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Matthew Paris, known as Matthew of Paris, was a Benedictine monk, English chronicler, artist in illuminated manuscripts and cartographer, based at St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire. He wrote a number of works, mostly historical, which he scribed and illuminated himself, typically in drawings partly coloured with watercolour washes, sometimes called "tinted drawings". Some were written in Latin, some in Anglo-Norman or French verse.
The Old English Bible translations are the partial translations of the Bible prepared in medieval England into the Old English language. The translations are from Latin texts, not the original languages.
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 later became the basis of what is now the British Library, which still holds the collection. 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 sometimes having preserved the only copy of a work, such as happened with Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
De duodecim abusivis saeculi is a treatise on social and political morality written by an anonymous Irish author between 630 and 700. During the Middle Ages the work was very popular throughout Europe.
Mercian was a dialect spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia. Together with Northumbrian, it was one of the two Anglian dialects. The other two dialects of Old English were Kentish and West Saxon. Each of those dialects was associated with an independent kingdom on the island. Of these, all of Northumbria and most of Mercia were overrun by the Vikings during the 9th century. Part of Mercia and all of Kent were successfully defended but were then integrated into the Kingdom of Wessex. Because of the centralisation of power and the Viking invasions, there is little to no salvaged written evidence for the development of non-Wessex dialects after Alfred the Great's unification, until the Middle English period.
Kentish was a southern dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Kent. It was one of four dialect-groups of Old English, the other three being Mercian, Northumbrian, and West Saxon.
British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius C. II, or the Tiberius Bede, is an 8th-century illuminated manuscript of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. It is one of only four surviving 8th-century manuscripts of Bede, another of which happens to be MS Cotton Tiberius A. XIV, produced at Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey. As such it is one of the closest texts to Bede's autograph. The manuscript has 155 vellum folios. This manuscript may have been the Latin text on which the Alfredian Old English translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History was based. The manuscript is decorated with zoomorphic initials in a partly Insular and partly Continental style.
The Vespasian Psalter is an Anglo-Saxon illuminated psalter decorated in a partly Insular style produced in the second or third quarter of the 8th century. It contains an interlinear gloss in Old English which is the oldest extant English translation of any portion of the Bible. It was produced in southern England, perhaps in St. Augustine's Abbey or Christ Church, Canterbury or Minster-in-Thanet, and is the earliest illuminated manuscript produced in "Southumbria" to survive.
Francis Thynne was an English antiquary and an officer of arms at the College of Arms.
The Stowe Psalter is a psalter from the "2nd or 3rd quarter of the 11th century", at the end of Anglo-Saxon art. The text includes the Gallican version of the Psalms, followed by the Canticles with an interlinear Old English gloss.
Handbook for a Confessor is a compilation of Old English and Latin penitential texts associated with – and possibly authored or adapted by – Wulfstan (II), Archbishop of York. The handbook was intended for the use of parish priests in hearing confession and determining penances. Its transmission in the manuscripts seems to bear witness to Wulfstan's profound concern with these sacraments and their regulation, an impression which is similarly borne out by his Canons of Edgar, a guide of ecclesiastical law also targeted at priests. The handbook is a derivative work, based largely on earlier vernacular representatives of the penitential genre such as the Scrifboc and the Old English Penitential. Nevertheless, a unique quality seems to lie in the more or less systematic way it seeks to integrate various points of concern, including the proper formulae for confession and instructions on the administration of confession, the prescription of penances and their commutation.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great. Multiple copies were made of that one original and then distributed to monasteries across England, where they were independently updated. In one case, the Chronicle was still being actively updated in 1154.
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.
Cotton MS Cleopatra A.iii is an Anglo-Saxon manuscript once held in the Cotton library, now held in the British Library, containing three glossaries which important evidence for Old English vocabulary, as well as for learning and scholarship in Anglo-Saxon England generally. The manuscript was probably written at St Augustine's, Canterbury, and has generally been dated to the mid-tenth century, though recent work suggests the 930s specifically. The manuscript contains three Latin-Old English glossaries.
The Kentish Psalm, also known as Kentish Psalm 50, is an Old English translation of and commentary on Psalm 51. The poem is extant in a single manuscript, British Library MS Cotton Vespasian D.vi.
On the Resting-Places of the Saints is a heading given to two early medieval pieces of writing, also known as Þá hálgan and the Secgan, which exist in various manuscript forms in both Old English and Latin, the earliest surviving manuscripts of which date to the mid-11th century. Secgan is so named from its Old English incipit, Secgan be þam Godes sanctum þe on Engla lande aerost reston "Tale of God's saints who first rested in England"), and is a list of fifty places which had shrines and remains of Anglo-Saxon saints. Þá hálgan is a version of the so-called Kentish Royal Legend is a heading which appears to be for both texts, as the Kentish legend, which comes first, is actually an account of how various members of the royal family of Kent, descendants of Aethelbert of Kent, founded monasteries and came to be regarded as saints. As such it is closer to other hagiographical texts than to the list of burial sites that follows it. The texts describe people living from the 7th to 10th centuries, and they exist in both Old English and Latin versions, but both have their earliest known manuscripts dating from the 11th century.
The Tiberius Psalter is one of at least four surviving Gallican psalters produced at New Minster, Winchester in the years around the Norman conquest of England. The manuscript can now be seen fully online at the British Library website.
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.
The Old English Dicts of Cato is the editorial name given to the Old English language text based on the Latin Distichs of Cato. It is a collection of approximately 80 prose proverbs, the exact number varying between each of the three manuscript versions. These can be found in MS Cambridge, Trinity College, R.9.17, MS British Library, Cotton Vespasian D.xiv and MS British Library, Cotton Julius A.ii respectively.
References
- ↑ Irene Williams, A Grammatical Investigation of the Old Kentish Glosses, Bonner Beiträge zür Anglistik, 19, pp. 92-166 (Bonn, 1905).