Category: From my diary

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve had no luck in getting away for a break.  The prices for hotels are simply ridiculous, and somehow other things creep in.

But I’m making good progress with Botolph.  After my last post, a very kind gentleman, who was visiting the Bodleian Library in Oxford on his own account, kindly offered to photograph the two manuscripts that they hold.  And so he did. (Update: I now have permission to say that this was Peter Kidd of manuscripts.org.uk, to whom I am very grateful indeed!)

These two are manuscripts of the epitome of the “Life of Botolph”, BHL 1429.  The shelfmarks are Bodleian MS Bodl. 240, and Bodleian MS Tanner 15, both manuscripts of the “Sanctilogium” of John of Tynemouth.  The same text appears in the printed “Nova Legenda Angliae” of 1516, and was reprinted with amendments by Horstmann in 1901.

Since these appeared, I have been collating the text.  Starting with Horstmann as a base – because I could OCR this – I compared it to the 1516 edition, to the two Bodleian manuscripts, and to British Library MS Cotton Tiberius E. 1, which I photographed myself.  This latter was damaged by fire, but it doesn’t seem to have much in the way of original readings.  All three manuscripts are 15th century, and much of a muchness.  Horstmann’s edition – based on the 1516 and the BL manuscript – is perfectly sound.  All I will contribute is a larger apparatus, I think.

All the same you really do learn a lot about a text and about the manuscripts by comparing them, word by word.  You get a definite feeling that one of the scribes was in a hurry, copying a not-very-important text, happy to stick a word a bit later if his eye skipped it, and occasionally putting down the wrong word of identical meaning during the process of reading a sentence into his head and writing it out again.  You get a feel for the scribe, and a feel for the language of the author.

Lots of fun!

The full “Life”, BHL 1428, was done, except that I have located the missing Cologne manuscript in Berlin, and need to collate that and establish its relationship to the other manuscripts, especially to the Rooklooster manuscript which is probably its twin. It may mean a change to the family tree (stemma) of the manuscripts.  It will mean changes to the apparatus.  I doubt that it will affect the text or translation.

As of today, I have a text of the epitome, BHL 1429, and a draft translation of it which I will now revise.

The very brief Life in the Breviarium Slesvicense (BHL 1430) was done a while back.

The “Translatio” of the relics of St Botolph (BHL 1431) has been transcribed and a translation made, but I need to do more on this.

So it’s coming along very nicely.  But I still need some summer holiday!

Update: Dr Kidd also advised me about the rather confusing shelfmark for MS 240:

The ‘Bodleian’ is a library but ‘MS. Bodley’ is a shelfmark, which should be abbreviated as ‘MS. Bodl.’. So the shelfmark of one of the MSS I sent is Bodleian, MS. Bodl. 240, not Bodleian, MS 240.

Thank you!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It’s summertime, and definitely the time to get away from the computer and go outdoors.  Visit ancient monuments.  Travel to places that have nice beaches with Roman ruins.  Etc.  So I hope none of you are reading this!

I’m trying to do some of that myself, but I’ve not managed to get away yet.

I’ve made a bit of progress with the Life of St Botolph.  Both Latin and English are done and in a Word document each.  I’ve done the same with the Lives of Sts Thancred, Torhred and Tova, which followed it in one manuscript, and collated the printed text in Birch, Liber Vitae, with the manuscript.  I discovered that Birch was careless when he transcribed. I’ve identified the lost Cologne manuscript used by the Bollandists, although I have no access to it: it’s in Berlin. Maybe I should email them and ask if they would make me images of the two pages concerned?  I’m starting work on the abbreviated Life produced by John of Tynemouth, and printed in the Nova Legenda Angliae.  I’ve just emailed the Bodleian Library, who hold two manuscripts of that abbreviated Life, and asked for help in getting copies of the pages.  But this abbreviated Life really should not take much work to knock out.  So I have a bit of wind in my sails.

But I ought to get away.

