MS. Auct. F. 4. 32
Summary Catalogue no.: 2176
St Dunstan's Classbook
Liber commonei
codex Oxoniensis prior
‘St Dunstan's Classbook’: four manuscripts written 9th-11th century in Brittany, Wales and England
Physical Description
Binding
Russia leather, mid-19th-century.
History
Provenance and Acquisition
Parts I, III and IV perhaps together at Glastonbury Abbey in the time of St Dunstan.
The four parts of the volume perhaps, as argued by Hunt, first brought together at Glastonbury Abbey in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century as part of a renewed interest in local saints.
Acquired at an unknown date by Thomas Allen (1542–1632).
Given by him to the Bodleian in 1601 (Summary Catalogue I, p. 80): fol. 1r, ‘Tho. Allen D(ono) D(edit)’.
MS. Auct. F. 4. 32 – Part I (fols. 1–9)
Contents
Language(s): Latin
Originally blank. Added three-quarter length image of Christ, with kneeling monk at his feet, in brown ink, see Decoration. Above the monk a distich written by hand D asking for Christ's protection for ‘Dunstan’.
Note on Eutyches
Extract from Macrobius, De differentiis et societatibus, probably with independent circulation; cf. P. de Paolis, Macrobii Theodosii De verborum Graeci et Latini differentiis vel societatibus excerpta (1990), test. 1 (p. 172), lines 1–11 (closest to the present text), and test. 4 (p. 177); cf. ibid., pp. 21–23 ( = Keil, Grammatici Latini V. 601–2) for the same passage in context of the whole work.
Added distich by hand D, the first two lines of Eugenius of Toledo, De bono pacis (see Lapidge in Anglia 98 (1980), 106).
As pr. Keil, Grammatici Latini V.447–60 (ends imperfect at l. 36 of the printed text, ‘semino . as . memor . memoro . as .’).
Jeudy, ‘Manuscrits de l'Ars de Verbo d'Eutychès et le commentaire de Rémi d'Auxerre’, p. 430.Syntactical glossing marks.
Marginal and interlinear glosses in Latin and Breton: mostly written by the scribe, some added 9th and 10th centuries (Bischoff). The first marginal glosses on the text are:
Physical Description
Collation
Layout
Folded before ruling in drypoint four at a time. Written in 27 long lines, written space c. 195 × 125 mm. .
Hand(s)
Caroline minuscule (fols. 1v-9).
Fol. 1r: inscriptions on the image in Anglo-Saxon minuscule; inscription under the image in English caroline minuscule.
Decoration
Pächt and Alexander i. 421; iii. 24, pl. II:
Coloured initials.
Added, fol. 1r, important drawing, possibly by St. Dunstan (inscription in the first person). Drawing of a part-length figure of Christ, holding rod or staff in his right hand (inscribed ‘uirga recta est’, ‘uirga regni tui’, Ps. 44.7), and book or tablet in his left hand (inscribed ‘Uenite | filii au|dite me timorem | domini docebo uos’, Ps. 34.11). Kneeling monk at his feet, identified as ‘Dunstanus’ in verses above. Budny (‘‘St Dunstan’s Classbook’’, pp. 140–2) has identified the script on Christ’s emblems with that of a contemporary copy of a Glastonbury charter of 949, and argued that Dunstan was not its original draughtsman but was responsible for later alterations.
History
Provenance
For dating and localization of the original core see Bischoff, Katalog, no. 3774 (‘Bretagne unter Tours-Einfluß’).
In England probably by the mid-tenth century (drawing and additions by hand D).
Identifiable as a fragment of the ‘duo libri Euticis de uerbo. uetestiss⟨imi⟩’ recorded in the Glastonbury Abbey catalog of 1247/8 (English Benedictine Libraries, The Shorter Catalogues, B39.312).
Seen by Leland at Glastonbury Abbey between 1536 and 1540: ‘Grammatica Euticis, liber olim S. Dunstani’ (English Benedictine Libraries, The Shorter Catalogues, B44.9; also Carley in Scriptorium 40/1 (1986), 114, no. 9).
MS. Auct. F. 4. 32 – Part II (fols. 10–18)
Contents
Cameron B3.3.6; pr. R. Morris, Legends of the Holy Rood, EETS os 46 (1871), 3–17; M-C. Bodden, The Old English Finding of the True Cross (Woodbridge, 1987).
Physical Description
Collation
Layout
1 col., 20 lines; written space c. 215 × 120 mm.
Hand(s)
Anglo-Saxon minuscule with some Caroline features by one scribe, with some later corrections and alterations.
History
Provenance
A vertical crease along the middle indicates that the manuscript was formerly folded.
‘LXXIII’, fol. 10r top, 12th century (?).
MS. Auct. F. 4. 32 – Part III (fols. 19–36)
Contents
Text continues from fol. 36r; see below.
