The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220

Hollie Morgan and Owen Roberson

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 557

Summary

MS Items

Upper fragment fol. 1r, Lower fragment fol. 1r, Upper fragment fol. 1v and Lower fragment fol. 1v.

Physical Description

Object Description

Hand Description

Decoration Description

Binding Description

History

Additional Information

Administration Information

Surrogates

Bibliography

Back to List of MSS and Descriptions

Fragments of Legend of the Holy Cross before Christ

Date: s. ximed

Summary:

Two fragments of the Anonymous Homilies, Homilies for Specified Occasions, Sanctorale: Invention of the Cross, used as strips in the binding. Most of another leaf from the same manuscript and text is in Lawrence, Pryce C2. 1. The text is otherwise known only in a twelfth-century copy in Bodley 343. Interlinear glosses are by the Tremulous Hand, written by one hand of Worcester provenance.

Manuscript Items:

Item: Upper fragment fol. 1r
Item: Lower fragment fol. 1r
Item: Upper fragment fol. 1v
Item: Lower fragment fol. 1v

Physical Description:

Object Description:

Form: fragments

Support:

Extent:

74 mm x 145 mm (dimensions of Fragment 1 - size of leaf)

48 mm x 140 mm (dimensions of Fragment 1 - size of written space)

42 mm x 155 mm (dimensions of Fragment 2 - size of leaf)

42 mm x 135 mm (dimensions of Fragment 2 - size of written space)

Foliation and/or Pagination: Foliation does not survive. The strips are designated Fragment 2:1 and Fragment 2:2. In their current mounting, 2:2 is above 2:1 and 2:2 is mounted with the verso to the front.

Condition:

Note:

Lawrence, Pryce C2

Hand description:

Number of hands:

Summary:

Tremulous Hand

Methods of Alteration:

Tremulous Hand

Hand:

Scope: major
Scribe: Ker 73 SC1
Script: English Vernacular Minuscule
Summary of the characteristics of the hand: Ker (1957) describes this as 'a rather poor hand' (p. 122).
e is high in the combination æ.
Only long s is used.

Decoration Description:

Text initials are sometimes filled with a reddish- orange wash. On the upper left edge of 2:1r is a small decorative otif, drawn free-hand and in a different ink from the main text and the glosses (Doane 2002, p. 2).

Binding Description:

In 1952 the two fragments were mounted in a paper frame by V. S. Stoakley. In 1991-2 Nicholas Hadgraft made a butterly pressure mount made of acid- free board with fitted recesses for each fragment (Doane 2002, p. 1).

History:

Origin:

The glosses by the Tremulous Hand suggest that the fragments come from Worcester. Ker (1940) observed a resemblance between the scripts of 2:2 and Ker's Scribe 9 of Cambridge, CCC 198, causing Colgrave and Hyde (1962) to suggest that the fragments were once bound with Cambridge, CCC 198 or 'a similar manuscript which has now disappeared' (p. 77).

Provenance:

May have remained in Worcester until Archbishop Parker's time. Ker 1957 argues that it is not unlikely that Parker would have discarded this leaf because it was part of a text that began or ended imperfectly.

Acquisition:

2:1 was used as strips in the binding of SP. 260, Fides Iesu et Iesuitarum &c. (Christlingæ 1573). It was found in the early 1950s. 2:2 was used as strips in the binding of SP. 4, Tertia pars chronici Carionis (Bas. 1563). It was found in 1936 and reported by Ker in 1940. Both books are from the library of Archbishop Parker, with 16th-century Parkerian bindings, and were given to Corpus Christi College in 1575 (Doane 2002, p. 1).

Additional Information:

Administration Information:

Manuscript description by Hollie Morgan and Owen Roberson with the assistance of Sanne van der Schee, with reference to published scholarship (2010; 2012).

Surrogates:

Parker Library on the Web

http://parkerweb.stanford.edu/parker/

Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile

Anglo- Saxon Bibles and "The Book of Cerne"

Bibliography:

Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and Stanford University, Parker Library on the Web (http://parkerweb.stanford.edu/parker/; accessed in 2010)

Colgrave, Bertram, and Anne Hyde, 'Two Recently Discovered Leaves from Old English Manuscripts', Speculum, 37 (1962), 60-78

Doane, Alger Nicolaus, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Renaissance Studies (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002), vol. 7: Anglo-Saxon Bibles and 'The Book of Cerne'

Franzen, Christine, The Tremulous Hand of Worcester: A Study of Old English in the Thirteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991)

Gneuss, Helmut, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001), item 117

Ker, N. R., 'An Eleventh-century Old English Legend of the Cross before Christ', Medium Ævum, 9 (1940), 84-85

---, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957; repr. 1990), item 73

Napier, Arthur Sampson, ed., History of the Holy Rood-Tree : A Twelfth-century Version of the Cross-legend with Notes on the Orthography of the Orumulum (with a facsimile) and a Middle English Compassio Mariae, EETS, OS 103 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1894)

Napier, Arthur Sampson, ed., History of the Holy Rood-Tree: A Twelfth-century Version of the Cross-legend with Notes on the Orthography of the Orumulum (with a facsimile) and a Middle English Compassio Mariae, EETS, OS 103 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1894)

Oldham, J. B., English Blind-stamped Bindings (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952)

Page, R. I., Mildred Budny, and Nicolas Hadgraft, 'Two Fragments of an Old English Manuscript in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge', Speculum, 70 (1995), 502-29

Scragg, Donald, Alexander Rumble, and Kathryn Powell, C11 Database Project (Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/mancass/c11database/; accessed in 2009)

Vaughan, Richard, and John Fines, 'A handlist of Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, not described by M. R. James', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 3.2 (1960), 113-23