Durham Cathedral Library MS A.IV.19 "The Durham Collectar/Ritual"

Abstract

119. Durham Cathedral Library MS A.IV.19

"The Durham Collectar/Ritual"

[Ker 106, Gneuss 223/224]

HISTORY: A composite manuscript consisting of an earlier 10c Southumbrian collectar plus a later 1 0c miscellany of liturgical and educational texts written on three added quires. The core text consists of the collectar (a collection of "collects" or brief prayers used here for the Divine Office), with some pontifical (benedictions and ordeals) or ritual material (for the collectar, see Correa 1992: 76-111; Gneuss 1985: 112-13). This core of the manuscript was written in the south by a W-S scribe around the beginning of the 10c (890 x 930; cf. Correa 1992: 81, Dumville 1987: 167-69) and derives from a continental tradition of that period. It was brought to the north some time during the 10c to the community of St. Cuthbert at Chester-leStreet, where it was extensively glossed in OE; there it had texts and three new quires of primarily liturgical material added to it, and for the most part these addenda were also glossed, all by about 970. Dumville (1992: 129-30) thinks the glossing shows that at least some of the canons at Chester-leStreet could not read the Latin liturgy. The glossing and supervision of the additions were almost certainly the responsibility of Aldred "the Provost" who added a signed and dated colophon (f. 84r); he also glossed the Lindisfarne Gospels (BL Cotton Nero D. iv [206]) and added a partial interlinear Latin gloss to Bede's "Commentary on Proverbs" in Oxford, Bodleian, Bodley 819 (Boyd 1975: 4-5; cf. Lowe CLA 2.235). Durham A.IV19 moved with the Cuthbert community to Durham in 995 where it has remained ever since. It was bound in the 19c and again in 1927 after the Lindelof edition, this time sewn far too tightly. [Note: The manuscript has been described by Wanley 1705, Rud/[Raine) (1825), Mynors (1939), Ker, Cat. (1957), and has been examined in detail with a full facsimile by T.J. Brown et al. (1969). The edition of Stevenson (1841) was superseded by that of Lindelof (1927); the collectar proper has been edited by Correa (1995), though she includes a good general discussion of the northern part (76-80). For further bibliographical details see Brown et al. 1969: 11-12 and Correa 1992: 131-37.)