THE VOLUMES

Vol. 1 Vol. 2 Vol. 3 Vol. 4 Vol. 5 Vol. 6 Vol. 7 Vol. 8 Vol. 9 Vol. 10

Vol. 11 Vol. 12 Vol. 13 Vol. 14 Vol. 15 Vol. 16 Vol. 17 Vol. 18 Vol. 19

Vol. 20 Vol. 21 Vol. 22 Vol. 23 Vol. 24 Vol. 25 Vol. 26 Vol. 27

Vol. 28 Vol. 29

Volume l: The Thorkelin Transcripts of Beowulf

Edited by Kemp Malone, Johns Hopkins University, U.S.A. 233 pp. in collotype plus an introduction of 43 pp.

Beowulff, now universally acknowledged to be the greatest surviving masterpiece of Old English literature, was still little known in the eighteenth century. But in 1787 Thorkelin, an Icelandic scholar in the Danish civil service, commissioned an unknown scribe to copy the poem from the only existing manuscript, Cotton Vitellius A.xv.in the British Museum. A little later in the same year he himself made a second copy of the poem direct from the manuscript. These two transcripts are now in the Royal Library in Copenhagen. They supply us with texts of the poem more nearly complete than the one which now survives in the manuscript itself, because over the years the outer edges of the manuscript’s leaves have crumbled as a result of the scorching they sustained in the disastrous fire of 1731 in the Cotton Library.

Volume II: The Leningrad Bede

St Petersburg, Public Library, Q.v.I.18. Edited by O. Arngart, University of Lund, Sweden. 323 pp. in collotype plus an introduction of 36 pp.

This, the least accessible of all surviving copies of Bede’s ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY and unknown when Plummer published his famous edition in 1896, is a manuscript of the first importance, not only as our best source of knowledge of the text of Bede’s great work but also as a landmark in Northumbrian palaeography and illumination.

Volume III: The Tollemache Orosius

British library, Add. 47967. Edited by Alistair Campell, Balliol College, Oxford. 174 pp. in collotype plus an introduction of 27 pp.

The vernacular prose version of Orosius’s HISTORY OF THE WORLD was one of the main productions of the literary circle associated with the court of King Alfred. It is perhaps best known for its striking original additions, including its description of the geography of northern Price Listope and the famous accounts of the voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan.

Volume IV: The Peterborough Chronicle

Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 636. Edited by Dorothy Whitelock, St. Hilda’s College, Oxford. 184 pp. in collotype plus an introduction of 43 pp.

THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE, another of the great enterprises in English prose that were undertaken in the reign of King Alfred, is our most important source for the political history of the long period it covers. All the versions of it extant today have a complicated textual history, and the Laud manuscript, commonly cited as E, is no exception. It is one of the two which represent what is known as the northern recension of the Chronicle, a compilation which contains in the early years much material of northern interest and which, as Professor Whitelock argues convincingly in her introduction, was put together almost certainly at York. But by the middle of the eleventh century the associations of E’s text are with Canterbury. E itself is a copy made at Peterborough in 1121. Further annals were added to it there until 1155 or soon after. Thus it is the version of the Chronicle which continues some three quarters of a century longer than any other (except for a fragment). Its interest to the historian and to the linguist cannot be overestimated.

Volume V: Bald’s Leechbook

British Library, Royal 12 D, XVII. Edited by Cyril E. Wright, British Museum, London 255 pp. in collotype plus an introduction of 32 pp.

This manuscript, written at Winchester in the middle of the tenth century, preserves two examples (Bald’s and another’s) of a handbook for the everyday use of a practising doctor. In addition to prescriptions based on empirical knowledge of the virtues of herbs it contains the charms and invocations which were always part of early medicine and some personal elements which give it great human interest. It is thus a combination central for the study of Anglo-Saxon medicine and medico-magic, and it throws much light on ordinary life in the tenth century.

Volume VI: The Pastoral Care

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 20. Edited by N. R. Ker, Magdalen College, Oxford. 204 pp. in collotype plus an introduction of 34 pp.

The Hatton manuscript takes us right to the heart of King Alfred’s drive to use vernacular prose to effect a revival of learning after the Danish wars, for it was one of the original copies which the king himself sent out when, as he tells us in his famous preface, he made a systematic distribution to his version of Gregory’s CURA PASTORALIS - a work so fundamental to the well-being of the Church. This was the copy, which he sent to Worcester, and it can be dated to 890-96. The charred fragments of Cotton Tiberius B. xi., almost wholly destroyed in the Cotton fire of 1731, and the Kassel leaf represent between them all that now remains of another manuscript that belonged to the King’s “first edition”.

