Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and their Heritage

Phillip Pulsiano, Elaine M. Treharne

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429864087
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

First published in 1998, this volume brings together some of the best recent work on the period before and after the Norman Conquest and makes an irresistible case for a number of fundamental revisions in our understanding of the culture of Anglo-Saxon and Norman England. Combining the use of novel techniques such as digital image processing with the best current practice in textual and iconographic study, this volume broadens the scope and applicability of manuscript studies, showing, for example, the falsity of prevailing notions of the vitality and status of the native English tongue after the Conquest. The essays combine to make a coherent and persuasive demonstration of the benefits of not remaining bound to the physical artifact but rather connecting codicology with practical and theoretical applications within manuscript studies and other historical disciplines.

1 Gloss ana Illustration: Two Means to the Same End?

Gemot R. Wieland

Two recent articles, one by R.I. Page, the other by J.A. Kiff-Hooper, raise the question of whether illustrated manuscripts were also used as classbooks.¹ Kiff-Hooper establishes the following criteria for illustrated manuscripts not used in the classroom: ‘Elaborate initial forms; drawings of the author and the absence of extensive contemporary glossing’.² And Page, speaking about Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 23, an illustrated Psychomachia manuscript, gives the following point as one major reason why he does not consider the manuscript a classbook:³

Possibly the most suggestive evidence that CCCC 23 was not a classbook (or at least not designed as such) is the nature of the manuscript itself …. CCCC 23 is sumptuous. First its size: it is 360 X 285 mm, a largish volume, not very convenient for taking to and from class …. There are 89 large pictures, and spaces for a few more that were never filled in. The illustrations are elegant line drawings in tinted inks, with captions in red or green. This does not look like a book intended for teaching….⁴

Both Kiff-Hooper and Page seem to agree that manuscripts with elaborate illustrations or initials would not have been intended for use in the classroom.

There is one major difference between the two arguments: while Kiff-Hooper establishes as one of her criteria ‘absence of extensive contemporary glossing’, Page contends that CCCC 23 is not a classbook despite extensive contemporary glossing. A priori, Kiff-Hooper’s criterion seems to be the more valid one. If glosses are absent, we are, aside from the use to which the content can be put, left without any indication as to the intended uses of the manuscript. The only way to determine whether a manuscript was designed for use in the classroom is through the glosses, since they provide the information concerning the manner in which the text was to be read. If the glosses reflect the concerns of the schoolroom, that is, if they are prosodic, lexical, morphological, and syntactical, and if they provide sources or explanations for culturally foreign objects,⁵ then the assumption is justified that the manuscript was destined to be a teaching text. The presence of glosses does not allow the assumption that the manuscript was subsequently actually used as such since books are portable property and can be alienated from their intended purpose; conversely, many manuscripts not containing glosses may have been used as teaching texts, but such use cannot be proven.

Kiff-Hooper specifies ‘contemporary’ glosses, and thereby begs the question of what happens when a manuscript is glossed later on. It would seem that a manuscript that did receive glosses after its original compilation could still be considered a classbook, one that perhaps originally was not intended for classroom use, but one that was appropriated for the school at a later date. This in turn raises the possibility that the book received the glosses at a later date because it had already been used as a classbook. If that possibility is accepted, then the boundary between ‘classbook’ and ‘art book’ cannot be drawn as strictly as Kiff-Hooper does explicitly and Page implicitly. It would seem that the question of whether the two are mutually exclusive needs to be explored further.

The present essay intends to do just that, and it will do so with special reference to illustrated Psychomachia manuscripts. Kiff-Hooper has examined manuscripts containing Aldhelm’s De laudibus virginitatis, both the prose and the verse, and even the most elaborately illustrated of these manuscripts contains at the most two illustrations and some elaborate initials. The case is entirely different with the illuminated Psychomachia manuscripts which contain as many as 89 illustrations,⁶ the sheer number of which would, in comparison to the Aldhelm manuscripts, turn them into de luxe codices and therefore, if we follow Page’s and Kiff-Hooper’s criteria, disqualify them from use in the classroom. As it happens, however, all extant illustrated Psychomachia manuscripts from Anglo-Saxon England are also extensively glossed with exactly the types of glosses one would expect a teacher to use, and on the strength of these glosses they could all be classified as classbooks.⁷ Does the evidence of the illustrations contradict the evidence of the glosses? Or are they two different means to the same end?

An answer to these questions has to examine what we know about Anglo-Saxon illustrated manuscripts generally; it needs to discuss the relationship of illustrated to non-illustrated Psychomachia manuscripts. It needs to focus on the relationship between text and illustration in order to determine whether the illustrations function as a type of gloss; and finally, it needs to discuss the relationship between glosses and illustrations in order to see whether the one influenced the other.

Temple’s catalogue of illustrated Anglo-Saxon manuscripts between 900 and 1066 is the best place to start.⁸ Of the more than 100 manuscripts listed by her, several can be considered teaching texts.⁹ Among them are Aldhelm’s De virginitate,¹⁰ Arator’s Historia apostolica,¹¹ Sedulius’ Carmen Paschale,¹² Juvencus’ De evangelio,¹³ and Boethius’ De consolatione Philosophiae.¹⁴ All these manuscripts have only very few illustrations: in the Aldhelm manuscripts, the illustrations are limited to a dedicatory page and some elaborate initials; the Boethius manuscripts usually contain no more than a portrait of Philosophy and again some elaborate initials; and the manuscripts with the other authors have only elaborate initials. Nonetheless, as the list shows, teaching texts were sometimes considered worthy of special attention in the form of elaborate initials and drawings.¹⁵ I might add here that iElfric’s Grammar, fols 56-127 in Durham Cathedral Library B. III. 32 (Temple no. 101), is prefaced by a full-page drawing of two men disputing with each other while a third man looks on. Why should this manuscript have deserved special treatment? If a grammar is not a text to be used in school, which text is?

