The English Reception of Hugh of Saint-Victor’s Chronicle Julian Harrison
ccording to conventional wisdom, Hugh of Saint-Victor’s Chronicle enjoyed limited success in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Europe.1 Also entitled De tribus maximis A circumstantiis gestorum (‘On the Three Chief Conditions of History’), the work in question was designed ostensibly as an introductory handbook for the use of historians, though its prologue (teaching an important mnemonic technique) seems to have gained wider currency, and was sometimes circulated independently of the whole.2 Approximately forty mediaeval copies of Hugh’s compilation are recorded as extant, a substantial proportion of which had belonged to religious communities in France, together with a handful of examples from both Germany and Italy.3 There are indications, nonetheless, that the Chronicle did not rank among his most popular compositions: as Mary J. Carruthers has remarked, ‘the evidence suggests that this particular treatise was not regarded as major or original enough to deserve wide dissemination, despite its author’s eminence; that it was never known much beyond the precincts of St. Victor [in Paris]; and that it sank into oblivion by the early fourteenth century,because it had been superseded by or incorporated into other pedagogical tools.’4 The extent to which Hugh’s Chronicle was known directly in the British Isles has hitherto remained subject to speculation.5 Among mediaeval scholars, solely Ralph de Diceto,
1 R.W.Southern,‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing: 2. Hugh of StVictor and the Idea of Historical Development’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, xxi (1971), pp. 159-79 (pp. 172-4); Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1990), p. 81; R. Baron, ‘L’Influence de Hugues de Saint-Victor’, Recherches de Théologie ancienne et médiévale, xxii (1955), pp. 56-71 (p. 60 and n. 28). 2 For the various titles by which this work was transmitted during the Middle Ages, see R. Baron, ‘La Chronique de Hugues de Saint-Victor’, in Giuseppe Forchielli & Alfonso M. Stickler (eds.), Studia Gratiana, xii, Collectanea Stephan Kuttner (Bologna, 1967), vol. ii, pp. 165-80 (pp. 167-8). 3 A total of 39 manuscripts of the Chronicle were listed by Rudolf Goy, Die Überlieferung der Werke Hugos von St.Viktor: Ein Beitrag zur Kommunikationsgeschichte des Mittelalters (Stuttgart, 1976), pp. 36-43. Reference has subsequently been made to 44 witnesses, without specifying their location: A. M. Piazzoni, ‘Geschichte studieren: warum und wie? Die Antwort des Chronicon Hugos von St.Viktor’, in Erik Kooper (ed.), The Medieval Chronicle: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on the Medieval Chronicle, Driebergen/Utrecht 13- 16 July 1996 (Amsterdam-Atlanta, 1999), pp. 212-25 (p. 218). Goy’s survey is supplemented — without relation to the Chronicle — by R. Kurz, ‘Zur handschriftlichen Überlieferung der Werke Hugos von St. Viktor. Ergänzungen zu Goys Handschriftenverzeichnissen’, Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte, xlii (1979), pp. 469-82. 4 Carruthers, The Book of Memory, p. 81. 5 The present discussion is limited to direct knowledge of this Chronicle. That work also provided source- material for Richard of Saint-Victor’s Liber exceptionum (composed 1153x1162); while a brief excerpt was appended to Andrew of Saint-Victor’s commentary on Samuel and Kings (presumably completed before 1147): Richard de Saint-Victor Liber Exceptionum, ed. Jean Chatillon (Paris, 1958), pp. 69, 83, 542; Andreae de Sancto Victore Opera, ii, Expositio Hystorica in Librum Regum, ed. Frans A. van Liere, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaeualis, liiiA (Turnhout, 1996), pp. cvii-cviii. Richard was a native of Scotland, and Andrew twice abbot (1148x1155, 1161x1163-1175) of the Victorine house at Wigmore (Herefordshire).
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dean of St Paul’s Cathedral (d. circa 1200), can be demonstrated to have made extensive use of this work, which he examined when compiling his own historical surveys: it is somewhat unfortunate that the exemplar to which Ralph had access has yet to be discovered.6 One of his near-contemporaries, John of Salisbury (d. 1180), may have also been familiar with the same text, which he described in the preface to his Historia pontificalis, completed between 1164 and 1170; but it has previously been denied — probably without good reason — that John had consulted this Chronicle in person.7 The published evidence for the dissemination of Hugh’s treatise in England and Scotland otherwise centres on its presence in a handful of book-lists, together with the existence of a single manuscript of questionable English origin. Copies of the Chronicle are noticed in some eleven monastic libraries between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, ranging from the cathedral priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, to Kelso Abbey in the Scottish Borders, although not one of the books so mentioned has reportedly survived.8 The most comprehensive analysis of this Chronicle’s transmission has similarly drawn attention to a solitary witness which was arguably transcribed in England (until recently Elverum, Folkebiblioteket, MS. 1, ff. 97r-98v), comprising the prologue alone.9 However, the same study has been tempered with the caveat that the Elverum manuscript may instead be of French origin, thereby disputing its connection with the British Isles. It is extremely fortuitous that such relatively circumstantial testimony can now be buttressed by the identification of another six copies of Hugh of Saint-Victor’s Chronicle, all in the collections of the British Library, and each of undoubted English origin or provenance: 1. Cotton MS. Julius B. XIII, ff. 2r-40v (saec. xii3/4), which belonged to Deeping Priory (Lincolnshire), a cell of Thorney Abbey; 2. Harley MS. 1312, ff. 1v-24v (saec. xiimed), transcribed in France, but removed to England sometime during the thirteenth century;
6 G. A. Zinn, Jr.,‘The Influence of Hugh of St.Victor’s Chronicon on the Abbreviationes Chronicorum by Ralph of Diceto’, Speculum, lii (1977), pp. 38-61; B. Guenée,‘Les Premiers pas de l’histoire de l’historiographie en occident au XIIe siècle’, Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions & Belles-Lettres (1983), pp. 136-52 (pp. 139-40, 143-4); Antonia Gransden, ‘Prologues in the Historiography of Twelfth-Century England’, in her Legends,Traditions and History in Medieval England (London, 1992), pp. 125-51 (pp. 139, 150). 7 The Historia Pontificalis of John of Salisbury, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford, rev. edn., 1986), pp. xxxii, 2 and n. 1; eadem, ‘John of Salisbury as Historian’, in Michael Wilks (ed.), The World of John of Salisbury, Studies in Church History, Subsidia, iii (Oxford, 1984), pp. 169-77 (p. 170, n. 6). Chibnall’s conviction that John had no first-hand knowledge of this Chronicle has been countered persuasively by L. B. Mortensen, ‘Hugh of St. Victor on Secular History. A Preliminary Edition of Chapters from his Chronica’, Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen-Âge Grec et Latin (Université de Copenhague), lxii (1992), pp. 3-30 (p. 3, n. 2). 8 T. Webber & A. G. Watson (eds.), The Libraries of the Augustinian Canons (London, 1998), pp. 6, 171, 188; R. Sharpe et al. (eds.), English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues (London, 1996), p. 723; R.A. B. Mynors, Richard H. Rouse & Mary A. Rouse (eds.), Registrum Anglie de Libris Doctorum et Auctorum Veterum (London, 1991), pp. 234, 249, 254, 259, 275, 299, 302, 305, 312-13; Montague Rhodes James (ed.), The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover: The Catalogues of the Libraries of Christ Church Priory and St Augustine’s Abbey at Canterbury and of St Martin’s Priory at Dover (Cambridge, 1903), p. 36. 9 Goy, Die Überlieferung der Werke Hugos von St.Viktor (no. 10), pp. 38, 43.This Elverum manuscript has currently been mislaid, following the reorganization of the Folkebiblioteket in 1976: hopefully, it will soon be rediscovered. I am extremely grateful to Steinar Sørensen of the Glomdalsmuseet, Elverum, for pursuing this book on my behalf.
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3. Cotton MS. Claudius C. IX, ff. 4r-12r (saec. xiiex), from Worcester Cathedral Priory; 4. Royal MS. 4 B. VII, ff. 199v-210v (saec. xiiex), from Rochester Cathedral Priory (Kent); 5. Egerton MS. 3088, ff. 99r-112v (circa 1243), produced for the Cistercians of Dore Abbey (Herefordshire);10 6. Cotton MS. Faustina B.VII, ff. 18r-35v (saec.xv1), the work of an English scribe. (A seventh British Library copy of differing origin is Stowe MS. 4, ff. 267r-272v, transcribed during the final quarter of the twelfth century in the duchy of Lorraine.)11 In addition, the English credentials of the Elverum manuscript can be reiterated: this book has elsewhere been assigned provisionally to a Cistercian or Victorine convent in the West Country.12 The copies of Hugh’s Chronicle attested in England during the Middle Ages are of fundamental importance: they suggest that the influence of this handbook on Insular historians, hitherto deemed to have been minimal, requires substantial reappraisal.13
Hugh of Saint-Victor (d. 1141) composed his Chronicle sometime between 1124 and 1137 — the traditional dating circa 1130 has yet to be fully substantiated — and addressed it specifically to those pupils in the Parisian schools embarking upon the study of Scripture.14 The work in question begins with a prologue, four paragraphs long, opening with the pronouncement ‘Fili, sapientia thesaurus est et cor tuum archa’ (‘Child, knowledge is a treasure and your heart is its strongbox’).15 This is accompanied by a series of historical tables, which document (among other subjects) the days of Creation, the major protagonists
10 The origins, contents and present whereabouts of this book (olim Phillipps MS. 12200) were unknown to both Goy, Die Überlieferung der Werke Hugos von St.Viktor (no. 5), p. 37, and W.M. Green,‘Hugo of St Victor De Tribus Maximis Circumstantiis Gestorum’, Speculum, xviii (1943), pp. 484-93 (p. 488). It was acquired on behalf of the British Library in 1933. 11 This copy of the Chronicle was first identified by Mortensen, ‘Hugh of St. Victor on Secular History’, p. 3, n. 2. 12 L. Gjerlöw, ‘A Twelfth-Century Victorine or Cistercian Manuscript in the Library of Elverum’, Revue bénédictine, lxxxii (1972), pp. 313-38. 13 One supposed witness must be dismissed from consideration, as reported erroneously by Goy, Die Überlieferung der Werke Hugos von St.Viktor (no. 14), p. 39. Oxford, Bodleian Library,MS. Rawlinson C.97 (S.C. 11962), comprises (1) Augustine of Hippo’s Enchiridion (ff. 1r-40v) and De diuersis questionibus (ff. 41r-106r), both transcribed in England during the second half of the twelfth century; (2) an unidentified (and incomplete) history added in the same monastic scriptorium towards the end of that century, with the misleading rubric ‘Incipiunt chronica magistri Hugonis prioris de sancto Uictore Parisius’ (ff. 108r-122v); (3) a list of contents circa 1200, recording the above three items (f. 4v); and (4) a handful of pages from Henry of Sawtrey’s Purgatorium Patricii, appended to De diuersis questionibus late in the thirteenth century (ff. 106r- 107v). This revises the inaccurate description (saec.xiv and no stated origin) in Catalogi Codicum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecæ Bodleianæ,vol. v, part 2 (Oxford, 1878), p. 34. A second, complete copy of the same unidentified history is to be found in BL, Harley MS. 957, ff. 34r-80v (England, saec. xii2), there said to be excerpted from the work of Eusebius of Caesarea. Harley 957 is a composite mediaeval book, which once belonged (f. 18v) to William Spynk, monk and later prior of Norwich Cathedral Priory (d. 1503). 14 Analyses which differ from the oft-quoted circa 1130 are Zinn, ‘The Influence of Hugh of St. Victor’s Chronicon’, pp. 41-2 and n. 24 (favouring the period nearer 1125); Joachim Ehlers, Hugo von St.Viktor: Studien zum Geschichtsdenken und zur Geschichtsschreibung des 12. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden, 1973), p. 53 and n. 15 (1130x1133); and Baron,‘La Chronique de Hugues de Saint-Victor’, p. 172, n. 11 (1135, citing the opinion of H. Montag). 15 The prologue has been edited by Green, ‘De Tribus Maximis Circumstantiis Gestorum’, pp. 488-92. All translations are based on Carruthers, The Book of Memory,pp. 261-6.
