Rule of St Benedict

Title

Rule of St Benedict

Shelfmark

MS. Hatton 48

Associated place

Canterbury

Worcester

Place of origin

English, Worcester, Worcestershire, Benedictine cathedral priory of St Mary the Virgin

English, south

Date

1040s×60s

690s×700s

Language

Old English (ca. 450-1100)

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment

Physical extent

i (modern paper flyleaf) + 76 + 1 (medieval binding fragment) leaves

Hands

Main text written in uncial script, probably by a single scribe. Uses scriptio continua, with word divisions added later.

Headings written in a smaller, less formal hand.

Corrected extensively in a smaller uncial hand. Lowe suggests that the main scribe, the corrector, and the rubricator are all the same person, in spite of differences in script.

At least four later correctors modified the manuscript through the 13th century.

Two lines of Insular minuscule, fol. 40v.

Decoration

Fine initials in red and black, surrounded by red dots; sometimes with horizontal lines (fols. 47r, 50r). (Pächt and Alexander iii. 1, pl. I)

Chapter headings rubricated.

Binding

White leather on boards, English 12th-century work. Rebacked and repaired. A fragment of the old back, bearing traces of the title, is laid down on the inside of the front cover.

Provenance

Worcester, Worcestershire, Benedictine cathedral priory of St Mary the Virgin. A catalogue of Worcester Cathedral manuscripts from 1622/3 by Patrick Young describes the manuscript, no. 216, as Regula Benedicti Ausculta o fili præcepta Magistri liber scriptus maiusculis characteribus, vetus fol. bon. See Neil R. Ker, The Provenance of the Oldest Manuscript of the Rule of St. Benedict, Bodleian Library Record 2, no. 7 (1941): 28–29.

Inscribed, ægelmær, ?10th century (fol. 44v).

Inscribed, Thomas bryne, early 16th century (fol. 9r). (MLGB3)

Christopher Hatton (1605–70): one of at least five manuscripts from Worcester in his collection.

Bought in 1671 from the London bookseller Robert Scot.