons further indicates that the scribe responsible for copying them also copied the lives of Sts. Æthelburh and Wulfhild in Dublin, Trinity College, MS 176 (E.5.28), a late eleventh-century book of Barking origin. This hand exhibits features peculiar to scribes trained in northeastern France or the Low Countries, raising the possibility that Goscelin made these copies himself. But even if he did not make them, the appearance of the same hand in texts related to Barking’s abbess-saints suggests that this scribe’s work in Otho A XII (Part 6) should be located at Barking, too, thus increasing the total number of books the community once owned to twenty-two and further proving one of the instrumental roles that religious women played during the Middle Ages to orchestrate their communities’ liturgies: commissioning writers and scribes to compose saints’ lives, Matins lessons, and other texts and music to celebrate their principal feast days with due solemnity and distinctiveness.

It is widely accepted that the peripatetic Flemish Benedictine hagiographer Goscelin of Saint-Bertin (ca. 1040–d. after 1099) composed a dossier of Latin saints’ lives, liturgical texts, and chronicled events for the Benedictine nuns at Barking Abbey in Essex, England, in the late eleventh century, at the behest of the community’s abbess Ælfgifu (ca. 1037–ca. 1114). ¹ It is the most extensive collection of hagiographical writings known to have been assembled at the direction of a community of religious women in medieval England. He definitely wrote the six texts listed in Table 1 to honor Barking’s three principal abbess-saints: Æthelburh (d. after 686), the abbey’s co-founder and first abbess; Hildelith (d. after 716), Æthelburh’s successor; and Wulfhild (d. after 996), a late tenth-century abbess of the community. ²

Table 1. Texts in the Dossier Composed by Goscelin of Saint-Bertin for Barking Abbey

As Table 1 notes, only three manuscripts still preserve the six texts Goscelin wrote for Barking. Elsewhere, I examined the (re)productions and uses of these texts through paleographical, codicological, and textual analysis of their two earliest manuscript witnesses: Dublin, Trinity College Library (hereafter TCD), MS 176 (E.5.28) and Cardiff, Public Library, MS 1.381. ³ The relevant texts in these manuscripts were variously copied between the last two decades of the eleventh century and the early twelfth century. I traced their origins back to Barking, established their textual relationships, recovered their communal and liturgical uses in and outside of the abbey, and even made a case for identifying the scribe of the uita of St. Æthelburh and the uita and translatio of St. Wulfhild in TCD 176 as Goscelin himself.

In researching the six texts listed in Table 1, I was troubled by the question of whether they constituted the entirety of Goscelin’s dossier for Barking. The survival of his Matins lessons for the three abbess-saints’ translation on 7 March in TCD 176 and for St. Hildelith’s dies natalis (24 March) in Cardiff 1.381 attests to the Barking nuns’ need for suitable readings to celebrate the night office on these feasts, to Abbess Ælfgifu’s provident care of her community to commission such texts, and to Goscelin’s skill in writing a variety of texts to meet the community’s different demands. In his study of a collection of texts from St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, dedicated exclusively to the cult of St. Mildreth (now London, British Library, Harley MS 3908), Richard Sharpe proposed that Goscelin composed all the texts in the collection at the community’s behest, not just the uita and translatio of the saint but also the twelve Matins lessons and the antiphons and responsories of the historia. ⁴ Goscelin’s later work at St. Augustine’s and the survival of his two sets of lessons for Barking, then, raise the possibility that he composed other liturgical materials for the abbey at Abbess Ælfgifu’s direction, including lessons for the feasts of Sts. Æthelburh and Wulfhild. Strengthening this possibility are the close correspondences between the incipits to the first lesson for Matins on the feasts of St. Wulfhild’s translation (2 September), her dies natalis (9 September), and St. Æthelburh’s dies natalis (11 October) in Barking’s early fifteenth-century ordinal and passages in Goscelin’s translatio of St. Wulfhild, uita of St. Wulfhild, and uita of St. Æthelburh, respectively. ⁵ But manuscript evidence in support of this possibility has been wanting.

In an article published in 1976, Helmut Gneuss suggested that another manuscript, London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho A XII, contained additional texts written by Goscelin for Barking, but his claim has yet to receive scholarly attention. ⁶ Otho A XII is a composite manuscript of fourteen different texts of various origins that were copied between the early eleventh century and the late twelfth century, and later gathered together in part by the antiquarian Robert Cotton (1571–1631). ⁷ Gneuss’s article was the first attempt at a description of the manuscript since Thomas Smith’s entry in his 1696 catalogue of the books in the Cotton Library and the report from the committee appointed to view the collection, published by order of the House of Commons in May 1732, over half a year after the fire at Ashburnham House that severely damaged or entirely destroyed most of the books in the library. ⁸ Both Smith’s catalogue and the report noted the contents of Otho A XII; the report even provided the folio number where each text started, as Table 2 shows. ⁹ On the basis of paleographical and textual evidence, Gneuss concluded that Otho A XII consists of six originally separate parts. ¹⁰ The texts in Part 6 of the manuscript are significant to this discussion of Goscelin’s hagiographical corpus. ¹¹

Table 2. The 1732 Report’s List of the Contents of London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho A XII

Of the 155 folios constituting Otho A XII in the early eighteenth century, there are presently only forty-seven “Kartonfolios” on which the surviving fragments were mounted. All of the fragments are in poor condition, and several were mislabeled, placed out of order, or inserted upside down or backwards by conservators. They have shrunk considerably and are brown to blackish in color, making their original dimensions irrecoverable and their texts nearly illegible. Because of its fragile condition, the British Library has restricted access to Otho A XII to preserve its remains. When Gneuss studied it in the 1970s, he recorded the sizes of the fragments as ranging from 7–11x3–5 cm, most with 23 to 33 long lines, and he indicated that parts of texts could be viewed “bei gunstigem Licht” (“with favorable light”). ¹² Words and phrases on certain folios can be deciphered better under UV light, but the Melinex sleeves in which the fragments were placed in 1987 for preservation impair such viewing and make any kind of reproduction of them impossible at this time. ¹³ We can only hope that one day conservators at the British Library will find a way to remove the fragments safely from their sleeves and obtain multispectral images of them, thereby continuing the important work of Andrew Dunning, Alison Hudson, and Christina Duffy on early English fragments in the Cotton Collection. ¹⁴

