Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 023: Anglo-Saxon Illustrated Prudentius. Orosius

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Title:
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 023: Anglo-Saxon Illustrated Prudentius. Orosius
Alternate Title:
Prudentius. Orosius
Language:
Latin
Extent:
ff. 2 + 104 + 55, ff. 104 + 2, and ff. 55
Dimensions:
365 Height (mm) and 290 Width (mm)
Approximate Date:
[ca. 1000 - 1099]
Provenance:
On f. iiv in square black capitals: Hunc quicumque librum Aedhelmo depresseris almoI suspect the scribe ought to have written Aldhelmo dempseris. Damnatus semper maneas cum sorte malorum Sit pietate dei sine qui vel portet ab isto Coenobio librum AedhelmiAltered I think from Aldhelmi. hunc vel vendere temptet Qui legis inscriptos versus rogitare memento Christum ac in requie semper die vivat Aðelƿerd Qui dedit hunc thomum AedhelmoRe-written on erasure. pro quo sibi Christus Munera larga ferat largitor crimina laxans. This fixes the provenance to Malmesbury Abbey with which Aldhelm was specially connected. There were two abbots Athelwerd, one about 982, the other 1040-1050. The latter is probably the giver of the book.
Table of contents:
  • Psychomachia
  • Peristephanon, carmen 10
  • Peristephanon, carmina 1-9, 11-14
  • Epigram for the basilica of St Agnes
  • Epigram for the basilica of St Agnes
  • Contra Symmachum (incomplete)
  • Historia aduersus paganos
Description:
CCCC MS 23 consists of two volumes bound together. The first is a famous illustrated manuscript of works by Prudentius (fl. 384-410), most significantly his Psychomachia, a poem about spiritual warfare between personifications of the vices and virtues. Many line drawings in coloured ink illustrate events in the text. It was made in England probably in the late tenth century, and it shares an artist with Bodleian Library MS Junius 11, the Junius manuscript of Old English poetry. Art-historical evidence has tended to link the production of part one of CCCC MS 23 with Canterbury, but a presentation inscription gives the manuscript provenance at Malmesbury, and it has also been suggested that it could have been made there. In the eleventh century Old English captions were added to the pictures. The second volume is a copy of Orosius, Historia adversus paganos of 417-18, written by six scribes working at Dover in the second quarter of the twelfth century. One of these scribes is also found in CCCC MS 462. The two manuscripts were probably bound together by Parker.
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