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Lives of St. Thancred, St Torhtred, and the Virgin Tova

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The “Life of St Botolph” begins with a preface, and ends with an account of the movement of the relics of various saints to Thorney Island during the period of the Danish raids.  But in MS British Library Harley 3097 (12th c.), folios 64v-65v (online here), in between the “Life” of Botolph, and the “Translatio” of the relics, there is another text, about three hermits of Thorney Abbey.  These were Thancred (or Tancred), his brother Torhtred, and their sister Tova.  I don’t know of any other manuscript that contains it.

The text is headed, “De Sanctis Thancredo et Torhtredo”, “Concerning Sts Thancred and Torhtred”, and ends with the explicit: “Explicit De Sanctis Thancredo et Torhtredo et eorum sorore Christi virgine Sancta Tova.”

The Latin text was published long ago in W. Birch, Liber Vitae: Register and Martyrology of New Minster and Hyde Abbey, Winchester, London (1892), appendix F, pp.284-286.  This is online at Archive.org here.

Unfortunately these saints are not listed in the Bollandists’ Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina.  Not much seems to be known about these three, except that their relics were preserved at Thorney Abbey, and venerated there before 1000 AD, as I learn from the Oxford Dictionary of Saints:

Tancred, Torthred, and Tova (870). Hermits of Thorney (Cambs.), killed by the Danes in 870.

The first two were men, the third a woman, but nothing is known of them. The story of their martyrdom rests on the chronicle of Pseudo-Ingulph, which may include sources older than the 12th century. They were, however, venerated in their Thorney shrine by the year 1000, witnessed by R. P. S. and were among the many saints whose bodies were translated by Ethelwold, but whose names William of Malmesbury was unwilling to write because they sounded so barbarous. Their feast was on 30 September at Thorney and Deeping.

R.P.S. and C.S.P.; William of Malmesbury, G.P., pp. 327–9; E.B.K. after 1100, i. 129–44.

It does not seem that the author of these couple of pages in BL Harley 3097 knew much more. All he can tell us is material from the notes of Aethelwold, founder of Thorney Abbey, and all the latter knew was that they were hermits killed by the Danes.

Here is a draft translation of the text as given by Birch, slightly corrected against the manuscript.

The saints and elect of God, rejecting the world in its fragility through inward contemplation of the soul, with single intent fixed the gaze of their hearts upon earning that joy of future blessedness.  But if anything contrary to this holy purpose appeared, they cast it aside with firm deliberation, and with the clearer sight of the mind they freely conceded renunciations, lest the ancient enemy should imagine that he could triumph over them with his usual trickery.

Hence it happened, by the blessing of God, that the holy confessors of the Lord, Thancred and Torhtred, who are venerated in today’s celebration, after despising the world, having been divinely raised to such a height of virtue, were strengthened in godly contemplation, that in the wilderness of Thorney they sought out the enemy of the human race in single combat, and at the same time, while supported by the grace of God, that they triumphed with a wonderful cry (of victory) over the one shamelessly deceiving, although no history recommends to us and no page of ancient narrative reveals the birth of these flowers of sanctity, or the manner of living of their lives.  But seeing the almighty grace of God, justifying those who fear him in every nation, we will not allow the little which we have learned about them to remain hidden from our descendants.

They lived in the aforementioned wilderness in dwellings not far separate from each other, brother from brother, likewise priest from priest, having a remote cell in which they spent their entire bodily life in meditation on the heavenly commandments. Who can measure, who can relate their labours in such a great solitude, their vigils, fastings, patience of soul, discomfort of body, the glorious tears and pious longings of a soul sighing constantly for God?

