The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220

Elaine Treharne

London, Lambeth Palace Library, 427

An alliterative verse; History of the Kentish Royal Saints

Date: s. xi2

Summary:

Fols 1-209 of this manuscript contain Gallican psalms and canticles, dating to s. xi1, with contemporary English glosses (Ker 1957, item 280, p. 342). Fifteen lines of alliterative verse was added in s. xi2, in the blank space in fol. 183v.

Two leaves (fols 210 and 211) concerning the Anonymous Homilies [Sanctorale]: Saint Mildred, and a list of Kentish Royal Saints were originally used as binding leaves of fols 1-209.

Manuscript Items:

1. Item: fol. 183v

   Title (A.57.EM): An alliterative verse

   Incipit: Eala drihten leof eala demagod

   Explicit: ær geswice

   Note: Added in the blank space before the beginning of the canticles.

   Date: s. xi2

   Bibliography:

   Ker 1957, p. 342

2. Item: fol. 210

   Title (B.17.10): Chronicles and Historical Texts: History of the Kentish royal saints: St Mildred

   Incipit: (fol. 210) Benedicta et beata sis semper

   Explicit: (fol. 210) geƿurðan sceolan. Gemunde

   Text Language: English

   Bibliography:

   Ker 1957, p. 343

3. Item: fol. 211

   Title (B.17.10.1.EM): Chronicles and Historical Texts: History of the Kentish royal saints: other saints

   Incipit: (fol. 211) ðær cuðe ƿæron

   Explicit: (fol. 211) to godes þeoƿdome

   Text Language: English

   Note: Fol. 211r agrees with the opening of the text known as Resting-places of the Saints (Ker 1957, p. 343).

   Bibliography:

   Ker 1957, p. 343

Physical Description:

Object Description:

Form: Codex

Support: Parchment

Extent:

212 mm x 158 mm (dimensions of fols 5-208 - size of leaves)

166 mm x 111 mm (dimensions of fols 5-208 - size of written space)

211 mm x 155 mm (dimensions of fols 210-11 - size of leaves)

175 mm x 97 mm (dimensions of fols 210-11 - size of written space)

Foliation and/or Pagination: Fols iv+209+vi. Foliated (i-iv), 1-211, (212-14). Fols (i-iv and 213-14) are paper, s. xvii and later. Fols 208-(212) are conjugate medieval binding leaves, fol. (212) was a pastedown. Fols 210 and 211 were used in s. xv or earlier as binding leaves of fols 1-209.

Condition: The opening words of fol. 210 are copied on fol. 209v in a hand of s. xv and a pattern of wormholes runs through fols 180-212. There are marginal notes or pen-trials of the later fourteenth century.

Layout description:

• Layout:
Fols 5-208 are 16 long lines.
• Layout:
Fols 210-211 are two single leaves. 21 long lines. There are very wide outer margins, with deeply-scored double rulings (C11 project).

Hand description:

Number of hands: 2

Hand: addition to the blank space
• Scribe: Ker 280
• Script: Late eleventh-century
• Description: fol. 183v.

Hand: main text
• Scribe: Ker 281 Gneuss 518
• Script: Late eleventh-century
• Description: fols 210-11. Ker 1957 describes the hand as 'careful and upright, and generally like, though less good than, the type of script found in the Exeter manuscripts of the period' (p. 343). Ganz et al. 2007, citing Rollason 1982, also suggest Minster-in-Sheppey as a possible place of origin (p. 58). The hand is round, regular and upright, and there is little reason to think it 'less good than' Exeter-type script. Interlinear space, as in Exeter and Canterbury manuscripts of this period, is generous, and there is, on average, seven words to the line, with few abbreviations, from which one can infer the importance of legibility in the writing of this text.
• Summary of the characteristics of the hand:
• The two elements of æ are of equal height, and the a is very rounded.
• e is horned with a vertical back.
• f has a mid-stroke that is shorter than the top-stroke.
• g is generally very round and s-shaped, with the tail beginning from the left-most part of the headstroke. The graph is probably written in one stroke, the tail being closed or almost closed.
• s is either long, with an onset stroke and a hooked curve; or low (which seems to be preferred in medial position, and for double s).
• ð has a very long ascender and the cross-stroke, which begins quite high on the right of the ascender, has a slight tag down at the top end.
• y is straight-limbed and only occasionally dotted. It has a long tail that is angled towards the preceding letter.
• ascenders are split at the top, or assertively tagged to the left. The upstroke of ð is much longer than the other ascenders.
• descenders curve slightly to the left at the end.
• Hairline accents with a small blob downwards at the end are used over long vowels.
• Punctuation:
• Punctuation is comprised of a punctus, placed at medial position in relation to the x-height.
• Abbreviations:
• Abbreviation consists of a mark with a serif up at the beginning and down at the end.
• The abbreviation for 'þæt' is a þ with a wavy line through it.
• The abbreviation mark for 'wæter' is above the t.

