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The Texts of the Lindisfarne Gospels

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The Texts of the Lindisfarne Gospels chapter 10 The Texts of the Lindisfarne Gospels Richard Marsden Beneath its celebratory splendour, the Lindisfarne Gospels associating production of the gospel-book with the cult of is a text – or rather texts. What we encounter today, after St Cuthbert has no foundation in evidence, and the earli- the addition of an Old English translation above the Latin est reference to its origins, in the above-mentioned colo- text more than two centuries after the original copying, is phon, makes no reference to Cuthbert at all.2 The work is a bilingual gospel-book. As such, it is an unusually rich said there to have been dedicated simply to the ‘holy ones’ resource for historians of both text and language; but the (Old English halgum, saints or possibly the community processes of trying to assess the two texts and to under- itself) of Lindisfarne. Thus the year of St Cuthbert’s trans- stand the relationship between them are hampered by lation (698) and the launch of his cult are no longer neces- many anomalies and puzzles. Some of these derive from sary reference points in our conjectures about when the instabilities which are inherent in Bible texts (in Eadfrith copied out the gospels. Although some recent whatever language) in the medieval period, some are a estimates have stretched the likely period of copying consequence of the vagaries and accidents of manuscript towards the end of Eadfrith’s life, Gameson’s argument transmission, and some reflect the complex dynamics of that by 710 the bishop would have been too elderly to be the glossing process itself. While Vulgate historians have able to pursue the task, and that therefore the period of been able to establish some clarity in respect of the char- the 690s to c. 710 is more likely, is persuasive.3 The binding acter of the Latin text, study of the Old English text has is stated in the colophon to have been effected by until quite recently suffered surprising neglect. The aim of Æthilwald, who was bishop of Lindisfarne between 724 this essay is to give an overview of both the Latin and the and 740. Old English texts and to assess their interactions. It The text of the Lindisfarne Gospels represents what exposes some of the flaws in past studies of the Old Christopher Verey has called one of the rare ‘fixed points’ English gloss and affirms that a greater acknowledgement in a period of constant change and confusion in the tex- of its place in the wider Anglo-Saxon glossing tradition, tual history of the Latin Bible, which usually leaves schol- especially that of psalters, may be productive in future ars struggling to establish clear lines of transmission.4 We research. are able to situate the text and contextualise it with some confidence. It is a good Italian text; that is, it derives from an accurate and reliable exemplar brought to England The Latin Text1 from Italy (still the source of the best Vulgate texts at this According to a colophon, partly in Old English, added to the manuscript some 250 years after the event, the Latin 2 From Holy Island to Durham. The Contexts and Meanings of the text of the Lindisfarne Gospels was copied out by Eadfrith, Lindisfarne Gospels (London, 2013), pp. 16–9. 3 Michelle Brown in particular has argued for a far later date, adduc- who was bishop of Lindisfarne from c. 698 until his death ing evidence relating to developments in Insular art and script; see c. 722. This was presumably done at Lindisfarne itself. LG1, pp. 396–7. As Richard Gameson has shown, the long tradition 4 C.D. Verey, ‘The Gospel Texts at Lindisfarne at the Time of St Cuthbert’, St Cuthbert, His Cult and His Community to ad 1200, ed. 1 My primary source for the gospel-text of the Hieronymian Vulgate is G. Bonner, D. Rollason and C. Stancliffe (Woodbridge and Wolfeboro, vol. 2 of Biblia Sacra iuxta uulgatam uersionem, ed. R. Weber et al., 2 nh, 1989), pp. 143–50, at p. 143. Verey gives an excellent overview of vols., 4th ed. (Stuttgart, 1994), which is based on Nouum Testamentum the general problems of tracing the history of Vulgate texts (pp. Domini nostri Iesu Christi latine secundum editionem sancti 143–5). For an essential account of the Insular gospel-book, see his Hieronymi, ed. J. Wordsworth and H.J. White, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1889– ‘A collation of the Gospel texts contained in Durham Cathedral mss. 1954), i, Quattuor Evangelia (1889–98). For the Latin language, I rely A.II.10, A.II.16 and A.II.17, and some provisional conclusions there- mainly on A Latin Dictionary, ed. C.T. Lewis and C. Short (Oxford, from regarding the type of Vulgate text employed in Northumbria in 1879), and A Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, ed. the 8th century, together with a full description of each ms’. R.E. Latham, D.R. Howlett and R.K. Ashdowne (Oxford, 1975–2013; (Durham University thesis, 1969; online at http://etheses.dur.ac headwords searchable online at http://logeion.uchicago.edu). .uk/5577/), pp. 10–117. