London, British Library, Royal 12. D. XVII is the earliest codex of vernacular medical material extant from Anglo-Saxon England. The manuscript dates to the tenth century and is written in a single hand with rubricated title letters but no illustrations and little other decoration.Footnote ¹ The codex contains three books of medical material in Old English. The first two books belong to a single collection known by the name Bald’s Leechbook. The third book in the manuscript has long been recognized by scholars to be a separate piece. This work is widely known by the name Leechbook III, a title derived from the original edition of these texts, which printed all three books as part of a single collection.Footnote ² However, the independent nature of these two collections can be seen in differences in organizational complexity, choices of content and dialectical character.Footnote ³ The originally separate identity of these collections is also testified to by a colophon occurring at the end of the second book of Bald’s Leechbook:

As all three books and the colophon are written in a single continuous hand, it is unlikely that the colophon was original to this manuscript. Instead, it seems the scribe of the Royal manuscript was working from two exemplars and simply included the colophon found in the first exemplar before moving to the second.

Among the texts of the Old English medical corpus, Bald’s Leechbook is known for its intricacy of organization.Footnote ⁵ Its two books are divided into chapters marked by Roman numerals and each book is headed by a table of contents. The contents of the two books are organized to follow the body in a head to foot organization, also known as a capite ad calcem – a structure not unusual in late antique and early medieval Latin medical collections. However, a further degree of complexity is present in Bald’s Leechbook, as the two books appear to have been created to form a complementary unit, with the first book focusing on external ailments and the second on internal conditions. This collection is also noteworthy among the extant corpus of medical material in Old English for its incorporation of long sections containing careful and sustained discussion of certain ailments or bodily organs that have been translated from late antique medical sources. Although all the medical collections extant in Old English contain remedies translated from Latin sources, these sections in Bald’s Leechbook are unusual for their length and complexity. I have suggested elsewhere that certain sections were likely completed specifically for this collection and perhaps by the compiler himself (or herself).Footnote ⁶ These passages supplement the practical cures of Pliny and Dioscorides (common to the general corpus of Old English medicine) to create a text that functions not only as a useful guide for doctors but also a type of encyclopaedia of medical learning.

The identity of the compiler(s) of this important work of vernacular medicine is unknown. It is uncertain whether the colophon was part of the work from the beginning or whether it was added at a later point in the transmission of the text. However, since the publication of the collection, there has been a tendency to relate the composition of the text with one of the two figures named in the colophon.Footnote ⁷ If this is the case, this collection is the only text of the Old English medical corpus to be associated with a named author. In the scholarship surrounding the collection, the title of author is most frequently given to Bald, whose name is prominently placed as the first word of the poem. Yet although Bald’s name is given preeminence within the colophon, the nature of the relationship between the two figures is not clear. Is Bald meant to be the commissioner of the work and Cild the compiler? Or did Bald provide the exemplar text from which Cild made further copies? The verb used in the colophon (conscribere) does not answer these questions as it can mean to write in an authorial sense or to produce a copy; the prefix con was probably chosen primarily to alliterate with cild and quem earlier in the line rather than to qualify the meaning.Footnote ⁸ The names within the text are themselves unusual. Both Bald (or Beald) and Cild appear much more frequently as components in Anglo-Saxon names rather than as a name in themselves.Footnote ⁹ What is most likely is that two longer names were shortened to meet the metrical requirements of the hexameter verse of the colophon. No successful effort has ever been made to identify the figures mentioned, and the role (if any) of these figures in the creation of the text remains obscure.

Previous scholarly discussion of the colophon found in Royal 12. D. XVII has focused almost entirely on questions related to the identity of the figures mentioned and their role in the creation of the medical compilation. However, no analysis has been made of the form of the colophon or its literary qualities as a piece of Anglo-Latin verse. There has furthermore been very little exploration of the place of this text within the wider tradition of colophons in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. The following discussion will attempt to contribute towards a better understanding of the significance of this text within the genre of scribal colophons and within the corpus of Anglo-Latin poetry more generally, while at the same time considering possible literary influences on the author of this text, who may indeed have also been involved in the compilation of Bald’s Leechbook.

