Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 183: Bede the Venerable, Two Lives of St Cuthbert with Regnal Lists, etc

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Title:
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 183: Bede the Venerable, Two Lives of St Cuthbert with Regnal Lists, etc
Alternate Title:
Bedae Vita Cuthberti. Genealogiae etc.
Language:
Latin and English, Old (ca. 450-1100)
Extent:
ff. 96
Dimensions:
295 Height (mm) and 195 Width (mm)
Approximate Date:
[ca. 800 CE - 899 CE]
Provenance:
f. 1r is blank but for the letter W at top (xvi), possibly indicating that Nicholas Wotton was the donor. It can hardly be doubted that the book is from Durham Priory, but I cannot identify it with anything in the Catalogi Veteres. See further below. and Plummer (Bede, I cxlvii, note) refers to Symeon of Durham (I 211) as saying that in 931 Æthelstan gave a copy of Bede's lives of Cuthbert to the see, which was then at Chester-le-Street, and adds : This copy is now in the Library of C. C. C. Cambridge, no. 183. The words in the charter quoted by Symeon are unam sancti Cuthberti uitam metrice et prosaice scriptam. If this interesting identification is correct (as I believe it to be), we must suppose that the picture at the beginning of the book represents Æthelstan offering the volume to St Cuthbert.
Table of contents:
  • Vita Sancti Cuthberti
  • List of Popes
  • The Seventy-Two Disciples of Christ
  • Archbishops of Canterbury
  • Bishops of Rochester
  • Bishops of the East Saxons
  • Bishops of the South Saxons
  • Bishops of the West Saxons and Winchester
  • Bishops of Sherborne
  • Bishops of Wells
  • Bishops of Crediton
  • Bishops of the Hwicce after SeaxÆ¿ulf
  • Bishops of the Mercians
  • Bishops of Hereford
  • Bishops of Lindsey
  • Bishops of the East Anglians
  • Bishops of Dunwich
  • Archbishops of York
  • Bishops of Hexham
  • Bishops of Lindisfarne
  • Bishops of Whithorn
  • Genealogies of Northumbrian kings
  • Lengths of reigns of Northumbrian kings
  • Lengths of reigns of Mercian kings
  • Genealogy of Mercian kings
  • Genealogy of Mercian kings
  • Kings of Lindsey
  • Kings of Kent
  • Kings of the East Angles
  • Kings of the West Saxons
  • Notes on the Ages of the World and other subjects
  • Vita Sancti Cuthberti metrica, with glossary
  • Mass and Office of St Cuthbert
Description:
CCCC MS 183 is one of several manuscripts associated with Æthelstan, King of the English (924/5-39), but the only one of these written in England in his reign. He seems to have commissioned it for presentation to the community of St Cuthbert, which at this point was at Chester-le-Street in Country Durham, having fled Lindisfarne to escape Viking attacks but not yet settled in its eventual home at Durham. The famous presentation picture shows Æthelstan, with bowed head, presenting the book to St Cuthbert himself, and is a very important example of the revival of figure art in manuscript painting during Æthelstan's reign. It was written between 934 and 939, the year of Æthelstan's death, by a scribe who also appears in London, BL MS Royal 7. D. XXIV, perhaps at Glastonbury, but certainly somewhere in the south of England. It contains Bede's two Lives of St Cuthbert, the first in prose and the second metrical, and a mass and office for Cuthbert's feast day, as well as lists of popes, bishops, and kings, and a record of Æthelstan's other gifts to the community. Its production can be linked to Æthelstan's political activities in the North.
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