Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care, in the Old English translation attributed to King Alfred; England (perhaps Winchester), 890 × 897

Title

Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care, in the Old English translation attributed to King Alfred; England (perhaps Winchester), 890 × 897

Shelfmark

MS. Hatton 20

Place of origin

southern England, perhaps Winchester.

Date

Between 890 and 897

Language

Latin

Old English (ca. 450-1100)

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment

Physical extent

i (paper) + i (medieval parchment) + 41 + i (17th-century supply-leaf) + 56 + i (paper) leaves (Watson)

Hands

One main hand, 'a pointed Anglo-Saxon minuscule' (Ker).

Another hand on fols. 6v, 8r, 12r-14r, 15r-v, 40r, 45b, 46v, 48v-49r, 49r-53v, 67v-69v, 98v (Ker).

A third hand supplies Alfred's preface on an independent quire of two leaves (Ker).

A fourth scribe wrote verses on fol. 2v (Watson).

Annotations in an 11th century hand in Alfred's preface, identified as the hand of Archbishop Wulfstan (D. Scragg, A conspectus of scribal hands writing English, 960-1100 (2012), no. 307).

Fols 53v and 55r): an English Vernacular Minuscule using insular forms. a: insular ð: long ascender curving to the right and a round bowl ƿ: with long tapered descender. s. xii

Latin annotations by the so-called Tremulous Hand (Franzen 1998).

Decoration

Titles of chapters are in red, often metallic.

Initials are black filled with yellow, red and green on their own or in combination and have zoomorphic, interlace or other decoration. Sometimes colours are used to fill letters or ˥ which follows a mark of punctuation or other letters 'chosen for no apparent reason' (Franzen 1998, p. 11).

There is a hardpoint drawing on fol. 5v.

Binding

Rebound, s. xvii/ xviii, along with MSS. Hatton 76, Hatton 115 and Hatton 116 (Franzen 1998, p. 11).

Acquisition

After Hatton's death it was sold to the London bookseller Robert Scot, who sold it to the Bodleian Library in 1671 (Franzen 1998, p. 10).

Provenance

Worcester cathedral priory: sent to Worcester by order of King Alfred; annotated at Worcester in the 11th and 13th centuries (the Tremulous Hand); perhaps used at Worcester by Joscelyn in the 16th century.

Borrowed by Christopher, Lord Hatton before August 1644 and was used by Dugdale, for his Old English-English dictionary, and Junius, who supplied the missing text on fol. 42.