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in Biblical history, the principal geographical features of the world, the historians of Antiquity,and the names of secular and ecclesiastical rulers from the Incarnation to the time of writing. Certain of the constituent elements are to be found in very few manuscripts, and are probably accretions to the original text: in particular, the brief tract Tres sorores (the daughters of St Anne) was added on a singleton to the oldest surviving witness (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS. lat. 15009, ff. 1r-40v [f. 18v]), and consequently occurs in just three other extant copies.16 The Chronicle of Hugh of Saint-Victor has never been printed in its entirety, although far more has been published than is often realized (see Table 1).17 William M. Green’s subdivision of this treatise has been adopted in the present discussion.18
Table 1 Editions of the Components of Hugh of Saint-Victor’s Chronicle
Edition Prologue Green,‘De Tribus Maximis Circumstantiis Gestorum’, pp. 488-92 I Creation Zinn,‘The Influence of Hugh of St.Victor’s Chronicon’, p. 44 II Restoration (Hebrew unedited chronology) III Kingdoms of the world Mortensen,‘Hugh of St.Victor on Secular History’, pp. 8-18 (omitting the Jewish rulers) IV Creation & Restoration unedited (Septuagint chronology) V Lists of Hebrew names unedited VI Geographical names Baron,‘Hugues de Saint-Victor lexicographe’, pp. 139-45 VII The three sisters Baron,‘La Chronique de Hugues de Saint-Victor’, p. 170 VIII Table of Popes unedited IX Tables of rulers Mortensen,‘Hugh of St.Victor on Secular History’, pp. 19-30 X Names of historiographers Waitz,‘Beschreibung von Handschriften’, pp. 307-8 XI Chronological table of Popes Waitz,‘Chronica quae dicitur Hugonis de Sancto Victore’, pp. 90-7 and emperors
Twelfth-century historians throughout western Europe conventionally began their works with a dedication to a distinguished contemporary, in the hope of receiving future patronage, besides apologizing for their own lack of literary ability, a modesty topos which frequently has little real substance.19 The prologue to Hugh’s Chronicle, in stark contrast, adopts a purely functional approach, since it is addressed explicitly to his students at the
16 Green,‘De Tribus Maximis Circumstantiis Gestorum’, pp. 487-8, 493; Baron,‘La Chronique de Hugues de Saint- Victor’, pp. 170, 176. Baron (pp. 169-70, 175-6) also remarked the presence in a handful of manuscripts of two further passages, the authorship of which remains uncertain. 17 Those editions hitherto uncited are: (§VI) R. Baron,‘Hugues de Saint-Victor lexicographe.Trois texts inédits’, Cultura Neolatina, xvi (1956), pp. 109-45; (§X) G. Waitz, ‘Beschreibung von Handschriften, welche in den Jahren 1839-42 näher untersucht worden sind’, Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde zur Beförderung einer Gesammtausgabe der Quellenschriften deutscher Geschichten des Mittelalters, xi (1853-8), pp. 248- 514; and (§XI) GW[aitz], ‘Chronica quae dicitur Hugonis de Sancto Victore’, apud Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, xxiv (Hanover, 1879), pp. 88-101. A critical edition of the whole Chronicle has been promised by A. M. Piazzoni, ‘I Vittorini’, in Giulio D’Onofrio (ed.), Storia della Teologia nel Medioevo, ii, La grande fioritura (Casale Monferrato, 1996), pp. 179-208 (p. 185, n. 28). 18 Green,‘De Tribus Maximis Circumstantiis Gestorum’, pp. 492-3. 19 Guenée, ‘Les Premiers pas de l’histoire de l’historiographie’, pp. 145-51; Gransden, ‘Prologues in the Historiography of Twelfth-Century England’.
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school of Saint-Victor. The Chronicle was undeniably part of that abbey’s curriculum: as Hugh informed his pupils, ‘matters we have learned are classified in the memory in three ways; by number, by location, and by occasion.Thus all the things which you hear you will both readily capture in your intellect and retain for a long time, if you will have learned to classify them according to this tripartite distinction.’20 The prologue consequently serves as a guide to mnemonic training, here transferred to an historical context: Carruthers has argued on this basis that its alternative title (De tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum) is best translated as ‘The Three Chief Memory-Fixes for History’.21 It has previously been argued that the Chronicle was designed to establish the study of history on a footing with other scientific subjects.22 Indeed, Hugh of Saint-Victor recommended that this discipline might be better comprehended if the core of his handbook, containing thousands of names and dates, was committed to memory. Hugh advised his readers that any given topic could be memorized if arranged into a rigid framework, which method he described by reference to the psalter.23 In order to recall an individual psalm, it should first be assigned a number, by which its opening words could instantaneously be brought to mind; next, each psalm should be divided into subsections (akin to the verses of popular usage), to be learned a few lines at a time, a technique previously advocated in Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria (11.2.27).24 Once this scheme had been mastered, stated Hugh, it could be applied to the accompanying tables.‘There are three matters on which the knowledge of past actions especially depends, that is, the persons who performed the deeds, the places in which they were performed, and the time at which they occurred. Whoever holds these three memorially in his soul will find that he has built a good foundation for himself, onto which he can assemble afterwards anything by reading without difficulty and rapidly take it in and retain it for a long time.’25 Of course, it is unreasonable to expect that Hugh’s students carried out these instructions to the letter, at least with respect to his Chronicle: in the words of one commentator, such a prospect is ‘a terrifying thought which, one hopes, probably never materialized’.26
20 Green, ‘De Tribus Maximis Circumstantiis Gestorum’, p. 489: ‘Tribus modis discernenda sunt in animo ea que discuntur, secundum numerum, secundum locum, et secundum tempus. Ita omnia que audieris et facile intellecta capies et diu memoria retinebis, si ea secundum hanc trinam distinctionem considerare didiceris.’ For the origins of this tripartite division, see Baron,‘La Chronique de Hugues de Saint-Victor’, p. 173, n. 20, and A. J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic literary attitudes in the later Middle Ages (Aldershot, 2nd edn., 1988), pp. 16-17. 21 Carruthers, The Book of Memory,p.261, n. 1. For discussion of this work as a mnemonic text, see ibid., pp. 80- 5, 92-3; G. A. Zinn, Jr., ‘Hugh of Saint Victor and the Art of Memory’, Viator, v (1974), pp. 211-34; and K. Rivers, ‘Memory, Division, and the Organisation of Knowledge in the Middle Ages’, in Peter Binkley (ed.), Pre-Modern Encyclopaedic Texts: Proceedings of the Second COMERS Congress, Groningen, 1-4 July 1996 (Leiden, 1997), pp. 147-58. 22 Southern,‘Hugh of St Victor and the Idea of Historical Development’, pp. 172-4. 23 Carruthers, The Book of Memory,pp. 82-3. 24 Zinn, ‘Hugh of Saint Victor and the Art of Memory’, pp. 214, 222-4. The implications of this mnemonic method are examined by Rivers,‘Memory, Division, and the Organisation of Knowledge’. 25 Green,‘De Tribus Maximis Circumstantiis Gestorum’, p. 491:‘Tria igitur sunt in quibus precipue cognitio pendet rerum gestarum, id est, persone a quibus res geste sunt, et loca in quibus geste sunt, et tempora quando geste sunt. Hec tria quisquis memoriter animo tenuerit, inueniet se fundamentum habere bonum, cui quicquid per lectionem postea superedificauerit sine difficultate et cito capiet et diu retinebit.’ 26 Mortensen,‘Hugh of St.Victor on Secular History’, p. 4.
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The prologue further stressed the virtue of always reading a particular text from the same codex, so that the physical features of each page (the erasures, marginalia and decoration) became imprinted upon the memory.This advice again echoes Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria (11.2.17), to the extent that Hugh of Saint-Victor had possibly read the relevant section of his predecessor’s work, of limited circulation during the twelfth century.27 It can likewise be inferred that the layout of the Chronicle’s tables was devised by Hugh himself, on the grounds that its presentation reflects the mnemonic framework described in the prologue.28 This emphasis on retaining the original format may explain why most copies of Hugh’s handbook are similar in appearance. It is a moot point whether individual scribes made a conscious effort to reproduce that layout exactly. The laborious process of transcribing hundreds of obscure names may equally have influenced transcription of this work, rendering it least demanding for each exemplar to be copied word for word and page by page. The substance of Hugh of Saint-Victor’s Chronicle comprises a series of historical lists, beginning with a pictorial representation of the six days of Creation, and ending with a chronological comparison of papal and imperial reigns, terminating in the oldest version with Pope Honorius II (1124-30).29 Much of this material reinforced the educational programme at Saint-Victor: for example, study of the Latin Classics required ancillary knowledge of geography and history,which the Chronicle supplies.30 It is likely,on the other hand, that elements of this work had little practical application, having been included simply because they were present in one of Hugh’s sources.The list of the countries, mountains, rivers, islands and cities of the world was derived to great extent from the earlier work of Isidore of Seville; while the catalogue of thirty-two ancient historiographers (see Appendix) incorporates names found in the histories of Livy, Josephus, Orosius and Gregory of Tours, allegedly selected with no obvious rationale.31 This is perhaps to deny Hugh of Saint-Victor the creative impulse behind this chronicle. Much of its theological content can be attributed to Hugh himself, most notably the fundamental distinction between the Creation (conditio) and the succeeding era (restauratio), and emphasis on the Jewish high priests after the return from exile in Babylon (sixth century B.C.), in contrast to the secular rulers favoured by Eusebius of Caesarea (d. circa A.D. 339) and his successors.32
The argument for this Chronicle’s transmission to England is based on three classes of evidence: (1) the survival of some seven manuscripts of English origin or provenance, six of them in the British Library and the other last attested in the Folkebiblioteket at Elverum (Norway); (2) the use of that work by Ralph de Diceto during the final decades of the twelfth century; and (3) the presence of as many as fourteen copies of Hugh’s handbook in monastic book-lists from the British Isles. Together, this testimony implies that Hugh of
27 Zinn, ‘Hugh of Saint Victor and the Art of Memory’, pp. 214, 223-5. For the mediaeval dissemination of Quintilian’s treatise, see L. D. Reynolds (ed.), Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford, 1983), pp. 332-4: that work was certainly known — if not widely available — in twelfth-century France. 28 Carruthers, The Book of Memory,p.93; Rivers, ‘Memory, Division, and the Organisation of Knowledge’, p. 154, n. 25. 29 According to Zinn, ‘The Influence of Hugh of St.Victor’s Chronicon’, p. 42, n. 24, the entry for Honorius differs significantly from the preceding material in the oldest surviving manuscript (BN, lat. 15009), the implication being that this is an addition to the original work. 30 Mortensen,‘Hugh of St.Victor on Secular History’, p. 4, citing the list of Numidian rulers, relevant solely for the study of Sallust. 31 Baron, ‘Hugues de Saint-Victor lexicographe’, p. 139; Guenée, ‘Les Premiers pas de l’histoire de l’historiographie’, pp. 137-9. Several of these historians’ names were mangled either by Hugh or one of his scribes: for instance,‘Agatharchides Cnidius’(Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, XII.5-7) has been rendered as ‘Ouidius Sabarcides’, and ‘Berosus’ (ibid., I.93) as ‘Horosus’. 32 Zinn,‘The Influence of Hugh of St.Victor’s Chronicon’, p. 43.
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Saint-Victor’s Chronicle had reached England by 1190 at the very latest, and that it was copied there for more than 200 years, until at least the first half of the fifteenth century.
