Lawrence, Kansas, Kenneth Spencer Research Library Pryce MS C2:1 (with 63 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 557) Fragment of "Legend of the Holy Cross before Christ"

Abstract

153. Lawrence, Kansas, Kenneth Spencer Research Library Pryce MS C2:1

(with 63 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 557) Fragment of "Legend of the Holy Cross before Christ"

[Ker 73 Supplement, Gneuss 117]

HISTORY: A trimmed-down single leaf from an early or mid-11c fragment of the "The Legend of the Holy Cross before Christ," probably written at Worcester and containing glosses by the "tremulous hand" of Worcester. The leaf was discovered pasted as padding between the leather and the board in the same volume as Pryce C2:2 [154] (see the "History" of that item), under the opposite cover. Two small strips from another leaf from the same manuscript and text are preserved as CCCC 557 [63]. The initial identification of the Kansas and Corpus leaves as being from the same manuscript was by N. R. Ker, p.c. to B. Colgrave, 4 July 1961 (Colgrave and Hyde 1962: 61-62). The only known copy of the complete text is in the very late OE/ early ME version in Bodley 343 [359], a late 12c manuscript from the West Midlands, which very likely had this OE manuscript as its ancestor, if not its exemplar (ed. Napier 1894; see Colgrave and Hyde 1962: 76). Probably from a manuscript acquired by and mutilated by Parker (see the "History" of CCCC 557 [63]). Based on Ker's initial identification of one of the Corpus fragments (Ker 1940), Colgrave and Hyde (1962) speculate that it may once have formed part of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 198 [41] (Ker's scribe 9, cf. Cat.: 82), a mid-llc homily collection with additions made later in the century and glossed by the 13c "tremulous hand" of Worcester. It is not known how leaves excised from a manuscript in the 1570s could find their way into the binding of a book dated after 1636. It is not unlikely that these leaves (including CCCC 557) and Pryce MS. C2:2, a leaf from Bodleian Library Hatton 115 [385], were removed by Parker, or by an agent of Parker's Ooscelyn) when the manuscripts were still at Worcester. This leaf had the former shelfmark MS. Y 103. It is unmounted.