When considered structurally, the six lines comprising the colophon fall naturally into two parts, with each part ending with an invocation of Christ. In Schiegg’s proposed classification scheme for colophons, the first two lines form the ‘assertive’ part of the poem, as they provide information about the text (in this case, who was involved in its production).Footnote ¹⁰ The second part of the colophon, containing the injunction that no one steal the book Bald (or Cild?) has so carefully compiled, finds no parallels in colophons from the Anglo-Saxon period (although a similar command is found in the prose preface to the Pastoral Care).Footnote ¹¹ This lack of parallels may simply be a result of the comparative rarity of colophons in early English texts, however, as commands regarding the safety or treatment of books are not unusual in Continental colophons.Footnote ¹² This type of admonition would fall in the category of ‘directives’, which tell the reader to do something, or perhaps ‘declaratives’ which make something happen of themselves. The most common type of directives in colophons are requests for prayer for the scribe, but there are also examples that ask the reader to wash his hands or close the book after use.Footnote ¹³ Bald’s colophon does not contain any overt threat of what may happen if a perfidious person does remove the book, but it is similar in sentiment to declarative ‘book curses’ found in many colophons.Footnote ¹⁴ The strength of the prohibition is emphasized through the repeated negatives (nullus, nec, nulla) in lines three, four and five. Further word patterning can be seen in the reoccurrence of liber (book) at the beginning, middle and end of the colophon (lines one, three and six).

Metrically, the colophon represents a competent example of hexameter verse. The metrical form appears to generally follow a tradition of Anglo-Latin verse inherited from Aldhelm, that is, one marked by the relatively infrequent use of dactyls in the first four feet of the line and the use of a fixed metrical patterning of spondee-spondee-dactyl-spondee for the final four feet (a pattern that occurs in every line of the colophon).Footnote ¹⁵ The verses are also characterized by extensive use of alliteration, which I have marked by underlining below:

As can be seen, alliteration on c, h and n is found throughout, with alliteration on f in line four. The poet’s use of alliteration appears to be mainly aural rather than visual, as v and f alliterate in line four, and g, q and x appear chosen throughout to alliterate with c. Footnote ¹⁶ The aural nature of the alliteration in many places may make us curious about cild, which if read according to Old English pronunciation would not alliterate with conscribere in the same line. This may suggest that the poet appreciated both the visual and aural effects of alliteration. Line four stands out as particularly artful. Departing from the alliteration on c and q found in every other line, this verse alternates n and f alliteration to create a negative thought-word-deed triad (‘not by force, nor by stealth, nor by any false speech’). The line forms the centre of a small envelope pattern between the two appearances of the name of Christ.

The literary effect of the short poem is further amplified by the fact that several of its cadences echo other poetic works. Famine falso (line four) is used in poetic works by the influential Anglo-Latin poet Aldhelm and Milo of St Amand.Footnote ¹⁷ Although perhaps coincidental, it is interesting to note that the sole appearance of this cadence in Aldhelm’s works occurs in close proximity to an item of medical vocabulary in the verse De virginitate. It is found in the section on St Narcissus, where three men offer (false) oaths of the honesty in their accusations against the saint:

This declaration is suggestive for its inclusion of the unusually specific medical detail that the speaker will be struck by glaucoma (probably here meaning cataracts or other conditions resulting in cloudy vision); this term is not found in the prose De virginitate which only mentions blindness.Footnote ¹⁹ If the author of Bald’s Leechbook was also responsible for writing the colophon, this particular passage may have stuck in his or her mind due to an interest in Greek-derived medical terminology.Footnote ²⁰

Beyond famine falso, conscribere iussit and very similar constructions also occur in a series of colophons associated with the abbey of St Amand. The closest match to the Leechbook verse is: ‘Clauiger exiguus quondam Lotharius istum/ Librum, quem cernis, lector, conscribere iussit.’Footnote ²¹ Two other colophons associated with Lotharius contain the phrases scribere iussit and scribere fecit. These similarities reinforce the carefully constructed nature of the colophon found in Royal 12. D. XVII and its place within the wider genre of poetic scribal colophons. The correspondences to works originating in St Amand may also suggest that the author was drawing on models from the Continent in the creation of his colophon. This would make sense given the known importance of Carolingian manuscripts in the creation of certain Old English medical compilations, most notably the Old English Herbarium. Footnote ²²

The colophon can also be compared fruitfully to Anglo-Saxon examples. As on the Continent, the most typical form for scribal colophons in Anglo-Saxon England was prose. However, there are other instances of colophons written in Latin hexameters from Anglo-Saxon manuscripts including that found in the Benedictional of St Æthelwold, an eleventh-century copy of Plautus’ Comoediae and Aldred’s tenth-century additions to the Lindisfarne Gospels.Footnote ²³ The colophon found in the Benedictional records a scenario apparently very similar to that in the Royal manuscript, where a senior figure – here the bishop Æthelwold – commands an inferior (Godeman) to write the book using a comparable formula (‘presentem biblum iussit perscribere presul’).Footnote ²⁴ In this instance, the finite verb has been moved earlier in the line and presul occupies the final foot; like conscribere in the Royal manuscript, the prefix per was probably chosen to alliterate with presul (and presentem, earlier in the line) rather than to indicate any particular details about the writing process. The colophon in the Benedictional is less closely linked stylistically to Bald’s colophon than the examples from Amand, but it provides another instance of a codex being commissioned by one senior figure and executed by another – in this case, most scholars agree that Æthelwold must have had direct oversight over the production of the Benedictional, an arrangement that could provide a possible model for understanding the interaction between Bald and Cild in our colophon.Footnote ²⁵

