MS. Hatton 20
Summary Catalogue no.: 4113
Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care, in the Old English translation attributed to King Alfred; England (perhaps Winchester), 890 × 897
Contents
In the Old English (West Saxon) translation attributed to King Alfred
H. Sweet, King Alfred's West-Saxon Version of Gregory's Pastoral Care, 2 vols., EETS 45, 50 (London) [repr. 1958]"ÐEOS BOC SCEAL TO ǷIOGORA CEASTRE"
A leaf lost after fol. 41, containing part of ch. 33 (extracts made by Jocelyn in the 16th century, when the leaf was still extant, are in Lambeth Palace MS. 692); the present fol. 42 supplied by Junius, who copied the missing text from British Library MS. Cotton Tiberius B. IX.
" (fol. 53v) ƿillimot writ þus oððe bet"
" (fol. 55r) ƿrit þus oððe bet oððe þine hyde forlet"
Glosses by the Tremulous Hand of Worcester, 13th century
Physical Description
Collation
Layout
Ruled on hair side for 21-31 long lines. Single bounding lines, but Quires 5-7 have double inner binding lines (Franzen 1998, p. 11).
Hand(s)
One main hand, 'a pointed Anglo-Saxon minuscule' (Ker).
Another hand on fols. 6v, 8r, 12r-14r, 15r-v, 40r, 45b, 46v, 48v-49r, 49r-53v, 67v-69v, 98v (Ker).
A third hand supplies Alfred's preface on an independent quire of two leaves (Ker).
A fourth scribe wrote verses on fol. 2v (Watson).
Annotations in an 11th century hand in Alfred's preface, identified as the hand of Archbishop Wulfstan (D. Scragg, A conspectus of scribal hands writing English, 960-1100 (2012), no. 307).
Fols 53v and 55r): an English Vernacular Minuscule using insular forms. ‘a’: insular ‘ð’: long ascender curving to the right and a round bowl ‘ƿ’: with long tapered descender. s. xii
Latin annotations by the so-called Tremulous Hand (Franzen 1998).
Decoration
Titles of chapters are in red, often metallic.
Initials are black filled with yellow, red and green on their own or in combination and have zoomorphic, interlace or other decoration. Sometimes colours are used to fill letters or ˥ which follows a mark of punctuation or other letters 'chosen for no apparent reason' (Franzen 1998, p. 11).
There is a hardpoint drawing on fol. 5v.
Binding
Rebound, s. xvii/ xviii, along with MSS. Hatton 76, Hatton 115 and Hatton 116 (Franzen 1998, p. 11).
History
Provenance and Acquisition
Worcester cathedral priory: sent to Worcester by order of King Alfred; annotated at Worcester in the 11th and 13th centuries (the Tremulous Hand); perhaps used at Worcester by Joscelyn in the 16th century.
Borrowed by Christopher, Lord Hatton before August 1644 and was used by Dugdale, for his Old English-English dictionary, and Junius, who supplied the missing text on fol. 42.
After Hatton's death it was sold to the London bookseller Robert Scot, who sold it to the Bodleian Library in 1671 (Franzen 1998, p. 10).
Record Sources
Availability
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Digital Images
Digital Bodleian (full digital facsimile)
Digital Bodleian (7 images from 35mm slides)
Surrogates
Ker, N. R., ed., The Pastoral Care, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile (Copenhagen: Rosenhilde and Bagger 1956), vol. 6
Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile (Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1998), vol. 6: Worcester Manuscripts
Bibliography
Printed descriptions:
Online resources:
Abbreviations
View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.
Last Substantive Revision
2021-10: Matthew Holford: description revised for digitization, based on da Rold/Morgan/van der Schee and other published descriptions; manuscript not seen.