The online world is awash with new resources for the study of medieval manuscripts. One such is DigiPal, maintained at King's College, London. As its homepage states, DigiPal (Digital Resource and Database of Palaeography, Manuscripts and Diplomatic) focuses on the handwriting of English manuscripts, particularly those produced between AD 1000 and 1100, during the reigns of Æthelred, Cnut and William the Conqueror.

DigiPal is still in development, but it already has images available from almost 50 medieval books and charters in the British Library's collections. And here is one example:

Lease by Archbishop Wulfstan to Wulfgifu of land at Perry Wood in St Martin's-without-Worcester, 1003 x 1023 (London, British Library, Additional Charter 19795, face).

DigiPal enables its users to review and compare individual letter forms, and to examine the work of individual scribes. The site includes a guide on how to use DigiPal (which demonstrates, for instance, how to find manuscripts produced in Worcester and held at the British Library).

We heartily recommend that those of you interested in vernacular, Anglo-Saxon manuscripts consult this site. For more details about the project, its outcomes and rationale, see here. DigiPal already features manuscripts from many other institutions, including Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: for an excellent feature on the project, see the Parker Library blog.

Detail of Archbishop Wulfstan's lease (London, British Library, Additional Charter 19795, face).

Sometime in the 8th century, King Offa of Mercia (reigned 757-796), of Offa's Dyke fame, is reputed to have given a Bible to the monks of Worcester. But where did he obtain it, and what was its subsequent fate? Some answers to these questions are found in a number of manuscripts at the British Library, and they reveal a strange state of affairs, from 7th-century Northumbria to post-medieval Nottinghamshire.

Passage from IV Kings, with a red rubric at the beginning of chapter 2 (London, British Library, MS Additional 45025, f. 3r).

Our story begins with Ceolfrith, saint and abbot of the monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow in Northumbria from 690 to 716. Ceolfrith was Bede’s early mentor, and during his rule the size and wealth of the monastery increased greatly and the number of books in the library doubled. Most famously, Ceolfrith commissioned three large Bibles from his own scriptoria: one for Jarrow, one for Wearmouth and the third for the Pope.

Realising that he was close to death, Ceolfrith resigned from the abbacy in 716 and set out for Rome, where he planned to present one of the Bibles to Pope Gregory II (715-731) and to remain to await his death. But he died en route, at Langres in Burgundy, and the Bible he was carrying instead made its way to the monastery of Monte Amiata in Florence. It is the only one of Ceolfrith's three Bibles to survive intact, and is now in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana at Florence, known as the Codex Amiatinus and the oldest surviving full copy of the Bible in Latin. The image below of Christ in Majesty with the four Evangelists is one of two full-page miniatures from this huge volume, which is over 48cm tall, weighs 35kg and has more than one thousand pages.

Image of the Codex Amitianus (courtesy of stpaulschurchjarrow.com).

British Library MS Additional 45025 is thought to be part of one of the two other Bibles commissioned by Ceolfrith. Only ten leaves and a fragment of an eleventh survive, from III and IV Kings, but the dimensions of the folios match those of the Codex Amiatinus, and it is written in the same Uncial style of script. Additional 45025 may still have been in Northumbria when the monasteries were sacked by the Vikings, and their libraries destroyed or dispersed. However, the Ceolfrith Bible, as it is now known, was most probably at Worcester Cathedral by the 11th century, when Bishop Wulfstan II (1062-1095) ordered that copies of important documents be added to a precious book described as the  ‘Great Bible’. Could this manuscript have somehow passed to King Offa, who then donated it to Worcester?

Ruins of St Paul’s Abbey, Jarrow, dedicated in 685 (image courtesy of BBC).

No record of the fate of this magnificent early Bible is available until the 16th century, when some leaves were sadly used as covers for deeds pertaining to lands owned by the Willoughby family, Barons Middleton of Wollaton Hall (Nottinghamshire). Three of the ten folios of Additional 45025  have labels written upside down in the margins relating to the documents they contained (see below). The Bible fragment was bought from Lord Middleton in 1937 by the Friends of the National Libraries for the British Museum.

