Self-contained units in composite manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon period

Abstract

Many medieval manuscripts are composite volumes, made up of a number of self-contained units which elsewhere I have called ‘booklets’. Such a unit originated as a small but structurally independent production containing a single work or a number of short works. Two of the earliest surviving examples, dating from the late eighth century, were produced on the continent. Each is a single gathering now bound with other gatherings into a codex: Merseburg, Stiftsbibliothek 105, fols. 85–105, containing Alcuin's Vita S. Vedasti and some of his homilies, and St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek 567, pp. 135–53, containing aVita S. Lucii. There is a fold in the centre of every page of both these quires, made after the text had been copied and not present in the other quires with which they are now bound. In both instances the completed quire was folded so that the verso of its last leaf became the outer pages or ‘cover’ of the resulting booklet. This ‘cover‘ is more soiled than the other pages in the quire, suggesting that the booklet once circulated independently of the other quires in the manuscript into which it is bound.

Affective piety and the practice of penance in late-eleventh-century Worcester: the address to the penitent in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 121

“…The size and especially the thickness of all of these books, as well as their comparative lack of wear, suggests that they may have been intended as reference volumes, but it is worth bearing in mind that they may not have been bound immediately, and so in the time of St Wulfstan and Coleman selections might have been more easily pulled out for use than now appears in their bound state. 121 Moreover, as noted above, while the address to the penitent might have been read from a book, it might equally have been memorised, or used as a model for new compositions, or as a basis for a more spontaneous address to a penitent. Reconstructing the private conversations of a late eleventh-century confessional may (and perhaps should!)…”

The Old English Promissio regis

“…41 It is also possible that the collection was assembled in booklet form, and Pamela Robinson points that Cleopatra Part 1 and Lambeth 489 together make up 'three small, portable booklets' which could have been used in preaching. 42 Regardless of whether the collection once consisted of Cleopatra and Lambeth only or of Cleopatra, Lambeth and CCCC 421, Part 1, it does not seem as if the original arrangement was in the order of the liturgical year and the collection seems more of the kind designed for use on particular occasions or suited to preaching on any occasion. 43 Malcolm Godden has suggested that the collection in Cleopatra B. xiii and Lambeth 489 was 'probably for the use of a bishop, since it includes four homilies for the dedication of a church, one for the consecration of a bishop, and a coronation oath'.…”

Bishops, priests and penance in late Saxon England

“…105 Moreover, the early tenth-century additional leaves of Vespasian D XX perhaps originated as a separate booklet, hinting that this may have been a common form for working pastoral books. 106 Such handy collections may have been particularly vulnerable to the ravages of time.…”