Durham, Cathedral Library, B. IV. 24
B. IV. 24
General Information
109
248
This 'miscellaneous' manuscript (B[otfield] 1838, p. i), mainly written in s. xi2 with many additions in s. xii1, includes the following Latin items:
- Letter of Pope Alexander III to Roger, Archbishop of York and Hugh, Bishop of Durham, 26 July 1177 (fols 3:5v/1-33)
- Kalendar (fols 8:8r/1-11v/33)
- Durham Martyrology (fols 12:14v/1-39r/38)
- Gospel Capitula (fols 39v/1-45r/14)
- Lanfranc's Constitutions (fols 47r/1-71v/38)
The Old English is found in the bilingual version of the Rule of St Benedict. Æthelwold's Old English translation (fols 98v/1-123v/28) follows the Latin text (fols 74v-95v). This arrangement is 'different from that of all other bilingual copies of the Rule, in which the Old English follows the Latin chapter by chapter' (Ker 1957 p. 148). Although the Old English version has a very similar layout to the Latin version, it may be have been written 'as an afterthought', as Piper suggests (1994, pp. 80-81).
The capitula of the Latin text are numbered I-LXXIII, but the chapters in the text itself are numbered I-LXXII, because chapter 62 is omitted. The Old English has no capitula, chapter-headings, or chapter numbers, but the text is written in paragraphs which agree with the chapters of the Latin text, and each paragraph begins with the first words of the corresponding Latin chapter. Unlike the Latin text, chapter 62 is not omitted (Ker 1957, p. 148).
Digital Surrogate
Object Description
Codex
Support: Parchment
Extent:
- ca. 265 mm x ca. 180 mm (dimensions of all - size of page)
- ca. 215 mm x ca. 140 mm (dimensions of all - size of written space)
Collation:
- Quires: Fols i + 1-127 (69 is used twice). The manuscript is 'a compendium of five discrete sets of quires which broadly correspond to contents' (Keefer 2007, p. 101).
- Quire I: Various added texts and records
- Quires II-V (+VI?): The Calendar, Usuard, and Gospel capitula
- Quires VII-X: Lanfranc
- Quires XIV-XVII: Old English Rule of St Benedict
- Quires XI-XIII: Latin Rule of St Benedict
Rule of St Benedict is in six quires of eight leaves (fols 74-121), followed by one quire of six leaves (fols 122-27; it lacks original 5, and now has a singleton in its place). The four quires containing the Old English text (fols 98-127) have their own signatures, i-iii, at the end.
Hand Description
Number of Hands: 1 in Old English
Summary: The Old English is contemporary with the Latin text of the Rule, but 'in a better hand' (Ker 1957, p. 149).
Hand: main text
Scope: Major
Summary of the characteristics of the hand: The Old English Rule of St Benedict (fols 98-127). Palaeographical images can be found in the C11 Database Project (available for limited viewing on the Internet Wayback Machine). Ker (1957) lists the following characteristics of this hand:
- ð, not æ, is usually used for th.
- descenders are short with ends curving to the left.
Abbreviations: The nota ˥ is usually raised above the general level of the letters.
The initials, alternately purple (sometimes filled with yellow) and red, are by the same hand throughout (fols 74-127) (Ker 1957, p. 149). There are usually six per page, each new verse having a coloured initial for the Latin and the English. They are arranged alternately, and usually with three verses to a page, so that the initials are red (left margin), purple (midline), purple (left margin), red (midline), red (left margin), purple (midline), or vice versa. In all but two instances where initials overlap they are both done in the same colour. A few are further decorated with some black penwork.
s. xviii: table of contents of manuscript (fol. [i]:1r) list of books read at collation (fol. [i]1v/1-11)
s. xii: inventory of about 450 books (fol. 1:2r/1a-2:3r/31b)
Nineteenth-century binding (Ker 1957, p. 149).
Additional Information
Manuscript described by Owen Roberson and Takako Kato with the assistance of Hollie Morgan and Johanna Green (September 2012).
Digital surrogate: https://iiif.durham.ac.uk/index.html?manifest=t1mcr56n0965 (accessed 18 July 2018)
Microfiche in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile(Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2007), vol. 14: Manuscripts of Durham, Ripon, and York
History
Unknown. Keefer suggests that the Rule of St Benedict has 'a form better suited to a Canterbury origin in the 1080s than it does to Durham Cathedral Priory' (2007, p. 99).
Provenance: According to B[otfield], Rule of St Benedict (fols 74-127) was at Durham by s. xi/xii and bound with fols 1-73 at least by 1391 (1838, p. 30).
Ker (1957) suggests that they were bound together much earlier, and that the whole manuscript is likely to be the 'Martyrologium et Regula' given to Durham by Bishop William of St Carilef (d. 1096). See also B[otfield] 1838, p. 118. The Old English text is named as 'regula Sancti benedicti in gallico' by a late-fifteenth-century cataloguer of Durham Cathedral Library Durham (fol. 12).
