Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 139
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 139, is an intriguing example
of how historical materials were endlessly recycled in order to build new
history-themed compilations. Its contents, leaving aside early modern additions, may
be listed as follows:
Unit |
Quires |
Item |
Description |
Fols. |
1. |
I–II |
1. |
Historia omnimoda, ‘The History in Every Form’,
extending from the Creation of the World to the Kingdom of David,
to which is appended the names of the Bishops of Rome from St Peter
to Calixtus II (1119–24) (fol. 16rv), giving the
lengths of their reigns in years, months and days. |
1r–16v |
2. |
III–IV |
2. |
Extracts from Regino of Prüm, Chronicon. |
17r–35v |
|
V |
3. |
Richard of Hexham, History of the Church at Hexham, The
Deeds of King Stephen, and The Battle of the Standard. |
36r–46r |
|
VI |
4. |
Chronicle from Adam to the Emperor Henry V.
Much of this is simply a list of rulers with the lengths of their reigns. |
46r–48v |
|
|
5. |
Symeon of Durham, Letter to Hugh, Dean of
York, about the Archbishops of York. |
48v–49v |
|
|
6. |
The Siege of Durham and the Probity of Earl Uhtred and of the
Earls who Succeeded Him. |
50r–51v |
3. |
VII–XV |
7. |
Symeon of Durham (attributed), History of
the Kings.
Note, however, that fol. 59v is a rogue leaf containing the prologue
to the Chronicle of Roger of Howden. |
52r–129r |
|
XVI |
8a. |
John of Hexham’s continuation of the History of the Kings.
The continuity of this text is interrupted by items 9 to 12. |
129v–132v |
|
|
9. |
Extract from John of Worcester’s Chronica chronicarum,
s.a. 1132(end)–1133, about the wonders which foretold the passing
of King Henry I. |
132r–v |
|
|
10. |
Serlo’s poem, addressed to Ralph, abbot of Louth Park, about
the Battle of the Standard. |
132v–133r |
|
|
11. |
William of Glasgow, Poem about the Death of Sumorled, lord of the
Isles and of Argyle, at the battle of Renfrew in 1164. |
133r–v |
4. |
XVII |
12. |
Aelred of Rievaulx, The Battle of the Standard. |
134r–138r |
|
XVIII |
8b. |
John of Hexham’s continuation of the History of the Kings. |
138r–147r |
|
|
13. |
Aelred of Rievaulx, The Miracle of the Nun of Watton. |
147r–149v |
5. |
XIX |
14. |
Stephen of Whitby, History of the Foundation of the Abbey of
St Mary, York. |
150r–152v |
|
|
15. |
How Fountains Abbey Assumed its Foundation. |
152v |
|
|
16. |
Thurstan, archbishop of York, Letter about the Departure of the
Monks of Fountains from the Monastery of St Mary in York. |
153r–158r |
|
|
17. |
Excerpt from William of Malmesbury, Deeds of the Kings of the
English, ii.167–70, about Gerbert of Reims and his manner
of life. |
158r–160r |
|
|
18. |
Excerpt from William of Malmesbury, Deeds of the Kings,
ii.111, concerning Charles the Fat’s vision about the future
of the empire. |
160r–161r |
|
|
19. |
Excerpt from William of Malmesbury, Deeds of the Kings,
iii.268, about Archbishop Maurilius of Rouen’s vision of the
last judgement. |
161r |
|
|
20. |
Excerpt from William of Malmesbury, Deeds
of the Kings,
ii.205, about an engagement ring which was claimed by a bronze statue. |
161r–v |
6. |
XX |
21. |
A story about the wife of Ernulf. An excerpt, translated
into Latin, from Geoffrey Gaimar, History of the English,
about how the wife of ‘Ernulf’ was taken by Ælle,
king of the Deirans. |
162r–164v |
|
|
22. |
Why the Church of York Ought Not to Have Jurisdiction Over the
Scots. |
165r–v |
|
|
23. |
The Vision of a Certain
Cleric about the Glory of King Malcolm. The passage also
appears in the fourteenth-century Chronicle compiled
by John Fordun. |
165v |
7. |
XXI |
24. |
Nennius, Eulogium, the ‘Eulogy’ or
preface to his chronicle. Fol. 166r is blank apart from
a brief quotation from Aelred’s, Battle of the Standard,
which was added by a fourteenth-century hand. |
166v |
|
XXII |
25. |
Nennius, Historia Brittonum, ‘The History of the Britons’. |
167r–176v |
|
|
26. |
Caradog of Llancarfan, Life of St Gildas. |
176v–179r |
This collection has many interesting features, not the least of which is the
way in which it begins with two universal histories, the Historia omnimoda and
the Chronicon of Regino of Prüm. The former is a compilation drawn
from diverse sources—from the Bible, Augustine, Ambrose, Origen, Epiphanius,
Arnobius, Hrabanus Maurus, and so on—which combines biblical and ecclesiastical
history with classical mythology. Jerome, significantly, described his
translation and continuation of the Chronicle of Eusebius as a chronicon
omnimodae historiae, and the opening item in Corpus
139 is a work of a similar kind, constructed as a way of correlating
diverse forms of history. It also survives in Oxford, Magdalen
College, MS lat. 8. The other chronicle in this opening section is a history
of the world from the birth of Jesus Christ to 906 (in its original form).
