Colloquia

Colloquia and Seminars

Durham Colloquium, December 2001

Programme

THURSDAY 6 DECEMBER

I. PARALLELS TO THE DURHAM LIBER VITAE

	4.30-5.00		Dr Werner Vogler (Stiftsarchiv St Gallen)
	'Carolingian libri vitae of Rhaetia and Alemannia: Pfäfers, Reichenau, St Gallen. Contents, function, meaning, perspectives of further research'
	5.00-5.30		Professor Simon Keynes (University of Cambridge)
	Liber Vitae of New Minster and other comparanda
	5.30-6.15		discussion

FRIDAY 7 DECEMBER

II. THE DURHAM LIBER VITAE AS AN ARTEFACT

	9.00-9.30		Dr Colin Tite (London)
	The Liber Vitae and Sir Robert Cotton
	9.30-10.00		Mr Michael Gullick (Red Gull Press)
	'The Make-Up of the Liber Vitae'
	10.00-10.45		Discussion
	10.45-11.15		Coffee

III. NAMES IN THE DURHAM LIBER VITAE

	11.15-11.45		Mr Alan Piper (University of Durham)
	Later medieval monastic entries
	11.45-12.15		Mrs Lynda Rollason (University of Durham)
	Later medieval lay entries
	12.15-1.00		Discussion
	2.30-3.00		Dr Jan Gerchow (Ruhrlandmuseum Essen):
	The origins of the Liber Vitae
	3.00-3.30		Dr Elizabeth Briggs (West Yorkshire Archive Service):
	Names in the original compilation (down to the mid-ninth century)
	3.30-4.00		Professor David Rollason (University of Durham)
	The Liber Vitae in the Twelfth Century
	4.30-5.00		Mr John S. Moore (University of Bristol)
	Anglo-Norman families recorded in the Durham 'Liber Vitae'
	5.00-5.30		Professor Geoffrey Barrow (Edinburgh)
	Some Scots in the Liber Vitae
	5.30-6.30		Discussion

SATURDAY 8 DECEMBER

IV. CONTEXTUALISING THE DURHAM LIBER VITAE: ANALOGUES AND COMPARANDA

	9.00-9.30		Prof. em. Dr Dr h. c. Arnold Angenendt (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster)
	'Beneficium societatis: Schenkung und Einschiebung in den Liber Vitae'
	9.30-10.00		Dr Katherine Keats-Rohan (Unit for Prosopraphical Research, University of Oxford)
	Cartulary, Obituary and Martyrology of the Mont St Michel
	10.00-10.30		Prof. PhDr. Ivan Hlavácek (Institute of Historical Auxiliary Sciences and Archivistics, Karlsuniversität, Prague)
	The Codex Gigas and its necrology
	11.45-12.15		Dr Janet Burton (University of Wales, Lampeter)
	Monastic commemoration and memorialisation in a Yorkshire context
	12.15-12.45		Dr R. N. Swanson (University of Birmingham)
	'Books of Brotherhood: Registering Fraternity and Confraternity in Late Medieval England'
	12.45-1.30		Discussion
	2.30-4.30		PLENARY SESSION
	Taking forward the Durham Liber Vitae project

British Library Seminar, December 2002

Present: Elizabeth Briggs, Michelle Brown, David Ganz, Jan Gerchow, Michael Gullick, Alan Piper, David Rollason, Colin Tite

Session 1: Codicology

Michael Gullick introduced his current research as follows:

Part I (Gospel excerpts).

The original core of the book (Part II) had four primary sewing stations (i.e holes in the gutters) with pronounced thread stains, and these stations are different from those used by Cotton in rebinding the book. There are in addition other sewing stations in Parts III-IV. Since the sewing stations in Part I are the same as the original sewing stations in Part II, it is tentatively proposed that Part I was made (in the late 12th century) to be joined to Part II and to reuse the original sewing stations of the latter. This would not be unusual if there had been a complete rebinding, and would have been only practical as the parchment is so thick. Alternatively, Part I could just have been hitched on to the existing binding of Part II.

Either way, this could have been done during a period of apparent intense interest in the book in the late 12th century. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, it was more normal to make new sets of sewing stations.

Michael raised the possibility that the hand of Part I was that of a letter of Bernard of Clairvaux in DCL B.IV.24, bottom fol. 96r. [On comparison of a xerox, the meeting dismissed this possibility but noted the need to compare the hand of Part I with Durham hands at the forthcoming seminar in Durham.]

Part II: the original core:

It is impossible to believe that a manuscript so finely produced was not made in regular quires. Michael's reconstruction involves:

Quires I-V: regular quires of six with leaves now missing. Note that fol. 37 (on which the monks' list begins) may be the beginning of quire V. Quire VI is a very large quire (of twelve), which is still tentative - it seems strange as the parchment is so thick.