Decorated initial P and Chi Rho monogram (London, British Library, MS Additional 45025, f. 2v).

The leaves of Additional 45025 are sparsely decorated, with initials and first lines in red, and on f. 2v (above) the beginning of IV Kings has the initial P in black with red dots and, between the columns, the Chi Rho monogram, symbol of Christ, flanked by alpha and omega. This page also has a 14th-century note in red marking the end of Book 3 (‘Explicit liber tertius’) and the beginning of Book 4 (‘Incipit quartus’).

Another two portions of the same Bible (or its companion) also survive at the British Library, Additional MS 37777 and Loan MS 81. We now know that one of Ceolfrith's three great Bibles came to reside in Italy. The British Library fragments together imply that a second Bible left Wearmouth-Jarrow in the 8th century, passing in turn to King Offa and the monks of Worcester.

You can read more about the Ceolfrith Bible in Leslie Webster & Janet Backhouse (eds.), The Making of England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture AD 600-900 (London, 1991), no. 87; Ivor Atkins & Neil R. Ker, eds., Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Wigorniensis made in 1622-1623 by Patrick Young, librarian to King James I (Cambridge, 1944), pp. 77-79; and Richard Marsden, ‘Manus Bedae: Bede’s contribution to Ceolfrith’s bibles’, Anglo-Saxon England, 27 (1998), 65-85.

And you can also find full digital coverage of Additional MS 45025 on our Digitised Manuscripts site!

Chantry Westwell

Students of medieval manuscripts will know that it's always instructive to consult the originals, rather than to rely on printed editions. There are many aspects of manuscript culture that do not translate easily onto the printed page -- annotations, corrections, changes of scribe, the general layout, the decoration, ownership inscriptions.

Beowulf is a case in point. Only one manuscript of this famous Old English epic poem has survived, which is held at the British Library (Cotton MS Vitellius A XV). The writing of this manuscript was divided between two scribes, the first of whom terminated their stint with the first three lines of f. 175v, ending with the words "sceaden mæl scyran"; their counterpart took over at this point, implying that an earlier exemplar lay behind their text, from which both scribes copied.

The point at which the scribes of Beowulf change (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, f. 175v, lines 3-4).

The presence of the handwriting of two different scribes in the Beowulf-manuscript has other implications. The script of the second scribe is consistent with having been trained to write in the late-10th century, whereas that of the first is more typical of the period after AD 1000. On those grounds, the most likely time for these scribes to have collaborated is the early decades of the 11th century, perhaps during the reign of Æthelred the Unready (978-1016), although modern scholars are by no means agreed on that point.

Another distinction between those two scribes, perhaps less familiar to modern students of the text, is the varying way in which they spell the name of the eponymous hero Beowulf. On 40 occasions, Beowulf's name is spelt in the conventional manner (the first is found in line 18 of the standard editions, the last in line 2510). However, in 7 separate instances, the name is instead spelt "Biowulf" ("let's call the whole thing off"), the first case coming in line 1987 of the poem.

The spelling "Biowulf" occurs twice on this page, the first in lines 9-10 (Bio-wulf) and the second in the final line, both times using the Anglo-Saxon wynn (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, f. 176v).

What's most apparent here is that the spelling "Biowulf" is confined to the second scribe, who nonetheless alternated it with "Beowulf". While this may be simply a scribal tick -- an uncertainty how the name should be spelled, or a simple inconsistency -- it does lend to the debate over the origin of the name, a summary of which can be found here. (Various suggestions include Bee-Wolf, Beow-Wolf, Biewolf and War-Wolf -- take your pick.)

  
The spellings of Beowulf (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, ff. 133r, 176v).

If you weren't already aware, images of the entire Beowulf-manuscript can now be found on our Digitised Manuscripts site, where you can investigate for yourselves how the manuscript was written.

