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Archbishop Wulfstan's Commonplace Book

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Dorothy Bethurum
Dorothy Bethurum*
Affiliation:
Connecticut College
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Extract

MSS CCCC 190 and 265, Bodley 718 (2632), Junius 121 (5232), Nero A 1, and Bibl. Paris MS Fonds Latin 3182, all from the end of the tenth or beginning of the eleventh century, contain a great many common entries relating to the affairs of a bishop and have been studied with some care by several scholars. Miss Mary Bateson nearly fifty years ago made it clear that the theological and legal material in these MSS really constituted a sort of bishop's commonplace book, and she identified a number of the random excerpts found here in such bewildering confusion. It is my purpose to present some evidence that Archbishop Wulfstan early in his episcopacy at Worcester made extensive use of the material collected here and perhaps directed its assembling as a part of his attempt to regulate the practices of both bishops and lesser clergy under his supervision. To the list given above must be added two other MSS which contain the same excerpts in somewhat the same order—Copenhagen Royal Library Gl. Kgl. 1595, and Bodleian Barlow 37. It is extremely difficult, if not now impossible, to fix the relationship among these MSS, but it is generally agreed that they represent a collection made at Worcester early in the eleventh century, and in the following discussion I shall deal with what must have been the original collection rather than with the contents of any particular MS.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 57 , Issue 4-Part1 , December 1942 , pp. 916 - 929
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1942

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References

Note 1 in page 916 Mary Bateson, “A Worcester Cathedral Book of Ecclesiastical Collections Made about 1000 a.d.,” English Historical Review, x (1895), 712–731; Roundell, Earl of Selborne, Ancient Facts and Fictions concerning Churches and Tithes (1892); Leibermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachen, i, xx ff.; M. R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; F. Madan, A Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1922, 1937); B. Fehr, Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa, ix (1914), x–xxii; J. Raith, Pseudo-Egbert's Penitential, Bibl. der ags. Prosa, xiii (1933), x–xiii.

Note 2 in page 916 I am indebted to Miss Dorothy Whitelock for calling this MS to my attention.

Note 3 in page 917 See Lord Selborne, op. cit., pp. 37–45, 227–245.

Note 4 in page 917 Ego frater N. promitto deo omnibusque Sanctis eius castitatem / corporis mei secundum (patrum?) decreta et secundum / ordinem mihi (blank: above the line, imponendum) seruare, domno / presule uulstano presente. Quoted from James II, 16.

Note 5 in page 917 For the identification of Archbishop Wulfstan with the Wulfstan who was Bishop of London from 996 to 1003, see Dorothy Whitelock, “A Note on Wulfstan the Homilist,” E.E.R., lii (1937), 460–465.

Note 6 in page 917 These are printed by Miss Bateson in the article referred to above, pp. 728–730.

Note 7 in page 917 Liebermann says (p. xx), “einst dem Domkloster Worcester gehörig, um 1025.” Since Wulfstan resigned Worcester to Leofsige in 1016 and presumably took up residence at York, the collection must have been made before that date.

Note 8 in page 917 See the list published by Miss Bateson in “Rules for Monks and Secular Canons after the Revival under King Eadgar,” E.H.R., ix (1894), 690–708.

Note 9 in page 917 James divides the book into three volumes, after pp. 294 and 364. His Vol. ii contains the translations, and Vol. iii is made up entirely of penitentials and is in English.

Note 10 in page 918 See Jost, “Einige Wulfstantexte und ihre Quellen,” Anglia, lvi (1932), 293. The Capitula is found in CCCC 201 and 265; an OE translation, which Thorpe published under the title Ecclesiastical Institutes (Ancient Laws, p. 469), is in CCCC 201; a part of the OE version is in Bodley 265; and two homilies in Assmann's Angelsächsische Homilien und Heiligenleben (Bibl, der ags. Prosa, iii), pp. 138 and 144, are dependent on the Capitula.

Note 11 in page 918 Jost, op. cit., pp. 292–294, gives a list of corresponding passages.

Note 12 in page 918 Raby gives a brief sketch of him in Christian-Latin Poetry (Oxford, 1927), pp. 171–177. His works, poetry and prose, are in Migne, P.L., cv, and his poetry in M.G.H., Poet. Car., i, 437 ff.

Note 13 in page 918 M.G.H., Poet. Car., i, 543.

Note 14 in page 918 Jost, op. cit., proves Wulfstan's indebtedness, first in the Latin excerpts of iv, and then in the English elaboration of them in v. iv had a wide circulation in these MSS; it is in CCCC 190 and 265, in Barlow 37, and in Copenhagen Kgl. S. 1595.

Note 15 in page 918 Jost, pp. 288–301.

Note 16 in page 918 See T. P. Oakley, English Penintential Discipline and Anglo-Saxon Law in their Joint Influence. Columbia Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, Vol. cvii (New York, 1923), pp. 31–32 and ch. iv.

Note 17 in page 919 See Fehr, Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, pp. x–xxii; apparently he did not know of the existence of the Copenhagen MS.

Note 18 in page 919 Selborne, p. 217. The question turns upon the authenticity of the version of the Canons of Edgar in Junius 121.

Note 19 in page 919 See Pertz, M.G.H.: Legum, i, 87; and Boretius, M.G.H.: Cap. Reg. Franc., p. 105.

Note 20 in page 919 Memorials of St. Dunstan, Rolls. Series (London, 1874), p. cvii.

Note 21 in page 919 “Einige Wulfstantexte,” pp. 288–301.

