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Margin as Archive: The Liturgical Marginalia of a Manuscript of the Old English Bede

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

Sarah Larratt Keefer
Sarah Larratt Keefer*
Affiliation:
Trent University, Canada
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Extract

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 41 contains the B-text of the Old English Bede, and a sizeable body of marginalia that includes a substantial amount of liturgy. The main text is in a large format but remains incomplete in some of its artwork; it was copied in two parts by two different scribes in the early eleventh century and supplied with various decorated initials, not all of them finished. The book was given by Bishop Leofric to Exeter between 1050 and 1072. It is not immediately apparent whether the liturgical addenda were copied there or done earlier at some other center, but the nature of the marginalia suggests that the additions were made, as was perhaps the book itself, in a provincial scriptorium of no great size. The use of the margins of the text indicates a shortage of available vellum, thus suggesting that the original text of the Old English Bede may have been made for a smaller center with a minimal library, or possibly for an individual.

Type
Articles
Information
Traditio , Volume 51 , 1996 , pp. 147 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by Fordham University 

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References

This essay was originally read as a paper for the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence Seminar concerning Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 41, held at the Parker Library on 11 December 1993. Thanks are due to R. I. Page, Mildred Budny, Catherine P. Hall, and Leslie J. French for their help and suggestions at that time, to the Librarian and staff of the Parker Library for permitting me to work with the Corpus Christi College manuscripts used in this study, and to Helmut Gneuss and Joyce M. Hill for their advice in preparing this study. Special gratitude is owed to Timothy C. Graham for the time and care that he devoted to rechecking my readings against the manuscript itself, and for the many useful and essential improvements that he suggested in the presentation of my material.Google Scholar

1 See Patrick Conner, W., Anglo-Saxon Exeter: A Tenth-Century Cultural History (Woodbridge, 1993), esp. 3, 13, and 37.Google Scholar

2 Mildred Budny (Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: An Illustrated Catalogue, forthcoming from Medieval Institute Publications, Kalamazoo) suggests that this center is a provincial one. Evidence presented at the seminar on CCCC 41 would support her proposal.Google Scholar

3 Gneuss, Helmut, “A Preliminary Handlist of Manuscripts written or owned in England up to 1100,” Anglo-Saxon England 9 (1981): 8, item 39; idem, “Liturgical Books in Anglo-Saxon England,” in Helmut Gneuss and Michael Lapidge, eds., Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 1985): 101, item A2.Google Scholar

4 Grant, Raymond J. S., Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 41: The Loricas and the Missal (Amsterdam, 1978), 27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 I am grateful to Catherine Hall for this suggestion, which seems to be the most accurate characterization of the CCCC 41 marginalia to date.Google Scholar

6 The remainder of the CCCC 41 liturgical marginalia, not included in this study, is as follows: pp. 18–36 and 38–39 contain masses for Sundays and Feria up to Good Friday; p. 45 preserves a mass for Saint Benedict; pp. 46–47 contain the office for Easter Eve; p. 60 has liturgy for the feasts of Saints Philip and James, and for the Invention of the Holy Cross; pp. 61–71 mark a jump of six months in the liturgical year, preserving antiphons for Advent; pp. 74–75 contain a mass, and antiphons for the Christmas octave; pp. 134–39 return to Advent with more office material; p. 158 contains a missa quam sacerdos pro se debet and p. 182, a missa generalis pro vivis et defunctis, which are generally found among the sundry masses at the end of a missal; pp. 224–25 have an office for the Invention of the Holy Cross; pp. 370–73 contain masses for the Common of Saints and for the king; and p. 483, which also preserves an Old English rubric, has a missa contra paganos, another of the sundry masses commonly found at the end of a massbook. This unusual order of compilation, with mass texts interspersed among homiletic, martyrological, and arcane marginalia — together with a somewhat erratic sense of the Church calendar — supports the theory that the liturgical material in CCCC 41 was added as and when it became available to the copyist in whatever margins were free, in order to collect the texts of the services that were of interest.Google Scholar

7 A random sample of inconsistencies follows: page 3, line 2, propitius but page 4, line 4, pitiū; 3.7, ƀdicere but 5.3, ƀnedicere, and, in the same prayer, 6.3, ƀdicere; 2.7, per but 5.5 p; 10.6–7, but 11.1, peccatorū and then peccatorum; 2.6, invocationē, but 10.5–6, invocationem. Google Scholar

