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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2008
When Old English studies were in their infancy in the seventeenth century, scholars such as Franciscus junius (1591–1677) had very little to study in print. With no grammar and no dictionary (until Somner's in 1659) they had to teach themselves the language from original sources. Junius, whose interest in Germanic studies became active in the early 1650s, was so proficient, not only at Old English, but also at the cognate languages that he became virtually the founding-father of Germanic philology. Over the years Junius made transcripts in his own distinctive imitation-Anglo-Saxon minuscule script of many Old English texts, transcripts that have subsequently proved invaluable, especially where the original manuscripts have been damaged or lost.
1 For a preliminary list of early printed books containing Anglo-Saxon, see Adams, E. N., Old English Scholarship in England from 1566–1800, Yale Stud, in Eng. 55 (New Haven, CT, 1917)Google Scholar, Appendix III (b), but her ascriptions of the types used by the various printers are not reliable. Adams no doubt drew on the pioneering list of ‘Libri Saxonici Typis Impressi’ in Hickes's, G.Linguarum Veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus Grammatico-Criticus et Archaeologicus, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1705) II, 325–6.Google Scholar
2 Somner, W., Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum (Oxford, 1659)Google Scholar. Somner had earlier prepared a glossary to Casaubon's, M. ‘De lingua Anglica vetere, sive Saxonica, ejusque cum Graeca cognatione’, in the latter's De Quatuor Linguis Commentationis Pars Prior (London, 1650), pp. 1–72.Google Scholar
3 For some account of how learning Old English might have been tackled at this time, cf. Murphy, M., ‘Methods in the Study of Old English in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, MS 30 (1968), 345–50Google Scholar. Probably many scholars used both manuscript and printed materials without distinguishing between them as rigidly as we do now.
4 For some account of Junius's life and work, see, for example, Aldrich, K., Fehl, P. and Fehl, R., Franciscus Junius: The Literature of Classical Art, 2 vols., California Stud. in the Hist, of Art 22 (Berkeley, CA, 1991) I, xxvi–xlixGoogle Scholar; Breuker, P. H., ‘On the Course of Franciscus Junius’ Germanic Studies with special Reference to Frisian’, Aspects of Old Frisian Philology, ed. Bremmer, R. H. Jr, van der Meer, G. and Vries, O., Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 31/32 (Amsterdam, 1990), 42–68Google Scholar; and Lucas, P. J., Franciscus Junius Cædmonis Monachi Paraphrasis Poetica Genesios ac praecipuarum Sacrae paginae Historiarum, abhinc annos M.LXX. Anglo-Saxonicè conscripta, & nunc primum edita (Amsterdam, 1995), Introduction, § 1.Google Scholar
5 For a facsimile of Junius's ordinary current handwriting, see Thibaudeau, A. W., Catalogue of the Collection of Autograph Letters … formed … by Alfred Morrison, 6 vols. (London, 1883–1892) II, 356Google Scholar. For a list of manuscripts and books bequeathed by Junius to the Bodleian Library, many of them his own transcripts, see Madan, F., Craster, H.H.E. and Denholm-Young, N., Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, 7 vols. (Oxford, 1895–1953) II.ii, 962–90 [SC].Google Scholar
6 EEMF 23 (Copenhagen, 1991). I should like to take this opportunity of thanking Professors Robinson and Stanley for their graciousness in learning of the omission, for encouraging me to write this article and for their interest in it.
7 Another potential witness, London, British Library, Cotton Otho B. ii (s. x/xi), is not reproduced because the damage from the 1731 fire was so extensive as to render it practically useless. On the manuscripts preserved in Cambridge, cf. Magoun, F. P. Jr, ‘King Alfred's Letter on Educational Policy according to the Cambridge Manuscripts’, MS 11 (1949), 113–22.Google Scholar
8 This feature is found commonly in other books printed by Day, e.g., Foxe, J., Actes and Monuments (1563) [STC 11222], pp. 935, 985Google Scholar and elsewhere, so although the feature was no doubt modelled on occasional scribal practice in manuscripts, it does not follow that a specific manuscript influenced the shaping of the text of PCP in Parker's 1574 edition (although such direct influence is possible).
9 Ker, N. R.. Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957; reissued with Appendix, 1990), no. 195.Google Scholar
10 Dobbie, E. V. K., The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, ASPR 6 (New York, 1942), cxiii.Google Scholar
11 Sisam, K., ‘The Publication of Alfred's Pastoral Care’, in his Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953), pp. 140–7.Google Scholar
12 Ibid. p. 142.
13 Ker, Catalogue, nos. 195 and 324: ‘The hand of Tib. ff. 1–3, 5, 7 and Kassel appears to be that which wrote ff. 1, 2 of Hatton 20.’
