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Cotton MS Faustina A X
- Record Id:
- 040-001103859
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-001101582
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000001273.0x000054
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100059097123.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Cotton MS Faustina A X
- Title:
- Ælfric, Grammar (imperfect); Ælfric, Glossary; proverbs and maxims; grammatical dialogue; Old English translation of the Rule of St Benedict; account known as 'King Edgar's Establishment of the Monasteries' (incomplete)
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript contains texts written in the late 11th century on ff. 3r-101v, with many later annotations. Meanwhile, the second half of the manuscripts (ff. 102r-151v) contains 12th-century copies of Old English works which have been attributed to Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester (d. 984), or to his close associates.
The codex includes:
f. 1r: early modern notes on the manuscript's owners;
f. 1v: blank;
f. 2r: early modern table of contents;
f. 2v: note referring to the library of St John's College, Oxford;
ff. 3r-92v: Ælfric, Grammar (imperfect);
ff. 92v-100v: Ælfric, Glossary;
ff. 100v, 101v: proverbs and maxims, some attributed to Hugh of Amiens and Adalbold, Bishop of Utrecht;
ff. 101 r-v: grammatical dialogue;
ff. 102r-148r: Old English translation of Regula sancti Benedicti;
f. 102r: marginal lines on 'De vii vitiis', in a mid-12th-century hand;
ff. 102v-103r: extracts from chapters 16 and 17 of Halitgar's De vitiis et virtutibus, copied in the margins in a mid-12th-century hand;
f. 105r: 41 lines of verse copied in the margins in a mid-12th-century hand, including 34 verses attributed to Roger of Caen;
f. 106r: extract from Halitgar's De vitiis et virtutibus, copied in the margins in a mid-12th-century hand;
ff. 106r-111r, 151r: questions on theology, some of which quote Peter Aberlard and St Augustine, in the margin;
f. 116r: charms in Old English and Latin, including recipes or remedies against illnesses, copied in the margins in a mid-12th-century hand;
f. 117v: Latin-Latin and Latin-Anglo-Norman wordlists, copied in the margins in a late 12th- or early 13th-century hand, and a maxim attributed to St Augustine, extracts from chapters 16 and 17 of Halitgar's De vitiis et virtutibus, copied in the margins in a 13th-century hand;
f. 147v: extracts from Seneca's letters to Lucilius, copied in the margins in a mid-12th-century hand;
ff. 148r-151v: the only surviving copy of an account of King Edgar's establishment or reform of the monasteries in England (incomplete: there is some text missing before f. 149r);
ff. 149r-150v: extracts from Publilius Syrus's Proverbs, arranged alphabetically, copied in the margins in a mid-12th-century hand;
f. 150v: different tenses of the Latin verb 'pango', copied in the margins in a late 12th-century hand.
Decoration: initials, rubrics, and highlighted letters in red and oxidized red (throughout ff. 3r-101v); initials in green (f. 32v); initials in black with penwork decoration (f. 101r); initials in red and green, with penwork decoration (f. 102r); initials in red and green, sometimes alternating (throughout ff. 104v-147v); rubrics in red (ff. 104v-147v); text in red and green (f. 148r).
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Cotton Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-001101582
040-001103859 - Is part of:
- Cotton MS : Cotton Manuscripts
Cotton MS Faustina A X : Ælfric, Grammar (imperfect); Ælfric, Glossary; proverbs and maxims; grammatical dialogue; Old English translation of… - Hierarchy:
- 032-001101582[1236]/040-001103859
- 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_100059097123.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Old
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1050
- End Date:
- 1149
- Date Range:
- 3rd quarter of the 11th century-1st half of the 12th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Condition: leaves damaged by fire in 1731.
Materials: Parchment and ink.
Dimensions: binding 235 × 160 mm (text space, not including marginalia: 180 x 100 mm).
Foliation: ff. 151 (where ff. 1-2 are early modern endleaves + 3 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and 1 unfoliated parchment and 3 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the end).
Binding: Post-1600, rebacked at the British Museum in 1951.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
ff. 3-101: England (? Worcester), 2nd half of the 11th century. It may have been copied by a scribe who has also been identified as the main scribe of Oxford, Bodleian Hatton 115 (see Ker, Catalogue (1957), p. 195).
ff. 102-151v: England, 1st half of the 12th century.
