London, Lambeth Palace, 487

Present Location
Repository
Shelfmark

487

Contents
Date
Medieval Provenance

General Information

Ker

282

Summary

Nineteen texts in English, mostly homiletic, with some other devotional items. Items 1-18 are all in a single hand of around the year 1200. Item 19 is in a later hand, of s. xiiimed. Items 1-18 are drawn from at least two exempla (CTC B. 14. 52 (s. xiiex). The remaining items have no securely identified sources, although the subject-matter and tone of some suggest pre-Conquest influences. Item 19, 'On Ureisun of Oure Louerde', is associated with a group of texts written for or by women, and this might suggest that the manuscript was owned by a woman by the mid-thirteenth century (Thompson 1958, p. xv).

Scholars have debated whether the now-lost Finnsburh Fragment was found by Hickes as a single leaf in this volume (Hill 1970-72, pp. 272-72); most recently, Jane Roberts has argued for it having been found in another Lambeth Palace manuscript, the two surviving leaves of which are now bound into Roberts 2008).

Digital Surrogate

http://images.lambethpalacelibrary.org.uk/luna/servlet/s/zce975

Manuscript Items

 

  1. Item: fols 1r-3r/3
  2. Item: fols 3r/4-9r/10
  3. Item: fols 9r/11-15v/26
  4. Item: fols 15v/27-18v/9

    • Title (Morris 1867, 41-7, no. 4

      B.3.5.18.EM): Anonymous Homilies [for unspecified occasions, listed under the opening words]: 'Leofemen we uindeð' [Jeremiah in the Pit (Jer. 38:6-13)]

      Rubric (initial): Hic dicendum est de propheta.

      Incipit (Latin): Missus est ieremias in puteum

      Incipit: Leofemen we uindeð in halie boc.

      Explicit (Latin): per omnia secula seculorum. Amen.

      Text Language: English with Latin citations

      Bibliography:

      Hall 1920, 79-82, no. 11

  5. Item: fols 21v/16-25r/26
  6. Item: fols 25r/27-27v/4

    • Title (Cambridge, Trinity B.14.52, fols 12r-14r (Homily 4)

      Bibliography:

      B.3.5.19.EM): Anonymous Homilies [for unspecified occasions, listed under the opening words]: 'God almihti seið an forbisne to his folk' [The parable of the Good Samaritan]

      Incipit (Latin): Homo quidam descendebat ab ierusalem in ierico et cetera

      Incipit: God almihti seið an forbisne to his folk in þe halie godspel

      Explicit (Latin): per omnia secula seculorum. Amen.

      Text Language: English with Latin citations

      Note: Begins imperfectly

      Bibliography:

      B.1.1.24): Ælfric, First Series of Homilies [Catholic Homilies I]: Pentecost

      Incipit: Fram þan halie hester dei

      Explicit (Latin): Qui vuiuit et Regnat, et cetera.

      Text Language: English with occasional Latin citations

      Bibliography:

      Clemoes 1997, 354-64

  7. Item: fols 37v/4-45r/11
  8. Item: fols 45r/12-47r/17
  9. Item: fols 47r/18-49r/5
  10. Item: fols 49r/6-51v/21

    • Title (Cambridge, Trinity College, B.14.52, fols 64r-66r (Homily 26)

      Bibliography:

      B.3.2.75.EM): Anonymous Homilies, Homilies for Specified Occasions, Temporale: Lord's Day

      Rubric (initial): In die dominica

      Incipit (Latin): Reuerenda est nobis hec dies sancta que dicitur dominica

      Incipit: Muchel man ach to wurþen þis halie dei þat is sunnen dei icleoped

      Explicit: wone of alle uuele; wole ˥ alle gode. Amen.

      Text Language: English with extensive use of Latin citations

      Bibliography:

      B.3.5.21.EM): Anonymous Homilies [for unspecified occasions, listed under the opening words]: 'wa is þet. man' [Mk. 8:34 (Common of Martyr)]

      Incipit (Latin): Qvi uult ueniet post me abneget semet ipsum

      Incipit: wa is þet. man. þet wa is ˥ me him mare bihat

      Explicit (Latin): Quod nobis prestare dignetur qui uiuit et cetera. Amen.