Some of you may be familiar with the Just So Stories of Rudyard Kipling (1902), which include "How the Leopard Got His Spots", "How the Elephant Got His Trunk", and "How the Camel Got His Hump". We like to think that Kipling, a man of letters, might have been able to draw inspiration from the British Library's collections when concocting these tales, not least when it came to his famous story of the camel.

Two camels in the Marvels of the East (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, f. 101v).

Have you ever asked yourself what a camel looked like in medieval times? Marvellously, we have some idea, thanks to drawings found in three of the greatest Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, all at the British Library: the Beowulf-manuscript (Cotton Vitellius A XV); the Old English Hexateuch (Cotton Claudius B IV); and an illustrated miscellany from 11th-century Canterbury (Cotton Tiberius B V).

Ants and camels in the Marvels of the East (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, f. 101v).

In the text known as the Marvels of the East is a passage describing ants the size of dogs, which live beyond the river Gorgoneus, and dig up gold from the earth. Men seeking gold are described crossing the river with their camels, leaving the young tied on their own side; the she-camels are laden with gold and return to their young, but the male camels are left behind, for the ants to devour, enabling the thieves to escape. In the Beowulf-manuscript, this scene is depicted by a large miniature (sadly damaged by fire), in which three dog-like ants attack a tethered camel on the right, while a man holds another camel bearing a saddle, and a young camel (or brontosaurus, take your pick) is tied to a tree at the bottom. In the copy of the same scene in the illustrated miscellany, a camel is attacked by ants while a man crosses the river to safety on the back of a she-camel.

The dog-sized ants and the camels (London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B V, part 1, f. 80v).

If this wasn't enough to give the male camel the hump, what else was? Well, in the Beowulf-manuscript, the next scene, describing a place where many elephants are born, is illustrated with two slightly grumpy-looking camels (shown at the beginning of this post). Presumably the camels are saying to each other, "Doesn't the artist know what an elephant looks like?" The illustrated miscellany represents the same passage (in Latin, "in his locis nascitur multitudo magna elephantorum") with a pig-like elephant standing on an island.

The elephant in an Anglo-Saxon illustrated miscellany (London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B V, part 1, f. 81r).

Of course, it's highly likely that few Anglo-Saxons had ever seen a camel in real life, and so we should not be surprised that their pictures of them are quirky, to say the least. But is this a world-first, a chorus line of dancing camels? Riverdance, anyone?

A line of camels in the Old English Hexateuch: part of Genesis, chapter 24 (London, British Library, MS Cotton Claudius B IV, f. 39r).

You can read more about the manuscripts of the Marvels of the East in the facsimile of the same name by Montague Rhodes James (Oxford: The Roxburghe Club, 1929). For the Hexateuch, see Benjamin C. Withers, The Illustrated Old English Hexateuch: The Frontiers of Seeing and Reading in Anglo-Saxon England (London: The British Library, 2007). And don't forget to look at our Digitised Manuscripts site, to see both the Beowulf-manuscript and the Hexateuch in their entirety.

We're often asked what the Beowulf manuscript contains. Here's a helpful run-down, which explains how the epic poem we know as Beowulf is part of a wider collection, and how that codex was itself bound in the 17th century with an entirely separate medieval volume.

Essentially, all the components of the "Beowulf manuscript" were put together by the Parliamentarian and antiquarian scholar Sir Robert Cotton (d. 1631). Cotton had at his disposal two independent medieval codices: one dating from the very end of the 10th century or beginning of the 11th, and containing the poem Beowulf and other texts; the second dating from the 12th century, and containing Old English versions of Augustine's Soliloquies and the Gospel of Nicodemus. Cotton had these bound together as part of a single volume, christened Cotton MS Vitellius A XV (once the 15th item on shelf A of a press named after the emperor Vitellius). At the front of that volume were added a leaf removed from a 14th century Psalter, a list of contents, and a medieval endleaf (presumably taken from one of the two medieval compilations).

You can see the whole Beowulf manuscript on our Digitised Manuscripts site. But, for ease of reference, here is a full list of the contents, plus images from selected pages.