8 Warren, F. E., ed., The Leofric Missal (Oxford, 1883).Google Scholar

9 Wilson, H. A., ed., The Missal of Robert of Jumièges, HBS 11 (London, 1896).Google Scholar

10 Grant, The Loricas and the Missal, 28–112.Google Scholar

11 Richter, G. and Schönfelder, A., eds., Sacramentarium Fuldense Saeculi X, repr. HBS 101 (London, 1972–77).Google Scholar

12 Davril, A., ed., The Winchcombe Sacramentary, HBS 109 (Bury St. Edmunds, 1995).Google Scholar

13 Turner, D. H., ed., The Missal of the New Minster, HBS 93 (London, 1962).Google Scholar

14 Rule, Martin, ed., The Missal of St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury (Cambridge, 1896).Google Scholar

15 John Brückmann, “Latin Manuscript Pontificals and Benedictionals in England and Wales,” Traditio 29 (1973): 446–48.Google Scholar

16 Despite the assertion of Swete, H. B. (“the Pontifical of Egbert … now preserved in a Paris MS of the tenth century, is the earliest specimen,” Services and Service-Books [London, 1930], 148), I am grateful to Helmut Gneuss for his information that the pontifical as a discrete form did not exist in Egbert's time (s.viii1/2). For the ascription of this as a pontifical belonging to Egbert, see Greenwell, W., ed., The Pontifical of Egbert, Archbishop of York, A.D. 732–766, Surtees Society 27 (London, 1853), vi–xi, specifically “the original Pontifical of Archbishop Egbert must have been two hundred years older than the present MS” (xviii); in his Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), Neil Ker describes it under no. 370; see also Banting, H. M. J., ed., Two Anglo-Saxon Pontificals, HBS 104 (London, 1985–87), ix.Google Scholar

17 Turner, D. H., ed. The Claudius Pontificals, HBS 97 (Chichester, 1971).Google Scholar

18 See Michael Lapidge, “The Origin of CCCC 163,” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 8 (1981): 18–28, for a complete study. The relationship between CCCC 163 and the Cracow Pontifical (Cracow, Jagiellonian Library MS 2057, ed. Obertynski, Z., HBS 100 [Manchester, 1977]), which contains accordances with the first two prayers and some of the responsory and collect material of the Candlemas series in CCCC 41, underscores the importance of the pontifical tradition in considering this liturgical marginalia collection.Google Scholar

19 Woolley, R. M., ed., The Canterbury Benedictional, HBS 51 (London, 1916).Google Scholar

20 Wilson, H. A., ed., The Benedictional of Archbishop Robert, HBS 24 (London, 1903).Google Scholar

21 Dom Anselm Hughes, ed., The Portiforium of St Wulfstan, 2 vols, HBS 89–90 (London, 1956–57).Google Scholar

22 Grant, The Loricas and the Missal (n. 4 above), 49.Google Scholar

23 Gneuss, “Liturgical Books” (n. 3 above), 100, 110–11.Google Scholar

24 See J. M. Hill's discussion of this approach to preservation of texts in “Monastic Reform and the Secular Church: Ælfric's Pastoral Letters in Context,” in Hickes, C., ed., England in the Eleventh Century (Stamford, 1992), 103–17.Google Scholar

25 Gneuss (“Liturgical Books,” 111) describes CCCC 391 as a “primitive breviary.”Google Scholar

26 I am grateful to Helmut Gneuss for his personal correspondence on this matter.Google Scholar

27 In light of these CCCC 41 compressions, it is possible that a close examination of the individual patterns of abbreviation in the service-books that remain to us from the tenth and eleventh centuries, may indicate common or indeed traceable scribal tendencies. Although the books are so very few in number from Anglo-Saxon England, such a comparison may prove a yet-untried method of predicting copying, textual transmission, and, given the likelihood of a provincial origin for CCCC 41, the travels of exemplar texts to remoter regions.Google Scholar

28 On the correct term for the book, see Wilson, The Benedictional of Archbishop Robert, x–xi, and esp. xi n. 1.Google Scholar

29 For a description of the extra-sacramentarial contents of the Sacramentary of Fulda, see Richter and Schönfelder, Sacramentarium Fuldense (n. 11 above), xiv–xv.Google Scholar