Volume VII: Textus Roffensis, Part I.

Rochester Cathedral Library A. 3.5. Edited by Peter Sawyer, University of Edinburgh. 242pp. in collotype plus an introduction of 23 pp.

The contents of this manuscript, written at Rochester in 1122 or soon after, fall into two parts, which are reproduced separately in our series, the present volume comprising the first section and volume XI the second. The first part contains laws followed by genealogies and similar chronological material. It is a compilation of outstanding importance because it contains codes and parts of codes, particularly of the early laws of Kent, which do not survive elsewhere.

Volume VIII: The Paris Psalter

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Lat. 8824. Edited by John Bromwich, University of Cambridge. N. R. Ker, Magdalen College, Oxford. Francis Wormald, University of London. Kenneth Sisam. Celia Sisam, St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and Bertram Colgrave, University of Durham. 187 pp. in collotype (reproducing 374 MS pp.) plus an introduction of 20 pp.

This manuscript, of mid-eleventh-century date and written on tall, slender pages with two columns to each page, contains a Latin text of the psalms, of the Roman version, in its left-hand columns and a vernacular translation in its right-hand columns. For psalms 1-50 the English version is in prose and for psalms 51-150 in verse. The involvement of King Alfred himself in the translation of the prose section has now been convincingly demonstrated. The verse translation may have originated about the middle of the tenth century. The manuscript’s last twenty-one pages contain texts in Latin, mainly canticles and a litany.

Volume IX: The Moore Bede

Cambridge, University Library, Kk. 5.16.Edited by Peter Hunter Blair, Emmanuel College, Cambridge. 258 pp. in collotype plus an introduction of 39 pp.

This manuscript has for long been considered the oldest surviving copy of Bede’s ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY and has formed the basis of all printed editions. It may well be a production of the Jarrow Wearmouth scriptorium and may have been completed as early as 737, that is within two years of Bede’s death. Textually it holds a key position: by the ninth century, or perhaps already in the eighth, it was in France, and there it had a large progeny.

Volume X: The Blickling Homilies

Princeton, John H. Scheide Library. Edited by Rudolph Willard, University of Texas, U.S.A. 153 pp. in collotype (reproducing 300 MS pp.) plus an introduction of 72 pp.

This facsimile presents scholars with a much-needed opportunity, for the manuscript itself, formerly in the library of Blickling Hall, Norfolk, and now in private ownership in the United States, has never been much studied at first hand. It contains an ordered collection of Old English homilies, dated by its handwriting to the end of the tenth century or the beginning of the eleventh, accompanied by a midfifteenth-century calendar and early-fourteenth-century gospel passages used for the administration of oaths. It was in the possession of the City of Lincoln until 1724, and this ownership is witnessed by numerous civic marginalia recorded there between 1304 and 1623.

Volume XI: Textus Roffensis, Part II.

Rochester Cathedral Library, A.3.5. Edited by Peter Sawyer, University of Birmingham. 234 pp. in collotype plus an introduction of 42 pp.

In this volume we have a facsimile of the second part of the codex of which the first part was reproduced in volume VII. This second part, written at Rochester in 1122 or soon after by the scribe who wrote the first part, is basically a cartulary of Rochester Priory. It is a collection of documents that is most valuable for both pre- and post-Conquest history, some forty of them dating from before the Conquest. Its importance has long been recognised, but the printed version failed to distinguish the original cartulary from additions and alternations made to it later in the twelfth century, so that the present facsimile makes it possible for scholars to study the detail of this manuscript properly for the first time.

Volume XII: The Nowell Codex

British Library, Cotton Vitellius A. XV. Edited by Kemp Malone, Johns Hopkins, University, U.S.A. 116 pp. in collotype (reproducing 232 MS pp.) plus an introduction of 120 pp.

With the publication of this volume the series fulfils its aim of making generally available in facsimile form the primary materials for a sound study of the text of the greatest of all surviving Old English poems - at the outset, in volume I, the Thorkelin transcripts, and now the unique manuscript itself. But this volume does more than that. For the first time it provides a facsimile of the whole manuscript which, belonging to the end of the tenth century or the beginning of the eleventh, contains besides BEOWULF some other vernacular texts of the highest interest.

Volume XIII: Ælfric’s First Series of Catholic Homilies

British Library, Royal 7 C. XII. Edited by Norman Eliason, University of N. Carolina, U.S.A. and Peter Clemoes, Emmanuel College, Cambridge. 430 pp. in collotype plus an introduction of 38 pp.

