Western Medieval Manuscripts : Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (in Old English)

Western Medieval Manuscripts

<p style='text-align: justify;'>Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk.3.18 (hereafter, MS Kk.3.18) is the youngest surviving copy of the Old English translation of Bede's <i>Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum</i>. Copied during the second half of the eleventh century at Worcester Cathedral Priory, MS Kk.3.18 played an important role in the use of English for pastoral care and preaching in Anglo-Norman England and beyond, as well as in the 'recovery' of Old English in the early modern period. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Bede (673-735), a monk at Wearmouth-Jarrow, completed his <i>Historia ecclesiastica</i> in 731. It is the earliest surviving history of early England, from its mythic origins to the arrival and conversion of the Germanic tribes that eventually became the English, and the development of the early English Church. The Old English version of Bede's text was translated anonymously sometime around or before 900. This translation abridges its Latin source by about a third, cutting much of Bede's accounts of Roman Britain, various heresies and controversies, and most of the papal correspondence. Overall, the main translator alters Book I and V the most, but transmits books II-IV almost in their entirety. The end result focuses more on local history, along with key early English saints, kings, and bishops. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>As we have it, the Old English <i>Historia</i> is the work of at least three translators: the bulk of the main text is the work of the main translator, a divergent section in Book III in three manuscripts is the work of another, and the Preface is the work of yet another, slightly later translator. The chapter headings may also be by another translator; if so, possibly one from the same centre as the main translator. The text survives in five manuscripts (and three brief excerpts) dating from c. 883-930 to c. 1062-95. These are: <ul><li><a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/catalog/qd527zm3425'>Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 41</a> (MS 'B')</li><li><a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/6c79a7b4-a7f7-4988-a41d-dbfba14ec6cb/'>Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 279b</a> (MS 'O')</li><li><a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/manuscript_8966'>Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 10</a> (MS 'T')</li><li>London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho B.xi (MS 'C')</li><li>London, British Library, Cotton MS Domitian A.ix (MS 'Z', the three excerpts)</li></ul></p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The contents and arrangement of the Old English text in MS Kk.3.18 are unique amongst the surviving manuscripts: it contains the Preface, a West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List, the list of Chapter Headings, and most of the main text of Bede's <i>Historia</i>. Book II, Chapters 5-7, and Book III, Chapters 19 and 20 (using the numbering from the <i>Historia</i>) are omitted. MS Kk.3.18 contains the alternate translation of Book III, from the end of Chapter 16 through Chapter 18 (MSS O and C also contain this alternate version). Importantly, MS Kk.3.18 is one of only two surviving manuscripts that contain the Preface, chapter headings and all of Books I and V (the other being MS B). MS Kk.3.18 is also the only copy of the Old English <i>Historia</i> in which the West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List survives, although one leaf extracted from MS C now survives as British Library, Additional MS 34652, fol. 2. We do not know whether MS T or MS O, both of which lack beginning and end, ever contained a copy of this List.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Although MS Kk.3.18 is primarily the work of one scribe, at least seven additional hands can be seen in it. In 1958, Neil Ker identified the main scribe of MS Kk.3.18 as Hemming, sub-prior at Worcester Cathedral Priory during the episcopacy of Wulfstan II (1062-1095). The hand of this scribe appears in five other manuscripts, and is the second of the three main hands in 'Hemming's Cartulary', a book of charters and records regarding Worcester (now British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius A.xiii). However, both Francesca Tinti and Simon Keynes have suggested that the first hand in 'Hemming's Cartulary', rather than the second, was the historical person, Hemming. Unless further evidence comes to light, we cannot be certain whether the main text of MS Kk.3.18 was copied by Hemming himself, or his associate. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>That being said, the main hand in MS Kk.3.18 copied the main text in English Vernacular Minuscule; this scribe is also responsible for most of the titles and rubrications, which are mostly in rubricated capitals. The text of MS Kk.3.18 was copied from MS O, but also compared to - and sometimes corrected - against a manuscript like MS B. The presence of the alternate translation in Book III in MS Kk.3.18, for example, is marked with a red 'EFT oðer cƿ̅' ('then the other passage', f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(82);return false;'>39v / l. 27</a>). This is about eleven lines late (the alternate translation begins after 'forbærnan wolde' in l. 16), but it is unique in this family of manuscripts of the Old English <i>Historia</i>. The ending is marked '⁊ eft oðer cwide' ('and afterwards the other passage', f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(84);return false;'>40v / l. 29</a>), also in red. Why the scribes of MS Kk.3.18 marked the passage, but did not restore the missing two chapters remains an open question. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>A few near contemporaries of the main scribe also glossed or annotated MS Kk.3.18. One of these was Coleman (d. 1113), a monk from Worcester who served as chancellor to Wulfstan II in 1089. Coleman's hand also appears in several other manuscripts. In MS Kk.3.18, he wrote his name in code in the left margin of f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(178);return false;'>87v</a>. He also added several notes in the margins, including directions to readers on the same folio, along with a number of glosses, scribbles, notes, and titles to Book V, Chapters 7 and 8 (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(172);return false;'>84v</a> and <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(173);return false;'>85r</a>). Coleman seemed to be especially interested in Dryhthelm's vision, which is an account of a man who retires to a monastery to live a life of penance after he dies for a night and has a vision of the afterlife.