The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220

Elaine Treharne

London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius A. xv, fols 4-93

Religious Prose and Pastoral Texts

Date: s. xiimed

Summary:

Now bound as part of the composite codex containing Beowulf, Part 1 of Vitellius A. xv contains four textual items from fols 4-59v. Each of the texts is a freely adapted version of earlier English exemplars, the first being the Soliloquia of St. Augustine, attributed in a colophon to King Alfred (Endter 1922). It begins 'Gaderode me þonne kicglas ˥ stuþan sceaftas' and ends imcompletely '[H]ær endiað þa cwidas þe ælfred kining alæs of þære bec þe we hatað ón', with just a few words missing (Ker 1957, p. 279). The texts of all the pieces were damaged in the fire of 1731; the copy by Junius in Oxford Bodleian MS Junius 70 (Madan 1895-1953, 5181) is the best authority for some readings on fol. 5.

Fols 60-86v. A translation of the Gospel of Nicodemus begins acephalously 'hyne cumen hyder to foran' (Hulme 1898, p. 473; see also Cross and Hill 1982). According to Ker 1957, a comparison with CUL Ii. 2. 11 shows that an amount of text equal to more than two pages of the printed text is missing at the beginning.

Fols 86v-93v contain the unique prose debate of Solomon and Saturn, beginning 'Her kið hu saturnus. 7 Saloman. fettode' (Thorpe 1834, p. 95).

Fol. 93v has the opening eleven lines of the Old English Life of St. Quintin (31 October), beginning '[H]it sagð þæt ða geforewritu cyðað...hys gewinnu. 7 hys haligan drohtnunge'. This is discussed briefly by Whatley in Biggs, Hill Szarmach and Whatley 2001.

Manuscript Items:

1. Item: fols 4r-59v

   Title (B.9.4.1): St Augustine, Soliloquies

   Incipit: (4r) Gaderode me þonne kicglas ˥ stuþan sceaftas

   Explicit: (59v) Hær endiað þa cwidas þe ælfred kining alæs of þære bec þe we hatað on

   Text Language: English

   Note: Ends imperfectly.

   Bibliography:

   Ker 1975, item 215, article 1

   Carnicelli 1969

2. Item: fols 60r-86v

   Title (B.8.5.2): Apocrypha: Gospel of Nicodemus

   Incipit: (60r) hyne cumen hyder to foran

   Explicit: (86v) Sig dryhtne lof and deoflum sorh a to worulde. AMEN.

   Text Language: English

   Note: Begins imperfectly at Ch. I.2

   Bibliography:

   Ker 1957, item 215, article 2

   Cross, ed., Apocrypha, pp. 143-247.

3. Item: fols 86v-93v

   Title (B.5.1): Prose Dialogues: Solomon and Saturn

   Incipit: (86v) Her kið hu saturnus. ˥ Saloman. fettode

   Explicit: (93v) vii hund hlafa ˥ xx hlafa buton morgeme[tt]en ˥ nonmettum.

   Text Language: English

   Bibliography:

   Ker 1957, item 215, article 3

   Cross and Hall, ed., Solomon and Saturn, pp. 25-34

4. Item: fol. 93v

   Title (B.3.3.33): Anonymous Homilies, Homilies for Specified Occasions, Sanctorale: Saint Quintin

   Incipit: (93v) Hit sagð þæt ða geforewritu cyðað by þara haligra martira lyfe

   Explicit: (93v) þæt he þam heofonlican criste hys gewinnu and his haligan drohtnunge...

   Text Language: English

   Note: Ends imperfectly due to loss of leaves

   Bibliography:

   Ker 1957, item 215, article 4

   Förster 1901, pp. 258-61

Physical Description:

Object Description:

Form: Codex

Extent:

c. 200 mm x 130 mm (dimensions of all - size of leaves)

157 mm x 100 mm (dimensions of all - size of written space)

Foliation and/or Pagination: The manuscript has multiple layers of foliation. Unnumbered paper leaves inserted after fols 59 and 93 are included in the foliation 4-95 adopted by Förster 1919. Kiernan 1999 uses the foliation given by Joseph Planta who wrote the numbers on the manuscript when he was the Keeper (Planta 1802), which is still clearly visible. See Kiernan 1997, 'History of the Multiple Foliations', pp. 98-103.

Collation:

Quires: The leaves are now mounted individually in paper. According to Ker 1957, on whom the collation details are based here, medieval pencil signatures II-VII on fols 12, 20, 28, 36, 44, 52 show that fols 4-51 were 6 quires, each with 8 leaves. These are not visible on the digitised images (Kiernan, Electronic Beowulf). Fol. 60 apparently has the signature VIII in the same series. Fols 78-93 were probably 2 quires of 8 leaves, since, again, according to Ker 1957, fols 78-81 are signed in pencil a-d. Leaves are missing between fol. 59 and fol. 60 and after fol. 93 (Ker 1957, p. 280).

Planta's foliation, adapted by Kiernan 1999 is three folios behind medieval pencil signatures.

Condition: Each leaf is separately mounted and traced on the mounting paper. Rust marks indicating a former binding with a medial metal clasp are found on fol. 4 and fol. 93.

Layout description:

18 lines per page, with an average of only eight words per line. Single bounding lines, ruled in pencil.

Hand description:

Number of hands: 1

Summary: According to Ker 1957, the script from fol. 60 onwards has a more irregular appearance than it has from fols 4-59, but there is only one scribe throughout.