Even without this technology, much can be learned about the texts still legible on the surviving fragments of Otho A XII, especially those related to Barking Abbey in Part 6 of the manuscript. Through his examination of the fragments, Gneuss was able to read enough of the words on the folios that had been identified as the “Vita S. Bertini Abbatis” and “De S. Erchenwaldo” to determine that the former text could not be found in the Acta sanctorum among the different lives of St. Bertin (d. ca. 709), the first abbot of the monastery in Saint-Omer, Flanders, which would later bear his name, and that the latter text could not be associated with any of the three known versions of the uita and miracula of St. Eorcenwald (d. 693), St. Æthelburh’s brother and the co-founder of Barking. ¹⁵ For Gneuss, the facts that Goscelin had taken monastic vows at Saint-Bertin, and that he had close ties to St. Paul’s Cathedral, the seat of the bishop of London and the keeper of St. Eorcenwald’s relics, made the hagiographer’s authorship of the texts honoring these saints in Otho A XII (Part 6) “durchaus vorstellbar” (“quite conceivable”). ¹⁶ Gneuss also discovered that the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century lists of the manuscript’s contents were incomplete. They did not include the Matins lessons for St. Hildelith, which follow the “Excerpta de uita S. uirginis Æthelburgae.” ¹⁷ Gneuss could tell, too, that the excerpts from the uita of St. Æthelburh had been arranged as Matins lessons. ¹⁸ On the present fol. 41r, the rubricated heading “LECT VIII,” marking the eighth lesson, still appears, and on fol. 44r, parts of a homily on Matthew 25:1–13, the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, the gospel reading for the feast of St. Æthelburh according to Barking’s early fifteenth-century ordinal, can be seen. ¹⁹ These observations led Gneuss to conclude: “With regard to the versions of the uitae of Æthelburh, Hildelith, and Eorcenwald in the Otho MS, it does not seem impossible that the entire last part of the MS (Smith, nos. 9–13) contained saints’ legends in the form intended for the hourly offices.” ²⁰ His conclusion further suggests the possibility that Goscelin composed these Matins lessons himself, probably for Barking.

Gneuss’s description of Otho A XII is an invaluable resource for scholars of Goscelin’s hagiographical writings and the cults of Barking’s three abbess-saints, but careful reexamination of the surviving fragments yields more insights. This article offers a second attempt at a description of Otho A XII, focused on the items in Part 6 of the manuscript pertaining to Sts. Æthelburh, Hildelith, Wulfhild, Bertin, and Eorcenwald (fols. 35–47). With a UV torch, I was able to identify the scribe responsible for copying the Matins lessons for Barking’s abbess-saints and St. Bertin. A different scribe copied the lessons for St. Eorcenwald. This finding is significant because the former scribe also copied Goscelin’s uita of St. Æthelburh and uita and translatio of St. Wulfhild in TCD 176, the late eleventh-century collection of hagiographical and liturgical materials from Barking mentioned in Table 1. ²¹ This correspondence suggests that all of these texts were copied, if not also composed, around the same time in the late eleventh century at the direction of Abbess Ælfgifu, and that at least the fragments in Otho A XII (Part 6) copied by this scribe were also written at or for Barking, possibly as a lectionary or legendary to be used at Matins. The latter finding increases the total number of books that can be assigned a Barking origin or provenance from twenty-one to twenty-two—a remarkable addition given the low survival rate of books from communities of religious women in medieval England. ²² But the former finding is no less important. It further proves one of the instrumental roles that religious women played during the Middle Ages to orchestrate their communities’ liturgies: commissioning writers and scribes to compose saints’ lives, Matins lessons, and other texts and music to celebrate their principal feast days with due solemnity and distinctiveness. ²³

My study of the fragments in Otho A XII (Part 6) with a UV torch also allowed me to decipher more of the words and phrases written on them and, thereby, identify corresponding passages in the other known uitae and lectiones of the abbess-saints that Goscelin wrote. With this information, I could then establish the fragments’ proper order, correct some of Gneuss’s errors about their contents, and determine both how the Matins lessons for the feasts of St. Wulfhild’s translation (2 September), her dies natalis (9 September), and Sts. Æthelburh’s dies natalis (11 October) were derived from their source-texts, and whether Goscelin was responsible for writing them.

Ultimately, this article makes the case for obtaining multispectral imaging of the entirety of Otho A XII, if it can be undertaken without risk of further damage to the fragments. The work of recovering texts from fragments in Melinex sleeves with a UV torch is limited. Multispectral imaging would improve the fragments’ readability and the conclusions we can draw from them. ²⁴

The Scribe of Otho A XII (Part 6), fols. 35r–45v

In his description of Otho A XII, Gneuss observed at least four hands operative in the writing of the different texts compiled in the manuscript. ²⁵ He credited the fourth scribe (Hand D), whom he judged to have worked in the twelfth century, with copying the items numbered nine to thirteen in Smith’s catalogue and in the 1732 report (fols. 35–47) (Table 2). He did not, however, rule out the possibility that these texts were written “vielleicht von mehr als einem Schreiber” (“perhaps by more than one scribe”). ²⁶ Careful study of Otho A XII (Part 6) with a UV torch makes it possible to determine that there was more than one scribe responsible for copying the texts on these folios. One scribe copied the Matins lessons for Barking’s abbess-saints and St. Bertin (fols. 35r–45v, line 4) in a proficient, but sometimes untidy Caroline minuscule, and another scribe copied the lessons for St. Eorcenwald (fol. 45v, lines 5–?) in a neat Protogothic script. ²⁷

When viewing the manuscript with a UV torch, I recognized the first scribe’s hand as the one that copied Goscelin’s uita of St. Æthelburh and his uita and translatio of St. Wulfhild in TCD 176, fols. 1r–13v, 15r–25v, and 36r–v. In his description of this manuscript, Marvin Colker dated the hand to the second half of the eleventh century, but his dating can be narrowed to sometime after 1086, the year in which Barking’s diocesan, Maurice (r. 1086–1107), the dedicatee of both lives, was consecrated the bishop of London. ²⁸ Michael Gullick posited a continental origin for this hand. ²⁹ It exhibits features peculiar to scribes trained in northeastern France or the Low Countries, such as the formation of t with a straight stem. ³⁰ The scribe nevertheless used the runic letters of ash and eth to write certain proper names, such as Æðelburga, Hildeliða, and Tortgyða. Because of the late eleventh-century dating of this hand and its localization to northeastern France or the Low Countries, I have suggested elsewhere that TCD 176 preserves Goscelin’s own copy of his uita of St. Æthelburh and his uita and translatio of St. Wulfhild. ³¹ Finding this scribe at work copying other texts probably composed by Goscelin, including a seemingly unique set of Matins lessons for St. Bertin, the patron saint of the community where he had made his monastic profession, lends some credence to this claim. It must remain a conjecture, however, until an autograph copy of one of his texts can be identified with certainty.