      Text Language: English with extensive use of Latin citations

      Note: Also found in Morris 1867, 145-9, no. 15

  11. Item: fols 56r/10-57v/22

    • Title (Cambridge, Trinity College, B.14.52, fols 75v-78r (Homily 30)

      Bibliography:

      B.3.5.23.EM): Anonymous Homilies [for unspecified occasions, listed under the opening words]: 'Þe halie prophete dauid' [Ps. 136:6 (Common of Martyrs)]

      Incipit (Latin): Euntes ibant ˥ flebant. mittentes semina sua

      Incipit: Þe halie prophete dauid specð on ane stude in þe sauter

      Explicit (Latin): Quod nobis prestare dignetur, et cetera. Amen.

      Text Language: English with extensive use of Latin citations

      Note: Also found in Morris 1867, 155-9, no. 17

  12. Item: fols 59v/5-65r/11

    • Title (Cambridge, Trinity College, B.14.52, fols 2r-9v

      Bibliography:

      Hall 1920, 30-46, no. 8

      B.3.4.68.EM): Anonymous Homilies [for unspecified occasions, published]: Morris 1867 'An Orison of Our Lord

      Incipit: Iesu soð god. godes sone. iesu soð mon. mon maidene bern

      Explicit: þah he sende. moder þet þu wult

      Text Language: English

      Note: Ends imperfectly

      Bibliography:

      Thompson 1958, 1–4

Object Description

Form

Form: codex

Support: parchment

Extent:

  • 176 mm x 130-133 mm (dimensions of all - size of leaves; dimensions of size of leaves include extra width of 4-5 mm from the mending strip applied to the outer margin of each leaf. On fol. 11, a wider mending strip is used to make up the missing edge of the parchment in the top half of the page.)
  • 160-166 mm x 84-88 mm (dimensions of all - size of written space)

Foliation and/or Pagination: Foliated in ink: i-iii on flyleaves and 1-67 on top right corner of the recto of each folio, with fol. 2 left out. Wilcox notes the following: foliation must postdate some of the leaf repairs, because on fol. 11 the foliation is written on top of the mending strip; the second leaf is numbered '1a' in pencil; the same pencil hand re-marks the numbers of some other leaves on top of the mending materials; endleaves are not foliated. Modern pencil hand records quire signatures wrongly in the bottom right corner of the verso of some folios; this numbering matches James’ description of the quiring (James 1925, p. 673, Wilcox 2000, p. 74).

Collation:

  • Quires: iii + 68 + iii, foliated i-iii, 1a, 2-67. 112, fols 1-1a, 2-11; 214, fols 12-25; 318, fols 26-43; 4-68, fols 44-67.

Note:

  • Most likely ruled quire by quire, and in some places possibly opening by opening after quires assembled (Swan 2007), since this would account for uneven number of lines across bifolia (e.g. fol. 2r ruled for 27 lines and fol. 9v ruled for 28 lines; fol. 2v ruled for 27 lines and fol. 9r ruled for 28 lines). Parchment arranged HFHF. Leaves lineated in ink for 26-32 lines per page (normally 28); fols 2v and 3r, and possibly some of the other first few pages, are lineated in both ink and drypoint. Double bounding lines at either margin, with some lines crossing over the grid. On quite a large number of pages, two lines towards the centre have been ruled across the opening, similarly to the margin guide lines at top and bottom. Pricking visible on some outer margins. Wilcox notes that two sets of pricking can be seen on fol. 1, and that they roughly correspond to the non-standard placement of lineation on both sides of this page (Wilcox 2000, p. 73).