The blank leaves then make sense in relation to the lists. There is one blank leaf after the kings' list; the putative bishops' list was followed by a blank etc. It begins to make sense as a sort of rhythm.

New lists start on fols. 18v and 19v, i.e. the short ones at the front.

DISCUSSION

How many bishops names would there have been? Which sees would have been included? There are four possible folios for bishops.

Jan: It is quite normal for bishops to come before kings in continental libri vitae.

Fol. 24 is short at the fore-edge and is hooked round quire II, but should have been hooked round quire III. Quire IV still stands as it was and is the key unit.

Fol. 25 is not an insertion because of the nature of the parchment. Nobody has ever been able to sort out hair and flesh. Michael has not himself tried to do this, but will do so in the light of his proposed reconstruction.

Fol. 47 is definitely the same parchment and pricked and ruled as Part II, and may be one of the leaves removed from Part II. It was kept because it had the OE manumission on it.

The leaves that are missing are presumably missing because they were blank. But Cotton did not generally cut leaves out. Michael and Lynda Rollason think there was a revival in interest in the book at the end of the Middle Ages. There is some evidence of another late sewing, presumably done at Durham not much before 1500, in Part IV, and it may have been then that the blank leaves were removed. These late sewing stations are not visible in the earlier sections.

Michelle: it may be possible to explore this during the digitisation process.

Fol. 47: Julian Brown thought the first lines of the manumission were written by one of the scribes of the Durham Ritual (early s.11).

Fols. 35 and 36 mark a change from 2nd to 3rd hand, so fols. 34 and 36 could be conjoint, and there could be a leaf missing between fols. 35 and 36. Fols. 33-7 are the big problem area.

Were there normally singletons in medieval manuscripts? Yes, in heavily illuminated books like the Book of Kells, but there seems no reason for it in the Liber Vitae. David Ganz: maybe singletons were created when a half bifolium which had been made a mess of was discarded.

Michelle: Silver leaf is a difficult technique and is very prone to misbehaviour. Questions to pose: how thorough was the planning of the book and what scope was there for expansion? What was the liturgical context? Could it have been the removal to Norham?

Elizabeth: the compiler of the original core was obviously copying from something, because on one occasion one block was copied twice by accident.

Alan: Four blank leaves after fol. 17 seems implausible, so in this case there must have been something on these leaves and they constitute an early loss. We could assume 3.5 pages of bishops, say 360 bishops. There could have been several lists of bishops (bishops of the grade of anchorites, bishops of ... etc.).

Michael observes the existence of holes with rust round them on fol. 71. They appear on fols. 69,l 68, 76, 75, 71, 67 diminishing in size right-left of this list. On this basis, Michael reconstructs the quire as shown, on the basis that a bifolium was refolded. From the content point of view, Lynda believes this makes perfect sense as a group of material which would have belonged together. SO: Michael is now presuming that this was a quire and was at the back of a binding. It seems likely that everything was bound together at this time and there were not separate leaves.

Fols. 66 and 70 are definitely a bifolium, as are 58 and 61 and 59 and 60.

Fol. 63v has the inscription which Lynda deciphered with Paul Harvey's help under UV. This is the inscription was recopied by a Cotton scribe. It is more likely to have been at the front than in the middle.

The second half of the 12th century work always goes in long lines as opposed to columns. A great deal of this 12th-century work looks suspiciously like the work of one scribe and might be identifiable in B.IV.24 (look at fol. 64r). The us abbreviation is especially distinctive. He may be scribe Hugh form 2 in B.IV.24 (e.g. wrote convention on fol. 63r). Latest convention he seems to write is with Gerard, prior of Durham (1175).

Michelle: the hand looks more like 1189 than 1175.

Michael: fol. 73 and onwards are leaves with only material of c.1300 and later (Lynda).

Fol. 63 has names on the recto. Alan: should it be at the back as a kind of colophon? Michael: perfectly possible, except that it does not have rust marks. But, if the rust marks are from the late medieval binding, it could have been at the back of the book in the 12th century. Lynda affirms that the inscription on fol. 63 is 15th-century.

Michael: Addition of gospel extracts in the early 12th century; then some addition or reworking in the 3rd quarter of the 12th century. Then a tidying up at Durham in the late middle ages (Lynda confirms consistency of this with names in the Liber Vitae).

Michelle: the disordering is likely to have been pre-Cotton. Maybe it was in the late middle ages that the blank leaves were cut out and there was some reordering and rebinding of the book.

Colin: Fols. 49-50, 68-9, 63-4 and 75-6 were glued together.

Michael: the current hypothesis is that this was done in the c.1500 work. This belongs to the pre-Dissolution Durham binding.

