Vercelli Book
The Vercelli Book (also known as Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare CXVII) is one of the four authoritative manuscripts in which the corpus of Old English poetry has come down to us. It is in the archives of the Capitular Library of the Vercelli Cathedral .
history
Based on palaeographic and content-related findings, the date of origin of the manuscript is generally assumed to be the middle of the second half of the 10th century. Dialectal and content features of some of the prose texts contained also point to south-east England, especially Canterbury , as a possible place of origin. All included text transcripts were made by the hand of the same scribe over a possibly longer period of time.
The circumstances under which the manuscript reached Italy are unknown. Conjectures about the possible period for the transfer from England to northern Italy ranged in scientific criticism from the beginning or the middle of the 11th century to the early modern period. Most commentators today assume that the code must have reached Italy by the 11th century at the latest. The German lawyer Friedrich Bluhme (also: Blume) found the manuscript in the Vercelles library in 1822 and described it in his Iter Italicum , whereby he was the first to identify its language as "Anglo-Saxon". Previously, it was referred to as "Homiliarum Liber Ignoti Idiomatis" in the library's book indexes and on the cover, which is dated to the early 19th century. A first copy was made in January and February 1834 by the German C. Maier on behalf of the Record Commission (London).
content
On 135 parchment leaves, the manuscript contains 23 sermon texts and a vita of St. Guthlac in prose form as well as the old English poems " Andreas ", " The Dream of the Rood ", " Soul to the Body ", " Homiletic Fragment I ", " Elene " and " The Fates of the Apostles ". The latter two are attributed to the Old English poet Cynewulf based on rune signatures in the poems .
Codicological considerations of the manuscript have shown that individual leaves are missing in various positions, so that several texts are incomplete. The legibility of some folios is also severely impaired by a reagent presumably used by C. Maier.
See also
literature
expenditure
Facsimiles
- Max Förster: Il Codice Vercellese con omelie e poesie in lingua anglosassone. Capitolo metropolitano di Vercelli la prima volta interamente riprodotto in fototipia . Rome 1913.
- Celia Sisam: The Vercelli Book: A Late Tenth-Century Manuscript Containing Prose and Verse, Vercelli Biblioteca Capitolare CXVII . EEMF 19. Copenhagen 1976.
Editions
- George Philip Krapp (Ed.): The Vercelli Book . (= Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 2) London 1932.
- DG Scragg (Ed.): The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts . EETS os 300. London 1992.
Secondary literature
- Oliver Bock: C. Maier's Use of a Reagent in the Vercelli Book . In The Library. 7th series Vol. 16, 2015, pp. 249-281.
- Friedrich Bluhme: Iter Italicum . First volume. Berlin, Stettin 1824.
- Max Förster: The Vercelli Codex CXVII together with an impression of some old English homilies of the manuscript . in F. Holthausen, H. Spies (Ed.): Festschrift for Lorenz Morsbach . Halle 1913, pp. 21–179.
- Maureen Halsall: Vercelli and the Vercelli Book . In PMLA. 84, pp. 1545-1550 (1969).
- Neil R. Ker: Catalog of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon . Oxford 1957. (No. 394)
- DG Scragg: The Compilation of the Vercelli Book . In Anglo-Saxon England. 2, (1973), pp. 189-207.
- Kenneth Sisam: Marginalia in the Vercelli Book . In Ders .: Studies in the History of Old English Literature . Oxford 1953, pp. 109-118.
- Samantha Zacher, Andy Orchard (Eds.): New Readings in the Vercelli Book . Toronto 2009.
Individual evidence
- ↑ See Maureen Halsall: Vercelli and the Vercelli Book . in PMLA 84 (1969). Pp. 1545-1550.
- ↑ Bluhme: Iter Italicum , Volume 1, 1824, p. 99.
- ^ Samantha Zacher, Andy Orchard: " Introduction ", in New Readings in the Vercelli Book , p. 3.
- ↑ Oliver Bock: C. Maier's Use of a Reagent in the Vercelli Book. In: The Library. 7th series Vol. 16, 2015, p. 262.