Hand: fols 4-95
• Scope: sole
• Scribe: Ker 215
• Script: mid-twelfth-century
• Description: Fols 4-95. The general aspect is upright. Ker 1957 calls this hand 'angular' and 'pointed' (p. 280), and it is angular, with the top of the bowls of letters often being pointed, while the curvilinear strokes are relatively angular. Despite generous interlinear spacing, the bodies of the letters are as tall as or taller than the height and length of ascenders and descenders. This gives the script the appearance of being large in proportional terms. Significantly, this hand's most notable features (for which, see below), including the descender of s and occasional descender of f are indicative of what Parkes 1991, pp. 190-91, calls a 'transitional' hand, datable to the 1150s and 1160s.
• Summary of the characteristics of the hand:
• the shoulders of minims are often rounded, as are the feet to the right of minims.
• ascenders are generally straight and tapering or tagged to the left;
• descenders taper and usually curve to the left.
• a is Caroline, with a prominent bowl and relatively undeveloped head, which is occasionally ligatured to preceding letters.
• æ is formed with a small, single compartment a plus a rounded e with a long back. This scribe also uses (as do the scribes of Claudius B. iv, and Hatton 116) a spurred e in place of æ.
• d same shape as, but slightly shorter than, ð.
• f is Caroline, but occasionally descends slightly below the line, and can be backward-leaning. Its cross-stroke is longer than the rounded headstroke, and often ligatures with the following letter.
• g is insular and rather s-shaped with the tail beginning at the left of the headstroke with an angular initial descent into a curved and open tail, which distinctively curls under the preceding letter.
• h is Caroline; the right limb often curves below the line.
• r is commonly insular, but with a very narrow angular shoulder, and a hooked end that finishes above the ruled line. Occasional 2-shaped r is used after o.
• s is a hybrid version, somewhere between Caroline and long s. It has barely any shoulder, and the descender tapers beneath the line to the left; suprascript round s is occasionally used at the line end (fol. 55).
• ð same shape as d, but usually has a higher ascender. The cross-bar is distinctive with a tag up at the left and a tag down at the right.
• y is distinctive, sitting more or less on the line. It is curved and dotted and sometimes tilted slightly to the right.
• þ leans to the left.
• ƿ has a large bowl, and could be easily confused with p.
• accents are hooked, and occur quire frequently. Ker notes they occur on 'ic', 'is', 'on' (preposition), derived probably from an exemplar of s. ix/x or s. x (Ker 1957, p. 280).
• The subscript an in the termination of 'anceran' (fol. 20) is derived probably from an exemplar of s. ix/x or s. x (Ker 1957, p. 280). The Tironian nota sits on, or just below, the line, curving to the left; its head is curved.
• Abbreviations:
• Curved mark of abbreviation.
• A vertical row of three dots marking the place for inseting omitted letters.
• Punctuation: Hyphens slope upwards. Punctus is generally by punctus, which is placed mid-minim height.

Decoration Description:

Red initials with green ornament on fols 4, 7, 14v; others omitted. The first letter of a sentence, the abbreviation for 'þæt', the nota 7, the i of 'ic' and g of 'god', and occasionally other letters are filled with red up to fol. 24.

History:

Origin: Unknown.

Provenance: Belonged to Southwick priory, Hants. The late-thirteenth-century inscription of ownership is at the foot of fol. 5: 'Hic liber est Ecclesie beate marie de Suwika quem qui ab eadem abstulerit. uel titulum istum dolose deleuerit nisi eidem ecclesie condigne satisfecerit; sit Anathema maranatha. fiat fiat; Amen; Amen' (Wanley 1705, p. 218; Ker 1957, pp. 280-81; Kiernan 1997, p. 112, n. 32).

Acquisition: Acquired by the British Museum along with the rest of the Cotton library.

Additional Information:

Administration Information:

Manuscript described by Elaine Treharne with the assistance of Hollie Morgan and Owen Roberson and George Younge (2010; 2013). Special thanks are due to Kevin Kiernan for his helpful suggestions and feedback.

Surrogates:

EM Project facsimile

Kiernan, Kevin, and Andrew Prescott, Electronic Beowulf, August 2010 (British Library, http://www.uky.edu/~kiernan/eBeowulf/guide.htm, 1999)

Bibliography:

Biggs, F., Thomas D. Hill, Paul E. Szarmach, Gordon Whatley, eds, Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, Volume 1: Abbo of Fleury, Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, and Acta Sanctorum (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2001)

Endter, W., König Alfreds des großen Bearbeitung der Soliloquien des Augustinus (Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa, xi, 1922)

Förster, Max, Die Beowulf- Handschrift, Berichte über die Abhandlungen der königlichen sächsichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Liepzig, Phil- Hist. Klasse, 71, iv (1919)

Cross, James and Thomas D. Hill, eds, The Prose Solomon and Saturn and Adrian and Ritheus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982)

Cross, James, et al. Two Old English Apocrypha: The Gospel of Nichodemus and The Avenging of the Saviour, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: CUP, 1996)

Hulme, W. H., 'The Old English Version of the Gospel of Nicodemus', PMLA, 13 (1898), 471-515

Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957; repr. 1990), item 215

Kiernan, Kevin S., Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript, 2nd edn (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997)

Kiernan, Kevin, and Andrew Prescott, Electronic Beowulf, August 2010 (British Library, http://www.uky.edu/~kiernan/eBeowulf/guide.htm, 1999)

Madan, Falconer, and others, A Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895-1953)

Parkes, Malcom, 'On the Presumed Date and and Possible Origin of the Manuscript of the Orrmulum: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 1', in his Scribes, Scripts and Readers: Studies in the Communication, Presentation and Dissemination of Medieval Texts (London: Hambledon Press, 1991), 187-200

Planta, J., A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library, Deposited in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1802)

Thorpe, B., Analecta Anglo-Saxonica (1834)

Torkar, Roland, 'Cotton Vitellius A. xv (pt. I) and the legend of St Thomas', English Studies, 67 (1986), 290-303

Wanley, H., Librorum Veterum Septentrionalium Catalogus (1705)