The Manuscripts
J Cotton MS. Julius B. XIII, ff. 2r-40v Deeping saec. xii3/4
MS. J comprises an untitled copy of Hugh’s Chronicle,the authorship of which has previously been ascribed to Roger Walden, archbishop of Canterbury (1397-9) and bishop of London (1404-6).This misattribution has a complicated history, having arisen after the whole manuscript was bound together for Sir Robert Cotton (d. 1631).33 Cotton Julius B. XIII contains three independent items, the last of which is the unique witness of Gerald of Wales’s De principis instructione (ff. 48r-173r), transcribed in a mid-fourteenth-century bookhand.34 An early modern note inserted at the beginning of De principis instructione states ‘De hoc argumento scripsit quidam Rogerus Walden’, referring not to the bishop of that name but to Roger of Waltham, canon of St Paul’s Cathedral, London (fl. 1332), whose Compendium morale de uirtuosis dictis et factis exemplaribus antiquorum provides exempla relating to political life.35 By mistaken association, a seventeenth-century scribe has entitled the first text in this book (Hugh’s Chronicle) ‘Epitomæ Historiæ Rogeri Waldon’ (f. 2r); this confusion is repeated in the list of contents (f. 1r), in the hand of Richard James (d. 1638), Cotton’s librarian, and was retained in the two published catalogues of the Cottonian collection, compiled by Thomas Smith (1696) and Joseph Planta (1802) respectively.36 James moreover understood the second item in Cotton Julius B. XIII (ff. 41r-47v) to be part of the preceding Chronicle, it instead being a separate, twelfth-century chronicle-fragment for the years A.D. 1-249.37
33 Cotton MS. Julius B. XIII is first recorded in its present state as no. 293 in BL, Harley MS. 6018 (f. 113v), which inventory was compiled during Sir Robert Cotton’s own lifetime: C. G. C.Tite,‘The Early Catalogues of the Cottonian Library’, British Library Journal, vi (1980), pp. 144-57 (pp. 146-7). 34 Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, viii, De Principis Instructione Liber, ed. George F.Warner, Rolls Series (London, 1891), pp. vii-ix.This is the copy which passed through the hands of John Leland, as recorded in Index Britanniae Scriptorum: John Bale’s Index of British and Other Writers, ed. Reginald Lane Poole & Mary Bateson, with an introduction by Caroline Brett & James P.Carley (Cambridge, rev. edn., 1990), p. 425. 35 Roger of Waltham should not be confused with his near namesake, as has hitherto been the case: Richard Sharpe, A Handlist of the Latin Writers of Great Britain and Ireland before 1540 (Turnhout, 1997), pp. 597-8. 36 Thomas Smith, Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecæ Cottonianæ (Oxford, 1696), pp. 5-6 (‘Historia Rogeri Walden…’); J. Planta, Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library,deposited in the British Museum (London, 1802), pp. 7-8 (‘Rogeri Walden Episc. Londin. Historia…’). 37 This fragment is in the same hand as the opening pages of the Melrose Chronicle (ff. 2r-8r): the last-named has been reproduced in facsimile as The Chronicle of Melrose from the Cottonian Manuscript, Faustina B. IX in the British Museum, ed.Alan Orr Anderson, Marjorie Ogilvie Anderson & William Croft Dickinson (London, 1936).
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Two scribes shared transcription of the Chronicle of Hugh of Saint-Victor, their handwriting being datable to the third quarter of the twelfth century (1150x1175).The first produced the prologue alone (ff. 2r-3v), written in a regular Protogothic bookhand, while his colleague assumed responsibility for the adjoining tables (ff. 4r-40r), introducing documentary elements into his script. The prologue contains a number of errors of transcription, but most of these mistakes were emended by the same scribe, with a contemporary editor adding other corrections in the margins. A complete set of tables is attached, save for the habitual omission of §VII (Tres sorores). Most notably, the depiction of the Creation (§I) lacks the crescents which normally illustrate Hugh’s scheme.38 This second scribe made his final contribution to the table of Popes and emperors (§XI) with the name of Honorius II, before extending its annal numbers to the year 1174, ending at the foot of f. 40r. It is highly improbable that this annal number ‘1174’ marks the time of writing: it merely brings the relevant page to its close. Other scribes made additions to the remainder of this table, one of whom continued the annal numbers to 1220 (f. 40v). In the same hand was likewise noted the papal succession as far as the eleventh regnal year (1208) of Pope Innocent III (1198-1216): in this instance, the final entry presumably does date that scribe’s intervention. It cannot be proved beyond doubt that this witness of the Chronicle was produced in England: in particular, the minims of the first hand lack the horizontal feet usually found in the Insular script of this period.39 However, MS. J is certainly of English provenance, since it contains an erased ex libris in the lower margin of f. 2r, which reads (under ultra-violet light) ‘Liber de prioratu sancti Iakobi de Est Deping’. This is the inscription of Deeping Priory,founded in 1139 as a cell of Thorney Abbey (Cambridgeshire).The item in question is the sole surviving book attributable to the monastic community at Deeping.40
H Harley MS. 1312, ff. 1v-24v France saec. xiimed
MS. H of Hugh’s Chronicle, transcribed during the middle of the twelfth century, has the contemporary title ‘Incipit liber de tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum, id est personis, locis, temporibus’. Its authorship was nonetheless attributed tentatively in the Harleian Catalogue to Roger of Waltham, undoubtedly under the influence of the published descriptions of Cotton Julius B. XIII.41 Harley 1312 was produced in France, to judge by its script and parchment, perhaps as early as the 1140s. It had been transferred to England by the beginning of the fourteenth century at the very latest, when a twelve-line passage on the death and burial of King Edward the Martyr (975-8) was added to its preceding page.
38 For these crescents in BN, MS. lat. 15009 (f. 3v), see Green,‘De Tribus Maximis Circumstantiis Gestorum’, plate A, and Carruthers, The Book of Memory, plate 3. 39 N. R. Ker, English Manuscripts in the Century after the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1960), pp. 23, 35, 37. 40 N. R. Ker (ed.), Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books (London, 2nd edn., 1964), p. 57. A fourteenth-century Deeping cartulary is also extant (BL, Harley MS. 3658), which is prefaced (ff. 2r-7v) by the calendar of those monks: G. R. C. Davis, Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain: A Short Catalogue (London, 1958) (no. 304), p. 36. The death of St Guthlac (sub anno 715), patron of neighbouring Crowland Abbey (Lincolnshire), was recorded by a twelfth- or thirteenth-century scribe in the Deeping copy of Hugh’s Chronicle (the left-hand margin of f. 35v). Crowland itself possessed this work by the early fourteenth century, according to the Franciscan survey, Registrum Anglie:was the Deeping manuscript obtained from Crowland? 41 A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum,4 vols. (London, 1808-12), vol. ii, p. 2 (‘adjudicanda forte cuidam Rogero de Waltham’).
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Fig. 1. Lists of Norman and Lombard rulers. Harl. MS. 1312, f. 24v
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This copy of the Chronicle is a wholly undistinguished production.The upper right-hand corner of the first five leaves has been partially eaten away, an apparent sign of rodent damage. However, on closer inspection it transpires that the text was written around this imperfection, which was evidently present in some form when the book was made. The whole work should probably be assigned to a single scribe, although the prologue (ff. 1v- 3r) has been written in pale brown ink, and the tables (ff. 3v-24v) in a far darker colour. This scribe was exceedingly careless: a contemporary editor has made some twenty corrections to the prologue alone, with many more errors having been overlooked. MS. H terminates prematurely with its list of the dukes of Normandy and rulers of the Lombards (part of §IX; see fig. 1), though it is clear that no pages have been lost, because the contemporary end-leaf contains imprints of the Chronicle’sred rubrication. Two significant additions have been made to this copy.The papal register (§VIII) ended originally with Honorius II, but the names of Innocent II (1130-43), Celestine II (1143-4) and Lucius II (1144-5) have been added in a subsequent hand, with a fourth name, presumably that of Eugenius III (1145-53) having been cropped from the lower margin (f. 21r).The list of Norman dukes (f. 24v) itself concluded originally with Henry I of England (1100-35), but a separate, English scribe has appended the names of Stephen (1135-54), Henry II (1154-89), Richard I (1189-99) and John (1199-1216).This second series of additions was undoubtedly made in England, and may be evidence that H had left France as early as the first decade of the thirteenth century. Another indication of this book’s English provenance is its memorandum of King Edward the Martyr, entered circa 1300 in a cursive bookhand (f. 1r; fig. 2).42
King Edgar died in the year 975, leaving his son Edward as heir both of his kingdom and his character. In the same year of the Lord, the holy archbishops Dunstan and Oswald, with their fellow bishops, consecrated and anointed him king. However, in the year of the Lord 978, Edward, king of the English, was slain unjustly by his own men at the place which is called Corfe, by order of his stepmother Ælfthryth, and was buried (contrary to royal custom) at Wareham. His brother Æthelred [the Unready] succeeded him. In the year of the Lord 969 [correctly 979], Ælfhere, ealdorman of the Mercians, came to Wareham with a great crowd of people, and directed that the holy body of the precious king and martyr Edward be lifted out of the tomb. When the body had been uncovered, it was discovered to be sound and untainted by any damage or infection. Washed and clothed in new garments, it was borne to Shaftesbury, and buried in honourable fashion.There is another King Edward, named the Elder, son of
42 For Edward’s murder and subsequent cult, see Christine E. Fell (ed.), Edward King and Martyr (Leeds, 1971); eadem,‘Edward King and Martyr and the Anglo-Saxon Hagiographic Tradition’, in David Hill (ed.), Ethelred the Unready: Papers from the Millenary Conference,BAR, British Series, lix (Oxford, 1978), pp. 1-13; Susan J. Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England:A Study of West Saxon and East Anglian Cults (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 44-50, 154-75; D.W. Rollason, ‘The Cult of Murdered Saints in Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo- Saxon England, xi (1983), pp. 1-22; and idem, Saints and Relics in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1989), pp. 142-4.
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Fig. 2.Memorandum on King Edward the Martyr. Harl. MS. 1312, f. 1r
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King Alfred, who reigned in England in the year of the Lord 901.There is also a third, St Edward the Confessor.43
This description is based almost verbatim on the account of Edward’s reign in John of Worcester’s Chronica chronicarum, compiled during the early decades of the twelfth century.44 Six manuscripts of John’s work have survived, together with a seventh containing an abbreviated version (the chronicula): these books were once the property of the Benedictine convents of Abingdon (Berkshire), Bury St Edmunds (Suffolk) and Worcester, and perhaps those at Coventry (Warwickshire), Gloucester and Peterborough (Northamptonshire).45 Unfortunately,the passage copied here is too brief to determine from which (if any) of these witnesses it may have been adopted.
