Condition of the manuscript
The Nowell Codex was written in two hands. The first extends from the beginning of the manuscript (fol. 94a) as far as the word scyran in line 1939 of Beowulf; the second hand continues from moste in that same line to the end of Judith. Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie notes that although the scribes behind the two hands are contemporary, they differ markedly in appearance, the second hand appearing "to belong to an older school of insular writing than its companion hand." [4]
The volume was heavily damaged in 1731 when a fire partially destroyed the Cotton library. While the volume itself survived, the edges of the pages were badly scorched; no serious attempt at restoration was made until the 19th century, by which time the margins had crumbled irreparably, and the edges of many pages are now illegible. Three pages, fol. 182a, fol. 182b and fol. 201b are in notably bad shape, showing more damage than can be explained by the Cottonian fire, with many words faded or illegible, some of which are far from the edges of the leaf. Van Kirk Dobbie suggests the damage to the third of these pages was due to Beowulf being separated from Judith prior to the 17th century, and fol. 201b was on the outside of the manuscript with no binding to protect it. But he offers no explanation for the condition of the first two pages. [5]
The damage to the Nowell Codex can be overcome to different degrees. The three pages in bad shape mentioned above have been studied under ultraviolet light, and the resulting information has been published. [6] Three modern transcriptions of parts of this portion of this manuscript are known. Two of these transcriptions, known as A and B, were made under the direction of the first editor of Beowulf, Grimur Jonsson Thorkelin in the years 1786-1787 after the Cottonian fire yet before the manuscript had deteriorated as far as it presently has. Transcript A was made by an unidentified professional copyist, while B was made by Thorkelin himself. [7] The third transcript (MS Junius 105, currently in the Bodleian Library) is of the Judith poem and was made by Franciscus Junius between 1621 and 1651. A careful copy of the poem with only occasional errors, Junius' transcription preserves the text of the poem before it suffered fire damage. [8]
Beowulf is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The date of composition is a matter of contention among scholars; the only certain dating is for the manuscript, which was produced between 975 and 1025. Scholars call the anonymous author the "Beowulf poet". The story is set in pagan Scandinavia in the 6th century. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall in Heorot has been under attack by the monster Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is mortally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants cremate his body and erect a barrow on a headland in his memory.
Old English literature refers to poetry and prose written in Old English in early medieval England, from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, a period often termed Anglo-Saxon England. The 7th-century work Cædmon's Hymn is often considered as the oldest surviving poem in English, as it appears in an 8th-century copy of Bede's text, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Poetry written in the mid 12th century represents some of the latest post-Norman examples of Old English. Adherence to the grammatical rules of Old English is largely inconsistent in 12th-century work, and by the 13th century the grammar and syntax of Old English had almost completely deteriorated, giving way to the much larger Middle English corpus of literature.
Solomon and Saturn is the generic name given to four Old English works, which present a dialogue of riddles between Solomon, the king of Israel, and Saturn, identified in two of the poems as a prince of the Chaldeans.
The Old English poem Judith describes the beheading of Assyrian general Holofernes by Israelite Judith of Bethulia. It is found in the same manuscript as the heroic poem Beowulf, the Nowell Codex, dated ca. 975–1025. The Old English poem is one of many retellings of the Holofernes–Judith tale as it was found in the Book of Judith, still present in the Catholic and Orthodox Christian Bibles. The other extant version is by Ælfric of Eynsham, late 10th-century Anglo-Saxon abbot and writer; his version is a homily of the tale.
The Junius manuscript is one of the four major codices of Old English literature. Written in the 10th century, it contains poetry dealing with Biblical subjects in Old English, the vernacular language of Anglo-Saxon England. Modern editors have determined that the manuscript is made of four poems, to which they have given the titles Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan. The identity of their author is unknown. For a long time, scholars believed them to be the work of Cædmon, accordingly calling the book the Cædmon manuscript. This theory has been discarded due to the significant differences between the poems.