Hand Description

Hand
  • Number of hands: 2, 1 from the period 1060-1220
  • Summary: The hand of the main scribe has been dated to around the year 1200. In an unpublished reassessment of the manuscript, Ker reports as follows: 'whether he was writing before or after 1200 who can tell? [...] I don't see why it shouldn't be before [...] there don't seem to be any features [...] which would suggest that a post-1200 date is likely' (O'Brien 1985, p. 1). A note inserted on a loose leaf at the back of the manuscript, and attributed by Sisam to J. P. Gilson, Keeper of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 1923, records that 'on purely palaeographical grounds I should be disposed to date Lambeth MS 487 somewhere in the forty years 1185-1225 (fols 65b-67 later). The materials however for dating vernacular writing are so slight that any opinion must be tentative. I base the above mainly on the Latin scraps, the extent of which is small' (Wilcox 2000, p. 72).
  • Methods of Alteration: Various corrections, such as underpointing an error at fol. 21v/16, supplying missing text in the margin or above the line, and crossing out mistakes. These corrections are probably made by the main scribe.
  • Hand: main text
    • Scope: Major
    • Script: English Vernacular Minuscule
    • Description: fols 1-65r. A very late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century hand with generally gothic features. Script not highly formal; described by Elaine Treharne as ‘non-formal, non-high grade’, and compared to similar grade scripts in CCCC 367, Parts I and II, Hatton 115, fols 148-55, and CCCC 303 (Treharne, personal communication reported in Swan 2007, p. 413, note 35). The aspect of the script is angular and rounded overall, with thick strokes and bowls multi-sided and formed with a number of turns of the nib. Generally controlled, but apparently not trying to sit scrupulously on the lines. Proportions of letters even.
    • Summary of the characteristics of the hand:
    • descenders mostly short; extending no more than half letter-height below the line.
    • ascenders longer; extending up to one letter-height above the line. Strokes ending on the line terminate in a small sweep to the right and upwards
    • d: ascender curved evenly and lightly clockwise as it rises.
    • f and long s head-stroke thick and almost horizontal, with a slight dip downwards at the far right.
    • g: both Caroline and insular forms used, often on the same folio (e.g. fol. 51r, fol. 61r).
    • Abbreviations:
    • þæt has a high ascender ending in a serif which is clubbed to the left of the ascender and which rises in a finer stroke to the right of the ascender. Cross-bar begins just to the left of ascender and rises in an anti-clockwise curve, ending in a clubbed serif to the left of its terminal, almost at the height of the top of the serif on the ascender.
    • ˥ z-shaped; sometimes with the lower horizontal stroke shorter and lighter than the top, and sometimes curved lightly upwards; usually with the top horizontal stroke curved down or under itself at the far left.
    • Correcting technique: Corrections, almost certainly in main hand, throughout the manuscript. Various types, including letters or words underlined with dots for omission; missing words or phrases added in the margin and marked by ‘//’ against the addition and the point in the main text where it should be inserted.
    • Date: s. xii/xiii
Decoration Description

Rubrics and Latin quotations mostly added in red by the main scribe. Space was left at the start of each item, apparently for a decorated enlarged initial, but these were not written in. A few small and now illegible guiding letters are visible in the left- or right-hand margin, in red or black. Red is used for some Latin snippets and some capital letters of words in sentences in English.

Binding Description

Wilcox 2000 reports that the manuscript is ‘bound in a fairly thick, coarse leaf of parchment with hairside on the outside. “487” and “8” are now written on the spine and there are three tears where previous spine labels have been removed. Two older press marks, “#. C. . 12” and “4to 185”, appear on the inside cover. The endleaves include two paper bifolia cut down to the size of the manuscript, bound upside down as fols i-ii and rightway up as fols [69-70]. These are from Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica, printed by Peter Schoeffer of Mainz in March 1467’ (Wilcox 2000, p. 75, reporting identification by Hill 1970-72, p. 271).

Additional Information

Administration Information

Manuscript described by Mary Swan with the assistance of Hollie Morgan and George Younge (2010; 2013).

Surrogates

Digital surrogate: http://images.lambethpalacelibrary.org.uk/luna/servlet/s/zce975 (accessed 18 July 2018)

Wilcox, Jonathan, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000), vol. 8.