While it is somewhat unusual to have a colophon in a different language from the main text (which in this case is Old English), this also is not unprecedented in Anglo-Saxon texts. A useful comparison might be the Latin colophon found in a copy of the Old English Gospels.Footnote ²⁶ Morton, in her recent analysis of late medieval Italian colophons, has argued that scribes may have chosen to write their colophons in Latin, even when copying a vernacular text, in order to stress their erudition and learning.Footnote ²⁷ A similar motivation may have dictated the form of Bald’s colophon, especially its appearance in verse, which exhibits the particular skill and learning of its author. It has been previously proposed that Bald and Cild may have been Anglo-Saxon physicians.Footnote ²⁸ Debby Banham has suggested that the tendency to cite experts within the community rather than external authorities (such as Hippocrates or Galen) within the collection may indicate a close-knit group of physicians, known by name to each other and among whom medical texts may perhaps have circulated.Footnote ²⁹ If Bald or Cild were indeed responsible for compiling the collection known as Bald’s Leechbook, it is possible they could have been included in such a circle. However, I would suggest that if the compilers responsible for this collection were in any sense ‘physicians’, it seems likely that medicine was only one of their interests. Useful parallels might be seen in Carolingian intellectuals such as Walafrid Strabo and Grimoald of St Gall, both of whom were known to have owned and studied medical texts among their other scholarly interests.Footnote ³⁰ Because of their technical nature, medical texts provided opportunities for the study of Greek vocabulary. The sections of Bald’s Leechbook that do not occur in any other Old English collection and seem to have been translated expressly for that work include long passages taken from a specific set of late antique medical works, frequently characterized by their use of technical, Greek-derived vocabulary.Footnote ³¹ Whoever translated these sections of text must have been well trained in Latin but also have had an interest and background in Greek terminology.Footnote ³² Given the generally competent handling of this extremely difficult material within the medical collection, such a person must have been highly educated, and I would suggest almost certainly capable of writing the moderately sophisticated example of hexameter verse found in the colophon.

As has been explored, a close reading of the colophon reveals its author to be a competent poet of Anglo-Latin verse, one clearly well-read in other Latin authors, including works by Aldhelm and possibly also Milo of St Amand’s Vita amandi or other works frequently studied as models for verse. I would suggest that the creator of this colophon must have had a liberal arts education, of which medicine may have been a single aspect.Footnote ³³ If this figure was involved in the creation of Bald’s Leechbook, he or she was almost certainly a member of an important monastic institution with significant resources, including not only a selection of Latin medical texts, but likely also glossaries or other reference texts.

When considering Bald’s Leechbook within the context of other Anglo-Saxon productions, it may also be useful to consider the colophon alongside the vernacular prefatory tradition and particularly those pieces found in the manuscripts associated with the period of Alfredian translation. The technical nature of Bald’s Leechbook, and the fact that it has never been thought to be a translation by the king’s own hand, has generally rendered it of only limited interest to scholars of Alfredian texts. However, the medical text contains an internal reference to the king (occurring in Chapter 64 of Book II) and the extant manuscript has a Winchester provenance, being copied in the same scriptorium as the Tollemache Orosius and the Parker Chronicle.Footnote ³⁴ Most scholars have assumed the original collection was also compiled in Winchester during the lifetime of Alfred or immediately following. However, it seems likely the original compilation of the manuscript may in fact be somewhat earlier, as there is evidence of extensive scribal interaction following the original organization of the text and the compilation of the table of contents. Footnote ³⁵ Christine Voth has recently argued for its origin in an Anglian centre, due primarily to dialectical features, and believes the remedies explicitly linked to Alfred to be a later interpolation.Footnote ³⁶ Although it remains uncertain where the original manuscript was compiled, a version of the text must have been available in Winchester, where it was recopied with some degree of revision, almost certainly as part of a wider movement to copy texts in Old English.Footnote ³⁷ This suggests that the medical collection was known, and likely consulted, in the tenth century when many of the earliest manuscripts containing works associated with the Alfredian ‘project’ were copied.

