Western Medieval Manuscripts : Homiliae in Ezechielem

Gregory the Great

Western Medieval Manuscripts

The Benedictine cathedral priory of Christ Church Canterbury possessed one of the great libraries of medieval England. There survive today well over two hundred manuscripts, as well as some early printed books, that are known to have been part of this collection. This copy of Gregory the Great's Homilies on Ezechiel is one such survival, and one of twenty Christ Church books held at Cambridge University Library. It is one of two copies of the text known to have been at Christ Church; the other is now Windsor, St George's Chapel, MS 5.CUL MS Ff.3.9 was made in the late eleventh or twelfth century. The date of other surviving copies of this text indicates that it was little-known in England prior to the Norman Conquest, but that copies multiplied quickly thereafter. It may have been made at Christ Church itself, where it was to spend the next four or so centuries. However, Neil Ker has pointed to the close connections that must have existed at this time between Christ Church and Rochester cathedral priories - Ralph d'Escures, former bishop of Rochester, was archbishop at Canterbury 1114-22, while Ernulf, former prior of Canterbury, was bishop of Rochester 1115-24 - concluding that 'It is a priori likely that the Christ Church collection contained manuscripts which the Rochester monks copied in this period and perhaps to a lesser extent earlier.' Gregory's Homilies on Ezechiel is one of fourteen patristic texts to have existed in copies at both Christ Church and Rochester, and where these copies are known to have survived (the Rochester copy of the Homilies is now <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='http://searcharchives.bl.uk/IAMS_VU2:LSCOP_BL:IAMS040-002105992'>London, British Library, Royal MS 4 B i</a>).According to C.R. Dodwell, the same artist was responsible for the decorated initials in both MS Ff.3.9 and <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://mss-cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/Manuscript/B.5.28'>Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.5.28</a>, and later scholarship has considered the production to be English (whether or not they are by the same hand). That Norman artists were also at work in Canterbury at this time, however, is shown by <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/catalog/pj101rk1280'>Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 291</a>: although the initials in CUL MS Ff.3.9 and Trinity MS B.5.28 also feature bright, hard colours and foliage and beast heads, those in Corpus MS 291 draw on Norman antecedents independent of Anglo-Saxon traditions of ornamental initials and were therefore likely executed by a Norman artist, working at the nearby abbey of St Augustine (see Morgan and Panayotova (2013) and Gameson (1995) for further details).Dr James Freeman Medieval Manuscripts Specialist Cambridge University Library