The scribe responsible for copying the Matins lessons for Barking’s abbess-saints and St. Bertin in Otho A XII (Part 6) shares several identifiable features with the scribe that copied Goscelin’s uita of St. Æthelburh and his uita and translatio of St. Wulfhild in TCD 176. The British Library’s conservation team has determined that they cannot photograph any part of Otho A XII in its present state without risking further damage to the manuscript. ³² It is, nevertheless, instructive to examine images of the distinctive features of the scribe’s hand in TCD 176, as Table 3 shows. ³³ They include the following features, which are also evident in Otho A XII (Part 6):

1. 1. right-leaning aspect of the script

2. 2. slight wedging at the tops of ascenders

3. 3. base of minims and shafts of ascenders that turn upwards to the right

4. 4. large rubricated initials that open chapters and lessons

5. 5. opening letters to sentences highlighted with red ink

6. 6. paraph marks highlighted with red ink

7. 7. suspension marks with thick heads and thin tails that lift up to the right

8. 8. the tendency at the very end of a line to leave a trail that lifts up to the right when making the final minim of a letter (e.g., a, m, n, u), the arm of r, or the cross-stroke of an e or t

9. 9. the consistent use of the ct, ri, and st ligatures

10. 10. single-compartment a with a stem that sometimes peeks over the bowl when a is in initial position or by itself

11. 11. uncial d and half-uncial d in both minuscule and majuscule forms

12. 12. e caudata with a slightly opened loop

13. 13. f and s with stems that often descend below the line

14. 14. g with an ear and an open loop that angles to the right at about forty-five degrees

15. 15. r with an arm that undulates at the end

16. 16. W formed with two overlapping Vs

17. 17. y with a dot over it

18. 18. et ligature with a final that extends far up to the right and terminates in a downward spur

19. 19. -bus and -que abbreviations made with two dots vertically arranged

20. 20. -orum abbreviation made with the right half of a majuscule R whose leg extends below the line, terminates in an upward spur, and is crossed by a line that thickens at the top end

21. 21. pro- abbreviation made with a wide loop starting midway down the descender of p

22. 22. -ur abbreviation made with a 2 tilted slightly downward and a final stroke that angles up to the right and terminates in an upward spur

Table 3. Analysis of the First Scribal Hand in Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS 176, fols. 1r–13v, 15r–25v, and 36r–v (Courtesy of Trinity College, Dublin)

Especially striking is the scribe’s habit of making a large rubricated initial A in three different ways: with a V-shaped cross-stroke, with a straight cross-stroke, and with an angled left stem with a hole at the top instead of a cross-stroke. All three As appear in TCD 176 and in Otho A XII (Part 6). ³⁴ Significantly, too, in corresponding passages in the texts related to Barking’s abbess-saints, the scribe highlighted with red ink the opening letters to sentences in the exact same way in TCD 176 and in Otho A XII (Part 6). See, for example, fol. 37r of Otho A XII (Part 6), which must contain the beginning lessons for the feast of St. Wulfhild’s translation because they are based on the opening chapters of Goscelin’s translatio of the saint, and because this is the first page of the collection of Matins lessons copied by the scribe. The opening letters of “Cumque,” “Tandem,” “Vbi,” “Successit,” and “Hec” were all highlighted with red ink. These five highlighted letters perfectly match their correspondents on fol. 24v of TCD 176. ³⁵ The A of “At ille nimio dolore” on the same folio of Otho A XII (Part 6) is a large rubricated initial that was formed in the third way favored by the scribe, probably to mark the beginning of a lesson. In TCD 176, this A is only a highlighted opening letter because it does not start a new chapter; however, the scribe wrote it in the third way, too.

Finding the work of the same scribe on texts related to Barking’s abbess-saints in two different manuscripts has important consequences for our understanding of these texts’ composition, circulation, and liturgical use at the abbey. Goscelin’s uita of St. Æthelburh and his uita and translatio of St. Wulfhild in TCD 176 and the Matins lessons for Barking’s abbess-saints and St. Bertin in Otho A XII (Part 6) were copied around the same time, and the scribe responsible for copying them consulted his previous work in one manuscript, possibly TCD 176, while he worked on the other. The absence of the Matins lessons for the feast of the abbess-saints’ translation on 7 March from Otho A XII (Part 6) suggests that these folios were copied before Goscelin composed this text and even before the solemn event took place. ³⁶ Evidence internal to Goscelin’s uita of St. Æthelburh makes clear that he wrote this text before the translatio, most likely between September of 1091 and March of 1092. ³⁷ Goscelin’s uita and translatio of St. Wulfhild probably date to this time, too. And if the Matins lessons for Sts. Æthelburh and Wulfhild were based on their lives, and if Goscelin composed them, as I demonstrate later in this article, then they would also date to 1091x1092.

The contemporaneous composition of Matins lessons makes sense liturgically: the nuns at Barking would have needed them to celebrate the abbess-saints at the night office on their respective feast days, and Ælfgifu, in her capacity as abbess, would have made sure to provision her community with them. The uitae, though suitable for reading at refectory, collation, or private devotion, would have been too long for Matins, even an office of twelve lessons. ³⁸ The texts had to be abbreviated and, in places, adapted to suit this liturgical purpose, and that is precisely what Goscelin did.