As is well known, the works broadly associated with the period of Alfredian translation are often accompanied by framing pieces.Footnote ³⁸ These pieces differ widely from one another and it is difficult to define with precision what constitutes a ‘preface’ or an ‘epilogue’ in reference to these works; nevertheless there appears to have been a shared conviction in the importance of such pieces for guiding the reading of a translated text. It is noteworthy that verse prefaces (or epilogues) frequently accompany prose works in this tradition; this occurs, for instance, in some manuscript copies of the Pastoral Care, the Boethius, the Soliloquies, the Old English Dialogues and the Old English Bede. Prior to these translations, there are no extant examples from Anglo-Saxon England where verse prefaces are attached to prose works, although there are some examples from the Continent, especially in the works of Alcuin.Footnote ³⁹

Although not a true preface or epilogue, the colophon to Bald’s Leechbook provides an additional example of a verse piece attached to a prose work of translation. Indeed, Earl has drawn attention to the similarity between these framing pieces (whether prefaces or epilogues) and scribal colophons.Footnote ⁴⁰ In much the same way as colophons, these framing texts frequently relate details of how, why and by whom these texts were written (although the accuracy of these details is often in doubt).Footnote ⁴¹ Importantly, the colophon to Bald’s Leechbook is not written in Old English, nor does it discuss or justify translation into the vernacular, as do some of these pieces. However, it does share several features with framing pieces in other Alfredian texts. Some of the closest parallels are with the verse preface to the Old English Dialogues. Footnote ⁴² The verse preface (which is similarly attached to a prose work) uses a verbal construction comparable to Bald’s colophon to describe the writing of the book: ‘me awritan het Wulfsige bisceop’ (‘the bishop Wulfsige commanded me to be written’), and, like the colophon, this preface involves two figures in the creation of the work: King Alfred, who it reports gave the book’s exemplar (bisen) to be copied, and Wulfsige the bishop. Like other framing pieces associated with Alfredian texts, the verse preface to the Dialogues emphasizes the book as a spiritual treasure, a motif that is echoed in the last two lines of Bald’s colophon: ‘nulla mihi tam cara est optima gaza/ Quam cari libri quos Xristi gratia comit’. Footnote ⁴³ The emphasis on the spiritual value of the book is perhaps somewhat unexpected in a medical text, which one might more obviously associate with practicality or usefulness, but could well have been seen as a standard trope for a framing piece or epilogue. These lines could be read as engaging somewhat playfully with this popular framework, as the verb comere can mean to adorn (the more obvious meaning in the context) but can also be translated as to bring together or compile, in which case it would refer to the composite nature of the collection it follows.

Another point of comparison is the use of the first person in these pieces. The preface to the Dialogues relies on first person pronouns as a structuring device, something frequently found in the vernacular prefaces.Footnote ⁴⁴ Recurrently the referent of the ic is left somewhat ambiguous and can sometimes be assigned to the book itself (as is the case in this preface).Footnote ⁴⁵ The first-person pronoun only appears once in the colophon to Bald’s Leechbook. However, its placement is important: occurring at the end of the third line in the very centre of the poem. Beyond its centrality, the placement of the pronoun in the line may also have drawn the reader’s attention, as two monosyllables (here, a me) only very rarely occur in the sixth foot of Anglo-Latin hexameters.Footnote ⁴⁶ As in many of the vernacular prefaces, the speaker in these lines of the colophon is not clear. The me follows after the first-person verb precor in the second line but has no clear referent. It may be Cild, the writer of the book, or, more likely, Bald, the owner, but as both figures are referenced in the third person the speaker is left ambiguous, which bears some resemblance to the usage in the prefaces. Overall, these similarities provide some points of comparison with the vernacular tradition; one way to interpret this would be to suggest that the author of the colophon had familiarity with the prefaces frequently found in other vernacular texts. However, given the likely earlier date of the compilation, it is also possible that Latin verse colophons of this type acted as models for a slightly later vernacular tradition of framing pieces.

The colophon found on the last folio of Bald’s Leechbook almost certainly predates the copy of the text found in Royal 12 D. XVII. However, whether it in fact goes back to the original compilation of the medical collection remains unproven. Nevertheless, the colophon itself is a sophisticated piece of verse; it suggests an author well read and trained in Latin literature and metre, and familiar with both Anglo-Saxon and Continental models of scribal colophons. Although the colophon itself does not reveal any medical knowledge, it seems possible that the author of this piece could also have been involved in the work of compilation and technical translation required in the creation of the medical text. Even without this identification, however, the colophon itself is notable as a carefully crafted piece of Latin verse attached to a vernacular prose composition, in this case a technical work of medical literature.