DigiPal Project

Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to be focusing on various digital projects and resources both old and new which incorporate data concerning one or more manuscripts from the Parker Library collection.

Image from CCCC MS 389, f.1v

The DigiPal Project is one of the most exciting digital medieval projects around  – and it uses lots of images from our manuscripts. In fact, you can see one on the header of their website.

It’s based at the Department of Digital Humanities in King’s College London and the Project Director is Dr Peter Stokes who has worked extensively on many of the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts in the Parker Library. DigiPal is a palaeographical resource based on digital images of manuscripts or documents but incorporating many types of annotation and detailed description of the hands, texts and manuscripts and (when it’s complete) several different ways of interrogating, organising and displaying the information.

The test case is eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon vernacular script but there are other projects working with DigiPal to apply its tools and methodologies to documents far removed from this in time and place, including cuneiform tablets and Hebrew manuscripts.

The project runs to autumn 2014 but the web resource has just been updated and it’s definitely worth having a look at their progress.

You can run a search to show all the manuscripts from the Parker Library in their database (and there are a lot of them!).

Several folios have been intensively annotated. Here’s f. 29v of CCCC MS 173 (the entry for 993 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle):

CCC MS 173, f. 29v annotated by DigiPal

As the yellow squares indicate, the annotations are applied at the level of individual allographs (particular forms of individual letters or symbols). It’s possible to select an individual highlighted allograph and see its detailed description:

Annotation of individual letter ‘f’

Here you can see that three components are identified and described for the insular ‘f’ of ‘forhergedon’ – the descender, the hook and the tongue.

Annotated examples of ‘f’

Selecting ‘Annotations by allograph’ allows you to see all the annotated examples of ‘f’  by that particular hand. Eventually it will be possible to do both visual and verbal searches and compare allographs across the whole corpus or selected portions of it. It will also be possible to plot the frequency of particular letter forms or display them on a timeline.

For more on the current status of the DigiPal Project, follow their blog or take a look at Research Associate Dr Stewart Brookes‘ recent presentation at the launch of British Library Labs.

Medieval Welsh Law (Cyfraith Hywel)

Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to be focusing on various digital projects and resources both old and new which incorporate data concerning one or more manuscripts from the Parker Library collection.

The first project is one that’s just gone live, Cyfraith Hywel (the Laws of Hywel Dda), a resource for the study of medieval Welsh law created by Dr Sara Elin Roberts and Bryn Jones. The system of Welsh law was distinct from English common law and from canon law. According to tradition, it was first codified in the reign of Hywel Dda (Hywel the Good) (ca. 880-950), described as ‘king of all Wales’ since he came to rule a large area of the country through conquest and marriage. In fact, although the law codes bear his name, there’s no real evidence to connect any particular text or section of Welsh law with Hywel Dda and none of the extant manuscript date from his reign.

Cyfraith Hywel lists 41 manuscripts, most in Welsh and some in Latin, the oldest of which date to the early or mid 13th century. Most of them are housed in the National Library of Wales, including one that was bought at auction last year, but one copy is held in the Parker Library. The manuscript history is a complex one with various redactions and sections, all of which are set out in the digital resource. Although the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 declared that English law was to be used instead of Welsh in criminal cases in Wales, Welsh law continued to be used in civil cases until the 1530s. The section illustrated below discusses the value of wild and tame animals for compensation purposes. The text carried on being copied and used, as the Parker Library copy of the Laws of Hywel Dda attests.

Laws of Hywel Dda (CCCC MS 454, f. 24v)

CCCC MS 454 is a Latin version of the text (Latin E) produced in the early fifteenth century in North Wales, probably in Denbighshire. It’s a small pocket-sized volume (17.5cm tall) and it seems likely that it was the working copy of a legal professional. Its flyleaves contain notes in Welsh and Latin about various cases including robbery and the circumstances for dissolving a marriage.

It might seem strange that a copy of a medieval Welsh law book would end up in the possession of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, in the 1560s. However, it must be remembered that Parker and his circle were extremely interested in Anglo-Saxon law, not just as antiquarians but in order to seek evidence of precedents for Reformation policies. It seems a similar intent fueled some of the sixteenth-century interest in the Laws of Hywel Dda, as Parker’s copy of the text makes clear.

