Table Of ContentA PRE-CONQUEST ENGLISH
PRAYER-BOOK
(BL MSS Cotton Galba A.xiv and Nero A.ii (ff.3-13))
Edited by
BERNARD JAMES MUIR
1988
HENRY BRADSHAW
SOCIETY
fottnbeb tn tbe )l>ear of ®ttr 1..orb
1890
tor tbe ebtttng of 'Rare 1.tturgtcal tte1ts
Clll
VOLUME
ISSUED TO MEMBERS FOR THE YEARS 1983-4
AND
PUBLISHED FOR THE SOCIETY
BY
THE BOYDELL PRESS
HENRY BRADSHAW SOCIETY
for the editing of rare liturgical texts
PRESIDENT
J.
The Rt Revd R. H . Moorman, DD
VICE-PRESIDENTS
The Revd Professor Henry Chadwick, LittD, FBA
The Revd Canon A. H . Couratin
Mgr Dr Dr.h.c. Klaus Gamber
Professor Dr Helmut Gneuss
Christopher Hohler Esq, FSA
M. Michel Huglo
Dr C. H. Talbot, FSA
OFFICERS OF THE COUNCIL
J.
Revd H. E. Cowdrey (Chairman)
D. F. L. Chadd Esq (General Secretary)
Dr M. Lapidge, LittD, FSA (Public.ations Secretary)
Dr M. B. Moreton (Treasurer)
Enquiries concerning membership of the Society should be addressed
to the Hon. General Secretary, D. F . L. Chadd, School of Art,
TfJ.
History & Music, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4
Un1v. librarv, UC Santa Cruz 1989
©
Henry Bradshaw Society 1988
First published for The Henry Bradshaw Society 1988
by The Boydell Press
an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Wolfeboro, New Hampshire 03894-2069, USA
ISBN 0 9501009 5 1
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A Pre-Conquest English prayer-book: (BL
MSS Cotton Galba A. xiv and Nero A. ii
(ff.3-13) ). (Henry Bradshaw Society,
ISSN 0144-0241; v. 103).
1. Devotional literature
I. Muir, Bernard, James II. British
Library. Manuscript. Cotton Galba A.XIV
Ill. British Library. Manuscript. Cotton
Nero A. II IV. Series
242 BV4832.2
ISBN 0-9501009-5-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
ISSN 0144-0241
Printed in Great Britain by
St Edmundsbury Press, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE vu••
INTRODUCTION •
IX
Description of the Manuscripts x
Script and Scribes xiii
Origin and Date xiv
Genre and Structure xvi
Contents xviii
Language xxi
New Material xxv
Notes on the Transcription and Editorial Policy xxv
Analogues xxvi
Plates xxxv
Bibliography xxxvii
Note on Editorial Procedure xli
Abbreviations xli
Sigla xliii
TEXT 1
INDEX OF INCIPITS 193
INDEX OF BIBLICAL REFERENCES 199
INDEX OF LITURGICAL FORMS 205
APPENDIX A (Illegible folios) 209
APPENDIX B (Foliation) 217
PLATES (following p. 220) 221
I
PREFACE
When I first turned to this undertaking I was aware that it would be
demanding: I felt that I should be a palaeographer, a liturgist, an
historian, a latinist, a literary scholar, and more, to bring it to a happy
conclusion. Luckily, I was young enough to think I could do it at the
time. Eventually I realized the exact proportions of the project, and
though humbled, persisted because I thought it unlikely that there
were many scholars today who would have mastered all these dis
ciplines and would also be interested in the manuscript. Moreover,
this manuscript has received little attention in the past because of its
poor condition, and apparently was held to be unimportant; it neither
contained a major text, nor was it an example of a certain type of
liturgical book. However, those who have examined the preliminary
draft of this edition, liturgists among them, have remarked that the
manuscript is significant in a number of ways, but principally because
it is not a formal liturgical book, and yet is intimately related to the
liturgy.
This edition is not primarily a study of the manuscript. It is a
critical edition of the texts, restoring and identifying them and making
them available to others. It explores sources and influences, and
makes suggestions concerning the nature of the compilation and its
position in the English devotional and liturgical tradition. It opens the
door to further study by specialists from various disciplines, a door
that has been only slightly ajar since Edmund Bishop first published
his account of the manuscript in 1907.
Finally, there are a few acknowledgements to make: I should like to
thank the staffs of the following libraries for their help-The British
Library, Corpus Christi College Library, Cambridge University
Library, the Bibliotheque Nationale, and the bibliotheques muni
cipales of Rouen and Orleans. The British Library has kindly granted
permission for the manuscript to be printed. The University of
Melbourne offered generous support for a research trip to England
and France in 1983 and a generous subvention towards the costs of
••
vu
A PRE-CONQUEST ENGLISH PRAYER-BOOK
publication. A number of scholars have responded to inquiries over
the years, and these I thank as a group for their assistance. In par
ticular, I acknowledge the patience and encouragement of both
Reverend David Tripp and Michael Lapidge of the Henry Bradshaw
Society, and the guidance and support of Roger Reynolds. Paul
Moore offered helpful advice on some difficult passages in the Latin,
and George Russell made some valuable suggestions concerning the
Introduction. Lastly, I take this opportunity to thank Edmund E.