Note 22 in page 920 It was edited by Emil Feiler, “Das Benediktiner-Offizium ein altenglisches Brevier aus dem 11. Jahrhundert,” Anglistischer Forschungen, iv, (1901). See also Zupitza in Herrig's Archiv, lxxxiv, 1; Miss Bateson in E.E.R., ix (1894), 707; and Fehr, “Das Benediktiner-Offizium und die Beziehungen zwischen Ælfric und Wulfstan,” Eng. Stud., xlvi (1913), 337–346.

Note 23 in page 921 Ælfric has another survey of the Old and New Testaments in the letter to Sigwerd called by the MS “Libellus de ueteri testamento et nouo” (ed. S. J. Crawford, E.E.T.S. 160 [1922]), and it contains a reference to Zedechiah. But there is no other connection between this work and Wulfstan's homily, and the verbal correspondence between Wulfstan and CCCC 190 is much closer.

Note 24 in page 922 There are the following small scribal variants: MS loquaris for loqueris, proximum tuum falsum for proximum falsum, and precepit moysi for moisi precepit.

Note 25 in page 922 “Einige Wulfstantexte,” pp. 278–279.

Note 26 in page 922 See Fehr, pp. 190–192, and pp. 222–227. For contents of the MS, pp. x–xiv.

Note 27 in page 922 The rubric reads “Penitenciale Theodori Archiepiscopi.” Mr. Neil Ker pointed out to me that “Theodori” has been written over “Egberti.” The rubric has no relation to what immediately follows.

Note 28 in page 922 This homily appears to be made up of passages chosen from different sources, for while it has a certain unity of subject, it has none of style. There is a long ubi sunt passage in it, rather poetic in feeling, sentences of which are taken from Defensor's Liber Scintillarum, Bk. lxxix (Migne 88).

Note 29 in page 923 Pp. 277, 279.

Note 30 in page 923 Except that the MS reads “et ideo” and the homily “ideoque” (l. 14).

Note 31 in page 924 190 has “gregorius quoque ait.”

Note 32 in page 924 190, “cristi.”

Note 33 in page 924 This is not the only discrepancy between the index and the actual contents. See Miss Bateson, E.H.R., x, 717.

Note 34 in page 925 The only other pre-Conquest English MS containing Adso's work is also connected with Wulfstan. It is Vespasian D ii which contains on f. 28b Wulfstan's Latin homily on Antichrist (xi), and on f. 29 under the rubric “De Die Iudicii Sermo” a shortened form of the same.

Note 35 in page 925 It is also in Vitellius A 7, f. 6Sb. See Fehr's Hirtenbriefe, p. 248. It has been edited by d'Achery in Spicilegium, i, 337, and is in Migne 132, 764.

Note 36 in page 925 In the comparison of phrases I list the form in Napier's xxxii with page and line number, the OE in 190, and the Latin original from the same MS.

Note 37 in page 926 See ii, 1918–201; iii, 2819–20; v, 4023–24; x, 7521–22; xiv, 9010–11; xv, 9410 xxii, 1121; xxxiii, 1661.

37a For example, the sermon begins: Vere, fratres karissimi, hoc debetis scire unde fuit inceptum hoc exemplum ut episcopi peccatores homines eicerunt de ecclesia in capite ieiunii. The translator renders it: Mine gebrooru oa leofestan, ge sculon to sooon ois witan hwanon wære ongunnen ærest þeos bisne þæt biscopas ut adrifon of cyrcan sinfulle men on þam wodnes dæge þe we hatao caput ieiunii. Wulfstan's more idiomatic sentence is: Leofan men, ic wille cyoan eow eallum and þam huru, þe hit ær nystan, hwanan seo bysn ærest aras, þæt bisceopas ascadao ut of cyrican on foreweardan lenctene þa men, þe mid openan heafodgyltan hy sylfe forgyltao.

Note 38 in page 927 Wulfstan's use of Paradise to mean the Garden of Eden antedates the first citation in the OED, which is from the Lambeth Homilies. The word is used in the West Saxon Gospels, Luke 23, 43, to mean heaven: “To-dæg þu bist mid me on paradiso.” Wulfstan makes a distinction between these uses. He takes over “paradyso” in 15320 and 15427, where it means the Garden of Eden, but substitutes “þære heofonlican cyrican” for the same Latin word in 154,8 where Christ takes Adam to heaven from hell. The MS English version has “neorx-nawang” in every case.

Note 39 in page 927 “Das Benediktiner-Offizium und die Beziehungen zwischen Ælfric und Wulfstan,” Eng. Stud., xlvi (1913), 337–346.

Note 40 in page 927 Die Hirtenbriefe, pp. 221–227.

Note 41 in page 928 If Jost is right that V Æoelred borrows from the Canons of Edgar—and the parallel passages indicate that this is true—then C of E must have come before 1008, or within five years of Wulfstan's elevation to the archbishopric.

Note 42 in page 928 See James's account.

Note 43 in page 928 G. K. Anderson, “Notes on the Language of Ælfric's English Pastoral Letters in Corpus Christi College 190 and Bodleian Junius 121,” J.E.G.P., xl (1941), 5–13.

Note 44 in page 929 Memorials of St. Dunstan, p. liv.

Note 45 in page 929 See Whitelock, “A Note on Wulfstan the Homilist,” E.H.R., lii (1937), 462–464.

Note 46 in page 929 Stubbs printed the letter, with a wrong reference to the MS, op. cit., pp. 404–405.