Titlepage of Ban wedy i dynny (CCCC MS 4544, f. 1ar)

Bound in at the front of the manuscript is a pamphlet printed in 1550 and entitled Ban wedy i dynny. This remarkable document is the one of the earliest Welsh publications of any kind, the first pamphlet to be printed in Welsh and the first bilingual Welsh-English publication. And its subject? An argument in favour of married priests, drawing on precedents that it claims are laid down in the Laws of Hywel Dda, with extensive quotation from the medieval text. Although the pamphlet is anonymous, it’s generally believed to have been written by William Salesbury, the great translator and Welsh Protestant humanist, editor of the first printed English-Welsh dictionary and Welsh New Testament. It’s been suggested that Salesbury himself might have sent the manuscript and the pamphlet to Parker. A volume of Parker’s correspondence in the library includes a letter from Salesbury dated 19 March 1565 which discusses the issue of clerical marriage and quotes a passage in Latin on the topic from another medieval Welsh source.

Letter from William Salesbury to Matthew Parker (CCCC MS 114, p. 491)

Bibliography

Robin Flower, ‘William Salesbury, Richard Davies and Archbishop Parker’, National Library of Wales Journal 2 (1941-42), 7-14.

Christine James ‘Ban wedy i dynny: Medieval Welsh Law and Early Protestant Propaganda’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 27 (1994), 61-86.

For a popular introduction to medieval Welsh law, see this BBC website article.

Matthew Paris and the Elephant at the Tower

The British Library medieval manuscripts blog has just posted an image and description of the famous elephant that was given a diplomatic gift by King Louis IX of France to King Henry III of England in 1255 and kept at the Tower of London. The image was drawn by the chronicler Matthew Paris who described the sensation that its arrival caused in England. As the BL blog describes, Matthew Paris went to see the elephant and produced two drawings of it, based on his observations of it. The first is found in a BL manuscript (Cotton Nero D I) and the second is found on a flyleaf at the front of MS 16 in the Parker Library, now bound separately as MS 16I.

Henry III’s Elephant by Matthew Paris (CCCC MS 16, f. ivr)

The two drawing are remarkably similar, though the Corpus drawing seems more polished, with its incorporation of the figure of Henry de Flor’, the animal’s keeper (magister bestie) which Matthew explicitly included to give an indication of the animal’s size. The representation of the trunk is also more realistic in the Corpus drawing, showing how the animal uses it for eating.

To learn more about the elephant before and after its arrival at the Tower of London, we have to turn to government records, or more precisely to Richard Cassidy and Michael Clasby’s investigation of them as part of the Henry III Fine Rolls project. Since Louis gave Henry the elephant in France, it was English officials who had the headache of transporting it across the Channel. The rolls show that the sheriff of Kent claimed £6 17s. 5d. for the transportation of the elephant. More than £22 was spent by the sheriff of London on constructing the special accommodation for the elephant at the Tower and the bill for the upkeep of the animal and its keeper for the nine months from December 1255 to September 1256 came to £24 14s. 3½d., a considerable sum of money when a knight could live on £15 a year.

More intriguing are the records that show what happened to the elephant after its death in 1257. It was buried in the bailey of the Tower but in 1258 a request was made to dig up its bones and give them to the sacristan of Westminster Abbey ‘for doing with them what the king had instructed him’. Cassidy and Clasby can find no trace in the administrative records of what this might be but speculate that the king wanted the relics of such a fantastical and mythical beast to be treated with particular respect. Although the skull of a lion from the royal menagerie has been excavated at the Tower, perhaps we should be looking in Poets’ Corner for the remains of Matthew Paris’ elephant?

Parker Library Calendar – May (MS 8)

MS 8, f. iv

The month of May was the traditional time for love, in medieval custom and romantic literature. The earliest surviving Anglo-Norman love-song is a chance survival of part of a mid-thirteenth-century parchment sheet which was re-used as a flyleaf at the end of a later manuscript of the Speculum historiale of Vincent of Beauvais. It  preserves a polyphonic setting for three voices, opening approximately, ‘Would you hear the sad story, how Guyot wastes his effort, for his lady love, who is too distant from him? [Night] and day he goes imploring her not to be unkind’, with the refrain, “Mes amerousette, /Douce camousette, /Kar éez pité’ De vos amourettes”, ‘My dearest love, Sweet snub-nosed one, Take pity on your lover!’. Parker Library MS 8, f. i verso.

Herbert of Bosham: Manuscripts and History

Our recent conference on Herbert of Bosham, secretary, confidant and biographer of Thomas Becket, was a great success with fascinating papers on the making of Herbert’s manuscripts, his Hebrew scholarship and his letters, on his relationship with Becket, and his connections with the court. The final paper of the conference, by organiser Michael Staunton, was on ‘Herbert and History’, which focused on Herbert’s conception and writing of history but his title also pointed to a clear theme running through the conference, namely how history has treated Herbert, his texts and his manuscripts.