Provenance:
? Worcester Cathedral Priory: medieval annotations in the same hand appear in both halves, suggesting that these parts had been joined to form a single codex in the medieval period (see, for example, ff. 92v and 193r; Ker, Catalogue (1957), p. 195).
Sarah Bankes: inscribed with her name (f. 51v) and her name in reverse (f. 3r).
Thomas Cartwright of Aynho (d. 1748): owned, according to inscription (f. 1r).
Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (b. 1571, d. 1631), 1st baronet, antiquary and politician: acquired from Thomas Cartwright in 1703 (f. 1r). Cotton’s collection was augmented by his son, Sir Thomas Cotton (b. 1594, d. 1662), 2nd baronet, and his grandson, Sir John Cotton. Sir John Cotton (b. 1621, d. 1702), 3rd baronet: 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:
-
Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, ed. by A.N. Doane and others, 15 (Binghamton, New York, and Tempe, Arizona, 2007), no. 193.
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. 95 [exhibition catalogue].
Buckalew, R.E., 'Leland's Transcript of Ælfric's Glossary', Anglo-Saxon England, 7 (1978), 149-64.
Burnett, Charles and David Luscombe, ‘A new student for Peter Abelard: the marginalia in British Library MS Cotton Faustina A. X’, in J. F. Meirinhos (ed.), Itinéraires de la raison: Études de philosophie médiévale offertes à Maria Cândida Pacheco (Louvain-la-Neuve: Fédération internationale des instituts d'études médiévales, 2005), pp. 163–86.
Careri, Maria, Christine Ruby and Ian Short, Livres et écritures en français et en occitan au XIIe siècle: Catalogue illustré (Rome: Viella, 2011), no. A9.
Gameson, Richard, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England (c. 1066-1130) (Oxford, 1999), nos. 383 and 384.
Gretsch, Mechthild, 'Æthelwold's Translation of the Regula Sancti Benedicti and its Latin Exemplar', Anglo-Saxon England,3 (1974), 125-51 (pp. 126-37).
Hartzell, K. D., Catalogue of Manuscripts Written or Owned in England up to 1200 containing Music (Woodbridge, 2006), no. 133.
Jayatilaka, Rohini, ‘The Old English Benedictine rule: writing for women and men’, Anglo-Saxon England, 32 (2003), 147–87.
Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957; repr. 1990), no. 154.
Álvarez López, Francisco, 'Monastic Learning in Twelfth-Century England: Marginalia, Provenance and Use in London, British Library, Cotton MS. Faustina A. X, Part B', Electronic British Library Journal (2012), Article 11 [http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2012articles/pdf/ebljarticle112012.pdf] (accessed 1 February 2016).
Menzer, M., 'Multilingual Glosses, Bilingual Text: English, French and Latin in Three Manuscripts of Ælfric's Grammar', in Old English Literature in its Manuscript Context, ed. by Joyce Tally Lionarons (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2004), pp. 95-119 (pp. 95, 102, 109-19).
[Planta, J.], A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library, Deposited in the British Museum (London, 1802), pp. 604-05.
Swan, Mary, 'Ælfric's Catholic Homilies in the Twelfth Century', in Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century, ed. by Mary Swan and Elaine Treharne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 62-82 (pp. 66-67, 76-78, 80-82).
Swan, Mary, 'Mobile Libraries: Old English Manuscript Production in Worcester and the West Midlands, 1090-1215', in Essays in Manuscript Geography: Vernacular Manuscripts of the English West Midlands from the Conquest to the Sixteenth Century, ed. by Wendy Scase (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 29-42 (pp. 36-37).
Tite, Colin, The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton's Library: Formation, Cataloguing, Use (London: British Library, 2003), p. 219.
Whitelock, Dorothy and others, Councils and Synods, with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), I, pp. 144-54 [includes edition and translation of 'King Edgar's Establishment of the Monasteries'].
Zupitza, Julius (ed.), Ælfrics Grammatik und Glossar (Berlin, 1880) [includes edition where Cotton Faustina A X is collated as F].
- 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)