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Two other scribes from the second half of the eleventh century glossed and corrected MS Kk.3.18 (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(80);return false;'>38v / ll. 3-6</a> and <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(44);return false;'>20v / l. 26</a>, respectively). Another glossator working in a pointed hand from the very beginning of the thirteenth century added interlinear glosses in Latin on ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(20);return false;'>8v</a> and <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(137);return false;'>67r</a>. We do not know the identity of these scribes, and their work has not yet been identified in other manuscripts. But, another well known Latin glossator, the 'Tremulous Hand' of Worcester glossed ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(20);return false;'>8v-99r</a> extensively around 1225. The 'Tremulous Hand' is a name given my modern scholars to a person (perhaps, Franzen suggests, a Latin Master), who glossed and annotated at least twenty Old English manuscripts. Somewhat like Coleman's additions, many glosses by the Tremulous Hand focus on parts of the text that are didactic and penitential. Both Coleman and the Tremulous Hand may have used the Old English <i>Historia</i> as a vernacular source for preaching and/or teaching materials in a period during which there was growing interest in penance and confession, issues that became increasingly important after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>In addition to containing evidence of the continued use of Old English in Worcester through the thirteenth century, MS Kk.3.18 played a prominent role in the 'recovery' of Old English in the sixteenth century and later. It was read and used by prominent scholars including Robert Talbot (c. 1505-58), Matthew Parker (1504-75), John Joscelyn (1529-1603), and Abraham Wheelock (1593-1624). Talbot was the first known person after the Dissolution of the monasteries to study manuscripts containing Old English. He added chapter numbers (collating with the Latin <i>Historia</i>) on ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(27);return false;'>12r</a> and <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(32);return false;'>14v</a>, and added glosses and annotations on <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(23);return false;'>10r</a> and <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(31);return false;'>14r</a> (where he also practices writing 'woden' in his version of early English script), interventions that suggest an interest in the conversion of the Germanic tribes. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury 1559-75, owned MS Kk.3.18 and it is the third item in the list of manuscripts he donated to Cambridge University Library in 1574. His name appears at the top of folio <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(9);return false;'>3r</a>. Parker collected Old English manuscripts avidly, seeking to demonstrate that the practices of the young Church of England were grounded in the practices of the Church in early medieval England. The use of orange-red crayon (such as for the chapter numbers) was characteristic of Parker and his circle of scholars, a member of which probably also wrote the couplet about the Old English <i>Historia</i> being translated by King Alfred (reg. 871-899) (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(202);return false;'>99v</a>; this is almost identical to the one at the top of the former pastedown that is now f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(4);return false;'>i verso</a>). John Joscelyn, Latin Secretary to Parker, was also an avid lexicographer. He created word lists of Old English using MS Kk.3.18, and clearly cross-referenced it against MS B, as well as the original Latin version of the <i>Historia</i>. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Finally, Abraham Wheelock (1593-1624), the first to hold a lectureship in British and Saxon Ecclesiastical and Political Antiquities at the University of Cambridge, used MS Kk.3.18 as the basis for his 1643 edition, in which he prints the Latin and Old English <i>Historia</i> in parallel columns. Wheelock's is the first printed edition of the Old English text, and the first English edition of Bede's Latin text. Among other things, Wheelock collated MS Kk.3.18 against MS B (in the left margin of f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(20);return false;'>8v</a>, for example), and added chapter numberings and index entries (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(202);return false;'>99v</a>).</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Wheelock, like many before him, believed that the Old English <i>Historia</i> was translated by King Alfred. The prominent red couplets at the beginning and end of MS Kk.3.18, combined with the other later notes citing the authority of Ælfric of Eynsham (c. 955-c. 1010) on the former pastedowns (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(4);return false;'>i verso</a> and <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(209);return false;'>ii recto</a>), and the presence of the West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List, go a long way to support this idea. However, since the work of Henry Sweet and Thomas Miller, among others, it now seems likely that the Old English <i>Historia</i> was produced outside Alfred's programme of translation (in a Mercian dialect of Old English, rather than Alfred's early West Saxon dialect), but then was swept up into that programme, perhaps via the addition of the Preface and Genealogical List, in the late eighth or early ninth century. What remains very clear, however, is that in MS Kk.3.18, the monks at Worcester Cathedral Priory created a beautiful manuscript that was used for pastoral and educational purposes, transmitted the Old English text to later audiences, and captured the close attention of some of the most prominent early modern scholars of the Old English language and of early English history. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Sharon M. Rowley<br />Christopher Newport University</p>