Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 153: The Corpus Martianus Capella
Abstract/Contents
- Summary
- This is a late ninth- or early tenth-century copy of Martianus Capella (fourth/fifth century), 'De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii'. The manuscript was produced in Wales and is extensively glossed in Latin and Old Welsh. The text is in a variety of hands, including an attractive Caroline minuscule–an early example of the use of this script in an Insular context–which attests to contacts between Francia and Wales in the ninth and/or early tenth century. The manuscript was in England (perhaps St Augustine’s, Canterbury) by the 930s, when the text was corrected in places and the lacuna in Book III filled (ff. 19-28). A few decades later, 'glossae collectae' on 'De nuptiis' were added to the end of the manuscript (ff. 69-86). [E. Boyle]
- Contents
- De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii -- Glossary on Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii
Description
| Alternative title | Martianus Capella |
|---|---|
| Type of resource | mixed material |
| Extent | ff. 86 |
| Date created | [ca. 800 CE - 899 CE] |
| Language | Latin; Welsh |
| Material | Vellum |
| Layout | double columns of 43, 50,46, 36, 54, 62, 53 lines |
| Height (mm) | 295 |
| Width (mm) | 215 |
| Collation | 1(10) 2(10) (1, 10, 2, 9 are made sheets) 3(8) 4(10)-7(10) || 8(8) 9(8) 10 (two). |
| Writing | in a variety of very beautiful and interesting hands |
| Foliation | ff. a-b + 1-67 (68 missing) + 69-86 + c-d |
| Provenance | A connexion of this book with St David's is, to my mind, rendered probable by the fact that Bishop Davies was interested in the antiquities of his diocese and that he corresponded with Parker about manuscripts. A comparison of this volume with MS 199, written by John, son of Sulgen, Bishop of St David's in cent. xi, confirms very strongly the conjecture of such an origin. |
| Research | The great interest and importance of this book is that it contains a number of glosses in old Welsh, discovered by Mr Bradshaw in 1871 (see Collected Papers 281 and 484): On going to the Library, and taking down, one after another, the books of which I had taken a note, it was not long before I came upon a copy of Martianus Capella, one of the most favourite writers of the early middle ages. Here, among the crowd of Latin glosses, it was easy to distinguish a few words, not of Irish, which I at first thought I might find, but of unmistakeable Old Welsh, written in a handwriting apparently as early as any remains of the Welsh language known to be in existence, and exhibiting forms familiar enough to students of Zeuss's Grammatica Celtica, but presenting an appearance to the eye very different from that of modern Welsh. A subsequent careful examination of the book has enabled me to extract about 140 glosses, or vernacular explanations of hard or singular words; and it is possible that a second reading of the manuscript, upon which I am now engaged, may yield a few more. Martianus Capella. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 153. A. Text, and most of the glosses ixth cent. B. A few glosses xth cent. Among Mr Bradshaw's papers in the University Library is a copy of the glosses, prepared for publication in 1872. The glosses were published by Dr Whitley Stokes in Archaeologia Cambrensis, Series 4, vol. IV p. i, and also in Kuhn and Schleicher's Beiträge zur Vergleich. Sprachforschung VII (Berlin 1873), p. 385.See description and facsimiles in Professor W. M. Lindsay's Early Welsh Script p. 19, pl. ix-x. |
Bibliographic information
| M.R. James Date | ix |
|---|---|
| Downloadable James Catalogue Record | |
| Superseded Interim Catalogue Record | |
| Contains |
|
| TJames | 181 |
| Stanley | N. 17 |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/wb769ft6889 |
| Location | MS 153 |
| Repository | UK, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, Parker Library |
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
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- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).
Collection
Parker Manuscripts
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