Cambridge, University Library Gg. 5. 35 Collection of Classical, Early Christian, Carolingian, and Medieval Verse; "Cambridge Songs Manuscript"

Abstract

96. Cambridge, University Library Gg. 5. 35

Collection of Classical, Early Christian,

Carolingian, and Medieval Verse;

"Cambridge Songs Manuscript"

[Ker 16, Gneuss 12]

HISTORY: Anthology of Latin Christian poetry (a few brief Greek texts) and a Latin songbook containing many short pieces of varied origin. The manuscript is of the 11c, from St. Augustine's, Canterbury; the collection was compiled after 1039, perhaps at Köln, and it includes some High German phrases and words (see Ziolkowski 1994: xxx-xxxix). The two main scribes (A and B) also wrote the huge body of Latin interlinear and marginal glosses on lexical, grammatical, and prosodic points, as well as many OE glosses in W-S dialect (Napier 1900: xvii), the whole often characterized as a "classbook," a concept that has been contested and partially explained (Wieland 1985). Pressmarks (13c) and ex libris (13 and 14c) of St. Augustine's, with a few glosses and entries added during the Middle Ages. The manuscript could not have been written before the year 1039, which is mentioned at f. 440ra/ 16-17 in relation to the death of Emperor Conrad II (4 June 1039). Late 15c foliation and supplementation of 13c table of contents by Clement Canterbury, librarian of St. Augustine's, Canterbury (cf. medieval foliation to numerals in Barker-Benfield 1980: fig. 61). Efforts to expunge erotic poems, probably in the Middle Ages, evident in the "Cambridge Songs" leaves, i.e., on ff. 438v, 440v, 441 v, and this perhaps accounts for the removal of a missing leaf between ff. 440-441, lost before the 15c foliation (Ziolkowski 1994: xxix). Came to C.U .L. by purchase from an unknown source, using the proceeds of the sale of duplicate items in the bequest of John Hacket, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, who died in 1670 (Oates 1986: 413-15). A loosened leaf (medieval f. '442') was accidentally or otherwise taken from C.U.L. by Theodor Oehler about 1840 (it was seen and described by Georg Pertz in 1839) and in 1982 returned from the Frankfurt Stadt- und Universitäts-Bibliothek, where it had ended up with Oehler's papers (see below, and Gibson, Lapidge, and Page 1983). This leaf is kept (still loose as of 1998) in a mylar sheath with the manuscript in its box. Rebound, Cockerell, 1974.