Michelle: why does it need to have been pre-Dissolution - the rust could have developed quite quickly. Alan: monks' names ceased to be put into the book at least a decade, possibly two decades, before the Dissolution. They may have left slips with names inside the book. The rust surely developed after the Dissolution when the book was no longer on the High Altar.

Michael: Lynda's work shows that the matter does fall chronologically. Was this all part of the late medieval tidying up and re-ordering. What had rust marks on was moved from the end. Maybe the latest leaves were loose. Definitely, the older part was joined with some of the earlier.

Alan: Lynda wants us to see the resurrection of the book in the late 14th century, when the Neville Screen was put up etc.

Michelle: is it possible that the book originally contained more ancillary texts, as is demonstrable with the Lindisfarne Gospels. I have argued elsewhere the case for the Gospels being the Liber Magni Altaris. As we have them, the Gospels have been tidied up to make a unitary text.

Jan: cannot recall an example of this in continental libri vitae, although it has been raised as a possibility.

Michael: from talking to Lynda, I am now coming to assume that, apart from the bishops' list, the book is still complete.

Alan: a leaf must have gone between fols. 15 and 16 by the early 12th century.

Michael: the foliation in the top right-hand corner was by James. The Cotton foliation was done by Wanley. The Arabic numbers on the first folios of quires are always struck through, providing evidence that the numbers antedate the quires. The numbers may go back to the pre-Cotton 16th-century rebinding.

Colin: [later comment] 'This may well be right but I really need to look again at that numbering. It was certainly in place by the time James Ware used the ms (probably some time in the second quarter of the seventeenth century.'

Alan: fols. 15v-16r: the 12th-century sections run across, with a cross-reference to the father of Henricus comes.

Why was the bishop list taken out? Elizabeth: because it had Aidan or Cuthbert in it?

David R: where does Michael think the binding was? Michael: in the c.1500 Durham binding, fol. 67 was the end of the book. What was the date of the binding which created the rust-holes? Michael: c. 1500. Chronological order is then lost.

Michael: Lynda says that the material on the rust-hole folios are a group. Maybe Cotton re-arranged the book to get it into chronological order.

Colin: The Arabic numerals can only have been inserted after the glued pages were separated, probably before Cotton's time. Then Wanley was given the job of foliating the book, with a numeral every ten pages. The Wanley order is accurate until you get to the adhered pages, and the only way he can have done the calculation is if the pages were stuck together again. Hence his final total on fol. 83v.

Alan: were they glued together only once after the Cotton binding? Are the 'a's and 'b's instructions to someone to paste leaves together? Colin: the page numbers would not be consecutive had this been the case. Michael: the foliation is pre-Cottonian, so Alan may be right about instructions to the binder but it is all pre-Cottonian.

The foliation of every tenth leaf is the calculation of 77 leaves struck through on fol. 83v, and was done by Wanley in 1703. Wanley's calculation of 75 leaves is an annotation to the catalogue.

Summary: the relict pagination was done; then the leaves were pasted together; separated before Cotton (Colin thinks), and then Cotton pasted them together again (because of the Wanley numbering). They were separated possibly because they were the central bifolia of quires, and fol. 63v would not have been available to be copied in the Cotton front leaf.

Colin [later comment]: 'I still think the 'a's and 'b's were added when the leaves were separated and are not instructions to the binder to glue those leaves together. I am also not completely happy about the conclusion we were reaching on Wanley's numbering. I shall send you a copy of my letter.'

Michael: Colin's comments show that the later foliations are all much later and have no significance for the reshuffling of the manuscript. Colin: the numbers at the bottom of the page cannot be earlier than the 16th century.

Colin adds [later comment]: I can't quite remember which of the foliations Michael was referring to but those at the centre foot of the page do show some shuffling - the number '10' appears on fol. 56, '9' on fol. 57 and '11' on fol. 58.

CONSULTATION OF THE MS

PART III

Michael: Part III (the 12th-century additions are on 'thin insular parchment'. Is this an attempt to match the parchment to the original core, because you don't normally find that sort of parchment in early 12th-century Durham books. Dark colour, very even texture both sides.

Elizabeth: Fol. 55 has original prickings but the ruling does not correspond - it is in plummet; and this seems to be the case for this whole part.

Michelle: This could have been a batch of vellum which was older, perhaps even taken from an earlier book.

Alan: Maybe the 'thin insular parchment' marked a re-launch of the book after 995.

Fol. 52v: looks like a palimpsest and needs checking out with UV etc.

Fol. 51r-v: candidate for UV (+ a very early repair)

Fol. 49 has been pasted to something else, if indeed it has been pasted.

Michelle: we need to check this.

I. RUST HOLES

The rust holes are an odd shape, but this is not inconsistent with the use of crude nails in later medieval bindings.

