Copenhagen, Kongelike Biblioteket, Gl. kgl. Sam. 2034 (4° ) Bede's verse " Life of St. Cuthbert;' "Praecepta uiuendi"

Abstract

151. Copenhagen, Kongelike Biblioteket,

Gl. kgl. Sam. 2034 (4° )

Bede's verse " Life of St. Cuthbert;' "Praecepta uiuendi"

[Ker 100; Gneuss 815]

HISTORY: A mutilated copy of Bede's verse "Life of St. Cuthbert" and "Libellus beati Columbanus" (missing first quire), and the Ps.-Alcuinian poem "Praecepta uiuendi" of the lOc/ l lc with a large number (173) of early 11 c OE glosses to the Cuthbert and many Latin glosses and syntactical glossing. Manuscripts of the class it is most closely related to were all written or owned at Canterbury in the mid- to late-lOc (Lapidge 2008: 116-17). In thel6c it belonged to Saint-Victor, Paris, where it served as the exemplar for Paris, BN lat. 18318 (16c, Paris; see Lapidge 1995: 146, but he reverses himself in Lapidge 2008: 117). The manuscript was formerly bound with an otherwise unrelated continental volume of Cyprian's letters, Copenhagen, Kongelike Biblioteket, GI. kg!. Sam. 1340 (4°), with which it shares an early 16c foliation; both were once in a composite volume of 179 leaves, under the pressmark "GG.7" in the early 16c catalogue of St. Victor (Paris, Bibi. Nat. lat. 14767) (see Ker, Cat.). Both parts, already separated, belonged to the humanist editor and bibliophile Frederik Lindenbrog (Lindenbruch (1573-1648); in his Codex legum antiquarum (1613) he cited two glosses from the "Vita Cuthberti" as "German" (Steinmeyer 1905: 6); the manuscript later went to the Gottorp (Schleswig) library with Lindenbrog's collection, and thence to K0benhavn in 1749.

_{[Note: In Lindenbrog's own catalogue (Hamburg, Bibi. Pub. Ms. 312 fol.) MS 2034 (4°) is no. 109 and MS 1340 (4°) is no. 117 so the two parts were already separated (on the early catalogues see J0rgensen 1926: 16, 41-42). GI. kg!. S. 1340 (4°) has a page size trimmed to 210 x 140 mm., the same early 16c hand as in GI. kg!. S. 2034 (4°) has foliated it '27-57' (now refoliated in modern pencil '1-31'), and this hand has written on f. 56v (the last page= f. 31v) 'folia xxxi' and on f. 27r ('lr') this hand has written within the bow of the initial 'C' of the text-opening '269; of obscure significance. GkS 1340 (4°) contains Cyprian's "Letters;' "De patientia;' and "De uirginitate" in a continental hand of9c/10c. On f. '27r' top, within a brown-painted panel is a 12c inscription 'In hoc libello c<on>tinentur uersus de miraculis | s<an>c<t>i cuthberti. et e<pisto>l<a> cipriani de mortalitate. | et de patientia. 7 d<e> uirginitat<e>'; the position of this inscription, at the beginning of what it implies is the second part, is puzzling. Perhaps the two parts were only loosely associated and easily shifted, perhaps not bound together, but in a cover or portfolio. The back outside page (f. 56v) is somewhat darker than the rest and may have been without a cover for some time. The late 18c Royal Library binding of GI. kgl. S 1340 (4°) is identical to that of GI. kgl. S. 2034 (4°); an inscription on f. 27r (= f. lr) 'C. Cypriani varias: seems to be the hand identical to that which wrote the 1784-86 Royal Library MS catalogue of the "Old Collection."]}