The first series of CATHOLIC HOMILIES was Ælfric’s first published work. Of the four surviving manuscripts of the series as a whole the Royal manuscript is both the earliest and the one closest to Ælfric. It shows an earlier state of the text than any other that has survived, probably the text as it was before it was put into general circulation, and the many alternations and corrections which it contains bear witness to the thorough-going authorial revision which the homilies underwent at this early stage. Above all, some notes and alterations are entered in Ælfric’s own hand.

Volume XIV: The Vespasian Psalter

British Library, Cotton Vespasian A. i. Edited by David H. Wright, University of California, U.S.A., and Alistair Campbell, University of Oxford. 3 colour plates and 325 pp. in collotype plus an introduction of 101 pp.

This beautiful book ranks among the finest work produced in England in the eighth century and has the added interest that it is believed, with good reason, to have been written at St Augustine’s, Canterbury, and to have remained there until the dissolution in 1538. It is a psalter of the Roman version, with canticles and hymns, written in uncial script of remarkable quality. There are also prolegomena in rustic capitals. Its painted decoration, some of which will be reproduced in colour, includes a full-page illustration of David and his entourage, several incipits and a great many initials. The inter-linear glosses provide vital evidence for the Mercian dialect in the ninth century.

Volume XV: The Rule of St Benedict

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 48. Edited by D. H. Farmer, University of Reading. One colour plate and 157 pp. in collotype plus an introduction of 29 pp.

This manuscript is revered in the history of English and Price Listopean culture as the oldest surviving copy of the Rule. It was written in bold uncial script, of unmistakably Anglo-Saxon character, by a master scribe late in the seventh century or early in the eighth. During the Middle Ages, and as late as the seventeenth century, it was at Worcester. It has a great many beautifully drawn initials.

Volume XVI: The Durham Ritual

Durham Cathedral Library, A. iv. 19. Edited by T. J. Brown, University of London et.al. 178 pp. in collotype plus an introduction of 92 pp.

This volume consists of a service-book, mainly a collectar and capitulary, which is of considerable interest to the liturgiologist. It was written in Anglo-Saxon minuscule, probably in the south of England, during the first half of the tenth century. But the book soon went north, for it was used by the community of St Cuthbert while they were at Chester-le-Street during the second half of the tenth century, and the scribe Aldred, who added a vernacular gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels, glossed this volume too. These two glosses together are our most important source for the Northumbrian dialect in the tenth century.

Volume XVII: A Wulfstan Manuscript

British Library, Cotton Nero A. i. Edited by H. R. Loyn, University College, Cardiff. 185 pp. in collotype (reproducing 355 MS pp.) plus an introduction of 54 pp.

The two component parts of this volume were bound together by 1580. The first, of mid-eleventh-century date, is a collection of laws in English ranging in date from the reign of Ine (688-726) to that of Canute (Liebermann’s MS G). It includes some codes drafted by Wulfstan, archbishop of York and bishop of Worcester. The second part of the volume, of the beginning of the eleventh century, is even closer to Wulfstan, for it was a handbook prepared for his use, being written presumably at either Worcester or York. Its miscellaneous contents, mostly in English, comprise mainly ecclesiastical institutes and laws. They include a number of his own works, the well known SERMO LUPI among them, as well as earlier texts of interest to him, with annotations in his own hand. Additional plates provide examples of his handwriting from eight other manuscripts.

Volume XVIII: The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch

British Library, Cotton Cladius B. iv. Edited by C.R Dodwell, University of Manchester, and Peter Clemoes, Emmanuel College, Cambridge. 5 colour plates and 321 pp. in collotype plus an introduction of 73 pp.

This is a copy, written in the first half of the eleventh century, of an Old English prose version of the first six books of the Old Testament, partly by Ælfric. In medieval times it belonged to the library of St Augustine’s, Canterbury. It is one of the most lavishly illustrated of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, containing no less than 400 coloured drawings, which form one of the most extensive cycles of Pentateuch illustrations to survive from the Middle Ages. These drawings are of extreme interest iconographically because they were derived from an Early Christian exemplar which has not otherwise come down to us.

Volume XIX: The Vercelli Book

Vercelli, Cathedral Library CXVII. Edited by Celia Sisam, St Hilda’s College, Oxford 282 pp. in collotype plus an introduction of 62 pp.

