Vercelli Book

Vercelli Book

TheVercelli Bookis one of the oldest ofthe four Old English Poetic Codices(the others being theJunius manuscriptin theBodleian Library,theExeter BookinExeter Cathedral Library,and theNowell Codexin theBritish Library). It is an anthology of Old English prose and verse that dates back to the late 10th century. The manuscript is housed in the Capitulary Library ofVercelli,in northernItaly.

Contents

The Vercelli Book consists of 135 folios, and although the manuscript was probably compiled and written in the late 10th century, not all of the texts found in the manuscript were originally written at that time. The poems ascribed toCynewulf(The Fates of the ApostlesandElene) could have been created much earlier. The Vercelli Book contains 23 prose homilies (theVercelli Homilies) and a prosevitaofSaint Guthlac,interspersed with six poems:

• Andreas
• The Fates of the Apostles
• Soul and Body
• Dream of the Rood
• Elene
• a fragment of ahomileticpoem

History

The book is aparchmentmanuscript of the end of the tenth century, containing amiscellany,orflorilegium,of religious texts that were apparently selected for private inspiration. The meticuloushand is Anglo-Saxon square minuscule.It was found in the library by Friedrich Blume, in 1822, and was first described in hisIter Italicum(Stettin, 4 vols., 1824–36). The presence of the volume was explained by a hospice catering especially to English pilgrims that was founded by JacopoGuala Bicchieri(d. 1227),bishop of Vercelli,who had beenpapal legatein England 1216–1218.

In the words of a modern critic, "The Vercelli Book appears... to have been put together from a number of different exemplars with no apparent overall design in mind. The manner in which the scribe did the copying is relatively mechanical. In most cases, he copied the dialect and the manuscript punctuation that was found in the original texts, and these aspects therefore aid in reconstructing the variety of exemplars. The texts therefore range in date for although they were all copied in the later tenth century, they need not all have been written in this period".

The verse items occur in three randomly placed groups intermixed with prose. Evidence suggests that the scribe may have assembled the material over an extended period of time. Elaine Treharne inOld and Middle English: An Anthologysuggests: "Although the examples are diverse, and no apparent chronological or formal arrangement can be discerned, the texts suggest the compiler was someone in a monastic setting who wished to illustrate his personal interest inpenitentialandeschatologicalthemes and to glorify the ascetic way of life. The homilies represent part of the anonymous tradition of religious prose writing inAnglo SaxonEngland ".

In his bookThe Vercelli Homilies,Donald Scragg claims that because of the poetry, the Vercelli Book "is in no sense a homiliary".He argues that most of the homilies in the Vercelli Book are sermons with general themes, while two of the homilies describe lives of the saints (XVII and XXIII). The manuscript contains two homilies (I and VI) that are primarily narrative pieces and lack the typical homiletic structure. The arrangement of the homilies, coupled with the placement of the poetic pieces, creates a manuscript which Scragg considers to be "one of the most importantvernacularbooks to survive from the pre-Conquestperiod ".None of the homilies can be precisely dated, nor can any be assigned to a specific author.

Editions

Blume reported his find to German historianJohann Martin Lappenberg,who in turn wrote to the British antiquaryCharles Purton Cooper.Blume did not, as was earlier thought, transcribe the manuscript himself.Rather, Cooper, on behalf of the BritishRecord Commission,commissioned Dr. C. Maier of theUniversity of Tübingento make a transcript, which he did in 1834.This copy was the basis forBenjamin Thorpe's putative edition, "well advanced" by 1835 but never published (the Record Commission was dissolved in 1837).Copies of his work were kept and distributed between 1869 and 1917, though some copies must have been sent out: one such copy was the basis forJacob Grimm'sAndreas und Elene(Kassel, 1840), an edition of the Old English poemsAndreasandElene,both found in the Vercelli Book. In turn,John Mitchell Kemblepartly based hisPoetry of the Codex Vercellensis(London, 1856) on Grimm's edition; Maier's transcript was also the basis for C. W. M. Grein's critical edition inBibliothek der angelsächsischen Poesie(Göttingen, 1858, rev. Leipzig, 1894).Given Vercelli's remote location (across the Alps for German and English scholars), Maier's was the only available transcription for decades;Julius Zupitza's 1877 edition was the first one based on a new inspection of the manuscript.

• The majority of Vercelli Book poems are edited along with digital images of their manuscript pages, and translated, in theOld English Poetry in Facsimile Project

References

Bibliography

• Blume, Friedrich (1824).Iter Italicum.Berlin: Nicolaischen Buchhandlung.Retrieved24 November2014.
• Chisholm, Hugh,ed. (1911)."Vercelli Book".Encyclopædia Britannica.Vol. 27 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 1017.
• Förster, Max (1913). "Der Vercelli-Codex CXVII nebst Abdruck einiger altenglischer Homilien der Handschrift" [The Vercelli Codex 117 along with imprint of some Old English homilies in manuscript].Festschrift für Lorenz Morsbach.Studien zur englischen Philologie (in German). Vol. 1. Halle. pp.59–61.OL14007806M.{{cite book}}:CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Gradon, Pamela Olive Elisabeth; Swanton, M. J., eds. (1996).Cynewulf's "Elene".Exeter: University of Exeter Press.ISBN9780859895088.
• Kemble, John Mitchell(1843).The poetry of the Codex Vercellensis.Aelfric Society14. London.OL3021761W.
• Krapp, Georg Philip (1902). "The First Transcript of the Vercelli Book".Modern Language Notes.17(6): 171–72.doi:10.2307/2917925.JSTOR2917925.
• Krapp, George Phillip, ed. (1932).Vercelli book.New York: Columbia University Press.OCLC635743.
• Lapidge, Michael(1999).The Blackwell encyclopedia of Anglo Saxon England.Blackwell Publishers.ISBN9780631155652.
• Muinzer, L. A. (1957). "Maier's Transcript and the Conclusion of Cynewulf's 'Fates of the Apostles'".Journal of English and Germanic Philology.56(4): 570–87.JSTOR27706994.
• Scragg, Donald George, ed. (1992).The Vercelli homilies and related texts.Early English Text Society. Vol. 300.Oxford University.ISBN0-19-722302-8.
• Treharne, Elaine (2000).Old and Middle English: an anthology.Blackwell Publishers.ISBN0-631-20465-2.
• Zacher, Samantha; Orchard, Andy, eds. (2009).New readings in the Vercelli book.Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.ISBN9780802098696.

External links

• Roberto Rosselli Del Turco,"The Digital Vercelli Book project";Beta version of the digital edition(English Codex)