C Cotton MS. Claudius C. IX, ff. 4r-12r Worcester saec. xiiex
Cotton Claudius C. IX comprises three mediaeval books bound together during the seventeenth century,with the front- and end-leaves (ff. 1r-3v, 204r-209v) being made up of miscellaneous early modern material.46 The first mediaeval portion constitutes a truncated version of the Chronicle under consideration, followed in the same late-twelfth-century hand with an annalistic text concluding with the year 1171 (ff. 12v-17v).This final work contains annotations pertaining to Worcester Cathedral Priory, to which community the whole booklet undoubtedly belonged.The remaining sections supply a thirteenth-century copy of William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum Anglorum (ff. 18r-102v), whose provenance can be assigned to Battle Abbey (Sussex);47 and a documentary collection (ff. 105r-203v)
43 ‘Rex Edgarus anno nongentesimo septuagesimo quinto defungitur, qui filium suum Edwardum et regni et morum reliquit heredem. Quem eodem anno domini sancti Dunstanus et Oswaldus archipre
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from the monastery at Abingdon, much of which was transcribed during the third quarter of the twelfth century, probably no later than circa 1170.48 This copy of Hugh of Saint-Victor’s Chronicle is untitled, and omits the prologue and several other items, presumably representing a deliberate selection of material. It begins with the Restoration (§II), followed in sequence as far as the list of geographical names (§VI), and terminates with the table of Popes (§VIII), which in this instance extends only to Severinus (d. 640).A complex series of sigla has been employed to link passages overrunning from one page or column to the next.The same feature characterizes Hugh’s Chronicle in Royal MS. 4 B.VII (R below), intimating that it reflects the layout of a common exemplar. At the end of the geographical inventory (f. 11v), and repeated beneath the papal catalogue (f. 12r), occurs the rubric ‘Expliciunt cronica ueteris testamenti’, written in red ink. The ensuing annalistic text (A.D. 1-1171) has the heading ‘Cronica noui testamenti’ (f. 12v), implying that it continues the preceding, even though it forms no part of Hugh’s compilation. This final item was transcribed in conjunction with the aforementioned Chronicle,and is related directly to another annalistic record from Rochester (again part of MS. R).49 The work in question was Norman in origin — it demonstrates great affinity with the archiepiscopal see at Rouen — but had probably been maintained in England from the beginning of the twelfth century. In this copy, the annal-numbers extend to 1178 (the foot of f. 17v; fig. 3), but the final entry reports a thunderstorm during the night of 25 December 1171.This concluding notice has previously been cited as evidence for the time of transcription, on the mistaken assumption that the appended chronicle is an original composition.50 However, comparison with its Rochester counterpart indicates that MS. C is derived from an exemplar which ended with the year 1171, and so need not have been transcribed at that very juncture. Although the script is coterminous with the end of the twelfth century, it is unwise to date this booklet with too great precision.51 After the present components of Cotton Claudius C. IX had been gathered together, Sir Robert Cotton himself ascribed the opening portion to Abingdon, by reference to the other contents of the manuscript.52 However, it has subsequently been recognized that the annalistic chronicle has mediaeval additions relating to the bishopric of Worcester, testimony for the provenance of the book in question.53 These Worcester entries notice the accession
48 Joseph Stevenson (ed.), Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon,2 vols., Rolls Series (London, 1858), vol. i, pp. xiv- xvii; S. E. Kelly (ed.), Charters of Abingdon Abbey,2 vols.,Anglo-Saxon Charters vii-viii (Oxford, 2000-1), vol. i, pp. liii-lviii; Ker (ed.), Medieval Libraries of Great Britain,p.3;Davis, Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain (no. 3), p. 2; N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), p. xiv, n. 2. 49 These two chronicles have been edited (in conjunction with a third from Battle) by F. Liebermann, Ungedruckte Anglo-Normannische Geschichtsquellen (Strasbourg, 1879), pp. 31-49. This Battle work (BL, Cotton MS. Nero D.II, ff. 238v-241r) was originally compiled circa 1119 and continued until 1206; it shares a partial, common source with MSS. C and R, but is in essence an independent composition. See further An Eleventh- Century Anglo-Saxon Illustrated Miscellany: British Library Cotton Tiberius B. V Part I together with leaves from British Library Cotton Nero D. II,facs. ed. P.McGurk et al. (Copenhagen, 1983), pp. 15, 25, 28, 39, 104-6 and plates 1-8. 50 Andrew G.Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 700-1600 in The Department of Manuscripts The British Library,2 vols. (London, 1979), vols. i, p. 100, and ii, plate 93. 51 The handwriting was assigned to the early thirteenth century by Liebermann, Ungedruckte Anglo- Normannische Geschichtsquellen,p.32. 52 ‘Liber Mon:Abbingdonensis’ (f. 4r). 53 Liebermann, Ungedruckte Anglo-Normannische Geschichtsquellen,p.32; Ker (ed.), Medieval Libraries of Great Britain,p.207;Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts,vol. i, p. 100.
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Fig. 3. The annalistic text appended to Hugh’s Chronicle. Cotton MS. Claudius C. IX, f.17v
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of Bishop Bosel (sub anno 680), his succession by Bishop Oftfor (689), and the consecration of Bishop Ecgwine (693); and the consecration (1062) and death (1095) of Bishop Wulfstan II, first incumbent of that see under Norman rule.54 The first series has been entered in a single cursive bookhand, datable to the end of the fourteenth century; those relating to Wulfstan are substantially earlier additions, having been inserted sometime during the thirteenth century.55 Worcester is mentioned nowhere else in the chronicle, though it is unnecessary to infer that C was transcribed at another scriptorium. It is logical to assume that this booklet was produced on behalf of Worcester, based on an earlier manuscript, and only customized for that house at a later date. A further superscription demonstrates conclusively that this copy of Hugh’s Chronicle belonged to the monastic community at Worcester. In the upper margin of f. 12v can be read the partially cropped signature ‘Johannes Musart’, who is attested as a member of that cathedral priory in the sixteenth century.56 John Musard (variously spelt Musart, Myssard) was ordained as an acolyte in April 1504, as subdeacon and then deacon in September and December of the same year, and as priest in June 1508.57 Most significantly, Musard was employed repairing books in the library of Worcester Cathedral (1527/8), and purchased materials for the same purpose in 1531.58 His monastic career soon took a dramatic turn: he was arrested in July 1531, and imprisoned on the charge of having robbed the prior of ‘certen plate & other things’.59 He remained in prison when, on 31 January 1536, he addressed to Thomas Cromwell a letter entitled ‘The decayes of your honorable lordshyps monastery att Worcettur, and the occasion there of’, in which he condemned his detractors and begged for relief.60 Musard is last recorded in May 1538, when he was granted dispensation to put aside his habit. MS. C provides new evidence for knowledge of Hugh’s writings at Worcester Cathedral Priory. This is otherwise restricted to a handful of extant books and three complete treatises, namely De archa Noë, De arrha anime and his commentary on the Lamentations of Jeremiah.61
54 Liebermann, Ungedruckte Anglo-Normannische Geschichtsquellen,pp.36, 44, 47. 55 Liebermann dated these notices of Wulfstan to the end of the thirteenth century,but this is probably too late. 56 Musard’s name also occurs in BL, Add. MS. 25031 (f. 5r);Worcester, Cathedral Library, MSS. F. 53 (f. i and the rear pastedown); F.90 (f. 270v); and F.93 (f. 211v): R. M.Thomson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts in Worcester Cathedral Library, with a contribution on the bindings by Michael Gullick (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 32, 58, 65. 57 Joan Greatrex, Biographical Register of the English Cathedral Priories of the Province of Canterbury c. 1066 to 1540 (Oxford, 1997), pp. 853-4. 58 Ethel S. Fegan (ed.), Journal of Prior William More,Worcestershire Historical Society (Worcester, 1914), pp. 256-62, 322, 324;Thomson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts in Worcester Cathedral Library, pp. xxxviii, xlii-xliii, xlvi. 59 Fegan (ed.), Journal of Prior William More,pp. 330-1. 60 Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII., ed. James Gairdner, vol. x (London, 1887) (no. 216), pp. 75-6; Fegan (ed.), Journal of Prior William More,pp. ii-iii. Musard’s holograph is BL, Cotton MS. Cleopatra E. IV,ff. 116v-117r. 61 These other books are Cambridge, University Library, MS. Kk.4.6 (De archa Noë,ff. 86v-107r); BL, Royal MS. 5 C.VI (De substantia dilectionis,ff. 34r-35r);Worcester Cathedral, MSS. F. 75 (De arrha anime,ff. 213r- 219v); Q. 48 (commentary on the Lamentations of Jeremiah, ff. 1r-50r); and perhaps F. 114 (excerpts from De quinque septenis,f.67r/v). This extends the list in Thomson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts in Worcester Cathedral Library,p.xxiv.
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R Royal MS. 4 B.VII, ff. 199v-210v Rochester saec. xiiex
This copy of Hugh’s Chronicle should undeniably be regarded as the sister manuscript of that from Worcester, since it contains the identical rubrics and sigla, and is followed by the same annalistic text extending originally to A.D. 1171 (ff. 211r-218v). Furthermore, MS. R presents a superior and more complete version of Hugh’s work, and could almost be the other’s exemplar, were it not for minor variations in the appended annalistic record, and an occasional variant in the Chronicle itself. (The traditional assumption that Royal 4 B.VII is a substantially later book seems to be unfounded.) To err on the side of caution, it might be posited that an earlier copy of the Chronicle, transcribed circa 1171, lies behind both MSS. R and C. Royal 4 B.VII belonged to the cathedral priory of Rochester — it has a fourteenth- century ex libris,‘Liber psalterii de claustro Roffensi’ (f. 2r),‘psalterii’ being added in another hand — and was presumably a product of that scriptorium.62 The Chronicle of Hugh of Saint-Victor is the final item in this volume, being preceded (ff. 194r-199r) by the Compendium historie in genealogia Christi (Genealogia historiarum) of Peter of Poitiers, chancellor of Paris (d. 1205).63 These texts accompany Lethbert of Saint-Ruf’s Flores psalmorum, with the preface by Bishop Walter of Montpellier (ff. 2r-165v); a partial copy of Richard of Saint-Victor’s Allegorie in Nouum Testamentum (ff. 166r-178r);64 and two anonymous sermons (ff. 178r-179v) followed by brief expositions of Scripture (ff. 180r- 192r). The entire book probably belongs to a single campaign, although the handwriting of Hugh’s Chronicle is larger and slightly more spiky,and may be the work of a separate scribe. The dating of R and the remainder of this manuscript is problematical. The compilers of the Royal Catalogue assigned the book in question to the thirteenth century,stating that the writing of the concluding chronicle ‘appears to be distinctly later than either 1171 or 1184 [when its continuation ends]’; while Felix Liebermann dated Royal 4 B.VII to the middle of the thirteenth century.65 This line of reasoning is also dictated by the apparent omission of this volume from the Rochester library catalogue which was finalized circa 1202 (BL, Royal MS. 5 B. XII, ff. 2r-3r), written on the fly-leaves of an early-twelfth-century collection of works by Augustine of Hippo.66 The supposition that MS. R postdates 1202 must nevertheless receive fresh examination. It is noticeable, for example, that its script and decoration is consistent with the end of the twelfth century, as reinforced by the handwriting of a cursive note in the lower margin of an otherwise blank page (f. 193v), which reads somewhat mysteriously ‘Librum Johannis Cassiani. Similitudines Anselmi’.67
62 George Warner & Julius P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections, 4 vols. (London, 1921), vol. i, pp. 83-4. 63 Philip S. Moore, The Works of Peter of Poitiers, Master in Theology and Chancellor of Paris (1193-1205) (Notre Dame, 1936), p. 103. 64 Richard de Saint-Victor Liber Exceptionum, ed. Chatillon (no. 82), p. 36. 65 War ner & Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections,vol. i, p. 84; Liebermann, Ungedruckte Anglo-Normannische Geschichtsquellen,p.32. 66 Sharpe et al. (eds.), English Benedictine Libraries,pp. 497-526 and plate 6; S. Harrison Thompson, Latin Bookhands of the Later Middle Ages 1100-1500 (Cambridge, 1969), no. 88.The dating-clause of this catalogue has been added in a separate hand, and seemingly applies to an inspection of that collection (‘Anno ab incarnatione domini .mo.cco.iio. hoc est scrutinium librarii nostri’). The inventory itself was compiled and revised by a number of scribes: it may theoretically have been started several years before 1202. 67 This note perhaps refers to John Cassian’s Collationes, together with Ps.-Anselm’s Similitudines: Rochester is not recorded to have owned the second-named work.