A distinctive vernacular literature of high quality was, of course, one of the principal achievements of Anglo-Saxon England. This manuscript, of the second half of the tenth century, is one of the four great codices on which our knowledge of Old English poetry mainly depends. It also contains twenty-three items of striking vernacular religious prose, rare examples of homiletic writing from before the revolutionary work of Ælfric.

Volume XX: The Durham Gospels

Durham Cathedral Library A. ii. 17. Edited by Julian Brown, University of London. Elizabeth Coatsworth, Manchester Polytechnic and Christopher Verey, formerly Universities of Durham and London, with an appendix by Roger Powell. 4 colour plates and 238 pp. in collotype plus an introduction of 111 pp.

This volume consists of two parts. The first part is an incomplete copy of the gospels written in a very expert insular majuscule early in the eighth century. It is ornamented throughout, and in its script, in the nature of its text and in the form of its decoration it serves as a link between the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels. This manuscript throws much light on the work of the scribes and artists in the Northumbrian monasteries during the period which is often known as the Golden Age of Northumbria. The second part of the volume consists of fragments of the Gospel of St Luke written late in the seventh century or early in the eighth in a type of uncial found in the Codex Amiatinus.

Volume XXI: An Eleventh-Century Anglo-Saxon Illustrated Miscellany

British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. v. Edited by P. McGurk, University of London. D. N. Dumville, University of Cambridge. M. R. Godden, University of Oxford. Ann Knock, University of London. 4 colour plates and 189 pp. in photolithography plus an introduction of 109 pp.

The original parts of Cotton Tiberius B. v, vol I, consist of an illustrated miscellany of computistical, astronomical and geographical matter written during the first half of the eleventh century, perhaps at Christ Church, Canterbury. It was at Battle Abbey by the twelfth century. It contains both Latin and English texts. The Latin material includes a metrical calendar; Cicero’s ARATEA, a versified translation of a Greek astronomical text; and Priscian’s PERIEGESIS, another verse translation, this time of a Greek verse text describing the whole world. The metrical calendar, a mnemonic, not a practical work, and of uncertain origin, was evidently adopted for teaching in the school at Winchester. The English material in the manuscript includes Ælfric’s DE TEMPORIBUS ANNI. There are also a Latin text and an English one of an account of the “Marvels of the East.” Though the purpose of collecting such disparate material in one volume is obscure, it has producted a remarkable miscellany of largely secular content. The book is lavishly illustrated.

Volume XXII: The Épinal, Erfurt, Werden, and Corpus Glossaries

Épinal, Bibliothèque Municipale 72 (2), Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek Amplonianus 2, 42, Düsseldorf, Universitätsbibliothek Fragm. K 19: Z 9/1, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cgm. 187 III (e.4), and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 144. Edited by Bernhard Bischoff, Planegg-bei-München, Mildred Budney, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Geoffrey Harlow, Westfield College, London, M. B.Parkes, Keble College, Oxford, and J. D. Pheifer, Trinity College, Dublin. 3 colour plates and 271 pp. in collotype plus an introduction of 78 pp.

In this volume are gathered four glossary manuscripts of seventh-to-ninth-century date, representing the earliest lexicographical initiatives of the Anglo-Saxons. They derive from collections of glosses compiled in England in the seventh century. The Èpinal and Corpus glossaries were written in England, but the Erfurt manuscript is in a type of script used in the school of St Peter’s cathedral, Cologne, at the beginning of the eight century, while the script of the Werden manuscript of the same date is related to other manuscripts from the monastery of St Liudger, (Essen-) Werden; they are thus early witnesses to the influence of English scholarship upon the Continent. Taken together, these glossaries are an index, however inadequate, to the intellectual life of their time. More than that, their entries in English provide precious material for the linguist, being by far the most substantial evidence we have for the state of the language at such an early period.

Volume XXIII: Old English Verse Texts from Many Sources: A Comprehensive Collection.

Edited by Fred C. Robinson, Yale University, and E. G. Stanley, University of Oxford. 14 colour plates and over 500 collotype plates plus an introduction of 32 pp.

The volume comprises verse texts from over one hundred different manuscripts, inscribed objects, and (where these are the surviving primary witness) printed books. Including all manuscripts of Cædmon’s hymn and Bede’s Death Song, the Ruthwell Cross, and the complete Meters of Boethius, together with Junius’s transcript, all but a few of these primary sources have never before been reproduced in facsimile. As well as illustrating the primary evidence for the texts, the volume displays the remarkable variety of forms in which Old English poetry survives.

