Description of British Library, MS Cotton Caligula A.ii, Part I (C)
Date: Second half of fifteenth century. Rickert argues for a terminus a quo of 1446 based on the presence of Lydgate's “The nyghtyngale.” The presence of O mors quam amara est memoria tua on fols. 57v-58r has also been considered in efforts to date the manuscript, as another copy of that poem in Harley 116 adds a verse memorializing Lord Cromwell, whose death in 1454 might thus suggest a later terminus a quo. But as Woolf (p. 340) and Foster (pp. 147-48) have argued, the added stanza in the Harley manuscript is likely not original to the poem, and consequently the poem cannot be used for dating Cotton Caligula A.ii. The list of kings found on fols. 109r-110v suggests a terminus ad quem, as the main “scribe has written only the first section, which ends before the reign of Edward IV, suggesting that the book was completed in 1460/1” (Foster 148). (Two additional hands continued to add to this list through as late as 1485, although their additions appear to have occurred after the book was complete.) As Foster argues, the fact that one scribe is responsible for the book and worked on it until 1460/1 suggests that it was likely completed towards the end of the possible spectrum of 1446-1460/1 since the chronicle could not have been written all at once until a later date and “the manuscript seems to be a continuous production” (148). The present volume comprises two formerly separate books in the Cotton Library, Vespasian D. VIII and Vespasian D. XXI. The two books were bound together as Cotton Caligula A.ii by the end of the seventeenth century, as they appear as such in the 1696 catalogue of the Cotton collection. This description primarily concerns part I, i.e., the former Vespasian D. VIII.
Support: Paper
Extent: 137 folios
Format: 210 x 145 mm, quarto format
Foliation: Current foliation, in ink, upper right corners, includes two flyleaves at the beginning of the book. An earlier correct foliation has been struck through. The foliation continues consecutively through parts I and II, i.e., what were formerly Vespasian D. VIII and Vespasian D. XXI. Two flyleaves at the end of part I are numbered 140-141, and a parchment bifolium – presumably formerly serving as a pair of flyleaves preceding part II – is numbered 142-143. The foliation ends with fol. 210 at the end of part II. Vespasian.D.8 is written and struck through on fol. 3, and Vespasian D.21 written and struck through on fol. 140. Although the former foliation is preferable for part I, the new foliation is used here and throughout the electronic archive, as it is standard in editions and criticism of the poem.
Collation: A definitive collation is hindered by the fact that the manuscript is currently mounted as a series of singletons, and no catchwords or quire marks survive. Hanna-Lawton propose a tentative collation based upon the surviving watermarks, but are at best able to offer partial suggestions due to the presence of unwatermarked groups of leaves and at least one stretch of folios in which “no coherent sequence of watermarks emerges” (xxv).
Condition: Paper in good, if worn, condition throughout.
Page layout: Siege of Jerusalem bounded in brown ink, with a range of 39-46 lines per leaf. Not ruled. Writing area within SJ approximately 175 x 120 mm. Prickings survive along the bottom edge of the manuscript only. Layout is similar throughout the manuscript, although many of the texts are bounded for two columns.
The scribe — script and dialect:
One scribe throughout, except for a few later additions noted in list of texts below. A small script mixing anglicana and secretary forms. Running heads by the scribe throughout, frequently featuring title of text with an obelus on either side. Brown ink.
Marginalia appear in only a few instances and serve to call attention to important details in the texts, usually proper names as at l. 903, fol. 120v, where we find no[ta] in the left margin and GABAA in the right margin. The scribe uses a slightly more formal book hand for these than for the text of the poem. The text is not heavily corrected, although there are examples of overwriting, erasure, and deletion, all of which appear to be the work of the original scribe. Double horizontal marks appear in a number of places in the margin (e.g., adjacent to lines 727, 771, and 993), but it is unclear what they were intended to signify.
There is no distinct capital form for w, and for other forms such as s and v the scribe relies upon relative size of the letters to distinguish between capital and lower cases. This reults in a range of sizes that often makes it difficult to determine which form was intended; see, e.g., the range of s forms in line 1170, Syr Sabyne of Surry . whyle þat sawte lastedde. Because the scribe tended to use distinct capital forms when available at the beginning of lines and each line was touched in yellow, it has been assumed that capital forms were intended throughout for initial letters and all lines have been transcribed accordingly.