30 James, M. R., A Descriptive Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1902–12), 1:82.Google Scholar

31 Richter and Schönfelder, Sacramentarium Fuldense, 24.Google Scholar

32 Stevenson, J., ed., Rituale Ecclesiae Dunelmensis, Surtees Society 10 (London, 1840), 4; and Corrêa, A., ed., The Durham Collectar, HBS 107 (London, 1992), 143, item 23.Google Scholar

33 Rule's claims in The Missal of St Augustine, Canterbury (n. 14 above), that this book is a “pure Gregorian sacramentary” and that “the exemplar of the Corpus MS may have been the very book — or, rather, one of the two or more books — which St Augustine brought to England” (xvi–cxv), have been perhaps justifiably regarded as extreme. If at all likely, however, they would place the book, although late, as looking backwards instead of ahead, on the line of liturgical compendium evolution.Google Scholar

34 Warren, The Leofric Missal (n. 9 above), 73–74.Google Scholar

35 Davril, The Winchcombe Sacramentary (n. 12 above), 48–49.Google Scholar

36 Richter and Schönfelder, Sacramentarium Fuldense (n. 11 above), 42–46, item 55.Google Scholar

37 Bodley 579 and the Sacramentary of Fulda direct at least the first collect of these mass prayers ad sanctam anastasiam while Orléans 127 heads it item post antiphona. Thereafter, though, all three direct the collects that follow ad sanctam sabinam, and the ferial masses that are indicated for Feria V and VI are clearly directed to stations (Saints George, John and Paul, Saint Mary, etc.) that seem to continue the processional rite.Google Scholar

38 Grant, The Loricas and the Missal (n. 4 above), 60–61.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., 61.Google Scholar

40 Warren, The Leofric Missal, 309.Google Scholar

41 Richter and Schönfelder, Sacramentarium Fuldense, 50, item 401; and 121, item 1037.Google Scholar

42 But see Sarah Keefer, Psalm-Poem and Psalter-Glosses (New York, 1991), 22–26, for a discussion of possible vellum shortage accounting for truncations in BL MS Cotton Vespasian D.vi from Saint Augustine's, Canterbury, s.xex.Google Scholar

43 See Michelle Brown, P., A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600 (Toronto, 1990), 6.Google Scholar

44 Not in Fulda, Lat. 10575, or CCCC 270. Grant notes that CCCC 422 contains this prayer on pages 285–86 but does not provide a close textual comparison of the two versions.Google Scholar

45 Warren, Leofric Missal (n. 9 above), 204. This prayer is found in a section which Brückmann (“Latin Manuscript Pontificals” [n. 15 above]) calls “Leofr. A and C intermixed: various blessings and orations,” pertaining more to benedictional than massbook material. Grant supports this identification of Leofric C material over that of Leofric A on pages 2–7 of the CCCC 41 marginalia (447). See also Warren's comment (Leofric Missal, 203): “Foll. 254a–261b are intercalated leaves, not part of the original sacramentary, and covered with collects etc. in various English handwritings of the eleventh century.”Google Scholar

46 Not in Lat. 10575, Orléans 127, Bodley 579, Rouen 274, Rouen 369, Le Havre 330, CCCC 422 II, CCCC 391, or CCCC 270.Google Scholar

47 Not in Fulda, Lat. 10575, Orléans 127, Claudius A. iii, Rouen 369, CCCC 422 II, CCCC 391, or CCCC 270.Google Scholar

48 Warren, Leofric Missal, 203–204.Google Scholar

49 Woolley (The Canterbury Benedictional, 81 [n. 19 above]), adds “leg. saluti” here, the assumption being that the ‘s’ is missing; as the reading presently stands, its accordance with CCCC 41's “saluti” is interesting.Google Scholar

50 Not in Fulda, Lat. 10575, Orléans 127, Claudius A.iii, Rouen 369, CCCC 422 II, CCCC 391, or CCCC 270.Google Scholar

51 Warren, Leofric Missal, 104.Google Scholar

52 Woolley (The Canterbury Benedictional, 81) notes that Harley 2892 preserves “desit,” which once more accords with the CCCC 41 readings; I would suggest that “desit” is therefore not necessarily a scribal error in Harley 2892.Google Scholar

53 Not in Fulda, Orléans 127, Claudius A. iii, Rouen 369, CCCC 163, CCCC 422 II, CCCC 391, or CCCC 270.Google Scholar

54 This text is more of a variant form than an actual accordance.Google Scholar

55 Warren, Leofric Missal, 203.Google Scholar