Volume XXIV: The Old English Version of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica

Oxford Bodleian Library, Tanner 10. Edited by Janet Bately, University of London. Four colour plates and 283 collotype plates plus an Introduction of 39 pp.

The oldest (c. 930) manuscript of the translation, probably made in the latter part of the ninth century and formerly attributed to King Alfred, presents a text in four hands that is an important witness to a period from which comparatively few Anglo-Saxon manuscripts survive. It is noteworthy also for a remarkable series of zoomorphic initials in brilliant colours in the early “Winchester School” Style. The disbinding of the manuscript has afforded a unique opportunity for photography in ideal conditions.

Volume XXV: The Copenhagen Wulfstan Collection.

Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek Gl. Kgl. Sam. 1595

(4). Edited by James E. Cross, University of Liverpool, and Jennifer Morrish Tunberg, University of Kentucky. One colour plate and 176 collotype plates plus an Introduction of 62 pp.

Brought to scholarly attention many years ago by N. R. Ker, when he identified numerous alterations and additions in Wulfstan’s hand, this “crucial” (Ker) manuscript at last becomes generally accessible. The Introduction reopens the canon of Wulfstan’s Latin writings. An amalgam of several distinct sections, including the earliest witness to sermons of Abbo of St Germain, the manuscript with its nine different hands provides a clear profile of scribal and scriptorium practice in early eleventh-century Worcester.

Volume XXVI: The Liber Vitae of the New Minster and Hyde Abbey, Winchester.

London British Library Stowe 944. Edited by Simon Keynes, University of Cambridge. Nine colour plates and 154 collotype plates plus an introduction of 132 pp.

Written c. 1031 by the monk Ælsinus, the manuscript lists the brethren, monks etc. of the community of new Minster (later Hyde Abbey) and contains other texts of singular interest, including a copy of the will of King Alfred. Three pages of fine line drawings include the famous representation of King Cnut. The lists of names, kept up to date until the sixteenth century, afford an extraordinary insight, only appreciable in facsimile, into the changing nature of monastic community.

Volume XXVII: The Old English Illustrated Pharmacopoeia

London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius C. iii, fols 11-85. Introduction by M.A.D’Aronco, University of Udine, Italy, and M.L. Cameron, Dalhousie University , Canada. Eight colour plates and 166 black-and-white plates plus an Introduction of 64 pages.

This manuscript, written in the early eleventh century and combining the Herbarius Apuleii with the so-called Medicina de quadrupedibus, is a magnificient example of the common pharmacopoeia of the high Middle Ages which was in use until the expansion of the great medical Schools of Salermo and Montpellier. Of the several manuscripts of the Old English translation that survive, it is the only illustrated copy. The Old English descriptions are accompanied by no less than 184 illustrations of plants and forty-seven of animals and serpents. The Illustrator was a highly gifted artist who had access to a late-antique or Carolingian text which reproduced much more beautiful and naturalistic late-classical material than survives in any extant Latin codex, as is demonstrated by more than fifty reproductions of comparative illustrations from other sources. Most of the plants can be identified and a large number are still in use by today’s herbalists for the same medical conditions.

Volume XXVIII: The Codex Aureus: An Eight-Century Gospel Book, PART I

Stockholm, Kungl. Biblioteket A. 135. Edited by Richard Gameson, University of Kent. 134 colour plates plus an Introduction of 103 pages.

Dating from around the middle of the eight-century, this Gospel Book has claims to be the most sumptuous manuscript to survive from the Anglo-Saxon period. Written in Uncial by at least five scribes, the text on every alternate page is in white or gold upon vellum stained or painted purple, a unique feature in early medieval Price Listope. On the white pages, silver and red are also used to present the text in contrasting colours. Much of the original magnificent decoration, the work of two artists, survives, including four whole decorated initial pages, Evangelist Tables, and many other features of ornament. Of particular importance are its perceptible connections with the earliest (and now largely lost) books brought to England by the earliest Roman missionaries, such as the sixth-century so-called Gospels of St Augustine.

This manuscript is a key monument in the history of script, book decoration, and manuscript production in early southern England. On fol. 11 it carries an extraordinary testimony to its own history: a nearly contemporary Old English inscription records how it was recovered by a certain Ælfred aldormon from a pagan (presumably Viking) army in return for gold, and presented to Christ Church, Canterbury.

Volume XXIX: The Codex Aureus: An Eight-Century Gospel Book, PART II

Stockholm, Kungl. Biblioteket A. 135. Edited by Richard Gameson, University of Kent. 256 colour plates plus an Introduction of 16 pages.

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