Colledge, 0.S.A., a friend and colleague, who first suggested this
project, and supervised it in its preliminary form as a doctoral disser
tation at the University of Toronto (1981), and to whom it is dedicated.
U Diversity of Melbourne
All Saints Day
1984
• ••
vw
INTRODUCTION
The text presented here is a critical edition of British Library MSS.
Cotton Galba A. xiv (complete) (hereafter referred to as G) and Cotton
Nero A. ii (ff. 3-13) hereafter referred to as N.1 The leaves from N
have been placed at the beginning of the edition since they contain a
calendar and computational tables that would normally appear at the
beginning of a liturgical manuscript. After these two items there are a
poem, a prayer, and two hymns (see 'Contents'). As it is presently
bound, G consists of two computational texts (nos. 9 and 10) followed
by approximately 100 identifiable texts of various types: prayers,
hymns, medical recipes, litanies, and biblical florilegia-in both Latin
and Old English.2
N survived the Ashburnham House fire of October 23, 1731
unscathed. G was not so fortunate; it was badly burned and suffered
extensive damage from the water used to extinguish the fire. Its
binding has been completely lost with the result that in the post-fire
period it has received three different foliations. 3 A major part of this
edition has been the reconstruction of the text, first by identifying the
texts-which often lack an incipit, a desinit, or both-and then the
collation of these with identical or similar texts found in other
1 The Nero (hencefonh N) folios were first associated with the Galba (G) manuscript by
Neil Ker (Catalogue ofM anuscripts Conzaining Anglo-Saxon, Oxford, 1957, p. 200). In a
recent article Michael Lapidge has argued that the Nero folios were never of G
part
('Some Latin Poems as Evidence for the Reign of Athelstan', ASE 9 (1981), 61-98); see
the 'Description of the Manuscripts' for fi,lrther discussion of this matter. As the
following note in N indicates, it is a modern compilation: 'Volumen hoc fragmentorum
a Roberto Cotton collectum continet diversos Tractatus quae proxima in Pagina
sequuntur' (f. 2); it is not clear how the eleven leaves from N included in this edition
became separated from G before the fire (see below), or why Cotton decided to include
them in this (Nero A.ii) collection of miscellaneous religious writings.
In its present state, about 85 per cent of the texts in G are in Latin.
l
3 For a discussion of the foliation see Appeooix B. A most informative and vivid
description of the fire and the subsequent treatment of the damaged manuscripts, written
w
by one Mr. Winnington, is found in volume I of the Repons of House of Commons
1715-35 (published in 1803), pp. 445-507; this report is reprinted in C. G. C. Tite's
edition of Thomas Smith's Catalogw of the Cottonian manuscripts (see Bibliography).
4 See the statement of editorial policy, p. xxv .
•
lX
A PRE-CONQUEST ENGLISH PRAYER-BOOK
manuscripts from the period,4 where possible, those which are
contemporary, or nearly so, with G and N, and preferably from
England or the Frankish realm.5 Since, in the process of rebinding,
many of the folios of G have been wrongly arranged, an attempt has
been made here to re-establish the original sequence, so far as
possible, from information in the pre-fire catalogues and from internal
evidence (see pp. xi-xiii and Appendix B). The most remarkable
discoveries among the texts are nos. 14 and 15: no. 14 is a new witness
for the 'Altus Prosator', a Latin abecedary poem often attributed
(doubtfully) to St. Columba; no. 15 is another abecedary poem, the
'Adiutor laborantium', which is here also attributed to Columba.6
For the rest, the texts are primarily interesting for the versions of
traditional material which they present, for what they reveal about the
devotional tradition and education in England in the post-Benedictine
Revival period, and for what their arrangement within the manuscript
discloses about the nature of devotional collections from this period
(see 'Genre' and 'Analogues').
Several texts that are well-preserved and recognizable units within
the manuscript have already appeared in print (e.g. the Calendar),'
and all the decipherable items written in Old English have been edited
previously at least once.8
Description of the Manuscripts
There are two good descriptions of G-very distinct in style: the first
is the charming and sometimes lyrical one by Edmund Bishop, which
5 A description of the analogues used in the reconstruction of G is given below
(pp. xxvii-xxxi).
6 See the introductory remarks to no. 14 for funher discussion of this attribution.
7 The following texts have been printed separately:
no. 1 F . Wormald, English Kalendars before A .D. 1100, London, 1934, pp. 28-41;
also in F . A. Gasquet and E. Bishop, The Bosworth Psalter, London, 1908,
pp. 165-71.
no. 5 W. de Gray Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, London, 1887, II. 331.
nos. 11 and 12 Ibid. II. 332-33.
no. 34 H . Logeman, 'Anglo-Saxonica Minora', Anglia 11 (1889), p. 97.
no. 61 W. H. Frere, The Leofric Collectar II, London, 1921, pp. 618-26.
nos. 64, 65 and 68 R. A. Banks, 'Some Anglo-Saxon Prayers from British Museum
MS. Cotton Galba A.xiv', N&Q 210 (1%5) 207-13.
no. 68 L. Gjerl0w, Adoratio Crucis, Oslo, 1%1.
8 For bibliographical information see the introductory remarks to each text, which can
be located by consulting the 'Index'.
x