A Barking origin can be assigned to TCD 176 with a high degree of certainty. ³⁹ The presence of the same scribe in both that manuscript and in the Matins lessons for the abbess-saints and St. Bertin in Otho A XII (Part 6), should encourage the assignment of a Barking origin to these folios, too, thus making a significant addition to the total number of books known to have once been in the community’s possession. ⁴⁰ These fragments, along with those containing the Matins lessons for St. Eorcenwald, may have constituted, either wholly or in part, a lectionary or legendary for performance of the night office at Barking. In the early fifteenth century, the abbey possessed at least one legendary or lectionary for Matins. The ordinal produced for the community at this time sometimes explicitly references a legenda or leccionale that had to be consulted for the Matins lessons of a particular feast. ⁴¹ The community would have needed such a book, or set of books, for all the lessons read at the night office because the ordinal only provides the incipits to the first lessons. The folios containing the Matins lessons for Barking’s abbess-saints, St. Bertin, and St. Eorcenwald in Otho A XII (Part 6) would have satisfied this need, helping the community to remember these saints distinctively on their feast days. ⁴²

The Contents, Source-Texts, and Organization of Otho A XII (Part 6), fols. 35r–47r

The severely damaged condition of the fragments of Otho A XII (Part 6) and the Melinex sleeves protecting them make it very difficult, if not completely impossible in places, to read the texts they contain, even with the aid of a UV torch. Still, more of the texts can be read under UV light than without it—the conditions in which Gneuss viewed the fragments. Table 4 lists all the words on fols. 35r–47r of the manuscript that can be read under UV light and their locations on the fragments where they appear. Gathering this information helps to determine the folios’ contents and source-texts, as well as their proper order, as Table 5 shows using the modern foliation and the 1732 report’s foliation.

Table 4. The Contents of London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho A XII (Part 6), fols. 35r–47r

Key to Symbols Used in Transcriptions:

<abc> letters obscured by damage to fragment, restored by editor

[#] letters obscured by damage to fragment, not restored by editor (known extent)

[---] letters obscured by damage to fragment, not restored by editor (unknown extent)

A large rubricated initials or letters highlighted with red ink

(abc) location of letters on fragment

Table 5. The Original Order of the Matins Lessons in London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho A XII (Part 6), fols. 35r–47r

Both Thomas Smith’s entry for Otho A XII in his 1696 catalogue and the 1732 report identified the translatio of St. Wulfhild as the first of the last five texts in the manuscript, and the report further noted that the text began on fol. 146r. The words that can be recovered from the present fol. 37r indicate that this folio was originally fol. 146r. It contains excerpts from the first two chapters of Goscelin’s translatio of St. Wulfhild (Chapters 12–13 in Marvin Colker’s edition of the text). The text continues onto fols. 37v and 39r with excerpts from the second, third, and fourth chapters of Goscelin’s translatio (Chapters 13–15 in Colker’s edition). On fol. 37v, fifteen lines from the top of the fragment, the rubricated heading “VI L” can be seen on the right side of the page, marking the beginning of the sixth lesson. It is the only rubric still visible under UV light on these folios, but it reveals that the text was copied as Matins lessons for the feast of St. Wulfhild’s translatio.

The uita of St. Bertin followed the translatio of St. Wulfhild, according to Smith’s catalogue and the 1732 report, beginning on fol. 147v. Though the fragments on which this text is found are among the most difficult to decipher, enough words can still be read to identify the present fol. 39v as the opening to this text, followed by fol. 38r. It is possible that this text ended near the top of fol. 38v because the subsequent text, the Matins lessons for St. Wulfhild’s dies natalis, does not start until fourteen lines from the bottom of the fragment, but it is impossible to verify this claim because the words on this part of the fragment are completely illegible in the present conditions. It is also impossible to determine whether this text was divided into Matins lessons. No rubricated headings are visible under UV light, but better imaging may reveal some. On the basis of what can be read on these fragments, I concur with Gneuss’s conclusion about the lessons’ uniqueness. I, too, was unable to locate an analogue for them.

Next to be included were the Matins lessons for St. Wulfhild’s dies natalis, once beginning on fol. 148v, but now starting on fol. 38v. They continue onto fols. 36r, 36v, 35r, and 35v. “WLFHILDIS VIRGINIS,” part of the rubricated title opening the text, can be seen on fol. 38v. Ten lines below this title and two lines up from the bottom of the fragment on fol. 38v a rubricated “II L” appears, indicating the start of the second lesson. The texts on these five pages are very difficult to read, but based on what can be deciphered, passages from Goscelin’s uita of St. Wulfhild were either excerpted or adapted in order to compose the lessons (definitely Chapters 1, 5, and 10 in Colker’s edition of the text).

Following the Matins lessons for St. Wulfhild are those for St. Æthelburh. In the early eighteenth century, they began on fol. 150v, but now they start on fol. 35v and continue onto fols. 40r, 40v, 41v, 41r, 44r, 44v, 42r, and 42v. Gneuss correctly observed that fol. 41 had been placed backwards by conservators, that the heading for the eighth lesson on fol. 41r had been rubricated, and that the ninth lesson, beginning midway down the fragment on fol. 44r, was a homily based on the parable of the wise and foolish virgins (Mt. 25:1–13). ⁴³ There is also a rubricated “X” eight lines down from the top of the fragment on fol. 44v, signifying the start of the tenth lesson, and there are paraph marks highlighted with red ink on fols. 42r and 42v, possibly marking the beginnings to the final two readings of a twelve-lesson office. The words that can be read on the fragments indicate that the lessons derive from many of the chapters of Goscelin’s uita of St. Æthelburh, as Table 4 shows. The entries for the printed editions of the sources of each folio’s contents provided in the table supplement and correct the list given by Gneuss in his article. ⁴⁴ For example, in his description of fol. 42v, the last remaining page of the Matins lessons for St. Æthelburh, Gneuss noted that it corresponds with Chapter 18 of Goscelin’s uita of the saint, but this is not the case. It relates to Chapters 17 and 20 of the uita and completely omits Chapters 18 and 19. This finding has important implications for determining the authorship of the lessons, as we will see.

Neither Thomas Smith nor the 1732 committee recorded the presence of Matins lessons for St. Hildelith in Otho A XII. Gneuss guessed that they had overlooked this text “because of the frequent mention in Hildelith’s life of Aethelburga, whose uita precedes it in the manuscript.” ⁴⁵ But they were probably drawing on Robert Cotton’s 1621 catalogue of the manuscripts in his library in London, British Library, Harley MS 6018, which did not list the Matins lessons for St. Hildelith among the contents of Otho A XII. ⁴⁶ Whatever the reason for their oversight, all these observers of the manuscript missed an important text in its collection: a copy of Goscelin’s Matins lessons for St. Hildelith. ⁴⁷ Their oversight may have also led to their miscount of the total number of folios in the manuscript by at least one folio, as Table 5 indicates next to the entries for fols. 43r and 43v. The lessons begin on the present fol. 43r and continue onto fols. 43v, 45r, and the first quarter of 45v. In his edition of the text, Marvin Colker misnumbered the lessons as they had been copied in Cardiff 1.381. ⁴⁸ His error affected Gneuss’s identification of the lessons’ location in Otho A XII (Part 6). The entries for the printed editions of the lessons’ sources in Table 4 correct these errors, following the division of the readings in Cardiff 1.381. No rubricated headings marking the lessons on these pages were visible under UV light, but some may be detected with multispectral imaging.