Psalter leaf (f. 1: now removed to form Royal MS 13 D I*, f. 37, the remains of the Psalter to which it originally belonged)

England, c. 1350-1360

 

Early modern endleaf (f. 2)

England, 1st half of the 17th century

Contains a list of contents in the hand of Richard James (d. 1638)

 

Medieval endleaf (f. 3)

England, 1st half of the 15th century (f. 3r), 2nd half of the 16th century (f. 3v)

Medieval endleaf, containing historical memoranda

 

"The Southwick Codex" (ff. 4-93)

England (provenance Southwick Priory, Hampshire), 2nd half of the 12th century

Augustine of Hippo, Soliloquia (ff. 4r–59v: imperfect)

Gospel of Nicodemus (ff. 60r–86v: imperfect)

Debate of Saturn and Solomon (ff. 86v–93v)

Homily on St Quintin (f. 93v: imperfect)

Augustine of Hippo, Soliloquia (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, f. 4r)

Gospel of Nicodemus (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, f. 60r)

Debate of Saturn and Solomon (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, f. 86v)

Homily on St Quintin (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, f. 93v)

 

"The Nowell Codex" (ff. 94-209, named after its former owner, Laurence Nowell, d. c. 1570)

England, last quarter of the 10th century or 1st quarter of the 11th century

Homily on St Christopher (ff. 94r–98r: imperfect)

Marvels of the East (ff. 98v–106v)

Letter of Alexander to Aristotle (ff. 107r–131v)

Beowulf (ff. 132r–201v)

Judith (ff. 202r–209v: imperfect)

Homily on St Christopher (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, f. 94r)

Marvels of the East (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, f. 98v)

Letter of Alexander to Aristotle (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, f. 107r)

Beowulf (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, f. 132r)

Judith (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, f. 202r)

Queen Emma and King Cnut at the altar of the New Minster, Winchester, England, 11th century: London, British Library, MS Stowe 944, f. 6r.

Visitors to the British Library at St Pancras can often see a wide range of books and manuscripts in our Treasures Gallery, ranging from Shakespeare to the Beatles. In the exhibition cases devoted to medieval manuscripts you can currently view several of our greatest Anglo-Saxon books, including the New Minster Liber Vitae (see here for a post about the equivalent book from Durham Cathedral) and the foundation charter of the same abbey. You can already see both items (the New Minster Liber Vitae, Stowe MS 944, and the New Minster foundation charter, Cotton MS Vespasian A VIII) on our Digitised Manuscripts site.

The frontispiece of the New Minster charter, England, c. 966: London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian A VIII, f. 2v.

Meanwhile, currently on display in the exhibition cases devoted to medieval literature is the unique manuscript of Beowulf. Made around the year AD 1000, this manuscript contains not only the sole surviving copy of Beowulf, the longest epic poem in the Old English language, but also the texts of Judith, the Marvels of the East, and the letter of Alexander to Aristotle.

A typical page from the Beowulf manuscript, England, c. 1000, which was damaged by fire in 1731: London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A XV, f. 176r.

The Sir John Ritblat Gallery: Treasures of the British Library, is open 7 days a week, and is free to visit. We regret that on occasion items have to be removed temporarily for use in our Reading Rooms; and we also operate a rotation policy, because many of the oldest and most fragile items in our collections cannot be kept on display for indefinite periods.

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, @blmedieval

Royal MS 1 A XIV, known as the Wessex Gospels, is a small book of the 12th century containing a translation of the four gospels into the West Saxon dialect of Old English. It is written in what has been described as a ‘rough, untidy’ hand by the famous Anglo-Saxon paleographer, Neil Ker (d. 1982), and has very little decoration. At the beginning of each Gospel is an initial in red or green with rough decoration in the contrasting colour, and two-line initials mark new chapters.

