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Cotton MS Julius E VII

Record Id:

040-001101757

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

032-001101582

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000001246.0x000019

LARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100058085880.0x000001

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Cotton MS Julius E VII

Title:

Ælfric, Lives of Saints; Ælfric, Interrogationes Sigewulfi in Genesin; De falsis diis

Scope & Content:

This manuscript contains one of the earliest known copies of Ælfric's Lives of the Saints, along with two other texts associated with Ælfric and four possibly anonymous saints' lives (Euphrosyne, Eustace, Mary of Egypt, and the Seven Sleepers). All of these texts were apparently intended as a single volume. The table of contents (f. 4v) includes a reference to another text, De duodecim abusivis, was intended to be included after De falsis diis, but it is not now present. Many of the glosses and corrections appear to have been written in the early 11th century.

Contents include:

ff. 3r-230r: Ælfric, Lives of Saints;

ff. 230r-238r: Ælfric, Interrogationes Sigewulfi in Genesin;

ff. 238r-240v: De falsis diis (imperfect).

Decoration: ornate red initials throughout. Some rubrication is now grey.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Cotton Collection

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-001101582
040-001101757

Is part of:

Cotton MS : Cotton Manuscripts

Cotton MS Julius E VII : Ælfric, Lives of Saints; Ælfric, Interrogationes Sigewulfi in Genesin; De falsis diis

Hierarchy:

032-001101582[0050]/040-001101757

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Cotton MS

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 parchment codex

Digitised Content:

https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100058085880.0x000001

Thumbnail:

Languages:

English, Old
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1000

End Date:

1033

Date Range:

1st third of the 11th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Parchment and ink.

Dimensions: 290 x 205 mm.

Foliation: fos. i + 241 (where ff. i and 1 are early modern endleaves and f. 2 is a Cottonian frontispiece).

Script: English vernacular minuscule, English Caroline minuscule.

Binding: BM/BL in-house. Rebound in 1914.

Custodial History:

Origin: Southern England (? the Benedictine abbey of Bury St Edmunds, or Canterbury): probably written by one scribe, 1st half of the 11th century (see Ker, Catalogue (1957), p. 210; Stokes, English Vernacular Minuscule (2014), p. 143).

Provenance:

The Benedictine abbey of Bury St Edmunds, 13th century: inscribed 'Liber sancti Ædmundi regis [et] martyris' (f. 3r).

16th-century: interlinear glosses in English added (ff. 153-55, 203, 230).

Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (b. 1571, d. 1631), 1st baronet, antiquary and politician : the volume was in Cotton's possession by 1621 and is recorded in the catalogue of the Cottonian collection, Harley MS 6018, no. 179. This item was perhaps once bound with Cotton MS Tiberius B II, ff. 2–85.

Cotton’s collection was augmented by his son, Sir Thomas Cotton, 2nd baronet (b. 1594, d. 1662), and his grandson, Sir John Cotton (his name is inscribed on f. 3r). Sir John Cotton, 3rd baronet (b. 1621, d. 1702) bequeathed the entire Cotton collection of books and manuscripts to trustees ‘for Publick Use and Advantage’, 12 and 13 William III, c. 7. Formed one of the foundation collections of the British Museum in 1753.

Information About Copies:

Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk.manuscripts.

Publications:

Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, ed. by Claire Breay and Joanna Story (London: The British Library, 2018), no. 96 [exhibition catalogue].

Alcamesi, Filippa, 'Ælfric’s Interrogationes Sigewulfi in Genesin: an Educational Dialogue’, in Practice in Learning: The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages,ed. by R. Bremmer and K. Dekker (Leuven: Peeters, 2009), 175-202 (pp. 192, 200-202).

Biggs, Frederick and others, Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture I: Abbo of Fleury, Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and Acta Sanctorum (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 2001), pp. 22-486

Bussières, Michèle, 'The Controversy about Scribe C in British Library, Cotton MSS, Julius E. vii', Leeds Studies in English, 38 (2007), 53-72.