According to Smith and the 1732 committee, the last text in Otho A XII pertains to the uita of St. Eorcenwald, and it began on fol. 155v (now fol. 45v). The terribly damaged condition of the subsequent folios and the seemingly unique nature of this text honoring the saint make it difficult to determine at present whether fols. 46 and 47 also contain texts from the uita of St. Eorcenwald—the fact that they were all copied by the same scribe raises this possibility—and whether the entire text was divided into Matins lessons. Fortunately, as Gneuss mentioned in his article, Cotton’s 1621 catalogue settles the second question: the thirteenth and last item in Otho A XII’s contents was “De Sancto Erchenwaldo lectiones.” ⁴⁹ Thus, the scribe copying this text picked up where the scribe of the lessons for St. Hildelith had left off on fol. 45v to include readings for another saint dear to Barking for use in the night office.

By the early fifteenth century, St. Eorcenwald’s dies natalis (30 April) was celebrated as one of Barking’s principal feasts, and the feast commemorating the translation of his relics at St. Paul’s Cathedral on 14 November 1148 was held as a duplex feast. ⁵⁰ The community’s surviving ordinal notes that Katherine Sutton, abbess of Barking from 1353 to 1377, elevated St. Eorcenwald’s dies natalis to a principal feast with the concession of Barking’s diocesan, Simon Sudbury, bishop of London (r. 1361–75); the community, however, may have held St. Eorcenwald’s feasts with at least twelve lessons prior to Katherine’s abbacy. ⁵¹ As stated earlier, St. Eorcenwald was the brother of St. Æthelburh, co-founded Barking with her, and served as the bishop of London from ca. 675 to 693. He was remembered fondly in the first two chapters of Goscelin’s uita of St. Æthelburh, and other sources recall that he died at Barking and that the community wished to bury his body there. ⁵² The canons of St. Paul’s and the people of London, however, insisted that his body be returned to the cathedral because ancient custom demanded that the saint be buried where he had been ordained and appointed. ⁵³ To the nuns’ bitter disappointment, the canons forcibly removed St. Eorcenwald’s body from Barking. The nuns nevertheless continued venerating the saint as one of their own, in the company of their abbess-saints, possibly even commissioning Matins lessons with which to memorialize him at the night office.

According to Barking’s ordinal, the incipit to the first lesson of Matins for St. Eorcenwald’s dies natalis was “Post passionem,” and the incipit to the first lesson for his translatio was “Confessor domini.” ⁵⁴ The first set of lessons probably derives from the popular uita of the saint, identified by the same incipit (BHL 2600). A fourteenth-century breviary from Chertsey Abbey, a monastery also founded by St. Eorcenwald, contains lessons for the saint’s dies natalis based on “Post passionem.” ⁵⁵ Barking’s ordinal may refer to the very same or closely related lessons. The lessons for St. Eorcenwald in Otho A XII (Part 6), however, do not derive from “Post passionem,” nor are they based on the other two known versions of the saint’s uita, as Gneuss noted. ⁵⁶ This led him to speculate about Goscelin’s authorship of these lessons. ⁵⁷

Table 5 shows that the Matins lessons in Otho A XII (Part 6), fols. 35r–45v, were copied in liturgical order, beginning with the feast of St. Wulfhild’s translatio on 2 September and ending with the feast of St. Eorcenwald’s dies natalis on 30 April. This arrangement of the texts raises the possibility that they constituted a short lectionary or legendary on Barking’s most treasured saints for Matins, possibly in libellus format, just like the other books containing hagiographical texts that were copied at the abbey in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, including TCD 176, the other known manuscript in which the hand of the scribe responsible for copying the lessons for Barking’s abbess-saints and St. Bertin in Otho A XII (Part 6) appears. ⁵⁸

Efforts made to conserve Otho A XII after the 1731 Ashburnham House fire make it impossible to recover its original collation now. In his article on the manuscript, Gneuss mentioned that the report signed by Matthew Hutton, John Anstis, and Humphrey Wanley on 22 June 1703, after their inspection of the Cotton Library, noted that Otho A XII was “in 4^o constans foliis 155. 1 fol. lacer.” ⁵⁹ It seems unlikely, though, that the entire manuscript adhered to a quaternion quire structure until the early eighteenth century. Gatherings of eight leaves do predominate in books made at or for Barking in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but the length of a text sometimes dictated otherwise, and later changes to a book often resulted in the addition and/or removal of leaves. ⁶⁰ Further speculation on the structure of the folios on which the Matins lessons for Barking’s abbess-saints, St. Bertin, and St. Eorcenwald in Otho A XII (Part 6) were copied must wait until more of the text on each page can be recovered through multispectral imaging. Only then can we know whether any folios are presently missing. We can conclude, however, that the remaining fragments of Otho A XII (Part 6) were a part of a collection that served the liturgical needs of the nuns at Barking.

The Author of the Matins Lessons for Sts. Æthelburh and Wulfhild

Near the end of his description of Otho A XII (Part 6), Gneuss admitted that he did not think that it was possible then to prove that Goscelin was the author of the Matins lessons collected in the last part of the manuscript. ⁶¹ Of course Gneuss could tell that the manuscript contained a copy of Goscelin’s lessons for St. Hildelith, and that the lessons for St. Wulfhild’s translatio, her dies natalis, and St. Æthelburh’s dies natalis were closely related to his uitae of the saints, but Gneuss could not determine whether the lessons were based on the uitae, or whether Goscelin had composed them, because he could not read enough of the text on each page. As Table 4 shows, with a UV torch, I have been able to recover more words from the fragments, but much of the texts remain illegible, especially the lessons for Sts. Bertin and Eorcenwald. Still, based on what can be read, several important observations about the composition of the lessons for Sts. Æthelburh and Wulfhild can be made.