The Exeter Book, also known as the Codex Exoniensis or Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, is a large codex of Old English poetry, believed to have been produced in the late tenth century AD. It is one of the four major manuscripts of Old English poetry, along with the Vercelli Book in Vercelli, Italy, the Nowell Codex in the British Library, and the Junius manuscript in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The book was donated to what is now the Exeter Cathedral library by Leofric, the first bishop of Exeter, in 1072. It is believed originally to have contained 130 or 131 leaves, of which the first 7 or 8 have been replaced with other leaves; the original first 8 leaves are lost. The Exeter Book is the largest and perhaps oldest known manuscript of Old English literature, containing about a sixth of the Old English poetry that has come down to us.
Grímur Jónsson Thorkelín was an Icelandic–Danish-Norwegian scholar, who became the National Archivist of Norway and Denmark and Professor of Antiquities at Østfold University College.
The Cotton or Cottonian library is a collection of manuscripts once owned by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton MP (1571–1631), an antiquarian and bibliophile. It was one of the three "foundation collections" of the British Museum in 1753, and is now one of the major collections of the Department of Manuscripts of the British Library. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, many priceless and ancient manuscripts that had belonged to the monastic libraries began to be disseminated among various owners, many of whom were unaware of the cultural value of the manuscripts. Cotton's skill lay in finding, purchasing and preserving these ancient documents. The leading scholars of the era, including Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, and James Ussher, came to use Sir Robert's library. Richard James acted as his librarian. The library is of special importance for having preserved the only copy of several works, such as happened with Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Rune poems are poems that list the letters of runic alphabets while providing an explanatory poetic stanza for each letter. Three different poems have been preserved: the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem, the Norwegian Rune Poem, and the Icelandic Rune Poem.
The Vercelli Book is one of the oldest of the four Old English Poetic Codices. It is an anthology of Old English prose and verse that dates back to the late 10th century. The manuscript is housed in the Capitulary Library of Vercelli, in northern Italy.
Franciscus Junius, also known as François du Jon, was a pioneer of Germanic philology. As a collector of ancient manuscripts, he published the first modern editions of a number of important texts. In addition, he wrote the first comprehensive overview of ancient writings on the visual arts, which became a cornerstone of classical art theories throughout Europe.
A lacuna is a gap in a manuscript, inscription, text, painting, or musical work. A manuscript, text, or section suffering from gaps is said to be "lacunose" or "lacunulose".
The Wonders of the East is an Old English prose text, probably written around AD 1000. It is accompanied by many illustrations and appears also in two other manuscripts, in both Latin and Old English. It describes a variety of odd, magical and barbaric creatures that inhabit Eastern regions, such as Babylonia, Persia, Egypt, and India. The Wonders can be found in three extant manuscripts from the 11th and 12th centuries, the earliest of these being the famous Nowell Codex, which is also the only manuscript containing Beowulf. The Old English text was originally translated from a Latin text now referred to as De rebus in Oriente mirabilibus, and remains mostly faithful to the Latin original.
The title "(The) Seasons for Fasting" refers to an incomplete Old English homiletic poem, which deals primarily with the observance of fasts on the appropriate dates of the liturgical calendar, but which also attacks the misbehaviour of lax priests. The piece appears to have been composed by a clergyman and directed at a lay audience, addressed as folces manna in line 212, whom he perhaps believed to have been potentially misguided.
The Old English rune poem, dated to the 8th or 9th century, has stanzas on 29 Anglo-Saxon runes. It stands alongside younger rune poems from Scandinavia, which record the names of the 16 Younger Futhark runes.
Kevin Kiernan is an American scholar of Anglo-Saxon literature. Kiernan is the editor of the Electronic Beowulf and an acknowledged expert on the Beowulf manuscript. Kiernan is the T. Marshall Hahn Sr. Professor of Arts and Sciences Emeritus at the University of Kentucky. He was inducted into the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame in 2015.
The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (ASPR) is a six-volume edition intended at the time of its publication to encompass all known Old English poetry. Despite many subsequent editions of individual poems or collections, it has remained the standard reference work for scholarship in this field.
The Old English Boethius is an Old English translation/adaptation of the sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, dating from between c. 880 and 950. Boethius's work is prosimetrical, alternating between prose and verse, and one of the two surviving manuscripts of the Old English translation renders the poems as Old English alliterative verse: these verse translations are known as the Metres of Boethius.
