The origin of the Bosworth Psalter

1973 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 173-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. M. Korhammer
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Full Page ◽  
Place Of Origin ◽  
Page Figure ◽  
Early English ◽  
English Manuscript

The main contents of the Bosworth Psalter (BM Add. 37517; henceforth cited as B) are on palaeographical grounds commonly assigned to the last quarter of the tenth century. It is thus the oldest surviving English manuscript in which all the important texts of the Benedictine Office – psalter, canticles, hymns and monastic canticles – have been placed together. These texts are preceded by a calendar of slightly later date. Parts of the psalter and six of the canticles were glossed in Old English very early in the eleventh century and there are Latin additions contemporary with the Old English gloss – a short litany, prayers and mass-texts. Finally some psalms were heavily annotated in Latin in the twelfth century. B, still bound in its original oak covers, is of considerable interest on several counts. Early English psalters supply a very good text of the Psalterium Romanum, and B is one of those which appear in the apparatus of Weber's new edition. The hymnologist appreciates B as the oldest representative of the ‘New Hymnal’ in England. And the art historian values it both for its initials to the psalms, which display a style different from that of the contemporary Winchester School, and for the full-page figure of Christ on 128v. Hence any light that can be thrown on the place of origin of this manuscript is important to several disciplines.

scholarly journals The northern world of the Anglo-Saxon mappa mundi

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 275-305
Author(s):  
Helen Appleton
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Mediterranean

AbstractThe Anglo-Saxon mappa mundi, sometimes known as the Cotton map or Cottoniana, is found on folio 56v of London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. v, which dates from the first half of the eleventh century. This unique survivor from the period presents a detailed image of the inhabited world, centred on the Mediterranean. The map’s distinctive cartography, with its emphasis on islands, seas and urban spaces, reflects an Insular, West Saxon geographic imagination. As Evelyn Edson has observed, the mappa mundi appears to be copy of an earlier, larger map. This article argues that the mappa mundi’s focus on urban space, translatio imperii and Scandinavia is reminiscent of the Old English Orosius, and that it originates from a similar milieu. The mappa mundi’s northern perspective, together with its obvious dependence on and emulation of Carolingian cartography, suggest that its lost exemplar originated in the assertive England of the earlier tenth century.

Frithegod of Canterbury's Maundy Thursday hymn

2005 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 219-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosalind C. Love
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Mary Magdalen ◽  
English Manuscript ◽  
Cult Of Mary

In his Catalogus of British writers, John Bale's account of the tenth-century scholar, Frithegod, includes incipits for two hymns, of which the first, on Mary Magdalen (‘Dum pietas multimoda’), was long thought lost. In fact it is not lost, but has simply become uncoupled from its author's name, and is transmitted anonymously in three manuscripts of French origin, and in some Spanish liturgical books, whence it was first printed in 1897. Frithegod's authorship is suggested by Patrick Young's seventeenth-century catalogue of Salisbury Cathedral manuscripts. Young noticed two ‘carmina Frethogodi’ at the end of what is now Dublin, Trinity College 174 (a late eleventh- or early twelfth-century Salisbury legendary), giving the incipit of the first as 'Dum pietas multimoda’. After Young had catalogued TCD 174, the page with the hymns must have become detached, and cannot now be traced. Frithegod may have composed the hymn while still at Canterbury, and then perhaps took a copy back to his native Auvergne, given that it ended up in an English manuscript but also circulated in France. Although the circumstances of composition are beyond recovery, I suggest that the hymn was originally intended not for the cult of Mary Magdalen (it was used thus in France), but rather to accompany the penitential rituals of Maundy Thursday. The article includes a text and translation of the hymn.