First, lengthy passages from Goscelin’s uita of St. Æthelburh and his uita and translatio of St. Wulfhild can be found in the saints’ respective Matins lessons with either no differences or relatively minimal ones. For example, on fol. 40v of Otho A XII (Part 6), a couple of the words on most of the lines can be read from the lesson for St. Æthelburh copied on the page; they indicate that nothing from the corresponding passage in Chapter 4 of Goscelin’s uita of the saint is missing. ⁶² On fol. 41r of the lessons for St. Æthelburh, the positions of the visible words before the rubricated heading “LECT VIII” suggest that only two sentences found in Chapter 9 of Goscelin’s uita of the saint do not appear in this part of the seventh lesson. Both texts relate a miracle performed shortly after the saint’s death for a nun in the community, who had been paralyzed for many years; however, the appearance of the infinitive “carere” (“to be deprived of”) and the possessive adjective “suos” (“her”) on successive lines on fol. 41r makes it impossible that all the text found between these two words in the uita fit in here. It is more probable that the lesson does not contain the two sentences describing the gravity of the nun’s condition: “Only her disobliging spirit was breathing in her cadaver. Even if the tongue, eyes, and ears had been able to ask for help, they would not have been able to prevail”—details probably deemed inessential by the lessons’ author. ⁶³

Similar differences can be detected on the recto and verso of fol. 37 of the Matins lessons for St. Wulfhild’s translatio in Otho A XII (Part 6). The visible words of the lessons on these fragments perfectly match their correspondents in Goscelin’s translatio of the saint in all but two instances. Near the bottom of fol. 37r, the phrase “pridem ab adolescentia” (“previously from adolescence”) differs slightly from the related passage in Goscelin’s account; there, the clause “ut in uita eius memorauimus” (“as we recorded in her life”) appears between the adverb “pridem” and the preposition “ab.” ⁶⁴ Such a reference to the saint’s uita would have been superfluous and potentially confusing in Matins lessons used to celebrate her feast day.

The second discrepancy can be found on fol. 37v, four lines below the rubricated heading “VI L,” marking the beginning of the sixth lesson of Matins for St. Wulfhild’s translatio. The visible words are “mira integritate. Tanta” (“with remarkable wholeness. Such…”). In the parallel passage in Goscelin’s account of the saint’s translation, the relative clause “quod et ceterae sorores cum ipsa matre Lifleda conspexere” (“which the other sisters with Mother Leoffled herself also saw”) follows the ablative “integritate.” ⁶⁵ The lessons’ author may have considered information about the other witnesses to the miraculous preservation of the saint’s body after her death extraneous given the abbreviated nature of this type of liturgical text.

Finally, the text on fol. 39r, the last page on which the Matins lessons for St. Wulfhild’s translation was definitely copied, agrees with the last sentence of Chapter 14 and the first two-thirds of Chapter 15 of Goscelin’s translatio of the saint, except in one part: it does not include the direct speech spoken to St. Wulfhild by Wulfruna-Judith, Barking’s sacristan at the time and the former abbess’s “most devoted disciple” (deuotissima ipsius discipula). ⁶⁶ When the cover of the saint’s tomb was removed during its translation by Abbess Leoffled, St. Wulfhild’s successor, Wulfruna-Judith used her veil to cover St. Wulfhild’s body to protect it “from the unworthy gaze of the carnal” (ab indignis carnalium aspectibus). ⁶⁷ Sometime after this event, when the monastery was in dire financial straits, Wulfruna-Judith was unable to purchase new clothing for herself, so she beseeched St. Wulfhild for assistance: “Look, Mother, I gave you a veil of the kind I had. Give me, therefore, the necessary tunic.” ⁶⁸ Wulfruna-Judith’s address humanizes the miracle with its candor, but it is not indispensable to the narrative if pressed for space. The audience would have been more interested to hear how St. Wulfhild had given Wulfruna-Judith sixty silver coins to buy clothing, and how the saint’s intercession had made it possible for the sacristan both to pay the vendor with this money and to restore the full amount to her purse by the time she had returned to Barking. The words visible near the bottom of fol. 39r make clear that these were precisely the details of the miracle that the author of the lessons chose to relate. ⁶⁹

The second observation that can be made about the composition of the Matins lessons for Sts. Æthelburh and Wulfhild is that several chapters in Goscelin’s uita of St. Æthelburh and his uita and translatio of St. Wulfhild do not appear in the saints’ respective lessons. For example, on fol. 42r of the lessons for St. Æthelburh in Otho A XII (Part 6), the text on the first third of the fragment matches the end of Chapter 13 of Goscelin’s uita of the saint exactly, thus preserving the miracle of the wolf, bear, and lion sent by St. Æthelburh to safeguard Barking against a band of marauding Danes. ⁷⁰ Then, the lessons jump to the account of St. Æthelburh’s expulsion of the Danes occupying the monastery with a brilliant light, told in Chapter 16 of the uita. ⁷¹ The intervening chapters of the uita, which relate two other occasions when St. Æthelburh miraculously chastised the Danes desecrating Barking’s church and cloister, do not appear in the lessons. ⁷² The author of this text must have decided that only two miracles recounting St. Æthelburh’s defense against the Danes were needed to extol the saint’s unfailing care of her community. Similarly, the text on fol. 42v of the saint’s lessons moves from the account of the healing of three blind women by Sts. Æthelburh, Hildelith, and Wulfhild, told in Chapter 17 of Goscelin’s uita of St. Æthelburh, to the story of the miraculous recovery of a missal stolen from Barking by a looting Norman priest, related in Chapter 20 of the uita. ⁷³ The miracles detailed in Chapters 18 and 19 of the uita, which concern the healing of a young girl unable to walk and of a blind man, respectively, were not included in the lessons, possibly in the interest of space. ⁷⁴

On fol. 39r, the last visible word is “credere” (“to believe”), found at the bottom of the fragment, as Table 4 shows. This is definitely the concluding page of the Matins lessons for St. Wulfhild’s translation in Otho A XII (Part 6) because those for St. Bertin begin on the opposite side, Goscelin used the infinitive “credere” near the end of the antepenultimate chapter of his translatio of the saint. ⁷⁵ This correspondence suggests that there is very little text missing after “credere” on fol. 39r, and that the lessons for St. Wulfhild’s translation do not contain the miracles told in the final two chapters of Goscelin’s account of this event. ⁷⁶ It would not be surprising if the lessons’ author chose to omit these miracles, because they primarily feature St. Æthelburh and have little to do with St. Wulfhild.