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There are also indications that some Rochester books were not recorded in the above-cited inventory, since they were stored elsewhere at that house.68 It might therefore be posited that Royal 4 B.VII did not originally form part of the communal collection, because it bears the inscription ‘Territii infirmarii’ (f. 2r), and so had arguably once been kept in the infirmary.69 The Rochester catalogue in question does record a copy of Lethbert’s Flores psalmorum, stated to have been the gift or personal possession of Prior Robert of Walton (Rochester’s cell at Felixstowe). Prior Robert’s book has elsewhere been identified as BL, Royal MS. 2 F. XI, transcribed towards the end of the twelfth century.70 This is undoubtedly correct: the principal hand of Royal 2 F. XI is the same as that of the sole surviving book with a Felixstowe ex libris, namely BL, Royal MS. 7 A. VII, containing Peter of Waltham’s Remediarium conuersorum, and produced (in smaller format) at approximately the same period.71 Irrespective of its date, MS. R supplies an excellent witness to the presence in England of Hugh of Saint-Victor’s Chronicle.This copy begins with the final two paragraphs of its prologue, followed by the depiction of the Creation (§I; fig. 4) and other tables, and concludes (as in C) with the list of Popes to Severinus. At the close of the geographical inventory is the rubric ‘Expliciunt cronica ueteris testamenti’ (f. 210r); while the heading ‘Incipiunt cronica noui testamenti’ commences the table of Popes (f. 210v), a slight variation upon its position in MS. C. A single scribe was responsible for the entire Chronicle and accompanying annalistic text, the latter being written in one stint to the year 1171, with notices for 1172-84 having been added in paler brown ink.72 This continuation contains two entries relating specifically to Rochester, recording the burning of its church (11 April 1179) and death of Bishop Walter (1182). During the opening decades of the thirteenth century, the Rochester copy of Hugh’s Chronicle was utilized at that convent in order to create another historical work. BL, Cotton MS.Vespasian A. XXII contains (among other items) a chronicle from the Creation to A.D. 738 (ff. 2v-8v); the separate Annals of Rochester (ff. 9r-34r); and a register from the same foundation (ff. 60r-129v).73 The first-named text is based primarily on Bede’s Chronica
68 Mary P.Richards, Texts and Their Traditions in the Medieval Library of Rochester Cathedral Priory,Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, lxxviii, part 3 (Philadelphia, 1988), p. 45. 69 The extant Rochester books frequently contain such inscriptions, though their historical worth is not always reliable: Sharpe et al. (eds.), English Benedictine Libraries,pp. 465-6. 70 War ner & Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections,vol. i, p. 67; Sharpe et al. (eds.), English Benedictine Libraries,(B.79.237), p. 525; Richards, Texts and Their Traditions,pp.18, 41. 71 War ner & Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections,vol. i, p. 165. The monks of Rochester Cathedral Priory ultimately owned at least three copies of Lethbert’s work, the third being that in BL, Royal MS. 2 D.VI, ff. 1r-95v (saec. xiii1): James P.Carley (ed.), The Libraries of King Henry VIII (London, 2000) (H2.807, 816, 906; H4.103), pp. 153-5, 171, 262. (Each item in Royal 2 D. VI, a composite Rochester book, is of a different date, some being as early as saec. xii2.) 72 Excerpts from this text have been edited by Liebermann, Ungedruckte Anglo-Normannische Geschichtsquellen, pp. 35-49. 73 Smith, Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecæ Cottonianæ,pp. 108-9; Planta, Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library,p.437; Davis, Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain (no. 821), p. 93; M.P.Richards,‘MS Cotton Vespasian A. XXII: the Vespasian Homilies’, Manuscripta, xii (1978), pp. 97-103. The whole book belonged to Rochester Cathedral Priory. It passed through the hands of the Kentish antiquary William Lambarde (d. 1601) in 1598; while another signature, quite possibly to be read as John Joscelyn, lies largely erased beneath that of Sir Robert Cotton (f. 2r).
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Fig. 4. The prologue and diagram of Creation. Royal MS. 4 B.VII, f. 199v
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maiora,but it also incorporates a list entitled ‘Sacerdotes post transmigrationem’ (f. 4r/v;), borrowed directly from that in Royal 4 B.VII (ff. 200v-201r).74 The handwriting of the scribe responsible for copying this passage and much of the same chronicle (ff. 2v-6r) can be dated with some accuracy, since it recurs in the register and as the principal hand of the Annals of Rochester, to the middle of the entry for 1225 (ff. 9r-33v).75 His first stint in this annalistic work ended with the year 1214, being augmented at periodic intervals, a sign of contemporaneous reporting. On this basis, it can be proposed that MS. R was put to practical use at Rochester as early as 1214, and presumably no later than 1225.
E Egerton MS. 3088, ff. 99r-112v Dore circa 1243
Hugh of Saint-Victor’s Chronicle is the seventh article in Egerton 3088, a collection of computistical and historical works made for the Cistercians of Dore Abbey.76 One of this manuscript’s scribes, responsible for the tables of Hugh’s handbook (ff. 101v-112v) and much of the Annals of Dore (ff. 118r-134v), was demonstrably writing in the period 1243x1254.77 The preceding texts are in coeval hands, the whole codex having been gathered together at an early stage, as indicated by the presence of contemporary quire signatures. MS. E is the work of two scribes, and is introduced by the title ‘Incipit prologus magistri Hugonis in libro chronicarum’, the accompanying tables being headed ‘Incipit liber cronicarum Hugonis’.The prologue is divided into a series of unnumbered chapters, each with its own rubric, unattested in the other British Library manuscripts of this work.The historical tables commence with the Creation (§I), in which the requisite crescents have again been omitted, and end with the table of rulers since the time of Christ (§IX).The list of dukes of Normandy, continued as the kings of England, ends with Henry III (1216-72; see fig. 5); while the papal register extends as far as the reign of Gregory IX (1227-41), thus confirming the approximate date of transcription. Two notes have been added at the foot of the final page, entitled ‘Anni ab origine mundi rationabiliter probati’ and ‘Anni ab incarnatione domini secundum euangelicam ueritatem’ respectively: these presumably relate to Hugh of Saint-Victor’s compilation.
74 Rochester is not otherwise known to have possessed a copy of Chronica maiora (which may have been borrowed from elsewhere). It is also possible that this source-material included an unattested continuation to Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, for the years 728-738. (This cannot have been the extant Rochester Bede, BL, Harley MS. 3680.) 75 Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts,vols. i, p. 108, and ii, plate 120. 76 Eric George Millar, The Library of A. Chester Beatty: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Western Manuscripts,4 vols. (London, 1927-30), vol. ii, pp. 65-70; The British Museum Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts 1931-1935 (London, 1967), pp. 306-9; Catalogue of the Renowned Collection of Western Manuscripts the Property of A. Chester Beatty, Esq.:The Second Portion, which will be sold by auction by Messrs. Sotheby and Co. (London, 9 May 1933) (lot 49), pp. 95-7; EGM[illar], ‘Three Manuscripts from the Chester Beatty Collection’, British Museum Quarterly, viii (1933-4), pp. 17-18 (p. 18); C. W. Jones, ‘Manuscripts of Bede’s De Natura Rerum’, Isis, xxvii (1937), pp. 430-40 (pp. 432-3). 77 These dates are established by his concluding contribution to the Annals of Dore, for the year 1243, and the death of Innocent IV (7 Dec. 1254), the last Pope he names in the continuation to Nicholas Maniacutius’s Ad incorrupta pontificum nomina conseruanda (f. 117r/v). Egerton 3088 was dated circa 1244 by Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts,vols. i, p. 117, and ii, plate 139.
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Fig. 5. The Dukes of Normandy. Eg. MS. 3088, f. 112v
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Although E’s exemplar has not been identified, several other items in Egerton 3088 were demonstrably copied from a twelfth-century book which belonged originally to Winchcombe Abbey (Gloucestershire) (BL, Cotton MS.Tiberius E. IV).78 It might feasibly be proposed that the monks of Winchcombe also possessed a copy of Hugh’s Chronicle, which was transcribed on behalf of the Cistercian community at Dore, located some forty miles to the west. However, it should also be noted that Cotton Tiberius E. IV may itself have left Winchcombe sometime during its early history.This book was produced in two distinct phases: its earliest portion (ff. 46r-181v) contains Bede’s De temporum ratione and similar texts, and is datable to the opening decades of the twelfth century; whereas the remainder (ff. 1r-42v) should be assigned to the middle and second half of the twelfth century, its principal component being the primary recension of the Annals of Winchcombe (ff. 1r-27v).79 The intervening three leaves (ff. 43r-45v) nonetheless supply documents relating to the bishopric of Worcester and to the refoundation of Gloucester College, Oxford (1291), originally dependent on St Peter’s Abbey, Gloucester, but subsequently admitting candidates from other Benedictine monasteries in England. Whether Cotton Tiberius E. IV was removed from Winchcombe — presumably for either Gloucester or Worcester — can no longer be established with any certainty.80 One book which arguably departed that convent for St Peter’s, Gloucester, is now BL, Royal MS. 11 D.VIII, a twelfth- century copy of the Collectio Lanfranci.81
F Cotton MS. Faustina B.VII, ff. 18r-35v England saec.xv1
Faustina B.VII is a typical example of a composite Cottonian manuscript, formed in this instance of five or more independent booklets sewn together to create a larger volume.The second such portion is a shortened version of Hugh’s Chronicle, as described by both Thomas Smith and Joseph Planta (§§13-16).82 That work is now accompanied by a series of miscellaneous ecclesiastical lists, based in part on the Opuscula of Ralph de Diceto and preliminary matter of John of Worcester’s Chronica chronicarum (ff. 2r-17v);83 a catalogue of
78 Jones,‘Manuscripts of Bede’s De Natura Rerum’, pp. 432-3, 439-40; The British Museum Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts 1931-1935,p.307. 79 Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts,vols. i, p. 107, and ii, plate 106; Richard Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England (c. 1066-1130) (Oxford, 1999) (nos. 408-09), p. 103; R. R. Darlington, ‘Winchcombe Annals 1049-1181’, in Patricia M. Barnes & C. F.Slade (eds.), A Medieval Miscellany for Doris Mary Stenton, Pipe Roll Society, lxxvi [corr. lxxiv], New Series, xxxvi (London, 1962), pp. 111-37; E.Temple, ‘The Calendar of the Douce Psalter’, The Bodleian Library Record, xii (1985-8), pp. 13-38 (pp. 23-6); Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, ed. Peter S. Baker & Michael Lapidge, E.E.T.S., s.s., xv (Oxford, 1995), pp. lvii-lx, lxxxvii-lxxxviii; M. Gullick,‘The English-Owned Manuscripts of the Collectio Lanfranci (s.xi/xii)’, in Lynda Dennison (ed.), The Legacy of M. R. James: Papers from the 1995 Cambridge Symposium (Donington, 2001), pp. 99-117 (pp. 113- 14 and n. 44). 80 Cotton Tiberius E. IV was damaged by fire in 1731, and its leaves have been remounted on paper (the entry in Planta, Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library,p.40, should therefore be disregarded): all trace of its original arrangement has been destroyed. 81 Gullick, ‘The English-Owned Manuscripts of the Collectio Lanfranci’, pp. 112-14; Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England (no. 539), p. 117. 82 Smith, Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecæ Cottonianæ,pp. 152-3; Planta, Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library,p.607. 83 Radulfi de Diceto Decani Lundoniensis Opera Historica:The Historical Works of Master Ralph de Diceto, ed.William Stubbs, 2 vols., Rolls Series (London, 1876), vol. ii, pp. 184-91, 196-210; Florentii Wigorniensis Monachi Chronicon ex Chronicis, ed. Benjamin Thorpe, 2 vols. (London, 1848-9), vol. i, pp. 231-46;The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. and trans. Darlington et al., vol. ii, pp. lxv-lxvii, lxxiv-lxxvi; Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts,vols. i, p. 102, and ii, plate 124.