B[otfield], B[eriah], Catalogi Veteres Librorum Ecclesiae Cathedralis Dunelm (London: J. B. Nichols and Son, 1838), vol. 7
Barrow, Geoffrey, 'Scots in the Durham Liber Vitae', in The Durham 'Liber Vitae' and its Context, ed. by David Rollason, and others (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004), pp. 109-16
Browne, A. C., 'Bishop William of St Carilef's Book Donations to Durham Cathedral Priory', Scriptorium, 42 (1988), 140-55
Caro, G., 'Die Varianten der Durhamer Hs. und des Tiberius-Fragments der ae. Prosa-Version der Benediktinerregel und ihr Verhältnis zu den übigen Hss', Englische Studien, 24 (1898), 161-76
Cowdrey, H. E. J., Two Studies in Cluniac History 1049-1126, Studi Gregoriani, 11 (Rome: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano, 1978)
Dubois, Jacques, ed., Le martyrologe d'Usuard: Texte et Commentaire, Subsidia Hagiographica, 40 (Brussels: Societé des Bollandistes, 1965)
Gneuss, Helmut, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001), item 248
Gretsch, Mechthild, 'Æthelwold's Translation of the Regula Sancti Benedicti and its Latin Exemplar', Anglo-Saxon England, 3 (1974), 125-51
Gullick, Michael, 'The Hand of Symeon of Durham: Further Observations on the Durham Martyrology Scribe', in Symeon of Durham: Historian of Durham and the North (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 1998), pp. 14-31
---, 'The Scribes of the Durham Cantor's Book (Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, MS B. IV. 24) and the Durham Martyrology Scribe', in Anglo-Norman Durham: 1093-1193, ed. by David Rollason, Margaret Harvey and Michael Prestwich (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994), pp. 93-109
---, 'The Two Earliest Manuscripts of the Libellus de exordio', in Symeon of Durham: Historian of Durham and the North, ed. by David W. Rollason (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 1998), pp. 106-19
Hanslik, Rudolphus, ed., Benedicti regula, Corpus Scriptorium Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 75 (Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1960)
Keefer, Sarah Larratt, 'Durham Cathedral Library, B. IV. 24: the Durham Cantor's Book', in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2007), vol. 14: Manuscripts of Durham, Ripon, and York, pp. 99-109
Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957; repr. 1990), item 109
Knowles, David, ed., The Monastic Constitutions of Lafranc, ed. by Christopher N. L. Brooke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002)
Leclerq, J, and H Rochais, eds, S. Bernardi Opera, Vol. VIII: Epistolae: I. Corpus Epistolarum 181- 310, II. Epistolae extra corpus 311-547 (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1977)
Moore, John S., 'Anglo-Norman Names Recorded in the Durham Liber Vitae', in The Durham 'Liber Vitae' and its Context, ed. by David Rollason, and others (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004), pp. 97-107
Mynors, R. A. B., Durham Cathedral Manuscripts to the End of the Twelfth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939)
Piper, A. J., 'The Durham Cantor's Book (Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, MS B.IV.24)', in Anglo-Norman Durham: 1093-1193, ed. by David Rollason, Margaret Harvey and Michael Prestwich (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994), pp. 79-92
---, 'The Early Lists and Obits of the Durham Monks', in Symeon of Durham: Historian of Durham and the North, ed. by David Rollason (Stamford, Lincs.: Shaun Tyas, 1998), pp. 161-201
---, 'The Libraries of the Monks of Durham', in Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker, ed. by M. B. Parkes and Andrew G. Watson (London: Scolar, 1978), pp. 213-49
Rollason, David, ed., The Durham 'Liber Vitae' and its Context, Regions and Regionalism in History, 1 (Suffolk: Boydell, 2004)
---, Symeon of Durham: Historian of Durham and the North, Studies in North-Eastern History, 1 (Stamford, Lincolnshire: Shaun Tyas, 1998)
---, ed., Symeon of Durham: Libellus de Exordio atque Procursu istius hoc est Dunhelmensis Ecclesie, Tract on the Origins and Progress of this the Church of Durham, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
Rollason, David, Margaret Harvey, and Michael Prestwich, eds, Anglo-Norman Durham, 1093-1193 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994)
Sandolini, Sabino de, Corpus inscriptionu crucesignatorum Terrae Sanctae (1099-1291): Testo, traduzione e annotazioni, Pubblicazioni dello Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, 21 (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1974)
Schröer, Arnold, ed., Die angelsächsichen Prosabearbeitungen der Benediktinerregel, rev. with a supplement by Helmut Gneuss, 2nd edn (Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 2; Kassel 1885-1888; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964)
Scragg, Donald, Alexander Rumble, and Kathryn Powell, C11 Database Project (Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/mancass/c11database/; accessed in 2009) Available for limited viewing on the Internet Wayback Machine.
Turcan-Verkerk, Anne-Marie, 'Entre Verdun et Lobbes, un catalogue de bibliothèque scolaire inédit: à propos du manuscrit Verdun BM 77', Scriptorium, 46 (1992), 157-203
Turner, C. H., 'The Earliest List of Durham Manuscripts', Journal of Theological Studies, 19 (1917-18), 121-32
Owen Roberson and Takako Kato