Paragraph on number, from Isidore, Etymologies, III.7.3–6.
Alphabet of Nemnivus, as ed. R. Derolez, Runica manuscripta (1954), pp. 157–9.
Two paragraphs on the dating of Easter; addition by ‘hand D’.
Table of the course of the moon through the Zodiac, as in Bede, De temporum ratione, c. xix.
Lunar table (‘Quot horis luna luceat’).
Paschal table for the years 817–835
Commentary or quaestio (unidentified) on Colossians 2.14; Lapidge & Sharpe 88.
Treatise ‘De abortiua luna’, apparently derived from the anonymous Irish De ratione computandi, c. 73 (Cummian's Letter De Controversia Paschali and the De ratione computandi, ed. M. Walsh and D. O Croinin (Toronto, 1988), pp. 89 n. 237, 180–4).
Between the rubric and incipit is a brief extract from the Cursus paschalis of Victorius of Aquitaine (MGH Auct. ant. IX, p. 682, ll. 8–10), as noted by Walsh and O Croinin, pp. 177–8, note to c. 69.
Gloss to following item.
Cf. edition by G. Friedlin, Zeitschrift f. Mathematik u. Physik 16 (1871) 58–78, at pp. 72–6; (fol. 23v) table of signs for weights, cf. F. Hultsch, Metrologicorum scriptorum reliquiae II (1866), sect. 133, pp. 127–9; multiplication table, continuing to fol. 24r margin, Friedlin, pp. 69–70.
Glosses in Latin and Old Welsh, the latter ed. I. Williams in Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 5 (1929–31), 226–48.
Liturgical lessons and canticles in Greek and Latin.
Readings for an unknown occasion (but probably related to the Eastertide liturgy) from the Minor Prophets; pr. Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents (1869) i.192–7 (not in the order of the manuscript); Lapidge & Sharpe 118(i).
Lessons and canticles for the Easter Vigil (Greek text transliterated); pr. B. Fischer in Colligere fragmenta: festschrift Alban Dold (1952), 144–59; Lapidge & Sharpe 118(ii). Fol. 36 is a replacement leaf supplied by ‘hand D’.
MS. Auct. F. 4. 32 – Part III (fols. 19–36): fols. 19–35
Physical Description
Collation
Layout
1–2 cols., column space c. 205–215 × 60–80 mm. , c. 28–40 lines but layout is variable.
Hand(s)
Welsh insular minuscule, with some half-uncial; Greek text in uncial.
History
Provenance
Fol. 19v (properly the final page, but now misplaced): ‘Finit opus in domino o thei quiri altissimo meo patre commoneo scriptum simul ac magistro’.
Easter table for 817–35, fol. 21r; pricking holes against the year 817 sometimes interpreted as evidence of the date of writing, but regarded by Budny as simply part of the pricking for the page layout.
In England (Glastonbury Abbey?) by the tenth century when fol. 36r added by ‘hand D’, fol. 36r; perhaps at the abbey since the time of St Dunstan.
MS. Auct. F. 4. 32 – Part III (fols. 19–36): fol. 36, replacement leaf added by hand D
Physical Description
Hand(s)
English caroline minuscule.
History
MS. Auct. F. 4. 32 – Part IV (fols. 37–47)
Contents
Fol. 47r is a replacement leaf by hand D.
Latin and Old Welsh interlinear glosses, mostly in a hand resembling the main text (fols. 37v-42r, 45r-v). Syntactical glossing marks.
Originally blank; sentence in Old English (deriving from the Penitential of Ps.-Egbert) added in two 11th century hands.
History
Provenance
At Glastonbury Abbey by the fifteenth century: fol. 47v, ‘In custodia fratris H. Langley’; cf. the same inscription in the same hand in MS. Laud lat. 4, fol. 272. Probably the Henry Langley who was a junior monk at the election of Walter More as abbot in 1456.
MS. Auct. F. 4. 32 – Part IV (fols. 37–47): fols. 37–46
Physical Description
Collation
Layout
1 col., c. 33–41 lines. Written space c. 215 × c. 100 mm.
Hand(s)
Fols. 37r-46v: Welsh minuscule by probably three scribes, (1) fols. 37r-42r18 (2) fols. 42r19–46r (3) fol. 46v.
History
Provenance
In England (Glastonbury Abbey?) by the mid-tenth century when fol. 47 added by hand D.
MS. Auct. F. 4. 32 – Part IV (fols. 37–47): fol. 47, replacement leaf by hand D
Physical Description
Layout
1 col., 26 lines.
Hand(s)
English Caroline minuscule by ‘hand D’.
History
Additional Information
Record Sources
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Digital Bodleian (8 images from 35mm slides)
Digital Bodleian (1 image from 35mm slides)
Bibliography
Abbreviations
View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.
Last Substantive Revision
2018-11: Description updated and revised.