II. GOSPEL EXTRACTS

It is extraordinary that the extract ends at exactly the end of the leaf. Was there another leaf on which the gospel passage continued?

David [later comment]: 'Would it be helpful if I tried to identify whether the Gospel extracts are lections, and if so what their liturgical function may be? With Ursula Lenker's monograph on A-S Gospel lections that should be fairly straightforward, and might make it possible to be more specific about how the book was used. (I haven't checked that Jan doesn't treat this in his book).'

III. THE LATE 12TH CENTURY SCRIBE

Alan: has 'hopping' ampersands. Alan and Michael: 1150s is most likely (common sign of abbreviation is still slightly cupped).

Alan: we could put a transcript of these discussions on the project web-site, and we could put some digital images up as well.

Michelle: as soon as the digitisation is done (as soon as possible after the end of March), the digital images would be available for the project to work on.

Session 2: Early medieval palaeography

IV. USE OF GOLD AND SILVER

Michael: There are two kinds of gold mordants: a sort of gum, and a mordant with a bulk filler such as chalk to produce a three-dimensional effect. What is used here seems to be gold leaf with a gum mordant. Looking at it under a magnifier, it seems to present a flat, slightly burnished surface. Michelle: It looks at first like shell (powdered) gold, but this can be checked under a low-powered microscope.

Michael: Silver leaf is much more difficult to work with because it is cannot be beaten as thin as gold, but nevertheless this looks like leaf. Scribe 3 wrote in alternate gold and ink (not silver), which may indicate that they did not have the silver, or it reflected the difficulty of using silver leaf. Perhaps it had already oxidised in the earlier work, and so was avoided.

Michelle: Lindisfarne Gospels use both leaf and chrysography (powder). Michael thinks the gold is burnished in the Liber Vitae and so cannot be chrysography. Michelle: it does look like leaf and there are places where the lettering seems to have been trimmed round with a knife. There are also places where it seems to be sticking up. We need to do microphotographs to confirm that. Chrysography is rare in Britain, unknown in Ireland. It is used presumably by Wilfrid in the gospels given to Ripon, and it is also found in the highest status contexts in the Lindisfarne Gospels. Gold leaf is found in the Amiatinus.

Silver leaf is found in:

Vespasian Psalter (720s/730s) Royal Bible (820s/840s) Codex Aureus

Alan: Maybe you burnished the writing area before applying the lettering, so there may be a chemical difference between the writing area and the margins. Michelle: we shall need to check this out in the course of digitisation.

Michelle: Oxidisation is likely to be greater for pages which have been exposed to the air (and some openings are clearly more oxidised than others). It will be necessary to check at what periods the book has been on exhibition. We need to check the content of the pages which are particularly oxidised. It is possible that some results from some earlier conservation treatment.

Michelle: Is there evidence of purple staining of the leaves, or is this the result of mould damage? We need to check that out. Some seems to relate to the frame ruling, and so might be pre-writing treatment of the leaf.

David: We shall need in the digitised edition to describe each and every one of the names in terms of the nature and use of gold or silver.

Fol. 33v: gold seems to have been laid over the silver.

Michelle: Some names show gold over silver, almost as if they have upped the status of certain names. This destroys the alternation of gold:silver. Possibly this was correction in gold ink.

Michael: It could be that gold was put down by accident, silver put over the top, and then flaked off to reveal the gold.

V. SCRIBAL HANDS

There is a problem as to whether hands 1 and 2 are really distinct; hand 3 certainly is.

The rubricator is assumed to be hand 1. Note that the rubrics were not ruled for.

Elizabeth: Hand 2 tends to use crossed d at the end.

Michelle: comparanda for the manuscript include:

Monkwearmouth/Jarrow (uses leaf) the Flixborough inscriptions (dating very uncertain) Bodley 819 Barberini Gospels (late 8th century; mileage of making some comparanda with some of the hands) Digby 63

We need to consider the liturgical context of making such high-grade commemoration - was it connected with the move of the community from Lindisfarne to Norham?

David Ganz: How can we exclude the possibility that names were entered over a period, say from the 820s to the 840s?

Elizabeth: Fols. 36 and 45 have hand 3. The hand seems to change on fol. 44. It is quite difficult to distinguish because hand 3 was consciously imitating.

David Ganz: Perfectly happy about hand 3 but uncertain about hands 1 and 2.

Elizabeth: Fol. 15r col. c: There does seem to be a difference here between names in this column and the following. Hand 2 adds to nearly all of the lists (e.g. the last three names of the anchorites). There does seem to be some change in abbreviations between the hands for presbyter.

Michael: It may be that analysis of the mordant will help to distinguish hands.

Michelle: We may be being distracted by the bleed and other features. It nevertheless does look like a different hand, but the two scribes seem to be working together.