Reddatur Parentibus: The Vengeance of the Family in Cnut's Homicide Legislation

2002 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Jurasinski
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Corpus Christi ◽  
The Family ◽  
Ultimate Outcome ◽  
English Law ◽  
One Year

TheAnglo-Saxon Chroniclestates that during his 1018 meeting in Oxford with the leading English ecclesiastical and lay authorities, roughly one year after his accession to the throne in England, Cnut agreed to uphold “the laws of Edgar” during his reign. The ultimate outcome of this and subsequent meetings is the code issued at Winchester in 1020, referred to by editorial convention as I and II Cnut. This code contains, respectively, the religious and secular laws of England promulgated under Cnut. The code is contained in four manuscripts in Old English. The earliest are British Library, Cotton Nero A.i and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College (CCCC) 201, both dated to the mid-eleventh century; the latest, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College (CCCC) 383 and British Library, Harley 55, belong to the early twelfth century. Cnut's code reappears in three twelfth-century Norman Latin tracts intended to acquaint French authorities with English law, theInstituta Cnuti, Consiliatio Cnuti, andQuadripartitus. TheLeges Henrici Primi, prepared by the same author as theQuadripartitus, also draws heavily on Cnut's legislation.

The Merovingian monastery of St Evroul in the light of conflicting traditions

1972 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 31-40
Author(s):  
Marjorie Chibnall
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Old Men

Historians of early monasticism in Frankish Gaul either have little to say about the monastery founded by St Evroul or, like Dom Laporte, devote their attention to a discussion of the probable date of his life. The disappearance of almost all early documentary sources is one reason for this: there was certainly a break in the occupation of the site for perhaps half the century between the destruction of the monastery in the tenth century and its refoundation in 1050, and only one charter, dated 900, was rescued and copied in the eleventh century. The fact that there has been no systematic excavation of the site, so that archaeological evidence of buildings before the thirteenth-century church is lacking, is another. Early annals and reliable lives of other saints have nothing at all to say on the subject. The first historian to tackle it, Orderic Vitalis, writing in the early twelfth century, had to admit that he could discover nothing about the abbots for the four hundred years after St Evroul; and he had to draw on the memories and tales of the old men he knew, both in the monastery and in the villages round about. Needless to say he harvested a luxuriant crop of legends and traditions of all kinds. The problem of the modern historian is to winnow a few grains of historical truth out of the stories that he garnered, and the hagiographical traditions, some of which he did not know.

scholarly journals The Emergence and Transformation of Medieval Cumbria

2014 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-216
Author(s):  
Fiona Edmonds
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Large Area ◽  
New Name ◽  
Late Ninth Century ◽  
Administrative Units ◽  
The Relationship

There has long been uncertainty about the relationship between the polities known as Strathclyde and Cumbria. Did medieval writers apply these terms to the same kingdom, or were Strathclyde and Cumbria separate entities? This debate has significant implications for our understanding of the politics of northern Britain during the period from the late ninth century to the twelfth. In this article I analyse the terminology in Latin, Old English, Old Norse, Welsh and Irish texts. I argue that Strathclyde developed into Cumbria: the expansion of the kingdom of Strathclyde beyond the limits of the Clyde valley necessitated the use of a new name. This process occurred during the early tenth century and created a Cumbrian kingdom that stretched from the Clyde to the south of the Solway Firth. The kingdom met its demise in the mid-eleventh century and Cumbrian terminology was subsequently appropriated for smaller ecclesiastical and administrative units. Yet these later usages should not be confused with the tenth-century kingdom, which encompassed a large area that straddled the modern Anglo-Scottish border.

scholarly journals King Edgar's charter for Pershore (AD 972)

2008 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 31-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter A. Stokes
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Single Sheet ◽  
First Time ◽  
Important Evidence

AbstractS 786 is one of the so-called Orthodoxorum charters, a group of documents which provide important evidence about the Anglo-Saxon chancery, the development of charters in the tenth century, and the history of Pershore Abbey and the tenth-century Benedictine reforms. The document has therefore received a great deal of attention over the past century or so, but this attention has been focussed on the surviving tenth-century single sheet, and so a second, significantly different version of the text has lain unnoticed. This second version is preserved in a copy made by John Joscelyn, Latin Secretary to Archbishop Matthew Parker. Among the material uniquely preserved in this copy are Old English charter bounds for Wyegate (GL), Cumbtune (Compton, GL?) and part of the bounds probably for Lydney (GL), as well as a reference to a grant by Bishop Werferth of Worcester. In this article both versions of the document are discussed and are published together for the first time, and a translation of the single sheet is provided. The history of the two versions is discussed in some detail, and the text of a twelfth-century letter which refers to the charter is also edited and translated.

