A couple of days ago I wrote to the British Library manuscripts department to enquire about the two manuscripts that contain versions of the medieval Latin “Life” of St Botulf. Yesterday I received a really quite helpful reply.
Cotton MS Tiberius D III is a Special Access (Select) manuscript, so I’m afraid it’s not permitted to take photographs of that. However, there is a surrogate microfilm, Microfilm 2492, which you could take photos of for personal reference use.
Cotton MS Tiberius E I has been divided into two volumes, and it looks like the “Life” of St Botulf [Botulph] is now in Volume 2, at ff.14v-15v:
Cotton MS Tiberius E I/2 John Tynemouth, Sanctilogium Angliae, Walliae, Scotiae et Hiberniae
ff. 1r: Sts Petroc (Bibliotheca Hagiogrphica Latina 6640), continued from the previous volume; ff. 1r–3v: Boniface (BHL 1406); ff. 3v–4v: Gudwal (BHL 3690); ff. 4v–6v: Robert of Newminster (BHL 7269); ff. 6v–7v: William of York (BHL 8910); ff. 7v–10r: Columba (BHL 1891); ff. 10r–11v: Ivo (BHL 4624); ff. 11v–13v: Margaret of Scotland, with marginal genealogies (BHL 5326); ff. 13v–14v: Odulphus (BHL 6321); ff. 14v–15v: Botulph (BHL 1429); ff. 15v–19r: Alban; … …
Decoration: Each life opens with an initial, either red with blue pen-work or blue with red pen-work. Small initials in blue and red throughout. A parchment codex. 2nd half of the 14th century LatinThere are no access restrictions for this, so you can take photos from the original manuscript.
The “select” manuscripts at the British Library are those which require special permission to access. In this case, I suspect that damage from the fire is the reason. I’ve written to check.
The first manuscript is a copy of the full text, which is the one that I need, unfortunately. The other is an abbreviated “Life”, which I will work on later. But I may as well get what I need now.
Looking at the British Library website, this says that imaging services, i.e. “photography” are unavailable. This is the legacy of the cyber-attack in October 2023. The attack must have been very impressive indeed, if it not only destroyed all the IT, and took all the manuscripts offline forever, but also ensured that the library staff were unable to use cameras even a year and a half later, or even hire a reprographics bureau. Very strong stuff.
But on the positive side it does mean that I can get some perfectly usable photographs with my smartphone with no fuss. Let us hope the microfilm is readable.
So it seems that I shall have to make a visit to London town. The journey from here is long and expensive – it’s probably easier and cheaper to get a budget flight from Milan than to travel in by train – but what must be will be. I’ve not been down for many years. I prefer the countryside!
It’s now more than forty years since I went down to London one Sunday afternoon, in order to start my working career on the Monday. I booked into a cheap hotel in Bloomsbury, where the doorman looked down his nose at this nervous lad with his rucksack. It rained that evening, and I walked down to Denmark Street, and I looked into the window of Forbidden Planet, the Sci-Fi bookshop that used to be there. London on a Sunday night can be very dark. But there was a recession on, and I knew that I was lucky to have got a job at all. It’s funny how some memories remain with you.
Anyway, I shall have to discover how the trains work these days, and the underground. It will probably be in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile there is plenty of material to work with.