During the holy praise of these two holy brothers, a transparent pearl of the splendour of God cannot lie hidden, namely their sister and glorious partner in Christ, the virgin Tova.  She, as the blessed bishop of Christ, both the first builder of the same place, and its most holy abbot, Ethelwold, attests in his writings, was not only the sister of so many saints by blood, but also by diligent imitation of their virtues. And so she had chosen for herself with a manly spirit a solitary cottage in the woods, further away and about a mile more distant, in order to obtain divine aid more closely, having left earthly comfort and society far away. Triumphing over the tyrant of the world in that struggle, she, having become a member of Christ, deserved to have Christ as her head, to whom she was united in the framework of the body of the Church, that is, in that heavenly communion of the saints.

Fittingly do we proclaim the saints, in their contempt for the world yet exalted in the world, and nothing prevents us from proclaiming those who, despising such things for the love of God , sought the peace of solitude, in order to pour out all their attention in the single-minded pursuit of divine things. For, exiled from the doings of this world, they stood as if in a constant line of battle against the assault of the devil, and they won the right to be honoured by the Lord, not with the martyrdom of a single day, month, or even a long year, but rather with the triumph of their whole lives.

Nor did their temporal gladiator lack a crown, because the same piratical plague, which is said to have depopulated England in the time of the blessed Edmund, king and martyr, troubling many locations in many places, also came to the same wilderness, and there made the blessed bishop of Christ Thancred into a martyr, having found him in his cell, and after some time adorned the struggle of a longer wrestling-match with a glorious end.

But his brother Torhtred, equally a bishop of the Lord, as the aforementioned pontiff of God Ethelwold teaches in his writings, conquering the foe and the world in the glory of confession,[ref]I.e. he was a “confessor”; presumably captured by the Danes and tortured, but not killed.[/ref] departed to Christ in his sleep, and was buried in the same wilderness with his brother the martyr and his sister the virgin.

There, to this day, resting in their tombs, to the honour of the Holy Trinity, they are venerated by faithful Christians, who, with the support of their assistance, are freed from the burden of oppressive sins, and as the strength of their faith grows, they rejoice, to the honour and praise of the same God and our almighty Lord, who lives and reigns for ever and ever, Amen.

It sounds as if the Danes found Thancred in his cell in the woods, tortured him, no doubt in hopes of money, and then killed him.  They also tortured his brother Torhtred, but did not kill him.  The virgin Tova was a mile deeper in the woods, and perhaps went unnoticed.

 

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Admin – mail failures

Posted on by Roger Pearse

My apologies.  I have just discovered that no emails are being sent from the site.  I appreciate all those who took time to comment.  I was unaware of this.  I am trying to debug the issue.

Update (26 July 2025): I hope that this is now fixed.

Update (28 July 2025): Apologies for the errors on posts with comments.  The footnote plugin has not been updated for years, and it seems PHP 8 is a little stricter on variable declaration.  I’ve fixed it, I think.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

How the days fleet past!  Today vanished, waiting around for an engineer to come and upgrade my broadband.  Then a trip to take a couple of things to a sick lady, and then waiting for a plumber who never appeared.   Of course it is summer, and it seems a waste to be indoors sat in front of a screen.

Last month I had to stop doing everything in order to try to buy a house.  In the end I withdrew, after finding that the house needed much more work  doing than I had thought.  Curiously the agent seemed quite uninterested in my offer to buy, at full price, or my decision not to.  I infer that the “sale” was bogus, designed merely to obtain a market valuation.  Oh well.

Tis’ the season to be travelling abroad, like Irish monks.  Not that I will be going overseas, but I do need to get away, as we all do. I must book something or it just will not happen.

However today I have managed to return to working on Folcard’s “Life of St Botolph,” and I am going through the Latin and English and creating a combined version with notes and apparatus.  I’ve started work on chapter 5 today, out of 11.  I have a draft translation of the whole thing.  But it needs revising against the new critical text.

I am slightly uncomfortably aware that I have been working on Botolph for two years now.  That’s ridiculously slow.  But thus does life pass.

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Commentaries by Oecumenius now online in English

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An interesting email from John Litteral:

I just wanted to let you know that I have started translating the Bible commentaries by Oecumenius. So far I have translated James, 1-2 Peter, and I am starting on the epistles of John now. I plan to do them all, Acts-Jude, and perhaps Revelation, but since that has been translated into English multiple times I may not do Revelation.