Its author, Regino of Prüm was active in the Rhineland until his death at
Trier in 915. The presence of these items may represent an attempt
to place the English/British contents which follow in a larger framework
of Salvation History, but the Historia omnimoda’s inclusion may
not have been envisaged when the book was first conceived.
The exact process by which Corpus 139 was put together is obscure. Almost
every major item is written by late twelfth-century hands. The layout
and decoration are also broadly similar. The text is laid
out in double columns of roughly the same size; they are
ruled with 35, 36 or 37 lines. There are, however, variations in script
and decoration which suggest that several ‘sections’ may once have
existed as separate manuscripts. This much applies to the gatherings
containing the Historia omnimoda (I–II), to
the gathering containing the Cistercian material and the extracts
from William of Malmesbury (XIX), and to the gatherings containing the Historia
Brittonum and
the Life
of St Gildas (XXI–XXII). These sections certainly
differ in their general aspect from the rest
of the book.
The incomplete gathering between folios 161 and 166 (XX) might also have
been a separate unit. That leaves gatherings III–XVIII.
These units are marked out by stronger continuities in design and content,
and by a certain consistency in the style and palaeography of the rubrics
which introduce and conclude the various texts. The items in quires III–XVIII
were copied by several scribes, but their rubrics are the work of a
single hand.
The most substantial item in these gatherings, if they may be taken to comprise
the manuscript as first conceived, is the so-called Historia regum attributed
to Symeon of Durham (no. 7). The name Historia Regum has gained wide
currency since the nineteenth century, but it receives only limited support
from the manuscript itself, being an abbreviation of a rubric which does
not seem to have been copied from the exemplar used by the scribes (see
below). This name nowhere occurs in the text proper. It misleads, more
to the point, in as much as it suggests that the work is a coherent whole
when it is itself a conglomerate of miscellaneous materials. It has some
eight components, distinguished from each other by radical shifts of style,
focus and derivation:
- An account of the martyrdom of two
seventh-century Kentish princes headed Passio sanctorum Ethelberti
atque Ethelredi regie stirpis puerorum.
- A brief account of the kings
of Northumbria from the mid-fifth century down to 737.
- A more
substantial narrative of Northumbrian ecclesiastical history in
the late seventh and eighth centuries mainly derived from the works
of Bede, especially the Historia
abbatum.
- An annalistic chronicle with a strong Northumbrian emphasis covering 732
to 802.
- A chronicle with a West-Saxon focus covering 849
to 887, based mainly on Asser’s Life of King Alfred.
- A relatively insubstantial series of annals for 888 to 957, but compiled
after 1042.
- Extracts drawn from
William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum, ii.154–5, 221–7, comprising
portents relating to the fate of England at the hands of the Vikings
and Normans which were conveyed to King Edgar and Edward the Confessor.
- An annalistic chronicle covering 848 to 1129.
The final section is mostly derived from John of Worcester’s Chronica
chronicarum, but it shows increasing originality from around 1070 onwards,
and its treatment of northern events strongly suggests that it has been
adapted by a writer based at Durham. But this author makes hardly any
interventions in this compilation’s earlier sections. Indeed, it has
been strongly argued that apart from two lengthy passages
concerned with the Hexham saints, Acca (s.a. 740) and Alchmund (s.a.
781) which were intruded when this section of Corpus 139 was copied, §§ 1–5
were first
collected and revised by an earlier author, Byrthferth of Ramsey. This
much is strongly suggested by the Latinity of these sections, since they
have all the stylistic peculiarities of this late tenth-century writer;
but if so, it is well to note that Byrthferth was himself gathering together
and re-writing earlier materials orginating from Kent, Wessex and Northumbria.