The third and final observation about how the Matins lessons for Sts. Æthelburh and Wulfhild were composed is that some passages correspond very loosely with chapters in the saints’ respective uitae, probably indicating that they were rewritten for the sake of concision. For example, on fol. 38v of Otho A XII (Part 6), none of the visible words in the first lesson for St. Wulfhild’s dies natalis has an exact match in Goscelin’s uita of the saint. Like Chapter 1 of the uita, this lesson recounts the nativity of St. Wulfhild, but in a different way. ⁷⁷ The early history of her father, detailed at length by Goscelin, does not open the lesson. It begins instead with the angelic messenger that Wulfhild’s parents received in their late age to announce her birth. Similarly, only a few of the visible words of the final lesson of Matins for St. Æthelburh on fol. 42v of Otho A XII (Part 6), correspond precisely with Chapter 20 of Goscelin’s uita of the saint. ⁷⁸ The spacing of these words in the lesson, compared with their appearance in the uita, shows that it provides a more condensed telling of the miraculous recovery of Barking’s missal.

Sometimes, the beginning of a lesson differs from its corresponding passage in Goscelin’s uita of the saint, probably to abbreviate the narrative and to provide a clearer transition from the preceding lesson. For example, the first six lines of the lesson of Matins for St. Æthelburh that opens with the large rubricated A on fol. 41v offer a more compressed paean to the nun Tortgyth’s humility, obedience, and leadership in the community, despite the pain she suffered from a protracted illness, than Goscelin provided in the first half of Chapter 7 of his uita of the saint. ⁷⁹ The lesson moves quickly to relate the vision of St. Æthelburh’s imminent death that Tortgyth received one night. At this point in the story, from at least “egressa de cubiculo” (“having come out of her bedchamber”), the lesson’s account starts to match the uita’s. ⁸⁰ There is a related discrepancy between the opening to the eighth lesson of Matins for St. Æthelburh, found on the opposite page (fol. 41r), and the start of Chapter 10 of Goscelin’s uita of the saint. ⁸¹ This is indicated by the use of different cases for the noun “merits” in the two texts: the nominative or accusative plural “merita” in the lesson, and the dative plural “meritis” in the uita. ⁸² Multispectral imaging would reveal more discrepancies between the two texts. This technology would increase the visibility of the remaining lines at the bottom of the fragment, which are presently too difficult to read, even with a UV torch.

Finally, on fol. 42r of the Matins lessons for St. Æthelburh, where a paraph mark seems to signal the start of a new reading, the words visible on the last four lines of the fragment relate the same story told in Chapter 17 of Goscelin’s uita of the saint—the healing of three blind women—but none of these words, save St. Æthelburh’s name, share any correspondents in the uita. ⁸³ The lessons’ author may have thought it necessary to open this reading with words that more clearly indicate the beginning of a different story: “Item sub alio” (“Likewise under another”). Chapter 17 of the uita begins more ambiguously: “So that a threefold illumination of the Lord should also appear in the three lamps of the virginal protectors of the church.” ⁸⁴ Clear signposts at the beginnings of lessons that oriented auditors were essential to the performance and comprehension of Matins because every lesson was followed by a responsory, and all three nocturns of a twelve-lesson office started either with six psalmodic units with six antiphons (the first and second nocturns) or with three canticles with one antiphon (the third nocturn). These chants provided rich commentary on the lessons, but they also interrupted their narrative flow. Signposts helped to connect them.

The simplest explanation for all the detectable differences between Goscelin’s uita of St. Æthelburh and his uita and translatio of St. Wulfhild and the saints’ respective Matins lessons that have been discussed is that the latter texts were based on the former. Mainly through excerpting the saints’ lives, but also by abridging them in places, excising select chapters, and rewriting certain passages, the lessons’ author composed readings that were suitable for performance at Matins. Until more of the texts can be recovered from the surviving fragments in Otho A XII (Part 6) with multispectral imaging, however, we cannot entirely rule out the possibility that the lessons preceded the uitae, especially given the absence of a uita of St. Hildelith in the surviving manuscripts.

There are, nevertheless, good reasons to suspect that Goscelin never wrote a uita of St. Hildelith because of the paucity of material on her abbacy. ⁸⁵ In fact, the early twelfth-century copy of the Matins lessons for St. Hildelith in Cardiff 1.381, fols. 94r–96v, looks more like the copy of St. Æthelburh that precedes it (fols. 81r–94r) and the uitae of St. Edward, king and martyr (d. 978), and of St. Edith of Wilton (d. ca. 984) that follow it (fols. 97r–102v and 102v–120r, respectively) than it does a set of lessons. The scribe responsible for copying the text identified it as the “lecciones de sancta Hildelitha” in a title on fol. 94r, but s/he did not mark the lessons with headings or numbers. They were distinguished only by large colored initials. Thus, the scribe seems to have compensated for the lack of a uita of St. Hildelith by making her lessons appear like one. ⁸⁶

The most probable author of the Matins lessons for Sts. Æthelburh and Wulfhild is Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, not only because he composed lessons for St. Hildelith, but also because he wrote a set of twelve lessons for the feast of the translation of Barking’s abbess-saints by Abbess Ælfgifu in addition to a longer account of this event. ⁸⁷ These two texts survive only in TCD 176, fols. 26r–29v, 31v–35v, and 37r–41r, and were edited by Marvin Colker. ⁸⁸ As Table 6 shows, side-by-side comparison of the texts indicates that Goscelin composed the lessons on the basis of the longer account, using the very same strategies employed to make the lessons for the abbess-saints found in Otho A XII (Part 6): excerption, abridgement, excision, and rewriting.

Table 6. Comparative Analysis of Select Passages in Goscelin of Saint-Bertin’s Matins Lessons for the Abbess-Saints’ Translation and Longer Account of the Event

Goscelin generated most of the text for the Matins lessons for the abbess-saints’ translation by excerpting passages from the longer account. The example provided in the second entry in Table 6 illustrates his preferred strategy for creating content. Here, Goscelin made the third lesson a nearly verbatim copy of the corresponding passage in the longer account, except for slightly changing the syntax of one sentence, removing a relative clause on the tradition of fasting exclusively on bread and water during Lent, and adding the words “officiose” (“dutifully”) and “et turibula aurea” (“and golden thuribles”). ⁸⁹ These discrepancies are underlined in Table 6 for easy identification.