Elizabeth: The third hand is not always on separate leaves. On fol. 35r, col. c, it looks as if hands 1 and 2 interleave with each other. Hand 2 does about four names (nos. 5, 6, 7, 8, of the silver names in the middle of names written by hand 2). The gold names we really cannot see and will need to be looked at in the digitisation process.

Alan: The last name on fol. 35, col. c looks very different (crossing of 'd' is significantly higher) from names in the middle of col. b.

Elizabeth: Hand 2 does seem to use crossed d at the end of a name, whereas hand 1 uses th.

David Ganz: How late could the script have been written?

Michelle: It must be pre-Athelstan. The script generally accords with Northumbria after the late 8th century.

Elizabeth: The last dateable names are around 839/844, assuming the entries are posthumous.

Michael: There is nothing idiosyncratic about this.

David Ganz: Hand 3 is not evolving in any direction.

Michelle: Spelling of names is adhering to Northumbrian orthography.

David Rollason: The philological aspect of the names will require close attention.

David Ganz: There must have been a pre-existing list of names which was then copied in mordant.

Michael: The change from hand 2 to hand 3 suggests that there was an interval, during which there was no ad hoc addition of names. We should obviously look at this very closely (Elizabeth confirms that there are no precise dating elements in the names at the points of change-over.)

Michelle: The hands do not need to be very far apart. The scribes could have been coxing and boxing.

Michael: It becomes very important to know how many scribes there were. If you have two, you really have got a scriptorium, whereas a single scribe could have been brought from anywhere.

Michelle: We could use videospectral analysis of the ink might be able to show a variation in ink between the different hands, and we could also analyse sweepings from the gutters to analyse any of the gold and silver which has become detached. We should be able to decide whether the gold was put on top of the silver etc.

VI. CAPITALS

Michelle: There might be some mileage in studying the capital letters, especially those on fols. 26r and 27r. How many scribes were there in the scriptorium which produced this manuscript?

By comparison with southern manuscripts, this should be dated early 10th century (Michelle), but David Ganz opines that Carolingian models would in fact have been available in the 820s - foliar ornament, etc.

Michelle: These initials look Mediterranean, the same sorts of thing which are influencing the Carolingian manuscripts. There are no close analogies for these initials in English manuscripts.

Red outlining is a very interesting feature and is found in Royal II.A.20 (Mercian prayerbook, first quarter 9th century). Its purpose is to mask any raggedness around the leaf.

There are some metalwork comparanda from the time of Æthelwulf.

VII. RUBRICS

Michelle: These are in vermilion (like Southumbrian books) in half-uncial without a 'sniff' of uncial, which you would expect even in late 8th-century Monkwearmouth/Jarrow books.

Fols. 49v-50r: Viewing in a mirror shows a 'Robertus' on fol. 49v which is not on fol. 50r. So the lower part of the offset is not an offset of the lower part of fol. 50r. The upper offset (from 'Walterus de Gosewich') is a later offset, when the leaves were indeed together and not pasted together. So this is evidence for another lost leaf, there being no leaf with a similar skim on.

Fol. 25r: This is the same parchment as the rest of Part II, and has the original pricking and ruling (another line has been added to accommodate the Worcester monks).

VIII. COMPARANDA (stacks)

Acanthoid decoration is characteristic of Carolingian influence (cf. Moutier-Grandval Bible), and related to what is on the front of the Stonyhurst Gospel.

Royal A.II.20 (Royal Prayerbook)

Red containing initials Silver (on first leaf - Gospel extracts) as well as gold (powder rather than leaf in both cases) use of half-uncial

Additional 40618 (Athelstan Pocket Gospel-Book)

750s, jazzed up for Athelstan Trilobate acanthoid decoration red outline to initials This has MS parallels from beginning 10th century and metalwork parallels from Æthelwulf (parallels are Southumbrian).

Royal I.E.6 (Royal Bible)

Capital letters with red surrounds (cloisons) metalwork looks like powder foliar work dated 830s/840s)

Alan: Fol. 62v can be dated from the top line (Henry, son of Hugh of le Puiset) probably in 1190s (not much liked by the monks until the 1190s after his father's death. Second line has John Cumin, archbishop of Dublin.

Fol. 62r: manner of doing 'de' (Simon de Veel) is probably 1180s. Also William of Salisbury and Countess Gundreda. Then a change of pen.

IX. 12TH-CENTURY HANDS

Fol. 45r: A number of names with tironian 's' not crossed, indicating a late 12th-century rather than a 13th-century date.

Fols. 46r and 47r re early 12th century.

Fol. 49r could be late 12th-century rather than later. This has William, archdeacon of Norwich, and the Constable of Richmond.