John Allen Giles (1808-84)

There was much discussion of the discovery and loss of the manuscripts of his works, many of which are extant only in single witnesses, and of the role played by 19th-century librarians and editors in his posthumous reputation, notably the frighteningly prolific J. A. Giles, a Victorian clergyman and scholar who set up a printing press in his own house and trained local girls in typography in order to keep up with the stream of translations and editions of classical and medieval texts that poured forth from his pen.

Letter of Herbert of Bosham to John of Salisbury (CCCC MS 123, f. 53v)

The conference was accompanied by an exhibition of manuscripts. The Parker Library contains a number of important manuscripts relating to Becket and his circle since Matthew Parker was very interested in his martyred archiepiscopal predecessor, despite (or because of) Becket’s defiance of royal authority over ecclesiastical matters. As secretary, Herbert was responsible for writing many of Becket’s letters, but he also put together a collection of his own letters. The single surviving manuscript of his Epistolae, a fourteenth-century copy, is MS 123 in the Parker Library.

Herbert also produced a life of Becket called the Thomus (a pun on Thomas/tomus) which has been condemned by one modern biographer of Becket as ‘rambling and verbose‘. All the conference speakers agreed that Herbert never used one word where ten would do but as an eyewitness to many of the events he describes, Herbert’s account has been praised for its honesty by Becket’s most recent biographer, John Guy. In addition to manuscripts containing several extracts from Herbert’s life of Becket, the Parker Library also contains the only surviving copy of a Middle English verse life of Becket, written by a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury named Lawrence Wade. Wade’s poem, written in 1497, testifies to the continuing devotion to the saint, particularly at Canterbury. Wade also acknowledges Herbert’s Thomus as the major source for his own work:

Prologue of Lawrence Wade’s Middle English Life of Thomas Becket, 1497 (MS 298, f.1v)

Wade’s prologue begins, ‘Here begynnyth the lyff off Seynt Thomas [bekett] off Cantorbury archbysshopp, translatyd in to our vulgar tonge owt off a boke callyd Thomys, by a brother of Christis Church in Cantorbury’. Less than fifty years after Wade’s hagiographical poem was written, the monastery at Christ Church was dissolved and Becket was condemned as a traitor. His controversial status during the Reformation is hinted at by the crossing out of ‘Seynt’, which is regularly seen in references to him in both manuscripts and printed books.

During the Reformation re-evaluation of Becket, this volume was owned by another of his successors as archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, who, like Becket, lost his life amidst royal and ecclesiastical power struggles and was acclaimed a martyr by some and a traitor by others. Rather poignantly, his signature (‘Thomas Cantuariensis’) can be seen above the rubric on the opening leaf of the manuscript.

Opening rubric of MS 298 with the signature of Thomas Cranmer (f.1r)

William Stukeley, antiquary and natural philosopher

William Stukeley, F.R.S.
Copyright National Portrait Gallery

Almost 400 years after the death of William Stukeley there is a resurgence of interest in his life and work. Stukeley studied medicine at Corpus, and was a contemporary and friend of Stephen Hales, inventor of the ventilator. His room at Corpus was, Stukeley records, “generally hung round with Guts, stomachs, bladders, preparations of parts and drawings… I sometimes surprised the whole college with a sudden explosion; I cur’d a lad once of an ague with it by a fright”. The Parker Library has a dozen or so Stukeley manuscripts, including notebooks and drawings, bought from the Sotheby’s sale of February 1963.

Stukeley was a member of the Royal Society, Royal College of Physicians, and the re-formed      Society of Antiquaries, and numbered amongst his friends and acquaintances Hans Sloane,     Edmond Halley, and Sir Isaac Newton. He travelled far and wide, and his best known works,  Abery and Stonehenge, resulted from extensive work on the stone circles there.

Stukeley was a distant cousin of the Stucley family of Hartland Abbey in Devon, where an exhibition, “William Stukeley, Saviour of Stonehenge” opens in May.  Have a look at Lady Stucley’s blog about Hartland Abbey here.

In the Modern Archive here in College are two medals, one with the head of William Stukeley, on the other, a picture of Stonehenge, together with Stukeley’s death date.  Because the Corpus medals are cast, rather than struck from a die – which is unusual for the time – they may be devices from which a medal, now in the British Museum, was made.  The Corpus medals are cast, rather than struck from a die, which is unusual for that time.

Herbert of Bosham Conference: Programme

The programme is now available on the library website for our forthcoming conference on the twelfth-century scholar and statesman Herbert of Bosham which will take place on the 15-16 April.

To register for the conference, please complete the registration form. For any further enquiries, please contact the library (parker-library@corpus.cam.ac.uk).