The scribe has a number of peculiar or problematic tendencies that are worth noting, some of which create problems of interpretation or consistency in transcriptional policy:
Otiose macrons: On occasion, the scribe uses macrons that seem to have no bearing upon the spelling of the words they decorate. For example, euenI at l. 440, fol. 115r, has a macron over the second vowel, but it is difficult to think that the scribe intended to expand to eue[n]n given that he spells the word euen with no macron elsewhere.
Otiose flourishes on –t: In a few instances, e.g. lines 3I and 22I on fol. 111r, the letter t features an otiose flourish on the end.
Final –n: The scribe usually adds a large flourish on the letter n when it is the last letter in a word. The flourish curves up and back to the left, as in the words downn and bowndonI on adjacent lines on fol. 111r. At times this can cause confusion because it seems as if the tail may be functioning as a macron, thus, for example, altering the spelling in the example above to bowndou[n]. The evidence points towards the scribe intending nothing other than a flourish, and thus these features are ignored in the transcription. This can be particularly tricky in instances where the ink has faded from part of the tail, making it appear as if there is a free-floating macron above the word.
Barred letters: The scribe frequently bars -l, -ll, and -h, but there is ample evidence that he does not do so to alter spelling. For example, the word all appears as all and alle both with and without barred -ll.
Thorn and –d: Thorn or th are sometimes used where one would expect the letter d and vice versa. Examples of this include þefende for defende (306), brothe for brode (434), founþen for founden (448), de for þe (473), þonnther for þonnder (519), and shede for sheþe (541).
Suspended –ur: The scribe often uses suspended -ur where -er would be expected, e.g., ou[ur] and Eu[ur].
Distinguishing v from u: At l. 468, fol. 115v, the scribe uses an internal v where he would usually use u, apparently to clarify the potential minim confusion of mened versus meued:
And myche of moyses lawe . he meved þat tyme
Foster offers a detailed discussion of the manuscript’s dialectal evidence, which poses what he characterizes as a “challenging linguistic puzzle that has yet to be solved” (148). Forms from a wide variety of dialect areas – Yorkshire, the East Midlands, the West Midlands, East Anglia, Kent – may be found in the manuscript. Foster concludes that “the scribe employed a Mischsprache, and his dialect cannot be distinguished from the many dialects of his exemplars, many of which he may have transcribed with little dialectical alteration” (148).
Hanna-Lawton, responding to McSparran’s report (pp. 24-5) that M. L. Samuels believed "that C's language is very mixed but shows strongest evidence of Kentish provenance," disagree based on an assessment of dialect within Siege of Jerusalem:"[O]ur experience with the forms of The Siege would suggest that Samuels has in fact identified a substrate peculiar to the transmission of Octavian, perhaps a London-Essex text: within The Siege scarcely any form occurs that one would associate with Kent. Here rather, the scribe seems to have assimilated, probably from relicts in his archetype, a melange of various East Anglian forms, focused in no single area" (xxvi). Kellogg also evaluated C on a list of thirty dialect features and concluded that it was an East Midland dialect.
While there are many features of an Eastern dialect present within Siege of Jerusalem, there are also dialect features that point elsewhere, as well as a few unusual features within the corpus of SJ manuscripts that are worth noting and have not yet been noted elsewhere:
Use of mon: Although C usually has the spelling man, the spelling mon is found three times (lines 150, 338, 1157), a spelling that is found elsewhere only twice in P (lines 286 and 288). The rounding of OE a before nasals is a West Midlands trait, and thus does not fit with the preponderance of evidence placing C’s copy of SJ in East Anglia or the East Midlands. (Kellogg noted the appearance of mon in C, but did not know of the existence of P, and thus was unaware of this agreement.)