In many cases, the passages Goscelin excerpted from the longer account for the Matins lessons were not continuous. He removed certain parts, often those containing direct speeches or analogies, and stitched together the remaining sentences to create abridged versions of select stories in the longer account that could be used as lessons. His process of abridgement is exemplified well by the third entry in Table 6. To make the twelfth lesson, he borrowed extended extracts from a passage at the end of the longer account, but he also left out two lengthy sections containing direct speeches, a short aside, and a few inessential words. He also rewrote the ending of the longer account entirely, probably because the assertion that “it is not fitting for glorious events to be summarized, obscured with brevity, and not done justice to by unadorned words” was at odds with the genre of Matins lessons, which are, by necessity, abbreviated in nature. ⁹⁰

In only one instance did Goscelin excise an entire textual unit from the longer account to make the Matins lessons. He omitted the preamble to the longer account, which praises God for the great works he performs through his saints. Goscelin started the first lesson instead where he had begun the second marked paragraph in the longer account: with an exhortation to celebrate the feast of the abbess-saints’ translation fittingly. ⁹¹ But the wording of their openings differs slightly: “Hinc ergo dies solennes” (“Hence, therefore, the solemn days”), in the longer account, and “Diem solennem” (“The solemn day”), in the first lesson. ⁹² Goscelin’s removal of the adverbs “hinc” and “ergo” makes sense given his omission of the longer account’s preamble, and his change in number of the plural noun “dies solennes” to the singular noun “diem solennem” helps to focus the lessons on the feast of the translation itself.

More substantial rewriting of the longer account can be found in the Matins lessons, but Goscelin used this method of creating content far less frequently than he did excerption or abridgement. The first entry in Table 6 shows the longest passage he rewrote. In the second lesson, he did not include the longer account’s description of how Ælfgifu was raised at Barking; received the “monasterialem curam” (“care of the monastery”) at the age of fifteen from King Edward the Confessor (r. 1042–66); was consecrated abbess on the feast of St. Germanus, a fifth-century bishop of Auxerre (31 July), by William the Norman, bishop of London (r. 1051–75); razed the houses of the neighboring country people that were confining the monastery on all sides in order to make sufficient space for her building project; and started to remodel Barking’s cloister and workshops and lay the foundation for a new church. ⁹³ Goscelin opened the second lesson instead with a modified version of the longer account’s depiction of the obstacle that the old abbey church posed to Ælfgifu’s project. She worried that “it was seen to be very injurious and damnable to destroy that ancient building of blessed Bishop Eorcenwald and his blessed sister, and to remove those sacred virgins from their ancient resting place.” ⁹⁴ Notably, Goscelin expressed the risks that Ælfgifu’s project presented with greater exigency in the second lesson. In the longer account, he simply asked the rhetorical question, “but who would give themselves to this presumption?” ⁹⁵

Abbess Ælfgifu gave herself to this presumption. She was intent on building a new abbey church at Barking that “ardua patriae emularetur” (“would rival the high points of the country”), no matter the obstacles she faced. ⁹⁶ To accomplish her project, though, she needed a dossier of writings that not only proved the abbess-saints’ holiness to doubtful and unsupportive ecclesiastical officials, such as Bishop Maurice, but also provisioned her community with texts to be read at Matins, refectory, collation, and private devotion. Ælfgifu enlisted Goscelin to do just that. He wrote a uita of St. Æthelburh and a uita and translatio of St. Wulfhild, addressed to Bishop Maurice, to make a direct appeal for his defense of these saints before their translation took place. After this event, he composed a long account detailing Ælfgifu’s efforts and the miracles worked before and while the abbess-saints’ tombs were being moved, as well as a set of Matins lessons based on the long account for use in the night office on future celebrations of this feast in the community. ⁹⁷ Goscelin also created lessons for St. Hildelith’s dies natalis, probably around the same time that he wrote his uita of St. Æthelburh and his uita and translatio of St. Wulfhild, and so there has been reasonable cause to wonder whether he created lessons for these abbess-saints’ feasts, too.

In the foregoing study of the fragments of Matins lessons gathered in Otho A XII (Part 6), I have made the case that Goscelin composed the lessons honoring all three abbess-saints preserved in this manuscript. I have argued further that the scribe responsible for copying the Matins lessons for Barking’s abbess-saints and for St. Bertin in this manuscript also copied Goscelin’s uita of St. Æthelburh and his uita and translatio of St. Wulfhild in TCD 176, a late eleventh-century collection of libelli of certain Barking origin. This hand exhibits features peculiar to scribes trained in northeastern France or the Low Countries, raising the possibility that Goscelin made these copies of the texts himself. But even if he did not make them, the appearance of the same hand in texts related to Barking’s abbess-saints indicates that this scribe’s work in Otho A XII (Part 6) should be located at Barking, too, thus increasing the total number of books the community once owned to twenty-two.

So much more can be learned from the Matins lessons for Sts. Æthelburh, Hildelith, Wulfhild, Bertin, and Eorcenwald in Otho A XII (Part 6), but further inquiry depends entirely on scholars’ ability to obtain multispectral imaging of the surviving fragments. This technology would allow us to recover more text from each fragment and, thereby, detail their contents and arrangement with greater specificity and determine if any lessons are missing. Such recovery is especially important to studies of the lessons for St. Bertin and for St. Eorcenwald. If we could see more of the words on these fragments, we would then be able to assess better the uniqueness and authorship of the texts. Multispectral imaging would make the incipits to the lessons for St. Wulfhild’s translation, her dies natalis, and St. Æthelburh’s dies natalis legible, too, so that we could figure out whether these lessons continued to be used at Barking into the fifteenth century, just as the lessons for the abbess-saints’ translation and St. Hildelith’s dies natalis were. ⁹⁸ This technology would also permit us to see if there are any signs of the lessons’ later use, such as corrections or marginalia. Medieval liturgical books were living documents for practice, often updated to meet communities’ changing needs, as analysis of Barking’s eleventh-century gospel book demonstrates. ⁹⁹ The addition of lessons for St. Eorcenwald by a later scribe suggests that the legendary or lectionary that the fragments in Otho A XII (Part 6) once constituted was supplemented at least once to accommodate Barking’s liturgical practice, but other alterations may have been made as well that multispectral imaging can reveal. For the time being, though, we must remain hopeful that we will one day see more of this remarkable manuscript.