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Oxford, Bodleian Library, Mss Junius 85 and 86 OXFORD, -........BODLEIAN LIBRARY, MSS JUNIUS 85 AND 86: AN EDmON OF A WITNESS TO mE OLD ENGLISH HOMn.ETIC TRADmON John Nicholas Chad bon Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of English November, 1993 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. ABSTRACT The thesis is in two parts, 'Manuscript' and 'Text'. The first part considers the post­ Anglo-Saxon history of the manufript, Junius 85 and 86, and then considers the Anglo-Saxon " manuscript from the point of view of the activity involved in its production. In Chapter One are noted some of the manuscript's fundamental physical characteristics, its size in relation to other homily collections, the collation of its leaves and the quality of the membrane. Chapter Two deals with the question of the manuscript's provenance, and is ordered in sections each of which considers a particular piece of evidence. A final section summarizes the significance of all the evidence. Aside from a titled transcript made by Junius of part of one of the homilies, all the evidence of the manuscript's history before Junius donated it to the Bodleian Library is that which has accrued to the manuscript over the centuries. The title of Junius's transcript provides evidence that Isaac Vossius possessed the manuscript before Junius, and a key question is that of Vossius's acquisition. It is circumstantially likely that Vossius did not acquire the manuscript in England, and press-marks entered in each volume suggest that the manuscript may have been collected in France by a French bibliophile, Paul Petau, part of whose collection had come into Vossius's possession before the latter moved to England. The evidence of the two volume binding, which seems certainly to pre-date Junius's ownership, does not contradict this, on the face of it, unlikely provenance for an Old English homily collection. Evidence of the manuscript's survival through medieval times resides in a title entered on the first membrane leaf, which is all that survives of a medieval b~ng, and in a series of jottings. A detailed 1\ examination of the writing shows that the title and the jottings are comparable palaeographically, and that both were probably added some time in the late twelfth or early thirteenth centuIy, either in France or England. It seems probable that the jottings, some of whose content gives support to the possibility that the manuscript was in France, were entered while the manuscript was bound, as the title indicates, with a Greek psalter. The manuscript may owe its survival to this binding. Chapter Three turns to the Anglo-Saxon manuscript itself, and it is established that it was written by three main hands. In the absence of any study of eleventh-centuIy insular scripts, a comparative study of the palaeography has not been possible, but by way of contribution to the subject I have tried to characterize the script of the manuscript, as well as giving detailed description of letter forms and their variety in the course of identifying the hands. Chapter Three ends with description of decorative features, particularly of ornamental brackets which are a feature peculiar to Junius 8S and 86. Chapter Four considers the compilation of the manuscript, and it is shown in a separate section how the use of ornamental brackets arose when one scn1>e made regular use of a feature which another scribe had introduced for practical reasons. The main section (section 4) of Chapter Four draws on the physical and palaeographical evidence already described and discussed and relates it to the texts to show how the manuscript was compiled in at least two stages, with the bulk of the manuscript belonging to a final stage and the rest being remains of a previous stage, though no great space of time separates the two stages. One particular point concerns the status of a translated extract from the apocryphon Visio Pauli, and it is argued that the text was copied, and possibly translated, specifically to expand Homily 1, there having been doubt hitherto on this point. Chapter Five considers some spelling features which are characteristic of Junius 8S and 86, and constitutes a suggestion of an alternative to traditional language descriptions, based on historical phonology, which are of limited value for late Old English manuscripts. The second part of the thesis is the edition of the texts. The editorial aim is to enable consideration of whether the manuscript could have been used for preaching. Each homily is followed by a Commentary whose principal function is to address all difficult readings, and assess how often a failure of sense occurs. When other copies of homilies are thus closely examined it should eventually become possible to assess how much textual difficulty a copy of a homily could bear and still be delivered from the page as a preached sermon. How far the Old English Homiletic manuscripts are representative of an active preaching tradition is yet a matter for much debate. Notes describing the condition of the text in the manuscript accompany the texts, and previous editions are corrected where necessary. A novel form of printing Old English prose has been adopted, whereby sentences are spatially distinguished. CONTENTS Abbreviatons I PART ONE. MANUSCRIPT Chapter One. Introductory 3 1. Dimensions 4 2. Collation S 3. Membrane 7 Chapter Two. Preservation History 9 1. MS Junius 45 9 2. Junius's Note on Fol.l 12 3. The Press-marks 'C.29.' and 'F.29.' 