Fol. 50v: document purporting to be from time of William of St Calais, and a document relating to Tynemouth are written by Reginald of Durham

Fol. 66r may also be the scribe of 63r and part of 64v.

Fol. 67r looks later.

Fol. 70r looks pre-1200.

Fol. 70v: the beginning could be 12th century, so could fol. 71r.

Alan: How would you expect the names on fol. 49r to be numbered? Even with a computerised overlay, there has to some sort of a system to how numbers are assigned to names on pages.

Michelle: You should only have column a even when there is only one column on a page. You could then divide a single-column page into halves (a1, a2, a3 etc.).

Jan:You could number through the original lay-out and then number the additions distinguished in some way.

Alan: Fol. 49r has Jurdan de Hamilton with archid in a different hand. Is this a genuine gloss on Jurdan de Hamilton.

David R.: The edition should avoid making firm statements either way, without requiring us to enshrining conclusions. In the case of 'Walterus episcopus', the two words should go in different fields and there should then be different ways of expressing degrees of certainty.

Michael: The programme should enable you to go to a particular grid-reference on the facsimile.

Jan: Another method is to number per page, and to give a number which indicates the scribal groupings (i.e. number separately groups which have been entered by the same scribe). It would be wise to consult with Dieter Geuenich who has been responsible for editing the continental libri vitae.

David R.: We must be careful that in the final edition we do not link together hands irrevocably, so that they cannot be prised apart if we change our minds. If we publish in a web-form, we can continue to work on it.

Michael: Fol. 49r: there is an erasure. A consistent campaign should indicate what has been written over erasure.

Michelle: Would prefer to identify problem pages and have them photographed under a series of lights. This would be a follow-on process from the digitisation process. We need to think about what the more forensic processes would cost, and there would have to be additional funding.

NOTE

Highlighting indicates decisions and suggestions required before digitisation of the manuscript begins, hopefully in May/June. As regards the pages for which we would like UV photographs, Elizabeth has suggested the following as a preliminary list:

fol. 15v - Tostig erasure fol. 17r - Beonnu near the bottom of the third column is a silver name apparently written over an erased name in gold fol. 23v, 32v, 34v - badly worn names in gold fol. 47v - first line of OE manumission erased

We need other suggestions - also for pages that might benefit from other forms of investigation.

Durham Early Mediaeval Seminar, March 2003

EARLY MEDIEVAL SEMINAR

SATURDAY 22-SUNDAY 23 MARCH 2003

Membership:

1. Dieter Geuenich
2. Rosamond McKitterick
3. David Rollason
4. Lynda Rollason
5. Alan Piper
6. Margaret Harvey
7. David Ganz
8. Alex Burgart
9. Elizabeth Briggs
10. Jo Story
11. Simon Keynes
12. Francesca Tinti
13. David Pelteret
14. Jan Gerchow
15. David Dumville
16. John Insley
17. Harold Short

SESSION 1: PROJECT PROGRESS

The state of the project:

David Rollason reported that following success in the AHRB Resource Enhancement funding scheme, the major project to produce a computer edition with linked materials and texts would begin in earnest on 1 May 2003.

1. Researcher 1 would be appointed for three years to be based at King's College London and the selecting committee would be held on 2 April. (In the event, Dr Andrew Wareham was appointed.)
2. The British Library were about to commence digitising MS Cotton Domitian VII to the highest possible standards, and had promised that the images would be available in time for the July seminar.
3. The papers of the 2001 Colloquium were in an advanced state of editing. A contract had been agreed with Messrs Boydell and Brewer with a final deadline for submission of copy as 1 August 2003.

Report on the Palaeography and Codicology Seminar (December 2002)

Alan Piper made an oral report on the salient points arising from the seminar, of which the present group had received David Rollason's report. Discussion focused on:

THE GOSPEL TEXTS (opening leaves)

1. These have now been shown by Michael Gullick to be an original part of the book as it was reconstituted in the twelfth century.
2. It was further noted that such texts also formed an original part of the Liber Vitae of Newminster. Gospel texts and prayers are part of the Liber Vitae of Remiremont, and similar components are found in the Libri Vitae of Pfäffers and Brescia. Essen has a Liber Vitae inscribed in a missal.
3. The selection of the texts excited some discussion. Did they in fact represent the passion narrative? Was it possible to find liturgical books from Durham with these particular texts set to music? Alan Piper noted that some Durham manuscripts do contain material from Lanfranc inserted in liturgical books.
4. David Ganz undertook to pursue the question in the work of Ursula Lenker, Die westsächsische Evangelienversion und die Perikopenordnungen im angelsächsischen England (1997). Simon Keynes reported that Dr Lenker was soon to edit a new Anglo-Saxon manuscript discovered in the Somerset Record Office, which contained Latin and Old English lections.