All
of this might lead one to doubt whether the contents of folios 52 to
129 are indeed a single coherent work—to infer that the eight sections represent,
say, four different works on the same level, as it were, as the other
units in this book; but they are clearly marked out as a text of some kind by
the rubrics which appear on folios 51v and 129v:
51vb |
Incipit historia sancte et suauis memorie Symeonis
monachi et precentoris ecclesie sancti Cuthberti Dunelmi de regibus Anglorum
et dacorum et creberimis bellis, rapinis, et incendiis eorum, post obitum
uenerabilis Bede presbyteri fere usque ad obitum regis primi Henrici
filii Willelmi nothi qui Angliam adquisiuit, id est .cccc(tor).xxix.
annorum et .iiii(or). mensium. |
Here begins the history of Symeon, of holy and pleasing
memory, monk and precentor of the Church of St Cuthbert of Durham, about
the kings of the English and the Danes and their frequent wars, ravages
and burnings, from the death of the venerable priest, Bede, almost up
to the death of King Henry I, the son of William the Bastard, who conquered
England—that is, of 429 years and four months. |
129va |
Explicit historia suauis et sancte memorie Symeonis
monachi et precentoris ecclesie sancti Cuthberti Dunelmi, annorum
.cccc(tor).xxix. et mensium quatuor. |
Here ends the history of Symeon,
of holy and pleasing memory, monk and precentor of the Church of St
Cuthbert of Durham, of 429 years and four months. |
No small part of the debate about this manuscript centers on these somewhat
confusing rubrics. It is in them alone that the work is attributed to the
Symeon, a significant Durham-based historian who flourished between c.1090
and c.1128. He was responsible for a
major work of rhetorical history concerned with that church, the Libellus
de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, ecclesie (‘A little book
on the origin and rise of this the church of Durham’), which
was written at some point between 1104 and 1109.
But Symeon can only be the author of our ‘history’ in a
limited sense, not just because it is manifestly a loose compilation of
works by diverse authors, and there are contradictions
in their Durham-related contents which make it improbable that the same author
was responsible for both the Libellus de Exordio and these elements
in the text. It appears that the Durham elements in our text are the work
of some other monk of the cathedral priory. It remains possible that Symeon
was involved in the gathering together of the compilation as a whole,
but it seems unlikely that he contributed any of the content. It
has been suggested, therefore, that this history might represent an attempt
by Symeon to gather together material for a more ambitious historical work,
but there is no hard evidence to show that a further work was contemplated.
The rubrics also provide
evidence for the theory that the book was part of a larger campaign of
book production which produced another late twelfth-century historical miscellany,
that found in Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff.I.27, pp. 1–40
and 73–252 + Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 66, pp. 1–114.
This book, now dismembered, includes a copy of Symeon’s Libellus de
Exordio, and the way in which Symeon is described in the rubrics
to this copy of that work closely resembles the words found in Corpus 139:
i.e. Incipit historia sancte et suauis memorie Simeonis monachi
sancti Cuthberti Dunelmi... (Cambridge Ff.I.27, p. 131). These
parallels seem to imply that these manuscripts were
produced in the same scriptorium at much the same time. The other book
has, furthermore, an ex libris inscription in a late twelfth-
or early thirteenth-century hand which shows that it was the property
of the Cistercian monastery at Sawley in the West Riding of Yorkshire
at that time: Liber
Sancte Marie de Salleia (Corpus 66, p. 2). A similar inscription,
now erased but still visible under ultra-violet light, also occurs in
Corpus 139. It seems clear that both books were at Sawley by around
1200, but it need not follow that their core components were devised
and produced there. Sawley was a monastery of middling status and wealth,
and one which had no special reason to hold Symeon in high regard. Another
possibility is that the core elements of Corpus 139 (gatherings III–XVIII)
were manufactured at Durham and then passed off to Sawley after it had
become clear that they were far from perfect.