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/9789004337848_011 184 Marsden time), probably during the last decades of the seventh other books, and the case for a Neapolitan origin (based century. Gospel-books copied in Northumbria at a slightly on the material in the liturgical calendar) remains solid.10 earlier period differ textually in many details from that of Nevertheless, a Wearmouth-Jarrow connection is cru- Lindisfarne. An ‘Irish-Northumbrian’ or ‘mixed’ text, for cial in the history of Lindisfarne’s gospel text, for this is the instance, is found in the gospel-book preserved piecemeal same as the text used for the gospels in Wearmouth- in dcl, A.II.10 + C.III.13 and 20;5 it shows many traces of Jarrow’s most famous product, the Codex Amiatinus. The Old Latin textual traditions, which are likely to reflect 1029-leaf volume (now Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Irish influence. On the other hand, the ‘Durham Gospels’ Laurentiana, Amiatino 1) was one of three great Vulgate (dcl, A.II.17, fols. 2–102), seems to have close textual links pandects made at Wearmouth-Jarrow. Nothing of the with the so-called ‘St Augustine Gospels’ in Oxford, other two survives except for a few Old Testament frag- Bodleian Library, Auct. D.2.14, a seventh-century Italian ments from one of them.11 The gospel texts in Amiatinus manuscript which may have reached England with, or and Lindisfarne are very close. No complete statistics are soon after, St Augustine’s mission.6 available, but my own sample collations of the two texts – The archetype of the gospel text of Lindisfarne proba- drawing on the variants listed in Wordsworth’s and White’s bly originated in southern Italy. More specifically, the critical edition of the gospels and the additional material region of Naples is indicated, for some twenty folios of available in selective collations made by Bonifatius prefatory matter were copied out from the exemplar, as Fischer – suggest a textual correspondence of more than well as the four gospels themselves, and this includes a 96%.12 They concur consistently both in small details and calendar of lections which lists two festivals celebrated in important readings (i.e., those which we use to identify specifically in Naples. These are the feast and vigil of St different textual traditions), including errors. Thus they Januarius and the dedication of the basilica of St Stephen.7 share in una nauicula for in nauiculum in Lk 8.22, in monte The Neapolitan connection has been disputed by Perette for in montem in Jn 6.3 and the omission of respondens in Michelli, who uses evidence of there being a church dedi- Lk 11.7, along with the error ueniunt, ‘they come’, for cated to St Januarius at Vivarium in Squillace (much fur- ueneunt, ‘they are sold’, in both Mt 20.29 and Lk 12.6.13 ther south and east of Naples), site of the monastery of Most of the textual differences between Amiatinus and Cassiodorus, to argue that the archetype came from Lindisfarne are trivial, being often little more than ortho- there.8 At first sight this could seem plausible, for we graphical variation or the result of careless error on the already know of a significant connection between part of one or other of the copyists. Thus in Mk 2.13, in the Vivarium and the Northumbrian twin monastery of sentence et egressus est rursus ad mare, ‘and he went out Wearmouth-Jarrow. A pandect (i.e., a complete single- again to the sea’, we find correct ad mare, ‘to the sea’, in volume bible) in the Old Latin textual tradition originat- Amiatinus but et mare, ‘and the sea’, in Lindisfarne. In Mt ing at Vivarium reached Wearmouth-Jarrow in the late 3.11, Lindisfarne has the verb correctly in the future tense seventh century, among the many volumes reported by in ipse uos baptizabit, ‘he will baptise you’, but Amiatinus Bede and others to have been brought from Italy to stock has the perfect tense baptizauit, ‘baptised’. Scribal the libraries of the newly founded houses.9 However, in the absence of any evidence, there is no compelling rea- son to link the transmission of this pandect with that of 10 Michelli’s argument (‘What’s in the Cupboard?’ passim) that the exemplar for Lindisfarne’s gospel-text was one of Cassiodorus’s nouem codices, which she believes had a Vulgate text, not Old Latin as now generally accepted, is not convincing.
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