14 Sweet, H., King Alfred's West-Saxon Version of Gregory's Pastoral Care, EETS os 45 and 50 (London, 1871–1872), xiii–xiv.Google Scholar
15 Dobbie, , Minor Poems, p. cxiii.Google Scholar
16 Sweet, , Pastoral Care, pp. xiii–xiv.Google Scholar
17 Ker, , Catalogue, p. 223.Google Scholar
18 CCCC 12, once considered a copy of Hatton 20, probably derived from Tiberius B. xi. See Dobbie, , Minor Poems, p. cxivGoogle Scholar, who refers to Turner, C. H., Early Worcester Manuscripts (Oxford, 1916), p. lviiGoogle Scholar; Sisam, , ‘Publication’, p. 146Google Scholar, who refers to Ångstrøm, M., Studies in Old English Manuscripts (Uppsala, 1937), p. 37Google Scholar; and Ker, , Catalogue, p. 42.Google Scholar
19 Dobbie, , Minor Poems, p. cxivGoogle Scholar. On p. cxv Dobbie is also in error in claiming that CUL li. 2. 4 lacks PCP, as noted by Robinson, and Stanley, , Verse Texts, p. 21.Google Scholar
20 According to O'Keeffe, K. O'B., Visible Song: Transitional Literacy in Old English Verse, CSASR 4 (Cambridge, 1990), 90, only the ‘comma-shaped points’ after 7b and 10b are in the hand of the scribe.Google Scholar
21 The established manuscript practice of writing out Old English verse like prose using the full width of the manuscript written space was followed in early printed texts of Old English verse, as, for example, Parker's 1574 text of PCP and Camden's 1603 reprint mentioned above.
22 See Lucas, P. J., ‘Franciscus Junius and the Versification of Judith’, The Preservation and Transmission of Anglo-Saxon Culture, ed. Szarmach, P. E. and Rosenthal, J. T. (Binghamton, NY, 1995), forthcoming.Google Scholar
23 See the reproduction in Robinson, and Stanley, , Old English Verse, 6.1.5.Google Scholar
24 See above, and n. 22.
25 Ker, N. R., The Pastoral Care: King Alfred's Translation of St. Gregory's Regula Pastoralis (MS Hatton 20 in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, MS Cotton Tiberius B.xi in the British Museum, MS Anhang 19 in the Landesbibliothek at Kassel), EEMF 6 (Copenhagen, 1956), 19.Google Scholar
26 Ibid. p. 20. For the Kassel leaf as a detached part of Tiberius B. xi, see also Flasdieck, H. M., ‘Das Kasseler Bruchstück der Cura Pastoralis’, Anglia 62 (1938), 193–233Google Scholar, idem, ‘Weiteres zum Kasseler Bruchstück der Cura Pastoralis’, Anglia 66 (1942), 56–8Google Scholar, and Heyworth, P. L., ‘Alfred's Pastoral Care: MS. Cotton Tiberius B. xi’, N&Q 216 (1971), 3–4.Google Scholar
27 Ker, , Pastoral Care, p. 21.Google Scholar
28 It is possible that this correspondence is the result of coincidence. The first two verse lines of PCP in Hatton 20 also correspond to one manuscript line, but to sustain the correspondence four times as long seems more likely to be the result of deliberate intent.
29 As far as I know, the earliest (previously recognized) example of Germanic verse set out in verse lines in the manuscript is the Ludwigslied in Valenciennes, Bibliothèque de la Ville, 150 (northern France [? Saint-Amand], s. ix/x), 141v–143r, reproduced in Fischer, H., Schrifttafeln Zum althochdeutschen Lesebuch (Tübingen, 1966), pl. 22 ( = 141v, 142r)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Parkes, M. B., Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West (Aldershot, 1992), pl. 44 ( = 141v)Google Scholar. This poem has rhymed verses and is not alliterative. Parkes suggests that the layout of verse influenced, and was influenced by, that of the Psalter (ibid. p. 104 and pl. 43).
30 Robinson, and Stanley, , Verse Texts, no. 29.2–3, with comment on p. 26.Google Scholar
31 Ibid. no. 4, with comment on p. 20.
32 Parkes, M. B., ‘The Manuscript of the Leiden Riddle’, ASE 1 (1972), 207–17, at 215Google Scholar; Ker, , Catalogue, Appendix no. 19 (p. 479).Google Scholar
33 For the text of Aldhelm's Enigm xxxiii in the context of a discussion of the text of the Old English riddle (in the West Saxon version), see Williamson, C., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill, NC, 1977), p. 244.Google Scholar
34 For discussion of the metrical pointing in this manuscript, see Lucas, P. J., Exodus (London, 1977 rev. ed. Exeter, , 1994), pp. 21–4Google Scholar, and cf. also O'Keeffe, , Visible Song, pp. 179–86.Google Scholar