I have already published James and 1-2 Peter, and I have put them on Archive for free.

Oecumenius has been my favorite Bible commentator for a long time, so I am excited to be the first to translate his commentaries on the Catholic Epistles and God willing to do Acts and Paul’s epistles.

The translations have been made from the Patrologia Graeca text.

Excellent news!  Let us hope that the author does still more of the commentaries!

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Translating the mega-sentence…. how?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The first sentence of the “Life” of St Botolph reads as follows:

Omnipotentis Dei benignitas, compatiens errori humani generis, quod ab antiquo serpente caelitus concessa denudatum glo­ria, ignorantiae damnatur tenebris; divitias misericordiae suae in eius restauratione exhibere voluit, ut ad gloriam lucis de qua cae­cum aberraverat, rediret per lumen quod ei ineffabili gratia administravit.

I.e.

The benevolence of almighty God – compassionate towards the error of the human race, which, having been stripped by the ancient serpent of the glory granted to it by heaven, is condemned to the darkness of ignorance – wished to display the riches of His mercy in the restoration of it, so that (the human race) might return to the glory of the light from which it had blindly strayed, through the Light which He bestowed upon it, by His ineffable grace.

I’ve been staring at that, and wondering how to turn that into English without departing too far from the original.

Suggestions anyone?

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The Society of St Botolph

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Few will be aware that there is actually a society devoted to the study of St Botolph, and the churches dedicated to him.  But there is.

The Society of St. Botolph (https://www.botolph.info/) is an association which is free to join. It’s purposes are:

The primary object of the Society is to remember, celebrate and raise the profile of Botolph, Britain’s most important forgotten Saint.

The secondary object is to provide communication, fellowship and a sense of ‘family’ between our relatively small cluster of seventy Botolph’s churches.

It has a regular newsletter, the Botolphian, full of material about Botolph, and the churches that bear his name.  Far from being purely superficial, this also contains some serious scholarly research.  For instance the April 2022 issue contains a very careful analysis of the sources to determine whether the relics of St Botolph spent a period at Burgh, or at Grundisburgh.

Thankfully the website is archived at Archive.org.

The secretary is D. S. Pepper, who took over from the founder and has run things enthusiastically for the last 12 years.  Highly recommended.

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Capgrave is not the author of the “Nova Legenda Anglie”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Anybody who works with the texts known as the “Lives” of the saints will encounter a volume called the Nova Legenda Angliae (NLA), the “New Legends of England”.  First printed in 1516, it consists of a mass of abbreviated “lives” of various saints, in alphabetical order by saint name.

Very often, the author of the NLA is said to be a writer named John Capgrave.  This claim is not true, and has been known to be false since 1970.  The real author was a man named John of Tynemouth.  Yet the false attribution persists, especially online.  It seems worth a post to debunk it.

Let’s take this step by step.

In 1516 an English printer in London named Wynkyn de Worde produced a printed volume containing a collection of the lives of the saints.  The original edition may be found online at Archive.org here.  (The page has the daft title “[Nova lege[n]da Angliae]”.)  The book had no title page, but the colophon says “Explicit nova legenda anglie” (“here ends the New Legends of England”), which title it has had ever since.  The colophon gives no author, and states frankly that it reprints existing material, but “emended and corrected”.  It is best known in a 2 volume “reprint” by Horstmann in 1901, which unfortunately also interleaved material from elsewhere between the “lives.”

Colophon of the Nova Legenda Anglie (1516)

From the 16th century onwards, this Nova Legenda Anglie (NLA) was attributed to the prolific 15th century author John Capgrave (1393-1464).

But already in 1970 Peter J. Lucas demonstrated concisely and conclusively that Capgrave could not have any connection to the work.  Unfortunately his article in The Library (5th series, vol. 25, pp.1-10: “John Capgrave and the ‘Nova legenda Anglie’: a survey”) is not easily accessed online.