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Cistercian abbeys, transcribed in England late in the twelfth century or early in the thirteenth, and extended during the fourteenth century to include subsequent foundations (ff. 36r-39v);84 a brief account of the kings of Wessex and England from Ine (d. circa 726) to Henry III, in a fifteenth-century hand (f. 40v); a universal chronicle which incorporates Peter of Poitiers’s Compendium historie in genealogia Christi, compiled circa 1216 but later continued to the burial of Edward II in 1327 (ff. 41r-71v);85 and the fifteenth-century register of the Honour of Richmond (ff. 72r-136r).86 The first item in this manuscript can tentatively be assigned to Evesham Abbey (Worcestershire), owing to its affinity with that house;87 while occasional annotations in the universal chronicle manifest interest in eastern England, though that text may feasibly have been written and illustrated elsewhere.88 Hugh of Saint-Victor’s handbook is primarily the work of a single, fifteenth-century scribe, commencing (as in MS. R) with the final two paragraphs of the prologue, and concluding with its list of geographical names.The Chronicle is itself unattributed, save for the opening rubric ‘Incipit prologus subsequentis operis’; while the diagram of the Creation has once again been omitted. Despite its late date, this copy is related in many respects to that from Rochester, although collation with both MSS. R and C indicates that all three are ultimately derived from the same parent text, to which F has made several innovations. Most significant in this context is the addition of a new paragraph at the end of the prologue (f. 18v), which provides a brief commentary on the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2.8).There are similar explanatory notes prefixed to §§II and IV (ff. 19r, 26v), the authorship of which is unestablished.
84 Edited by W.de G. Birch,‘On the Date of Foundation Ascribed to the Cistertian Abbeys in Great Britain’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, xxvi (1870), pp. 281-99, 352-69 (pp. 281-92), stating in error that this copy was produced in France.The first section of this list (ff. 36r-38v) was presumably transcribed before 1214, because the convent which removed to Dieulacres (Staffordshire) in that year is recorded under its original location of Poulton (Cheshire) (f. 38r). 85 W. H. Monroe,‘A Roll-Manuscript of Peter of Poitiers’ Compendium’, The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, lxv (1978), pp. 92-107 (pp. 97-8 and nn. 18, 20-1, pp. 101, 105, figs. 5 and 8); Nigel Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts [I] 1190-1250, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, iv (London, 1982) (no. 43b), pp. 91-2;Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts,vols. i, p. 102, and ii, plate 118.The date proposed by Watson for this text’s transcription (1208x1215) should be revised: the scribe who laid down his pen after reaching f. 69v made reference (f. 69r/v) to the sixteenth year of the pontificate of Innocent III (1213-1214) and the sixteenth regnal year of King John (1214-1215); while his contemporary who continued this work in lighter brown ink (ff. 69v-70r) concluded with the death of Pope Innocent (16 July 1216). 86 Roger Gale (ed.), Registrum Honoris de Richmond exhibens Terrarum & Villarum quæ quondam fuerunt Edwini Comitis infra Richmundshire Descriptionem (London, 1722); Davis, Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain (no. 1311), p. 152. 87 The scribe responsible for beginning the English episcopal lists noted that both Bishops Wulfsige of London (d. 909x926) and Æthelwine of Wells (dep. 1021x1024) had formerly been abbot of Evesham (ff. 6r, 7r), the second entry being found in John of Worcester’s preliminary matter; furthermore, a slightly later annotation beside the name of Bishop Ecgwine of Worcester (d. 717) states ‘Hic construxit cenobium Eoueshammense’ (f. 9r). 88 Alongside the account of the dedication of ‘Medeshamstede’by Archbishop Deusdedit of Canterbury (d. 664) — itself unusual in a work otherwise focusing on national affairs — a mediaeval scribe has written the more familiar name ‘.Burg.’ (Peterborough) (f. 59v); while the foundation within the fenland of the abbeys of Thorney and Ramsey is remarked in a very similar hand, a third name — most probably that of Peterborough — having been cropped by a binder (the upper margin of f. 65r). (The last-named events, with the tenth- century restoration of the religious community at Peterborough, are themselves noticed in the universal chronicle.)
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MS. F contains no sign of mediaeval provenance, but a sixteenth- or early-seventeenth- century signature ‘Thomas Barnes’ is to be found in the lower segment of f. 27r. At present, Barnes defies identification: he may have been an acquaintance of Sir Robert Cotton, or a much earlier owner of this booklet.
Q olim Elverum, Folkebiblioteket, MS. 1, ff. 97r-98v ?West England saec. xii2
The Elverum manuscript is a theological miscellany, comprising works by Hugh of Saint- Victor, Richard of Saint-Victor and Bernard of Clairvaux, among them being the prologue to Hugh’s Chronicle.A detailed study of this book has assigned its origin to England, and more specifically to the West Country; but a separate, more cursory survey has proposed either France or England as its home.89 Of these two alternatives, the English candidature is much to be preferred. The mediaeval history of this manuscript is unknown, the earliest indication of ownership being ‘Lib. Ric.
89 Gjerlöw,‘A Twelfth-Century Victorine or Cistercian Manuscript’; Goy, Die Überlieferung der Werke Hugos von St.Viktor, p. 38. 90 Gjerlöw,‘A Twelfth-Century Victorine or Cistercian Manuscript’, p. 317; Jean Leclercq, Recueil d’études sur saint Bernard et ses écrits,vol. i (Rome, 1962), pp. 105-6. 91 R.A. B. Mynors & R. M.Thomson, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Hereford Cathedral, with a contribution on the bindings by Michael Gullick (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 3-5, 14-15;Thomson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts in Worcester Cathedral Library,p.148; N. R. Ker & A. J. Piper, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries,4 vols. (Oxford, 1969-92), vol. ii, pp. 666-72, further noting (p. 673) that the copy in another English book (Eton College, MS. 39, ff. 102r-110v) belongs to a separate version. 92 R. A. B. Mynors, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Balliol College Oxford (Oxford, 1963), pp. 135-6; Jennifer M. Sheppard, The Buildwas Books: Book Production, Acquisition and Use at an English Cistercian Monastery, 1165- c. 1400, Oxford Bibliographical Society, 3rd series, ii (Oxford, 1997) (no. 22), pp. 109-13; R. M.Thomson, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 162-4; Warner & Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections,vol. i, pp. 85-6; Ker & Piper, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries,vol. iii, pp. 593-5.
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contain Hugh’s commentary on the Lamentations of Jeremiah (Eton 38, Hereford O.II.8, Worcester Q. 48); two his Homilie in Ecclesiasten (Elverum 1, Hereford O.II.8); and another three Richard of Saint-Victor’s Beniamin minor (Elverum 1, Hereford O.I.2, Hereford O.II.8). It can therefore be deduced that the Elverum manuscript is of probable West Country origin, the contents suggesting that it possibly belonged to a Victorine or Cistercian convent.93 MS. Q supplies solely the prologue of Hugh’s Chronicle, inserted among selections from his letters and minor works. The final paragraph, which applies to the historical tables forming the core of Hugh’s handbook, has been omitted.This is no real surprise, since the prologue was valued as a guide to mnemonic training.
S Stowe MS. 4, ff. 267r-272v North-East France saec. xiiex
Stowe 4 contains a series of excerpts from Hugh’s Chronicle (ff. 267r-272v), appended to a late-twelfth-century copy of Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica (ff. 2r-266v), which lacks the continuation added by Peter of Poitiers.94 (Comestor completed this work while in retirement at Saint-Victor, early in the 1170s.)95 The entire codex should be attributed to a single scriptorium, and a single campaign of transcription. Its handwriting is characteristic of the region centring on the duchy of Lorraine, while the decoration is restricted to simple red initials and rubrics.96 Unfortunately,Stowe 4 contains no mark of mediaeval ownership, because the first two leaves of Historia scholastica have become detached.97 Only the tables of Hugh’s work are represented here, and their order has been rearranged. The first item is the kingdoms of the world (§III), followed in turn by the table of rulers since the time of Christ (§IX), miscellaneous lists of Hebrew names (§V), geographical inventory (§VI), and the list of historians (§X).The usual columnar arrangement has been abandoned, much to the detriment of the original scheme. These excerpts contain two features valuable for dating and localizing this book. First, the catalogue of dukes of Normandy (f. 270v) ends with Henry the Younger (1170-83),son of Henry II, none of the other lists in S having been updated. Secondly,a later mediaeval scribe has added new names to the list of European cities (f. 272r), namely Metz, Utrecht, Magdeburg, Riga and Prague, with Senones (Vosges) being placed at the head of another column (fig.6).98 Both Metz and
93 Gjerlöw,‘A Twelfth-Century Victorine or Cistercian Manuscript’, pp. 337-8. 94 Revising the dating proposed apud Catalogue of the Stowe Manuscripts in the British Museum,2 vols. (London, 1895-6), vol. i, pp. 3-4.This copy of Historia scholastica is not recorded in the check-list published by Friedrich Stegmüller, Repertorium Biblicum Medii Aevi, 11 vols. (Madrid, 1950-80), vol. iv,pp. 288-90. For the authorship of the section on Acts of the Apostles, see Moore, The Works of Peter of Poitiers,pp. 118-22. 95 D. Luscombe, ‘Peter Comestor’, in Katherine Walsh & Diana Wood (eds.), The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley, Studies in Church History,Subsidia, iv (Oxford, 1985), pp. 109-29 (pp. 118- 21). 96 The script should be compared with Charles Samaran & Robert Marichal, Catalogue des manuscrits en écriture latine portant des indications de date, de lieu ou de copiste,v,Est de la France (Paris, 1965). 97 According to a note made on behalf of a subsequent owner, Ralph Palmer III of Little Chelsea (f. 1r), these leaves were missing by 1747. 98 The addition of Senones may be insignificant, since it already formed part of Hugh’s list: Baron,‘Hugues de Saint-Victor lexicographe’, p. 145.
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Senones are in Lorraine, implying that this book was made nearby, quite possibly at a Victorine house. This manuscript ends in its present state (f. 272v) with a short series of commentaries on Scripture, untraceable to any known authority.99 The original contents and history of Stowe 4 can be further illuminated by the survival of what is a virtual replica, now Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin–Preussischer Kulturbesitz, MS. theol. 864.100 This second book was produced in the fifteenth century, for an unidentified home: it contains Comestor’s Historia scholastica, with the addition of the section on Acts of the Apostles (ff. 1r-290v); the identical excerpts from Hugh’s Chronicle, in the same order (ff. 290v-297r); the commentaries on Scripture (f. 297r/v); and the Compendium historie in genealogia Christi of Peter of Poitiers (ff. 298r-310v).There can be no doubt that Stowe 4 was a direct ancestor of Berlin MS. theol. 864. In turn, it is clear that Stowe 4 is imperfect at its end as well as its beginning, as might have otherwise been anticipated from its present quire arrangement.
Ralph de Diceto
Ralph de Diceto, consecutively archdeacon of Middlesex and dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, was author of two substantial historical works, together with numerous shorter tracts on the same theme.101 His Abbreuiationes chronicorum spans the period from the Creation to A.D. 1148; the narrative is continued in Ymagines historiarum, to the coronation of King John (27 May 1199); while Ralph’s minor writings, collected as the Opuscula, comprise various surveys of historical subjects plus excerpts from his own and other chronicles.102 Ralph’s works have conventionally been assigned to the final years of their author’s career.103 Indeed, the oldest surviving witness of these treatises (London, Lambeth
98 The addition of Senones may be insignificant, since it already formed part of Hugh’s list: Baron,‘Hugues de Saint-Victor lexicographe’, p. 145. 99 These final four paragraphs begin ‘Iosyas rex iustus tres habuit filios’. However, this is not to be equated with the commentaries on the Lamentations of Jeremiah of either Jerome or Rabanus Maurus, both of which contain that sentence: Patrologiæ Cursus Completus, Series Latina [Patrologia Latina], ed. J.-P.Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1844-64), xxiv, col. 813; cxi, col. 973. 100 Goy, Die Überlieferung der Werke Hugos von St. Viktor,p.42; Valentin Rose, Verzeichniss der Lateinischen Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin, ii, Die Handschriften der Kurfürstlichen Bibliothek und der Kurfürstlichen Lande, part 3 (Berlin, 1905), pp. 1018-20.This relationship has hitherto been unrecognized. 101 For Ralph’s life and writings, see Radulfi de Diceto Opera Historica, ed. Stubbs; D.E. Greenway,‘The Succession to Ralph de Diceto, Dean of St. Paul’s’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xxxix (1966), pp. 86-95; John Le Neve, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066-1300,i,St Paul’s, London, ed. Diana E. Greenway (London, 1968), pp. 5-6, 15-16, 79, 90;Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England c. 550 to c. 1307 (London, 1974), pp. 230-6; Beryl Smalley, The Becket Conflict and the Schools:A Study of Intellectuals in Politics (Oxford, 1973), pp. 230-4; and eadem, Historians in the Middle Ages (London, 1974), pp. 114-19. 102 Certain aspects of these works have been scrutinized by C. Duggan & A. Duggan,‘Ralph de Diceto, Henry II and Becket with an Appendix on Decretal Letters’, in Brian Tierney & Peter Linehan (eds.), Authority and Power: Studies on Medieval Law and Government presented to Walter Ullmann on his Seventieth Birthday (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 59-81; and J. Gillingham, ‘Historians without Hindsight: Coggeshall, Diceto and Howden on the Early Years of John’s Reign’, in S. D. Church (ed.), King John: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 1-26 (pp. 8-9). 103 Radulfi de Diceto Opera Historica, ed. Stubbs, vols. i, p. xciv; ii, pp. viii-x, xv-xvi; Gransden, Historical Writing in England, p. 231.