This English version of the Gospels is the earliest translation into the English vernacular, apart from the glosses in Latin gospel books such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, and it survives in 8 copies from this period. Royal 1 A XIV must have been copied directly or indirectly from a manuscript in the Bodleian library at Oxford, Bodley MS 441, as the same passages have been omitted from both.

Text page from Luke’s Gospel (London, British Library, MS Royal 1 A XIV, f. 86r).

According to Walter Skeat (d. 1912), the great Old English scholar of the 19th century, this book ‘gives the impression of having been written in troublous times, when the object was rather to have a copy for ready use than to spend time in elaborating it’. Based on this impression, he suggests that Royal 1 A XIV may have been copied during the troubled reign of King Stephen (1135-1154), though there is no evidence for this assertion. It is certainly a workaday version of the Gospels and has been well-used, judging from the well-worn edges. There are frequent corrections and additions, as seen in the page above (f. 86r) where the word þan has been inserted above line 7, and on the following line where the darker ink shows two erasures and corrections by the scribe.

Opening page of Mark’s Gospel (London, British Library, MS Royal 1 A XIV, f. 3r).

The first page of this manuscript provides many clues about its history. At the top is the pressmark of the Benedictine cathedral priory at Christ Church, Canterbury, ‘D[istinctio] xvi Gra[dus] iiii’, so it was in the medieval library of the abbey, and was copied either there or in the area as it contains some Kentish spellings (for example ‘gefeyld’ for ‘gefyld’ fulfilled). The title written at the top of the page, ‘Text[us] iv evangelior[um] anglice’, is reproduced in the 14th-century catalogue of the Christ Church library, but at the Reformation this book was one of many acquired from religious houses by Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1556), whose name is written at the top of the page.

The Wessex Gospels next came into the hands of a noted collector of manuscripts, John Lumley (d. 1609) (his name is inscribed in the lower margin), who was involved in a conspiracy with Mary Queen of Scots, known as the Ridolfi Plot. Lumley forfeited his ancestral home and in unknown circumstances his collection of manuscripts passed to Henry Frederick, the eldest son of James I (d. 1612). The dashing, popular Prince of Wales was also a collector of art and books, and when he died at only 18 his manuscript collection became part of the Royal library. Now housed at the British Library, the Wessex Gospels has been fully digitised so that every page is accessible to view in detail on our Digitised Manuscripts site.

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter @blmedieval.

As a general rule, most medieval manuscripts are the product of a single scribal campaign. There are of course exceptions, most notably books such as chronicles and cartularies which were sometimes added to over many generations. But the Durham Liber Vitae (Book of Life) is perhaps exceptional in having been updated over a period of some 700 years, from the 1st half of the 9th century to shortly before the dissolution of Durham Cathedral Priory in the 16th century. This book is one of the most recent additions to our Digitised Manuscripts site, and there you can view the literally thousands of names which adorn its pages, from the Anglo-Saxon kings and bishops to the monks of the time of Henry VIII.

The first page proper of the Durham Liber Vitae: the names are written in gold and silver ink (London, British Library, MS Cotton Domitian A VII, f. 15r).

This page of the Durham Liber Vitae contains the date 1493 in the upper margin, and on the left commemorates William Richardson and his wife Christina (London, British Library, MS Cotton Domitian A VII, f. 81r).

The Durham Book of Life was made the subject of a comprehensive edition and survey, edited by David Rollason and Lynda Rollason (London: The British Library, 2007). You can now view all the pages online, to gain some appreciation of the complex manner in which this book was put together, commemorating the names of all the members of the monastic community of Durham and its predecessors, together with lay benefactors and others associated in Durham's prayers. A Book of Life indeed.

A series of Gospel extracts precedes the Liber Vitae, in a 12th-century hand (London, British Library, MS Cotton Domitian A VII, f. 4r).

The Durham Liber Vitae retains its 17th-century Cottonian binding, stained red (London, British Library, MS Cotton Domitian A VII).

Are there other candidates for the book which was made over the longest period of time? We'd love to know -- tell us via Twitter @blmedieval or add a comment at the foot of this post.