Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 326: Aldhelm, De laudibus uirginitatis

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Title:
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 326: Aldhelm, De laudibus uirginitatis
Alternate Title:
Aldhelmus
Language:
Latin and English, Old (ca. 450-1100)
Extent:
ff. 2 + 71
Dimensions:
230 Height (mm) and 160 Width (mm)
Approximate Date:
[ca. 900 CE - 1099]
Provenance:
From Christ Church, Canterbury. On f. iir: D iia Ga iiijus demo(nstratio) prima Aldelmus de laude virginum nouus (added). Also in Parker's red chalk: TW. (possibly for Twyne). On f. 1r upper corner, the older Christ Church mark: dc. Probably no. 47 in Eastry's Catalogue (Ancient Libraries, p. 21). At top of last leaf some letters erased. Then: runes (i.e. -um uilframno s(c)ripsit amen)
Table of contents:
  • De laudibus uirginitatis
  • Bella Parisiacae Urbis
Description:
CCCC MS 326 is an interesting manuscript which attests to Latin learning at the cathedral priory of Christ Church, Canterbury at the end of the tenth century and the beginning of the eleventh. It contains the unique text of the macaronic poem Aldhelm, which switches from Latin (with Greek vocabulary) to Old English, phrase by phrase; but its main contents are two particularly difficult Latin texts with glosses. The prose De laudibus uirginitatis by Aldhelm (d. 709), and the third book of Bella Parisiacae urbis by Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (d. 921), were both very influential on the so-called hermeneutic style of Anglo-Latin, which arose in the second half of the tenth century in association with the Benedictine Reform Movement. The manuscript also contains a poem in the shape of a wheel. Provenance at Christ Church, Canterbury is assured by the two surviving classmarks of that house, and the identification of this manuscript in the early fourteenth-century Christ Church catalogue of Henry of Eastry OSB. An origin at the same house seems certain since T. A. M. Bishop identified the scribe as one of those from his large network of Canterbury manuscripts.
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