The rubric on on folio 51v may also provide a clue
in its chronological contradictions as to the date when this larger campaign
of book production was carried out: it recognises, first of all,
that ‘Symeon’s Historia’ ends
in 1129 (‘almost up to the death of Henry I’), but if, as Hunter-Blair
suggests, one adds 429 years and four months to the date of Bede’s death
(May 735), the stated starting point, we get September 1164. This does
not seem to make sense, but 1164 may have been a significant closing point
for the makers of the book, for another item, perhaps the latest item in
the book as first conceived, refers to an event which took place in that
year, the death of Somerled. It follows that the rubricator may have regarded
Symeon’s Historia as
covering a certain portion of the period covered
by the book as a whole—part of the period, that is, from creation to late
1164. That would imply that the makers of Corpus 139 in its original form
were attempting to organise the book as a coherent compilation and that
they were active soon after 1164. However, the digits .cccc(tor).xxix. might,
as Derek Baker suggests, simply represent a misreading for .mc.xxix.,
the terminal date of the Historia Regum. Stronger evidence for the dating
of this section is provided by the lists of abbots of York and Whitby which
appear under the year 1074 in the final section of the Historia Regum.
These lists were updated by the scribes and they refer to Clement and Richard
as the present incumbents at York and Whitby respectively. The former
reigned between 1161 and 1184, the latter between 1148 and 1175, giving
a date of 1161 × 1175. Since
the cleric mentioned in item 23 interrogates the spirit of Malcolm IV,
this item must have been written after his death in 9 December 1165,
making it the latest securely datable item in the manuscript and lending, perhaps, further evidence for the dating of this flurry of historical activity; but there
is, unfortunately, some uncertainty as to whether this quire (no. XX)
was part of Corpus 139 as first compiled.
Of the other components, gathering XIX would seem to have come from a Cistercian
house, perhaps Fountains Abbey itself. The provenance of the other sections
remains obscure, but since the quires were numbered by a contemporary hand,
the whole must have been assembled before the end of the twelfth century,
probably at Sawley.
The later history of Corpus 139 is quite obscure. It seems to have reached London by the beginning of the sixteenth century.
Once there it passed through the hands of several owners—including
a certain William Peryn (d. 1558), who held a prebend at Westminster Abbey
late in the reign of King Edward IV, after its secularisation—before coming
into the possession of Nicholas Wootton, the first dean of Canterbury (d.
1566). Wootton gave the book to Archbishop Matthew Parker (1504–75),
who bequeathed it to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
Facsimile: Cambridge,
Corpus Christi College, MS 139.
Editions and Translations: The so-called Historia
Regum is printed in T. Arnold (ed.), Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia,
Rolls Series 75, 2 vols. (London, 1882–5), ii, 3–283. MU5. Arnold also prints
a number of the minor items in Corpus
139, such as the account of the Siege of Durham. For translations
of the Historia regum and its continuations, see J. Stevenson, The Church Historians of England, vol. 3, pt. 2 (London, 1855). There is an
solid edition of Regino’s Chronicon by F. Kurze: Reginonis abbatis Prumiensis chronicon cum continuatione Treverensi, Scriptores
rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 50 (Hannover, 1890).
Commentary
- Baker, D., ‘Scissors and Paste: Corpus Christi, Cambridge, MS 139 Again’,
in D. Baker (ed.), The Materials Sources and Methods of Ecclesiastical History,
Studies in Church History 11 (Oxford, 1975), pp. 83–123. PO.A. Offers an
excellent reconstruction of the manuscript, but note that the foliation
employed here is the author’s own. It differs from that used in the online
facsimile. Baker’s is almost alone, furthermore, in arguing that the book
was assembled at Fountains Abbey, perhaps for the use of its daughter house
at Sawley.
- Bell, D. N., An Index of Authors and Works in Cistercian Libraries in Great
Britain, Cistercian Studies 130 (Kalamazoo, MI, 1992), pp. 18, 138–9,
180–1,
and so on.
- Clancy, T. O., ‘Scotland, the “Nennian” recension of the Historia Brittonum, and the Lebor Bretnach’, in S. Taylor (ed.), Kings, Clerics and Chronicles in Scotland, 500–1297: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Ogilvie Anderson on the Occasion of her Ninetieth Birthday (Dublin, 2000), pp. 87–107. MXBA.
- Dumville, D. N., ‘Celtic-Latin Texts in Northern England, c.1150–c.1250’, Celtica, 12 (1977), 19–49.
- Dumville, D. N., ‘The Sixteenth-Century History of Two Cambridge Manuscripts
from Sawley’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society,
7 (1977–80), 427–44; rpt. in D. N. Dumville, Histories
and Pseudo-Histories of the Insular Middle Ages (Aldershot, 1990), no. 8.
- Forsyth, K., ‘Evidence of a Lost Pictish Source in the Historia regum
Anglorum of Symeon of Durham’, in S. Taylor (ed.), Kings, Clerics
and Chronicles in Scotland, 500 1297: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Ogilvie
Anderson on the Occasion of her Ninetieth Birthday (Dublin, 2000), pp.