History

Origin

  • Origin:

    Not known, dialect is largely consistent across all of items 1 to 18, and is localisable to the West Midlands. Laing suggests that the main scribe’s dialect is from North West Worcestershire (Laing 2004, pp. 72-73). Aspects of the copying hand and manuscript production might imply that the main scribe had intermittent access to a repository of source-texts. Manuscript copies of of the pre-Conquest Old English items would have been available in well-stocked institutions such as Worcester Cathedral. The holdings of such institutions would presumably be accessible to those working in neighbouring areas as well as to those based in the institution, so it is possible that the main scribe was trained and working in NW Worcestershire, and had access to a major library from time to time (Swan 2007). Swan (2007) also suggests reproduction from memory at some stage of the transmission process from source-texts to this manuscript.

  • Provenance:

    On Ureisun of Oure Louerde might suggest female ownership; very little else can be determined of the provenance.

  • Acquisition:

    Donated to Lambeth Palace Library by Archbishop Richard Bancroft(Archbishop of Canterbury 1604-1610). Listed in two catalogues of his manuscripts from 1612.

Provenance

West Midlands

Bibliography

Bethurum, Dorothy, The Homilies of Wulfstan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957)

Clemoes, Peter, ed., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies: The First Series. Text, EETS, SS 17 (London: Oxford University Press, 1997)

Cox-Johnson, Ann, 'Lambeth Palace Library 1610-1644', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 2 (1955), 105-26

Dobbie, Elliott van Kirk, ed., The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 6 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942)

Hall, Joseph, Selections from Early Middle English, 1130-1250, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920)

Hickes, George, Linguarum Vett. Septentrionalium Thesaurus Grammatico-Criticus et Archaeologicus, 5 vols (Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1705)

Hill, Betty, 'Early English Fragments and MSS Lambeth Palace Library 487, Bodleian Library Digby 4', Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, Literary and Historical Section, 14 (1970-72), 269-80

---, 'The Twelfth-Century Conduct of Life, Formerly the Poema Morale or A Moral Ode', Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 9 (1977), 97-144

James, M. R., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Lambeth Palace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925)

Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957; repr. 1990), item 282

Laing, Margaret, 'Multidimensionality: Time, Space and Tratigraphy in Historical Dialectology', in Methods and Data in English Historical Dialectology, ed. by Marina Dossena and Roger Lass (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 49-96

Morris, Richard, ed., Old English Homilies and Homiletic Treatises, EETS, OS 29, 34 (London: Trübner, 1867)

O'Brien, Sarah M., 'An Edition of Seven Homilies from Lambeth Palace Library MS. 487' (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Oxford, 1985)

Pope, John C., ed., Homilies of Aelfric: A Supplementary Collection, EETS, OS 259 and 260 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967-68)

Roberts, Jane, 'The Finnsburh Fragment and its Lambeth Provenance', Notes and Queries, 55:2 (2008), 122-24

Sisam, C., 'The scribal tradition of the Lambeth Homilies', Review of English Studies, 2 (1961), 105-13

Swan, Mary, 'Imagining a Readership for Post-Conquest Old English Manuscripts', in Imagining the Book, ed. by Stephen Kelly and John J. Thompson (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 145-57

Swan, Mary, 'Old English Textual Activity in the Reign of Henry II', in Writers of the Reign of Henry II, ed. by Ruth Kennedy and Simon Meecham-Jones (London: Palgrave, 2006)

---, '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

---, 'Preaching Past the Conquest: Lambeth Palace 487 and Cotton Vespasian A. XXII', in The Old English Homily: Precedent, Practice, and Appropriation, ed. by Aaron J. Kleist (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 403-23

Thompson, W. Meredith, ed., Ðe Wohunge of Ure Lauerd, EETS, OS 241 (London: Oxford University Press, 1958)

Wanley, Humfrey, Antique literature septentrionalis liber alter (Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1705)

Wilcox, Jonathan, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies (Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000), vol. 8

Wrenn, C. L., ed., Beowulf with the Finnesburg Fragment (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1953)

Catalogue Entry Authored By

Mary Swan

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