Although like the other texts mentioned above the Psychomachia is a teaching text, yet with potentially 90 illustrations it differs significantly from them. Because of the large number of illustrations, it really ought to be considered in connection with manuscripts having cycles of illustrations. According to the manuscripts presented by Temple, the Anglo-Saxons possessed such cycles in psalters,¹⁶ in Old English biblical texts,¹⁷ in The Wonders of the East,¹⁸ in the Herbarium,¹⁹ in the Aratea,²⁰ and in Hrabanus Maurus’ De laude s. crucis,²¹ None of these texts except for the psalters is usually considered part of the curriculum. The Psychomachia thus occupies a singular place among illustrated Anglo-Saxon manuscripts: despite possessing a cycle of illustrations, it differs from other such manuscripts in that its text forms part of the curriculum; and despite forming part of the curriculum, it differs from other teaching texts because of the presence of a cycle of illustrations. Its hybrid form contributes largely to the confusion of whether a particular glossed and illustrated manuscript should be considered a classroom text or not.

In order to gauge fully the classbook potential of the illustrated Psychomachia manuscripts, one must examine them together with the non-illustrated manuscripts. Ten Psychomachia manuscripts written or owned in Anglo-Saxon England are still extant. They are (in roughly chronological order):

1. Non-illustrated manuscripts:

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson C. 697 (s. ix ex.), written in north-eastern France and later owned at Bury St Edmunds (HG661).²²

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 223 (s. ix/x), written at St Benin and in England by the tenth century (HG 70).

Cambridge, Trinity College O. 2. 51 (s. x) of unknown origin and provenance (HG 191).

Durham, Cathedral Library B. IV. 9 (s. x med.) of unknown origin and provenance (HG 246).

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auctarium F. 3. 6 (s. xi in.), written at Exeter (HG 537).

Cambridge, University Library, Gg. 5. 35 (s. xi med.) written and owned at St Augustine’s, Canterbury (HG 12). 2.

2. Illustrated manuscripts:

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 23 (s. x ex.), written in England (possibly at Christ Church, Canterbury?) and later owned at Malmesbury (HG 38).

London, British Library, Additional 24199 (s. x ex.) of unknown origin and later possibly owned at Bury St Edmunds (HG 285).

London, British Library, Cotton Cleopatra C. viii (s. x/xi), written at Christ Church, Canterbury (HG 324). Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, elm 29336/1 (formerly 29031b, s. xi in.) of unknown origin and provenance (HG 852).

Ten surviving manuscripts of a teaching text is a large number as a comparison with other teaching texts will show: Arator’s Historia apostolica survives in six manuscripts, Juvencus’ Libri Evangeliorum in six as well, Sedulius’ Carmen Paschale in seven manuscripts, and only Boethius’ De consolatione Philosophiae, which survives in sixteen manuscripts, surpasses the number of Psychomachia manuscripts.²³ As can readily be seen, four of the Psychomachia manuscripts are illustrated, while six are not. This would appear to be a high percentage of illustrated manuscripts. Partly their large number can no doubt be accounted for by the fact that later ages considered illustrated manuscripts more valuable and would therefore more readily have preserved them. For the other part, the large number of illustrated manuscripts suggests that the Anglo-Saxons did not, except for the illustrations, consider them essentially different from their non-illustrated counterparts.

Since it seems to be easier to accept that non-illustrated manuscripts were used as classbooks, let us first examine their classbook potential. The two manuscripts originally written in France and then brought to England do not contain enough glosses to classify them as classbooks. The Psychomachia of Rawlinson C 697 is not glossed at all. The Psychomachia in CCCC 223 is extensively glossed in only the first four lines; thereafter occasional Latin and Old English glosses in both ink and drypoint appear;²⁴ it should be emphasised that all the glosses are added by later hands, presumably in England. The glossing is, however, not consistent or extensive enough to define unambiguously the manuscript as a classbook. Possibly once we find out more about the role of the mainly drypoint Old English glosses, we can revise that judgment, but as it stands now, the Psychomachia of CCCC 223 cannot be shown to be destined for use in the classroom. Of the four non-illustrated Psychomachia manuscripts written in England, three are extensively glossed; the one exception is the Psychomachia in Trinity College O. 2. 51, which is heavily glossed on only the first three folios, and then the glosses abruptly cease and are not resumed again. In CUL Gg. 5. 35, Durham B. IV. 9, and Auct. F. 3. 6, the glosses are of the type one would expect a teacher to use: lexical, prosodic, morphological, syntactical, and commentary glosses. There is more: the placement of the glosses also sug...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Gloss ana Illustration: Two Means to the Same End?
• 2 Cambridge Corpus Christi College 57 and its Anglo-Saxon Users
• 3 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 162
• 4 The Prefatory Matter of London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius E. xviii
• 5 The Conybeare-Madden Collation of Thorkelin’s Beowulf
• 6 Reading the C-Text: The After-Lives of London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. i
• 7 Lay Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England and the Development of the Chirograph
• 8 Memorialised Readingsd Manuscript Evidence for Old English Homily Composition
• 9 An Episode in the Medieval Afterlife of the Caligula Troper
• 10 The Detes and Origins of Three Twelfth-Century Old English Manuscripts
• 11 The Ghost of Asser
• Index