The actual author of the material in the NLA is John, Vicar of Tynemouth, who flourished around 1366.[ref]Henry of Kirkstede, in his “Catalogus scriptorum Ecclesiae”, formerly attributed to “Bostonus Buriensis” – See Horstmann, vol. 1, p.xxxiv[/ref]  He composed a “Sanctilogium Angliae, Walliae, Scotiae et Hiberniae”, composed of abbreviated lives of the saints.  In this work, the “lives” appeared in calendar order, the order of the anniversaries of their date of death or commemoration.  This is the same order as we find in the Acta Sanctorum, and for the same reason: liturgical use.

A single manuscript of this work survives, containing 157 “lives.”  This is MS British Library Cotton Tiberius E.1, of the 14th century, from St Albans, which was damaged badly in the fire of 1731 and is today in two volumes, (E.1/1, and E.1/2).

MS British Library Cotton Tiberius E 1/2, fol. 14v. The beginning of the “Life” of St Botolph. The manuscript was burned and restored.

At some unknown point the contents of the work were rearranged by some unknown person into alphabetical order, into the order of the names of the saints.  This makes it less useful for liturgical purposes, but more useful as a reference volume  Three manuscripts of the alphabetical order have survived, containing 148, 151, and 153 lives respectively, and others may have existed.  None of these copies indicate any connection to Capgrave.

The NLA is also in alphabetical order.  It contains 168 lives.  Most early printed books were made by taking some manuscript – usually a late manuscript – and printing it.  Most likely this is the source for the NLA: a manuscript of the alphabetical order of John of Tynemouth’s Sanctilogium.  Unfortunately the manuscript has not survived.

The NLA also contains  a prologue and a colophon.  But this prologue cannot be by Capgrave.  It refers to the book as “newly printed”; and it also refers to the Fasciculus temporum of Werner Rolevinck, published 1474.  Capgrave died in 1464, before printing arrived in England, or the publication of Rolevinck.  Yet the writer of the prologue and colophon is claims that the text is his own work, even though he accepts that he makes use of earlier, widely available (“apud plures”) material.  In the absence of any other indication, this suggests that the writer was a contemporary of De Worde, perhaps a hack employed by him.

So how did all of this material get attributed to John Capgrave?  The answer seems to be the obscurity of John of Tynemouth, the multiple names used for him in the manuscripts of his various works, and simply confusion by 16th century bibliographers – John Leland and John Bale – between two authors both called “John.”  Dr Lucas goes through this material concisely but conclusively.

I imagine that the Nova Legenda Angliae will continue to cause confusion.  But this is what it is; an early printed edition, from a now lost manuscript, of a work by John of Tynemouth.

Update: 28 July 2025: fixed missing link to 1516 edition.

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Cheap hand-held multi-spectral imaging for manuscripts?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A very exciting post yesterday on LinkedIn (but visible even if you don’t have an account) from Leonardo Costantini:

Yesterday marked the beginning of a new phase of Digital Humanities applied to manuscript studies.

Imagine a hyperspectral imaging system that weighs 500 grams and gives you instantaneous results, making the post-processing of the images easy and accessible. Its name is ChromaMapper. It’s being developed by PyrOptik Instruments Limited and it will be a gamechanger!

Designed by Dr Mary Stuart, Lecturer at the University of Derby, with the collaboration of Matt Davies and Elizabeth Allen from PyrOptik Instruments Limited, we tested their prototype on the manuscript fragments at the Special Collections of the University of Bristol. Our thanks to Emma Howgill for the kind collaboration.

It has been a mind-blowing experience, and it was so exciting to see the results seconds after the digitisation.

There are no further details, except that the hope is that it should be relatively cheap.  The PyrOptik website is here.

This would revolutionise manuscript studies.  There must be acres of unsuspected palimpsests out there, reused parchment with an unsuspected lower text.

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