19–34. MXBA.
- Hart, C. R., ‘Byrhtferth’s Northumbrian Chronicle’, English
Historical Review, 98 (1982), 558–82. JSTOR.
- Hunter Blair, P., ‘Some Observations on the Historia Regum Attributed
to Symeon of Durham’, in N. K. Chadwick (ed.), Celt and Saxon: Studies
in the Early British Border (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1964), pp. 63–118.
MVC7. A fundamental contribution to the discussion. Note esp. the plate
opposite p. 117, which reproduces the rubrics relating to Symeon from Corpus
139, fol. 51v, and Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff.I.27, pp. 123 and 131.
- Hunter Blair, P., ‘Symeon’s History of the Kings’, Archaeologia
Aeliana, 4th ser. 16 (1939), 87–100. Journals LA6.
- Lapidge, M., ‘Byrhtferth of Ramsey and the Early Sections of the Historia
Regum Attributed to Symeon of Durham’, Anglo-Saxon England,
10 (1982), 97–122 [MVB]; rpt in idem, Anglo-Latin Literature, 900–1066 (London
and Rio Grande, Ohio, 1993), pp. 317–42. YBL.
- MacLean, S., ‘Recycling the Franks in Twelfth-Century England’, Speculum, 87 (2012), 649–81. Journals L6.
- Meehan, B., ‘Durham Twelfth-Century Manuscripts in Cistercian Houses’,
in D. W. Rollason, M. Harvey and M. Prestwich (eds), Anglo-Norman Durham,
1093-1193 (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 439–49. Argues that Corpus 139 was copied
at Durham and updated at Sawley. MWTD.Q.
- Meehan, B., ‘Notes on the Preliminary Texts and Continuations to Symeon
of Durham’s Libellus de Exordio’, in D. W. Rollason (ed.), Symeon
of Durham, Historian of Durham and the North, Studies in North-Eastern History
1 (Stamford, 1998), pp. 128–37. MWTD.Q. Note esp. the conclusion, pp. 136–7,
where Meehan suggests that Corpus 139 and its sister MSS were produced
at Durham in haste and then passed off to minor local monasteries [such
as Sawley] in preference for the better copies that they had produced.
He suggests, moreover, that various items in Corpus 139 might provide ‘a
glance back to the period of his [Symeon of Durham’s]
activity as precentor, historian and scribe..., though it may be valid
to question the trust which subsequent commentators have placed in these
volumes’ attributions of authorship when in certain other respects they
are clearly not reliable’.
- Meehan, B., ‘Symeon
of Durham (fl. c.1090–c.1128)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).
- Morris, C. J., Marriage and Murder in Eleventh-Century Northumbria: A Study
of De obsessione Dunelmi, Borthwick Papers 82 (York, 1992). Pamphlet MWTN.Q.
- Norton, C., ‘History, Wisdom and Illumination’, in D. W. Rollason
(ed.), Symeon of Durham, Historian of Durham and the North, Studies
in North-Eastern History 1 (Stamford, 1998), pp. 61–105. Discusses Cambridge,
University Library, MS Ff.I.27, pp. 1–40 and 73–252 + Cambridge, Corpus Christi
College, MS 66, pp. 1–114. MWTD.Q.
- Offler, H. S., ‘Hexham and the Historia Regum’, Transactions of the Architectural and Archaeological Society of Durham and Northumberland, 30 (1970), 51–62.
- Offler, H. S., Medieval Historians of Durham, Inaugural Lecture (Durham
University, 1958).
- Piper, A. J., ‘The Historical Interests of the Monks of Durham’,
in D. W. Rollason (ed.), Symeon of Durham, Historian of Durham and the North,
Studies in North-Eastern History 1 (Stamford, 1998), pp. 301–32. MWTD.Q.
- Symeon of Durham, Libellus de Exordio atque Procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, Ecclesie – Tract on the Origins and Progress of this the Church of Durham, ed. and trs. D. W. Rollason, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 2000). MWTD.Q.
- Tyler, E. M., ‘Writing Universal History in Eleventh-Century England: Cotton Tiberius B.I, German Imperial History-writing and Vernacular Lay Literacy’, in M. Campopiano and H. Bainton (eds), Universal Chronicles in the High Middle Ages. Writing History in the Middle Ages 4 (York, 2017), pp. 65–93. MBR. Worth considering for the purposes of comparison.
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