COLLATION OF THE MANUSCRIPT

1. Alan Piper explained that Michael Gullick's reconstruction of the original collation was based on the assumption that such a de luxe manuscript must have been made in regular quires. There was some concern about this assumption. Did it really follow that regular quires would have been the norm? Alan Piper explained that Michael Gullick had identified certain surviving regular quires which he took to be archetypical.
2. There was discussion about the unusual character of the manuscript. It was noted that three-column books are very rare, and that continental Libri Vitae are generally not so expensively made.

LATER MEDIEVAL SECTION

Alan Piper explained Michael Gullick's findings as reported at the December seminar, noting in particular the discovery that the same hand was responsible for starting off several of the twelfth-century leaves, and the discovery of rust holes making it possible to reconstruct the original order of leaves. Discussion focused on:

1. Did the entries by different hands represent different families? This was clearly a matter which would need pursuing.
2. It should be possible with the digital edition to restore the pages as they had been at different stages of writing and edition. Using paper and tipex, this had been a normal technique of continental research.
3. John Insley drew particular attention to the list of Scandinavian names on fol. 55v, including Eric, king of Denmark (1093-1154). Did the word vel really represent an alias as had been thought, or was its meaning 'and' (i.e. there were really two people named)?
4. David Pelteret drew attention to the erased manumissions in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MSS 111 and 140, and suggested the importance of comparing these with the manumissions in the Liber Vitae.

Project planning and design

Harold Short set out the issues which the project would have to consider in the initial stages as follows:

The humanities computing context

conceptual map common technical methods multiple technologies integration inter-operation modes of delivery international standards

Project planning

seminars and ahrb proposal content analysis & specification technical assessment & software options delivery & user analysis technical assessment editorial development technical development pilot delivery & evaluation final delivery & evaluation

Technical issues

software selection Anastasia & its projects Digital Shikshapatri & Oxford Arch Digital Other relevant projects specialised image processing image delivery & linkage XML mark-up : the TEI and Master metadata descriptive content technical character representation : unicode presentation interface design representation of uncertainty access: browse / search / manipulation technical tools or scripts : open standards / open systems generation of web/CD materials internal hyperlinks external hyperlinks publications strategy : on-line / CD-ROM / print preservation & re-use AHDS Digital Preservation Coalition FEDORA

The following specific points were raised:

1. With particular reference to software selection, Harold Short noted the potential of Peter Robinson's Anastasia software, although clearly there were other possibilities.
2. Harold Short noted the availability of specialist image-processing software. Selection of this should be part of the design and implementation process, as also should be consideration of what tools users would require.
3. He emphasised the importance of metadata, especially if it was desirable for the commentary on the book to be searchable in a structured way.
4. The representation of uncertainty was clearly a priority as a design issue.
5. Attention would have to be paid to the use of Unicode to represent characters. Important too would be linkages with other projects, especially the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England. It was notable that this project had a direct link into the Fitzwilliam Museum's digital coin archive, and such a link might be desirable between the Prosopography and the Liber Vitae project.
6. FEDORA (funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation) was a digital object repository, particularly concerned with managing hierachies of smaller and larger objects, the former often constituting components of the latter.
7. It was noted that Don Scragg and Alex Rumble (University of Manchester) were currently involved in a project focused on eleventh-century palaeography, and there might be useful synergy with the Liber Vitae project. Simon Keynes undertook to represent the Liber Vitae project at the next meeting of this project.
8. Jan Gerchow drew attention to the situation where it was necessary to see particular hands as delineating groups on a particular page. Harold Short noted that there could be mark-up indexes for each page.

SESSION 2: COMPARANDA

A. Continental Libri Vitae

Dieter Geuenich presented the 'classic' continental libri vitae with the aid of a paper (attached), and also a series of facsimiles. Discussion and attention was directed to:

1. The Liber Vitae of Corvey which is of particular interest because it represents a book following the early medieval lay-out but actually made in the twelfth century.
2. The fact that in continental books no distinction is made between the various ranks of abbot (as in the Durham Liber Vitae) expect at the level of from which communities the abbots came.
3. The 'priestification' of the monastic personnel in the late eighth and early ninth centuries as reflected in these books. Dieter Geuenich noted that a couple of entries in the Liber Vitae of St Gall give titles, and Simon Keynes indicated that grades are given in the Liber Vitae of Newminster.
4. Rosamond McKitterick raised the possibility that libri vitae reflected particular liturgical activity or particular events, such as the Synod of Attigny in 762. She noted in particular that Virgil of Salzburg, who twenty years later started the Liber Vitae of Salzburg, was present at the Synod of Dingolfing in 770.
5. Do diptychs actually exist? No, but we do have the ivory covers from them.