16 4. The Present Binding 18 S. Foliation and Modern Additions 21 6. The Medieval Binding-leaves 23 7. The Title 'pars psalterii greci' 2S 8. A Series of Jottings 29 9. Other Jottings or Pen Trials 35 10. Conclusion 36 Chapter Three. Palaeography 42 1. The Hands 42 2. Script SO 3. Decoration 52 Chapter Four. Compilation SS 1. Pricking and Ruling SS 2. Written Lines S6 3. The Use of Brackets S7 4. Compilation 61 Chapter Five. Spelling 77 PART TWO. TEXT Introduction 90 Fragment 100 Homily 1 101 Commentary lIS Cbanns 123 Homily 2 124 Commentary 131~ Homily 3 134 Commentary 147 Homily 4 IS6 Commentary 168 Homily 5 179 Commentary 192 Bibliography 202 1 ABBREVIATIONS ASE Anglo-Saxon England BL British Library BT,BTSupp. 1. Bosworth and T.N. Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford, 1898), T.N. Toller, Supplement (Oxford, 1921) Campbell, OEG A. Campbell, Old English Grammar (Oxford, 1959) CCCC Cambridge, Corpus Christi College CUL Cambridge, University Library DNB Dictionary ofNational Biography DOE Dictionary oJOld English, facsicles published for the Dictioruuy of Old English Project. Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, by the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies MCOE A. DiP. Healey and RL. Venezky, A Microfiche Conco,.dance to Old English (Toronto, 1980) EEMF Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile EETS Early English Text Society Hogg, GOE Richard M Hogg, A Grammar ojOld Engiish. Volume 1: Phonology (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., 1992) lCer, Catalo~e N.R lCer, Catalogue ofManuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957) LWS Late West Saxon Mitchell, OE Syntax Bruce Mitchell, Old English Syntax, 2 vols (Oxford, 1985) OE Old English 2 Summary Catalogue F. Falconer Madan, et al .• A Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. 7vols (Oxford. 1895- 1953) Wanley. Catalogus Humphredi Wanleii Librorum Veterum Septenlrionalium ..• Catalogus. volume 2 of George Hickes. ed .• Linguarum Veterum Septenlrionalium Thesaurus (Oxford. 1705) 3 PART ONE. MANUSCRIPT CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTORY Junius 8S and 86 contains one lElfrician homily (Homily 2), four anonymous homilies and a fragment of a fifth, and the manuscript is thus most importantly a witness to the anonymous element within the OE homiletic tradition. I have accordingly adopted the sigel C from Scragg's list of manuscripts containing anoymous homilies and saints' lives. 1 I have found no reason to question Ker's dating of C to 's.xi med.', 2 nor have I found evidence to suggest a more exact dating. The question of where e was written I have left open. The textual relationship of the lElfrician homily with copies in Bodley 340 and 342, eccc 198 and CCCC 162, manuscripts of the early eleventh century with Canterbwy and Rochester connections,3 is a doubtful indication of south-eastem origin, since exemplars in that textual tradition could have travelled iar by the time of the writing of C. Moreover, the influence of a Canterbury tradition may depend as much upon particular relationships of Canterbury with other centres as upon geographical vicinity. This observation could apply as much to spelling traditions as to textual traditions. My study of C begins with consideration of some basic physical characteristics. ID.G. Scragg, 'The Corpus of Vernacular Homilies and Saints' Lives before A::lfric'.ASE. 8 (1979),223-77. 2Ker, Catalogue, p.409. 3Ma1colm Godden, ed., ~lfric's Catholic Homilies. The Second Series. Tert, EETS, ss.S (London, 1979), p.lx.' . 4 1. Dimensions What is at first remarkable about C is its smallness. The dimensions given by Ker, height first, are 160 x 115mm (MS 85) and 155 x l00mm. (MS 86).4 There is some variety in the size of the leaves, and to give overall maximum dimensions Smm. may be added to the height ofMS 85 and to the width ofMS 86. In the introduction to his catalogue, in a section dealing with the preparation of sheets for writing, Ker comments that a 'common size' of the folded sheets in Old English homiliaries is about 250 x 160mm.
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