Wynflæd's wardrobe

1979 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 195-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gale R. Owen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old English ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Relative Value

An Old English document, composed probably in the middle of the tenth century and extant in a not very careful, mutilated, eleventh-century copy, London, British Library, Cotton Charter, VIII, 38, lists the bequests of a woman named Wynflæd. The bequests of clothing in this will are particularly interesting. Anglo-Saxon testaments do not itemize elaborate garments as do some English wills of the later Middle Ages; they refer to clothing only rarely, and then sometimes in general terms. Wynflæd's will is unusual in mentioning several different items of clothing and in specifying them more precisely. Descriptive references to non-military clothing are uncommon in Old English texts generally. Although many garment-names are documented, some which occur only in glossaries or translations from Latin may never have been in common use in England and some words are of uncertain meaning. In most cases the sex of the wearer of a named garment and the relative value of the garment are unknown. The garment-names in Wynflæd's will, by contrast, refer to items of clothing which were certainly worn by women at a known date and were valuable enough to be bequeathed.

An Old English fragment from Westminster Abbey

1996 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 201-207
Author(s):  
R. I. Page
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Text Block ◽  
English Manuscript

Westminster Abbey Muniment 67209 is a strip of parchment sliced from an Old English manuscript, perhaps to be dated to the first half of the eleventh century (pl. IX a and b). It has top and bottom margins preserved, possibly in full, but no part of either side margin. The height of the fragment is 268mm, with top margin measuring 32mm (recto)/34mm (verso) and bottom 46mm (recto)/45mm (verso). Thus the height of the text block is c. 190mm. The strip is unevenly cut, so its width varies, top, 38mm, bottom 42mm, minimum 31mm.

Cyninges fedesl: the king's feeding in Æthelberht, ch. 12

1998 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 31-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisi Oliver
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
English Only ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Early English ◽  
Precise Interpretation ◽  
Hapax Legomena

The twelfth-century Textus Roffensis contains a collection of early English laws, of which the first is attributed to Æthelberht of Kent, who reigned c. 580–616. Although these laws remain to us only in a copy made some six centuries later, there are strong linguistic grounds, first proposed by Sievers and Liebermann, and recently elaborated on and expanded by myself, to assume that the text as we have it genuinely reflects a copy of an early original, albeit much changed by generations of scribal modernization. Yet problems of interpretation often arise, among them the difficulty in the definition of hapax legomena: words which occur in the corpus of Old English only in this text. One such term is contained in Æthelberht, ch. 12, which states: ‘Cyninges fedesl XX scillinga forgelde.’ This is presumably formulated along the lines of Æthelberht, ch. 8, which reads: ‘Cyninges mundbyrd L scillinga.’There is basic agreement among scholars as to the meaning, if not the precise interpretation, of mundbyrd: most would agree with Bosworth's definition of ‘protection, patronage’. Along these lines, the clause can be interpreted as: ‘[For violating] the king's protection: 50 (of) shillings.’ Using this as a template, one might translate iEthelberht, ch. 12, as: ‘[For violating] the king's fedesl: let [the perpetrator pay] 20 (of) shillings.’

The Old English Life of St Neot and the legends of King Alfred

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 193-225
Author(s):  
Malcolm Godden
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Derivative Work ◽  
King Alfred

AbstractThe Old English Life of St Neot has been generally dated to the twelfth century and dismissed as a late and derivative work. The article argues that it was written much earlier, in the first few decades of the eleventh century, and is both a significant example of late Old English hagiographic literature and an important witness to early legends about King Alfred and his posthumous reputation.

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