B. Principles of editing

Dieter Geuenich presented a paper (attached) on the principles of editing libri vitae for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, although he noted that these had changed a little between the editions of Remiremont and Brescia.

Discussion focused especially on:

1. Standardisation on West Germanic forms, and the need for a lemmatised index. It was noted that Dieter Geuenich had already prepared such an index for the Durham Liber Vitae which was published in Jan Gerchow's edition. It was noted that different problems were presented by the later medieval names.
2. Should there be an indexing for groups as well as individual entries? Harold Short indicated that this should present no difficulty to the software.
3. A grid system of referencing based on coordinates might be made to work.

C. The Liber Vitae of Salzburg

Rosamond McKitterick gave a summary of her research on this Liber Vitae, which focused on three questions:

What were the cultural assumptions and affiliations underlying the Liber Vitae ? Does its composition throw any light on political tensions, especially those between Arne and Virgil of Salzburg? (She emphasised the evidence the book contains for the pro-Carolingian policies of these two churchmen.) What does it show about collective memory?

Discussion focused on the following points:

1. The practice of reading out the names of the living before the canon of the mass. Rosamond McKitterick drew attention to the illumination in the Utrecht Psalter of an angel erasing names from the Book of Life.
2. The size of books. The Liber Vitae of Salzburg is not so large that it could not have been held during the mass. A manuscript from Werden is slim precisely because it was intended to fit inside an original diptych cover.
3. Jan Gerchow noted that the Liber Vitae of Salzburg is the closest comparandum to the Durham book, because it has a series of ordines which are hierarchical in character. Do the ordines in the Durham book only represent the monastery from which the book came? Salzburg does not have long lists.

D. The Liber Vitae of Newminster

Simon Keynes noted that, although produced in 1031, this book is rather like the Liber Vitae of Salzburg. It was in continuous use throughout the middle ages until 1539, for entering names of members and friends of the community, and also for entering texts.

Why were libri vitae only used in churches which had had them before the Conquest?

Discussion centred on:

1. The fact that there appear to be no libri vitae from West Francia. This has usually been explained in terms of the fact that such books arose in the context of the English mission.
2. Were there originally more libri vitae which have not survived, because they were on loose sheets and/or because they were destroyed as useless at the Dissolution?
3. Bearing in mind the altar slab from Reichenau with names scratched on it, might there have been more such monuments? May the lead plaque from Flixborough (Lincs.) with names scratched on it be precisely this?
4. If it is true that the Durham Liber Vitae's contents transcend one community, should it be seen as a generic list of names for all Northumbria, resembling in form the genealogies in Cotton Vespasian B.VI?
5. Should comparison be made with the Chronicle of Ireland, begun in the second half of the eighth century, maintained until at least the 910s, and kept up to date by drawing material from a number of different counties?
6. Comparisons should be made between the language of the Durham Liber Vitae and that of other Northumbrian texts, such as the Lindisfarne and Rushworth glosses and Caedmon's hymn.
7. Who were the clerics listed in the Durham Liber Vitae? Were they the cathedral clergy of York? It was noted that the distinction between clerics and monks was first found in Carolingian sources connected with Chrodegang, in 786. .It was further noted that Alcuin repeatedly discussed the distinction between clerics and monks.
8. It was emphasised that Nigel Ramsay's project to catalogue all monastic archives in England might be of relevance. David Rollason undertook to contact him.

SESSION 3: PROSOPOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES

A. Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England project (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/pase/)

Francesca Tinti explained the progress made by PASE in developing a prosopography of Anglo-Saxon names from the period 597-1042 and demonstrated the PASE databases in their current form. These involve data-entry databases each relating to an individual source, and these are then amalgamated into a master database. Francesca indicated that PASE had already dealt with a range of sources relevant to the Liber Vitae project, namely Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, the vitae Cuthberti, Historia Abbatum, De Abbatibus, Vita Wilfridi, letters of Boniface, and Anglo-Saxon charters.

Francesca then illustrated some of the issues at stake in PASE's work as it relates to the Liber Vitae by reference to a letter of Boniface (TANGL Michael, ed., Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus (Epistolae Selectae in usum scholarum ex Monumentis Germaniae Historicis separatim editae 1; Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1916), no. 55. Francesca illustrated the extent to which names in the letter could be parallelled (and possibly identified with) names in the Liber Vitae or in other sources (see appendix).

Discussion focused on, first, the question of context (what was the significance of the groupings in which names occur in the Liber Vitae and was it reflected in the other sources?); and, secondly, the philological aspect of the names. John Insley cast doubt on the identification of 'Coengils' with 'cynegils', and questioned the form of 'Ingeld' and its cognates. He also noted the desirability of some comment on the palaeography of name entries, but David Pelteret explained that PASE was working exclusively from printed sources.

David Pelteret then presented a pap