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Fig. 6. Lists of cities of the world and historians of Antiquity (col. 2, lines 9-26). Stowe MS. 4, f. 272r
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Palace, MS. 8), produced at St Paul’s itself, was compiled and revised during the late 1180s and the 1190s, though copied in part from an earlier exemplar or notes.104 The precise date of Ralph’s death — commemorated at St Paul’s on 22 November — is unknown, but presumably occurred in either 1199 or 1200. Ralph de Diceto made explicit use of the historical handbook assembled by Hugh of Saint-Victor.105 It has previously been recognized that Ralph quoted verbatim from the prologue’s opening paragraph in the introductory section to Abbreuiationes chronicorum;he adopted Hugh’s explanatory diagram of the Creation, together with the chronology to the Incarnation (§§I-II); while Ralph’s account of the origins of the Franks has also been traced directly to his predecessor’s work.106 This indebtedness can now be extended to include the lists of secular rulers — Roman, German and Byzantine emperors, kings of the Franks, Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Egyptians, Ostrogoths, Visigoths and Lombards, dukes of Normandy, Sicily and Apulia, and counts of Anjou and Flanders — which form part of the Opuscula, and originated as §§III and IX of Hugh’s handbook.107 Ralph’s first version of these tables, as represented in Lambeth MS. 8 (ff. 153v-154v), most closely reflects his source material: regrettably, the published edition invariably reproduces the revised lists found in the later manuscripts, and omits a few entirely,most notably the dukes of the Normans and counts of Anjou (Lambeth MS. 8, f. 154r).108 Equally significant is the indirect influence of Hugh’s Chronicle on the historical consciousness of Ralph de Diceto. It is possible, for example, that the prologue’s recommendations for the organization of material, and its stress on the physical layout of the page, inspired Ralph to devise his system of marginal symbols, used to draw attention to particular topics of interest.109 It would likewise seem that Ralph’s determination to make his writings more accessible, as exemplified by the abstracts which form the Opuscula,was conditioned by his reading of Hugh of Saint-Victor.110 The list of famous historians
104 Montague Rhodes James & Claude Jenkins, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Lambeth Palace (Cambridge, 1930-2), pp. 20-1. According to Stubbs (vols. i, pp. 23-4; ii, pp. viii-ix), Lambeth 8 states that Ymagines historiarum originally terminated with the year 1190. In fact, the entry in question once read 1193 (‘.m.c.xc.iii.’), the final three digits having been erased to allow for its further continuation, and never replaced (f. 6r). In BL, Cotton MS. Claudius E. III (Stubbs’s MS. B), the same notice reads 1197 (‘.m.c.xc.’ followed by a space, with ‘.vii.’ being noted in the margin) (f. 6v). 105 Zinn,‘The Influence of Hugh of St.Victor’s Chronicon’, pp. 39-41; Guenée,‘Les Premiers pas de l’histoire de l’historiographie’, pp. 139-40, 143-4; Gransden, ‘Prologues in the Historiography of Twelfth-Century England’, p. 139. 106 Radulfi de Diceto Opera Historica, ed. Stubbs, vol. i, pp. xxi, 31, 34-7, 47, 49-50, 52-3, 79-80; Zinn, ‘The Influence of Hugh of St.Victor’s Chronicon’, pp. 38-54; Smalley, The Becket Conflict,pp. 232-3. It is impossible at present to determine from which manuscript-tradition of Hugh’s Chronicle these passages are derived. 107 According to Zinn,‘The Influence of Hugh of St.Victor’s Chronicon’, pp. 54-6 and n. 82, these lists paralleled those in the Chronicle,but ‘none exhibits enough similarity to Hugh’s work to warrant a suggestion of dependence’. However, Zinn stated this without having examined Lambeth MS. 8 (p. 45, n. 44). 108 Radulfi de Diceto Opera Historica, ed. Stubbs, vol. ii, pp. 213-22, 241-2, 267-70, 275-6. Both the omitted lists concluded originally with Henry II of England (d. 1189), the name of Richard I being added in another hand. 109 Smalley, The Becket Conflict,pp. 232-3; eadem, Historians in the Middle Ages,pp. 118-19. For the list of signs in Lambeth MS. 8 (f. 1v), see Gransden, Historical Writing in England, plate VII. 110 Noted by Gransden, Historical Writing in England,pp. 233-4, without direct reference to Hugh.
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incorporated by Ralph de Diceto in the introduction of Abbreuiationes chronicorum also mirrors the similar treatment by Hugh.111 It is noteworthy how few of the forty-one names recorded by Ralph correspond to the thirty-two in Hugh’s handbook; but it can surely be no coincidence that both catalogues begin with Pompeius Trogus, a Roman historian in the first century before Christ.112 Although Ralph de Diceto was undeniably acquainted with the Chronicle composed by Hugh, there is no trace of the manuscript to which he had access.113 The origins of that exemplar remain unestablished. It has previously been suggested that Ralph’s copy was borrowed from the monks of St Albans, or acquired through the mediation of Bishop Arnulf of Lisieux (d. circa 1182), his friend and correspondent, who retired to the abbey of Saint- Victor.114 However, there is another, simpler explanation to account for the witness available at St Paul’s.Ralph had himself been a student in Paris, presumably no earlier than the 1140s. It is highly likely that he would have first encountered Hugh’s Chronicle during his residence in that city.115 The St Albans connection nonetheless deserves more detailed consideration. Simon, successively prior and abbot (1167-83) of that house, is known to have written to Prior Richard (1162-73), his famous counterpart at Saint-Victor, lamenting that many of Hugh’s treatises could not be obtained in England.116 Simon enclosed a list (the contents of which are not recorded) of those works which St Albans already possessed, and requested that a member of his community be permitted to visit Paris in order to transcribe the remainder. It cannot be proved whether a monk of St Albans ever fulfilled this mission, but it is likely that Simon’s petition received a positive response: an inventory of Hugh’s writings (Indiculum omnium scriptorum magistri Hugonis de sancto Uictore), arguably forming Richard’s reply, is preserved uniquely in Oxford, Merton College, MS. 49, ff. 81r-82v, resembling a similar list of St Albans’s books compiled during the second half of the twelfth century.117 Furthermore, it should be noted that the convent of St Albans had obtained a copy of Hugh’s Chronicle by the early years of the fourteenth century, as recorded in the union catalogue (Registrum Anglie de libris doctorum et auctorum ueterum) compiled by the Oxford Franciscans.118 On the other hand, it is clear that St Albans need not have been the sole medium for the Chronicle’s dissemination in England. Numerous religious houses were in possession of that text, and might feasibly have loaned their copy to Ralph de Diceto, if one were not already available at St Paul’s.
111 Radulfi de Diceto Opera Historica, ed. Stubbs, vols. i, pp. 20-4; ii, pp. xvii-xix. 112 The other names in common are Hegesippus, Josephus, Justin, Orosius and Sextus Iulius Africanus. Hugh’s full list is reproduced in the Appendix. 113 Hugh’s Chronicle is not recorded in any of the published library catalogues cited by N. R. Ker, ‘Books at St Paul’s Cathedral before 1313’, in his Books, Collectors and Libraries: Studies in the Medieval Heritage (London, 1985), pp. 209-42 (p. 209). 114 Zinn,‘The Influence of Hugh of St.Victor’s Chronicon’, pp. 59-61. 115 Of particular value in this context is the letter addressed to Ralph on his second visit to the Parisian schools, provisionally dated 1160: Frank Barlow (ed.), The Letters of Arnulf of Lisieux (no. 26), Camden Society, 3rd series, lxi (London, 1939), pp. 35-6. 116 Patrologia Latina, ed. Migne, cxcvi (epistle viii), cols. 1228-9; Zinn, ‘The Influence of Hugh of St.Victor’s Chronicon’, pp. 60-1; Rodney M.Thomson, Manuscripts from St Albans Abbey 1066-1235,2 vols. (Woodbridge, 1982), vol. i, pp. 64-6. 117 R.W.Hunt, ‘The Library of the Abbey of St Albans’, in M. B. Parkes & Andrew G.Watson (eds.), Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts & Libraries: Essays presented to N. R. Ker (London, 1978), pp. 251-4, 269-73; Thomson, Manuscripts from St Albans Abbey,vol. i, p. 65. 118 Mynors, Rouse & Rouse (eds.), Registrum Anglie,p.259.
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The Book-Lists
Pre-Dissolution records attest to the presence of Hugh of Saint-Victor’s Chronicle in eleven monastic libraries in the British Isles (Barnwell, Brinkburn, Christ Church Canterbury, Crowland, Kelso, Leicester, Merton, Newminster, St Albans, Stoneleigh and St Mary’s York).119 The late-fifteenth-century library catalogue of Augustinian Leicester Abbey indicates that those canons had two copies of this work;120 John Leland (d. 1552) witnessed another in the book-collection of the Augustinians of Barnwell (Cambridgeshire);121 a fifteenth-century catalogue from St Mary’s, York, records a manuscript of the same text, with a note questioning the ascription of authorship;122 while Hugh’s Chronicle is the final item in a book described in the early-fourteenth-century catalogue compiled for Christ Church, Canterbury.123 The York and Christ Church copies of the Chronicle are similarly noticed in the fourteenth-century Franciscan survey of Insular libraries (Registrum Anglie), together with those in a further seven religious houses (Brinkburn, Crowland, Kelso, Merton, Newminster, St Albans and Stoneleigh).124 In two instances, the other contents of these books are reported. One of the Leicester copies was preceded by Gregory the Great’s Regula pastoralis and Jerome’s Liber questionum hebraicarum in Genesim; while that at Christ Church followed Hugh’s commentary on the Lamentations of Jeremiah, Eutropius’s Breuiarium historie Romane, Richard Pluto’s Unde malum and De gradibus uirtutum, and Adelard of Bath’s Questiones naturales.125 The title of Hugh’s handbook is recorded variously as ‘Hugo de iijbus circumstanciis gestorum, personis, locis et temporibus’ (Leicester),‘Cronica magistri Hugonis compendiosa’ (in the library catalogue of St Mary’s,York),and ‘Chronica Hugonis de S. Victore. Fili sapientia thesaurus est’(by Leland). This title is conflated somewhat in Registrum Anglie, where it reads ‘Cronica de tribus maximis circumstanciis’. These records demonstrate that Hugh’s Chronicle was once in the possession of five Benedictine convents in England and southern Scotland (Christ Church Canterbury, Crowland, Kelso, St Albans and St Mary’s York), together with four Augustinian houses (Barnwell, Brinkburn, Leicester and Merton) and two Cistercian abbeys (Newminster and Stoneleigh).This repeats the pattern in mainland Europe, where the Chronicle was reportedly most popular with members of the regular monastic Orders, and less so among their mendicant counterparts.126
119 There were possibly other copies at Bridlington Priory (East Riding, Yorkshire) and Durham Cathedral Priory, described in both instances as ‘Cronica Hugonis’. However, these may equally be identified as the Chronicle of Hugh of Fleury (often ascribed to Ivo of Chartres):Webber & Watson (eds.), The Libraries of the Augustinian Canons (A4.53), p. 15; Thomas Rud, Codicum Manuscriptorum Ecclesiæ Cathedralis Dunelmensis Catalogus Classicus (Durham, 1825), p. 433; Catalogi Veteres Librorum Ecclesiæ Cathedralis Dunelm. [ed. Beriah Botfield], Publications of the Surtees Society,[vii] (London, 1838), pp. 31, 109.This Durham witness, attested in 1391 and again in 1416, was preceded by Palladius’s De agricultura. 120 Webber & Watson (eds.), The Libraries of the Augustinian Canons (A20.290c, 358-9), pp. 171, 188.The ‘Tabula Biblie’ (A20.290d) which follows De tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum must surely represent Hugh’s historical lists. 121 Webber & Watson (eds.), The Libraries of the Augustinian Canons (A2.1), p. 6. 122 Sharpe et al. (eds.), English Benedictine Libraries (B120.392), p. 723. 123 ,James (ed.), The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover (§175), p. 36. 124 Mynors, Rouse & Rouse (eds.), Registrum Anglie (R97.34), pp. 234, 249, 254, 259, 275, 299, 302, 305, 312-13. 125 Richard Pluto was a monk of Christ Church: neither of his works listed here are known to have survived. The second Leicester copy was reportedly found in the same volume as Freculf of Lisieux’s Chronicle, though it is stated elsewhere (A20.614) that this abbey possessed a book containing Freculf’s work alone: it is possible that one of these entries is in error. 126 Goy, Die Überlieferung der Werke Hugos von St.Viktor,p.43.