Additional Information:

Administration Information:

Manuscript described by Elaine Treharne with the assistance of Hollie Morgan and Sanne van der Schee (2010; 2013).

Surrogates:

Ganz, David, Jane Roberts, and Richard Palmer, eds, Lambeth Palace Library and its Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts; Exhibition Mounted for the Biennial Conference of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists 3 August 2007, International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (London: Taderon Press, 2007), pp. 58-60

Bibliography:

Bennet, K., 'The Book Collections of Llanthony Priory from foundation until Dissolution (c. 1100-1538)' (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Kent, 2007)

Budny, Mildred, Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: An Illustrated Catalogue, 2 vols (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications Western Michigan University in Association with Research Group on Manuscript Evidence the Parker Library Corpus Christi College Cambridge, 1997), vol. 1

Cockayne, Oswald, ed., Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, Being a Collection of Documents for the Most Part Never before Printed, Illustrating the History of Science in this Country before the Norman Conquest, Rerum Britannicarum Medii Ævi Scriptores, 35, 3 vols (London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office, 1864-66; repr. Wiesbaden: Kraus, 1965)

Frere, Walter Howard, Bibliotheca musica-liturgica. A descriptive handlist of the musical and Latin-liturgical manuscripts of the Middle Ages Preserved in the Libraries of Great Britain and Ireland 1901-32) (1894)

Gameson, Richard, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England (c. 1066-1130) (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1999)

---, The Role of Art in the Late Anglo-Saxon Church (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995)

Ganz, David, Jane Roberts, and Richard Palmer, eds, Lambeth Palace Library and its Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts; Exhibition Mounted for the Biennial Conference of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists 3 August 2007, International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (London: Taderon Press, 2007)

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 518

Gretsch, Mechthild, The Intellectual Foundations of the English Benedictine Reform, Cambridge Studies in Anglo- Saxon England, 25 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)

Hollis, Stephanie, 'The Old English "Ritual of the Admission of Mildrith" (London, Lambeth Palace 427, fol. 210)', Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 97 (1998), 311-21

James, M. R., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Lambeth Palace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925)

Keefer, Sarah Larratt, 'Respect for the Book: A Reconsideration of "Form", "Content", and "Contexts" in Two Vernacular Poems ', in New Approaches to Editing Old English Verse, ed. by Sarah Larratt Keefer and Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe (Suffolk: Brewer, 1998), pp. 21-44

Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957; repr. 1990), item 281

Liebermann, Felix, Die Heiligen Englands Angelsächsisch und Lateinisch (Hannover: Hahn, 1889)

Lindeloef, U Von, Der Lambeth-Psalter: eine altenglische Interlinearversion des Psalters in der Hs. 427 der erzbischoefliche Lambeth Palace Library; zum ersten Male vollstaendig herausgegeben, Acta Societatis Scientiarum Fennicae, 35, 2 vols (Helsingfors: Druckerei der Finnischen Litteraturgesellschaft, 1909-1914)

Lindelöf, U, Studien zu altenglischen Psalterglossen, Bonner Beiträge zur Angelistik, 13 (1904)

Love, Rosalind C., ed., Goscelin of Saint-Berlin: The Hagiography of the Female Saints of Ely (2004)

O'Neill, Patrick, 'Latin Learning at Winchester in the Early Eleventh century: The Evidence of the Lambeth Psalter...', Anglo Saxon England, 20 (1991), 143-66

Pickering, O. S., and V. M. O'Mara, The Index of Middle English Prose: handlist 13. Manuscripts in Lambeth Palace Library including those formerly in Sion College Library (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1999)

Roberts, Jane, 'The Finnsburh Fragment and its Lambeth Provenance', Notes and Queries, 55, no. 2 (2008), 1-3

Rollason, David, The Mildrith Legend: A Study in Early Medieval Hagiography in England (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1982)

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)

Van Deusen, Nancy, ed., The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages (Albany: State University of New York, 1999)

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

Yamanauchi, K., 'On the Use of Be-verbs in Old English Glosses to the Lambeth Psalter', Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature, 7 (1992)