Corona, Gabriella, Ælfric’s Life of Basil the Great: Background and Context (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2006), pp. 127-30.

Dumville, David, 'Beowulf Come Lately: Some Notes on the Palaeography of the Nowell Codex', Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 225 (1988), 49-63 (pp. 60-61).

Dumville, David, English Caroline Script and Monastic History: Studies in Benedictinism, A.D. 950-1030 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1993), pp. 78-79.

Gameson, Richard, 'The material fabric of early British books' in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, 6 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999-2012), I: 400-1100 (2012), ed. by Richard Gameson, pp. 13-93 (p. 67 n. 232).

Gneuss, Helmut and Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), no. 339.

Hill, Joyce, 'The Dissemination of Ælfric's Lives of the Saints: A Preliminary Survey', in Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints' Lives and Their Context, ed. by Paul Szarmach (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 235-59.

Hill, Joyce, ‘Identifying “texts” in Cotton Julius E vii: medieval and modern perspectives’, in A. N. Doane & Kirsten Wolf (eds.), Beatus Vir: Studies in Early English and Norse Manuscripts in memory of Phillip Pulsiano (Tempe, AZ, 2006), pp. 27–40.

Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957; repr. 1990), no. 162.

Ker, N. R. (ed.), Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books (London, 2nd edn., 1964), p. 20.

Lapidge, Michael, 'Ælfric’s Sanctorale', in Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints' Lives and Their Context, ed. by Paul Szarmach (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 115-30 (pp. 118, 128).

Lapidge, Michael, The Cult of St Swithun (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), pp. 580-85.

The Old English Life of St Mary of Egypt: An Edition of the Old English Text with Modern English Parallel-Text Translation, ed. by Hugh Magennis (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002), pp. 16-25.

The Old English Lives of St Martin of Tours, ed. and trans. by Andre Mertens (Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2017), pp. 111, 114, 137-39, 145, 261-389.

The Homilies of Ælfric, ed. by J.C. Pope, Early English Text Society, original series 259-60, 2 vols (London: Oxford University Press, 1967-68), I, 83-85.

Roberts, Jane, A Guide to Scripts Used in English Writings Up to 1500 (London: The British Library, 2005), pp. 82-84.

Rushforth, Rebecca, 'The Eleventh- and Early Twelfth-Century Manuscripts of Bury St Edmunds Abbey' (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge, 2003), pp. 163-64.

Scragg, Donald, 'Corpus of Anonymous Lives and Their Manuscript Context', in Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints' Lives and Their Context, ed. by Paul Szarmach (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 209-30 (pp. 217, 229).

Scragg, Donald, 'Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 162', in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and Their Heritage, ed. by Phillip Pulsiano and Elaine Treharne (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 71-84 (pp. 77, 82 n. 9)

Ælfric’s Lives of the Saints: Being a Set of Sermons on Saints’ Days Formerly Observed by the English Church, ed. and trans. by W.W. Skeat, Early English Text Society, original series 76/82, 94/114, 2 vols (Trübner, 1881-1900) [includes edition and translation].

Stokes, Peter, English Vernacular Minuscule from Æthelred to Cnut circa 990-1035 (D.S. Brewer: Cambridge, 2014), 32, 69, 100, 101, 143-44.

Szarmach, Paul, 'Foreword', in Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints' Lives and Their Context, ed. by Paul Szarmach (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), ix-xviii (pp. xii, xiv).

Szarmach, Paul, 'St Euphrosyne: Holy Transvestite', in Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints' Lives and Their Context, ed. by Paul Szarmach (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 353-66 (pp. 361-62).

Torkar, R., 'Zu den Vorlagen der ae. Handschrift Cotton Julius E. vii', Neuphilologische Mitteilungen,72 (1971), 711-15.

Upchurch, Robert, Ælfric's Lives of the Virgin Spouses (Exeter: University of Exeter, 2007), (pp. xi, 26-29, 52-53, 266-67).

Exhibitions:

Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, British Library, London, 19 October 2018 - 19 February 2019

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)