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Conclusions
The present analysis outlines the evidence, some of it explicit, for the reception of Hugh of Saint-Victor’s Chronicle in the British Isles.At least fifteen religious communities owned copies of this handbook, encompassing convents with a rich intellectual heritage (Christ Church, St Albans and Worcester) and less prominent houses whose literary history is comparatively obscure (Brinkburn and Deeping).127 There can be no doubt that other English examples were formerly in existence: even if Hugh’s Chronicle may never have been widely disseminated, it reached a greater potential audience than has hitherto been appreciated. The surviving testimony also permits speculation with regard to the production and transmission of this work. Five of the extant manuscripts of English origin or provenance were transcribed between the middle of the twelfth century and circa 1250, thereby mirroring the Chronicle’sheyday in mainland Europe. It can be postulated that most of the copies attested in Insular book-lists were made at a similar period: that at Christ Church, for example, contained four other twelfth-century texts, the most recent author being the Canterbury monk, Richard Pluto (d. circa 1181). It is equally noteworthy that the transcription of Hugh’s Chronicle was sometimes divided between two scribes, one taking responsibility for the prologue and the other the accompanying tables, as in MSS. J and E. The second portion was clearly the more arduous task: it cannot often have been allocated to an inexperienced scribe. Likewise, each witness of the Chronicle, with the notable exception of that attested at St Paul’s, is associated with a house occupied by regular monks or canons. That work seemingly had most relevance to those religious confined within the cloister, both as a compendium for the study of Biblical and mediaeval history,and as a tool for enhancing the memory’s capability. There is one other dimension to the use of this Chronicle in the British Isles. No English author scrutinized that compilation more thoroughly than Ralph de Diceto, whose own historical writings were demonstrably obtained by the convents of Bermondsey, Christ Church Canterbury, St Albans, Southwark and St Mary’s York, and perhaps by their counterparts at Lewes, Osney and Winchester.128 These works were further utilized by the chroniclers of Bury St Edmunds, Dunstable, Norwich and Waverley, at St Albans by Roger of Wendover (d. 1236), Matthew Paris (d. circa 1259) and Thomas Walsingham (d. circa 1422), and by the Dominican friar Nicholas Trevet (fl. 1334).129 Matthew Paris even annotated the surviving St Albans copy of Abbreuiationes chronicorum.130 The inference is clear: these later historians were all indebted to Ralph; while he in turn owed much to his study of Hugh’s handbook. It can confidently be asserted that Hugh of Saint-Victor’s Chronicle exerted greater influence upon English historical scholarship than has previously been envisaged.131
127 Mynors, Rouse & Rouse (eds.), Registrum Anglie,p.313; Sharpe et al. (eds.), English Benedictine Libraries, pp. 606-8. 128 Bermondsey (Sharpe et al. (eds.), English Benedictine Libraries [B10.44], p. 27); Christ Church, Canterbury (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College [CCCC], MS. 76, ff. 2-19, 22-24); St Albans (BL, Royal MS. 13 E.VI); Southwark (BL, Cotton MS. Faustina A. VIII, ff. 52r-110v); St Mary’s, York (BL, Add. MS. 40007); Lewes (BL, Cotton MS. Otho D.VII, severely damaged by fire); Osney (BL, Cotton MS.Tiberius A. IX, ff. 2r-51v); Winchester (BL, Cotton MS. Claudius E. III, ff. 3v-168r). Another, unprovenanced witness of Ralph’s Opuscula is CCCC MS. 313, vol. ii. Cotton Claudius E. III, Royal 13 E. VI and CCCC 76 are all products of the St Paul’s scriptorium, and should presumably be regarded as presentation copies. 129 Radulfi de Diceto Opera Historica, ed. Stubbs, vol. ii, pp. lviii-lix; Gransden, Historical Writing in England,pp. 332, 359, 364, 366-7, 395-6, 412, 444, 504; eadem, Historical Writing in England, ii, c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (London, 1982), p. 126; C. R. Cheney,‘The Making of the Dunstable Annals, A.D. 33 to 1242’, in his Medieval Texts and Scribes (Oxford, 1973), pp. 209-30 (pp. 214-19). 130 R.Vaughan,‘The Handwriting of Matthew Paris’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society,i (1949- 53), pp. 376-94 (pp. 381, 391). 131 I should like to thank Michelle Brown, Diana Greenway, Michael Gullick and Colin Tite, all of whom have assisted immeasurably with the writing of this survey.
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Appendix:The Historians of Antiquity
Hugh’s list of ancient historians has previously been published by Georg Waitz,based on the copy in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS. lat. 4891, with additional readings from that in Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, MS. theol. 350.132 Most of these names have been identified successfully by Bernard Guenée, who also consulted the version in BN, MS. lat. 15009.133 It should be noted, however, that ‘Cornelius’represents Cornelius Tacitus, occurring in Orosius, Historia aduersum paganos (VII.27), in the combination ‘Pompeium Trogum et Cornelium Tacitum’ (and not Cornelius Nepos = Dares of Phrygia as suggested by Guenée).134 ‘De nominibus historiographorum’ is reprinted here in order to facilitate comparison with the similar catalogue compiled by Ralph de Diceto, part of the introductory matter to his Abbreuiationes chronicorum.135 The present text is that of Cotton Julius B. XIII (fig. 7), but Stowe 4 (f. 272rb) has also been examined: this second BL witness contains many orthographical variants, and is headed ‘Nomina hystoriographorum’ (see fig. 6). The following abbreviations have been employed for Hugh’s sources: Gregory: Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri decem Josephus: Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities (in Latin translation) Livy: Titus Livius, Ab urbe condita libri Orosius: Paulus Orosius, Historia aduersum paganos
Cotton MS. Julius B. XIII, f. 27v
De nominibus historiographorum.
[1] Pompeius Tro
132 Waitz,‘Beschreibung von Handschriften’, pp. 307-8. 133 Guenée,‘Les Premiers pas de l’histoire de l’historiographie’, pp. 137-9. 134 Ibid., p. 137. 135 Radulfi de Diceto Opera Historica, ed. Stubbs, vols. i, pp. 20-4; ii, pp. xvii-xix.
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Fig. 7. Hugh’s list of ancient historians. Cotton MS. Julius B. XIII, f. 27v
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[12] Cinnius Alimentius. Lucius Cincius Alimentus (fl. 210 B.C.), author of a history of Rome (in Greek): Livy (XXI.38) [13] Helius. Quintus Aelius Tubero (late-first century B.C.), author of Annales and a Roman history in at least 14 books: (?)Livy (IV.23) [14] Claudius qui et annales Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius, author of a history of Rome in at least 23 Acilianos de Greco in books, and reputedly translator of a history of Rome (in Greek) by Gaius Latinum transtulit. Acilius: Livy (XXV.39); Orosius (IV.20 etc.) [15] Suetonius Tranquillus. Suetonius (Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus) (d. c. A.D. 130), author of De uiris illustribus and De uita Caesarum:Orosius (VI.7 etc.) [16] Alexander Polistor. Alexander ‘Polyhistor’ (first century B.C.), compiler of various treatises on geography, philosophy and marvels: Josephus (I.240-1) [17] Ieronimus Egiptius de Hieronymus the Egyptian, who composed a history of Phoenicia: Josephus antiquitate Phenicie. (I.94) [18] Manasseas Damascenus. a conflation of Mnaseas of Patura (fl. c. 200 B.C.), author of a collection of mythological tales, with Nicolaus of Damascus (no. 25), derived from the faulty Latin translation (‘Mnaseas Damascenus’) of Josephus: Josephus (I.94) [19] Horosus de istoria Berosus (fl. 290 B.C.), author of a Babylonian history in at least 3 books, Caldeorum. now preserved only in fragments: Josephus (I.93 etc.) [20] Megastenis de istoria Megasthenes (d. 290 B.C.), author of a history of India: Josephus (X.227) Indica. [21] Diocles de historia (?)Diocles of Peparethos (probably third century B.C.), whose work was Coloniarum. utilized by Quintus Fabius Pictor: Josephus (X.228) [22] Philostratus, de historiis Philostratus: Josephus (X.228) Indicis et Phenicis. [23] Ouidius Sabarcides de Agatharchides of Cnidus (fl. 145 B.C.), Greek historian and philosopher: successoribus Alexandri.Josephus (XII.5-7) [24] Polibius Megalopolitanus, Polybius of Megalopolis (d. c. 118 B.C.), author of Histories (in Greek) in 40 de Tholomeis. books, of which only the first five survive intact: Josephus (XII.135-7, 358-9); Orosius (IV.20) [25] Nicholaus. Nicolaus of Damascus (first century B.C.), author of a universal history in 144 books, repeating no. 18: Josephus (I.94, 108 etc.) [26] Arnobius rethor de a probable conflation of Arnobius the Elder (fl. A.D. 310), teacher of rhetoric diuersitate linguarum in and author of Aduersus nationes in 7 books, with Arnobius Junior (fifth expositione psalmi .ciiii. . century A.D.), who wrote allegorical commentaries on the Psalms [27] Titus Lunus. Livy (Titus Livius) (d. A.D. 17), author of Ab urbe condita libri in 142 books, of which only books 1-10 and 21-45 survive intact: Orosius (III.21 etc.) [28] Anneus Florus. Lucius Annaeus Florus (second century A.D.), author of Epitome bellorum omnium annorum .dcc. [29] Iosephus antiquitatum et Josephus (Flavius Josephus) (first century A.D.), author of De antiquitatibus de excidio Ierosolimorum. Iudaicis and De bello Iudaico:Orosius (VII.6, 9) [30] Egesippus. Hegesippus (second century A.D.), author (according to Eusebius) of 5 books of Memoirs [31] Orosius de hormesta Paulus Orosius (fl. A.D. 417), author of Historia aduersum paganos (De ormesta mundi) in 7 books [32] Victor de historia Victor, bishop of Vita (fl. A.D. 488), author of Historia persecutionis Africanae Affricana. prouinciae
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