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St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, and the ‘First Books of the Whole English Church’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
Early in the fifteenth century, Thomas of Elmham, who grew up in Norfolk and became a monk of St Augustine’s abbey, Canterbury, began to write and illustrate an ambitious history of his monastery. It may be that his interest in history arose from his early years at Elmham, site of the see of East Anglia in late Anglo-Saxon times. This could explain why he became a monk at the oldest monastic establishment in England instead of at the local Benedictine houses, such as Bury St Edmunds, Ely, or Norwich. Clearly he developed his historical interests at St Augustine’s with its ancient books and relics, even though, apart from the chapel of St Pancras and St Martin’s church nearby, pre-Conquest buildings were no longer to be seen.
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References
1 Cambridge, Trinity Hall, MS 1. It was printed by Hardwick, Charles with the invented title, Historia monasterii S. Augustini Cantuariensis, RS, 8 (1858 Google Scholar) [hereafter Historia].
2 An alternative possibility put forward by Graham, Rose, English Ecclesiastical Studies (1929 Google Scholar), 67, is that Elmham was first professed as a Cluniac who was later given papal licence to transfer to the important position of Treasurer of St Augustine’s abbey, Canterbury. This would explain why he was collated as Prior of Lenton in 1414, shortly after that becoming Vicar-general of the English Province of the Order of Cluny. An earlier commitment to the Cluniac Order could explain why he left his magnum opus, the Speculum Augustinianum as he wished to call it, unfinished, moving on to take an active role in national affairs.
3 For further details and references see my article, ‘The historical traditions of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury’, in Eales, Richard and Sharpe, Richard, eds, Canterbury and the Norman Conquest (1995 Google Scholar), 159–68.
4 Historia, 89, 209–10, and 1–73 for the Chronologia Augustiniensis.
5 Ibid., 96–9; James, Montague Rhodes, The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover (Cambridge, 1903), lxiv–lxix Google Scholar, provides an English translation with comments.
6 Antiquae literaturae septentrionalis liber alter seu Humphredi Wanleii (Oxford, 1705), 172–3.
7 Budny, Mildred, ‘The Biblia Gregoriana ’, in Gameson, R., ed., St Augustine and the Conversion of England (Stroud, 1999), 237–84 Google Scholar, esp. 237–48.
8 The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch is now BL, MS Cotton Claudius B.iv; the Eadwine Psalter is now Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.17.1; the four detached leaves now generally agreed to have belonged to it are New York, Picrpoint Morgan Library, MSS M 724 and M 521; BL, MS Add. 37472(1); and London, Victoria and Albert Museum, MS 661.
9 The library catalogue is now Dublin, Trinity College, MS D.1.19. A new edition by Dr Bruce Barker-Benfield is eagerly awaited, as that by M.R. James (see n.5) suffers from some inaccurate transcription.
10 Milfull, Inge B., The Hymns of the Anglo Saxon Church (Cambridge, 1996), 3–4 Google Scholar.
11 See Hunter, Michael, ‘The facsimiles in Thomas Elmham’s History of St Augustine’s, Canterbury’, The Library, 5th scr, 28 (1973), 215–20 Google Scholar.
12 It is hoped that Dr Paul Remley’s investigations into the prehistory of the Old English Gloss to the hymns of the Vespasian Psalter (BL, MS Cotton Vespasian A.1) will shed further light on the Psalterium Augustini.
13 For details, see Wormald, Francis, The Miniatures in the Gospels of St Augustine (Cambridge, 1954 Google Scholar), reprinted in his Collected Writings, 1: Studies in Medieval Art from the Sixth to the Twelfth Centuries (1984), 13–35; Budny, Mildred, ed., Insular, Anglo-Saxon and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: An Illustrated Catalogue, 2 vols (Kalamazoo, MI, 1997), 1:1–50 Google Scholar, for full description and bibliography; R.G. Gameson, The Gospek of St Augustine of Canterbury (forthcoming).
14 For illustration and comment see my article, ‘The early history of Saint Augustine’s abbey, Canterbury’, in Gameson, St Augustine and the Conversion, 417.
15 Die Briefe des Heiligen Bonifatius mid Lullus, ed. M. Tangl, MGH, Epistolae selectae, 1 (Berlin, 1916), no. 35.
16 Codex Aureus is now Stockholm, Kungliga Bibliotek, MS A.135. The facsimile, Codex Aureus, ed. Gameson, R.G., 2 vols, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 28–9 (Copenha gen, 2001–2 Google Scholar), will be of great value for the study of this manuscript, but appeared too late for inclusion here.
17 BL, MS Cotton Vespasian A.i. For facsimile and editorial discussion see The Vespasian Psalter, ed. D.H. Wright, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 14 (Copenhagen, 1967).
18 It is greatly to be hoped that the collaborative study of this gospel book and its component parts will be published. Meanwhile, some of the conclusions reached can be found in Budny, Catalogue, no. 3.
19 See Smith, Thomas, Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library, 1696, ed. C.G.C. Tite (Woodbridge, 1984), 72 Google Scholar.
20 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 197B, fol.Ir.
21 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Selden Supra 30, pp. 47, 70.
22 James, Ancient Libraries, 210.
23 For discussion see Alan Thackcr, ‘In Gregory’s shadow? The pre-Conquest cult of St Augustine’, in Gameson, St Augustine and the Conversion, 374–90.
24 See Richard Sharpe, ‘The setting of St Augustine’s translation (109 r)’, in Eales and Sharpe, Canterbury and the Norman Conquest, 1–13.
25 Historia, 99–102.
26 For the wider background see Gransden, Antonia, ‘Antiquarian studies in fifteenth-century England’, Antiquaries Journal, 60 (1980), 75–97 Google Scholar; Knowles, David, Great Historical Enterprises (Edinburgh, 1963), 3–62 Google Scholar.
27 For further discussion, see Mildred Budny, ‘The tip of the iceberg: reconstructing lost manuscripts from fragments’ (forthcoming).
28 I am grateful to Mrs Catherine Hall, Archivist of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, for providing this information and describing how the idea of presenting the Gospels of St Augustine came to be adopted. I should like to thank Dr Michelle Brown and Dr Mildred Budny for reading preliminary drafts of this paper and making helpful comments and suggestions. The final version has also benefited from the discussion following delivery at Lampeter. I wish to thank librarians and staff at the British Library, at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford, for allowing me to see manuscripts discussed here.