Alliteration on f and v: There are no examples of initial v for OE initial f, the presence of which would support Samuels' argument for a Kentish provenance. C is unique among the SJ manuscripts, however, in alliterating f with v, as it does at lines 31, 243, 253, and 1328:
31 - His fader vaspasiane ferly bytydde
243 - The pope a-valed his vayle . & his face towched
253 - Ȝyt is þe face in þe vayle . as veronica hit browȝte
1328 - At vyane a fowle detħ . & vengeaunce he suffredde
At line 31, C is in agreement with UDE, but the group replaces fadere of flesche, which is found in other manuscripts, with fader vaspasiane. This might have been motivated by the fact that Vespasian had not yet been mentioned by name in the poem, and thus the introduction of the proper name here can be explained as a scribal effort – inherited by the UDEC group – to clarify the identity of Titus’s father. Given that there is no other alliteration of f with v in UDE, this might be explained as a failure of alliteration caused by an effort to clarify the text within this group.
Both E and C appear to alliterate f and v by replacing visage with face at l. 253, but in the case of E this is not reliable evidence since E's alliteration is highly inconsistent (e.g., ten lines earlier at 243 C also has face against visage in all other manuscripts except E, but E reads nose).
Dialect and the shift of exemplar: Hanna-Lawton have demonstrated that the scribe switched between two exemplars, using one throughout the process of copying and switching freely between it and a second from line 603 (HL line 621) to the end. No analysis of the effect of this shift on dialect analysis has yet been put forth, and thus it is of interest to note one dialect feature exclusive to the portion of the manuscript prior to line 603, as well as two features found only after line 603:
a. The only examples of the present indicative plural inflection -eth occur prior to the introduction of the second exemplar: l. 304 assayleth and l. 329 seyþe.
b. After the introduction of the second exemplar, the sole example of the third person plural pronoun spelled þem occurs at l. 632. In addition, the only examples of third person singular, present indicative -es occur at l. 1102, leues, and at l. 1260, proferes.
The present indicative plural -eth is a trait of Southern, Kentish, and West Midland dialects, whereas both the spelling þem and the present indicative -es are traits of Northern and Northeast Midland dialects. This suggests the possibility that the second exemplar was of a more northern dialect, albeit with the caveat that this evidence is slight and should be taken into account against the wide admixture of forms found throughout the manuscript.
Decoration:
A space two lines in height at the beginning of Siege of Jerusalem was left for an initial capital I, but the letter was never rendered (cf. fol. 17r, where the initial is also missing). The first letter of each line was touched in yellow, now almost entirely faded away.
Passus divisions occur as marginalia in the main scribal hand, sometimes accompanied by one or more obeli. The text of SJ is divided into quatrains, each of which is marked with a paraph. The scribe has seven passus divisions, but only the last five of them are numbered; the first would not be marked since it coincides with the beginning of the poem and the second almost certainly occurred on the missing folio that contained HL lines 167-248. In addition to these divisions, there are three points where an unusually large and ornate capital in C coincides with a textual division in one or more other manuscripts. At l. 1000 (HL 1025), a large initial N corresponds with a four-line capital in V. There are also large initial capitals at lines 930 (HL 953) and 1150 (HL 1177) (again an N in each case). The first corresponds to a three-line capital in E, and the latter to both a three-line capital in E and a paraph marker in D. This is of particular interest because of the decision of Hanna-Lawton to omit lines 953 and 1177 of E and l. 1025 of V, along with all paraph markers from D, from consideration in determining textual divisions for their critical text on the grounds that they occur only in single manuscripts. These capitals in C present us with the difficult task of determining whether they are meant to indicate further textual subdivisions in C (in addition to the scribe's clearly marked passus headings), or simply to reflect breaks in the continuity of the narrative. In each case these large initials introduce the word Now(e) at a moment suggesting a turn in the narrative:
953 - Nowe of þe kynge of surry . wyll I seye more
1000 - Nowe is vaspasiane I-gone . ou[ur] þe bygge stremes
1150 - Now tytus counceyle hatħ take . þe town to assayle
Although the presence of these initial capitals in C may lend weight to the textual divisions signaled in the other manuscripts, the evidence for relying upon those divisions found in E, V, and D remains murky, as C tends to use large initials at other points where there are no corresponding textual divisions found in the other manuscripts:
41 - Now was þer on nathan . naymes sone of greeke
288 - Now mykyll woo wortħ wrogħt þe . in þy welthy townes
Furthermore, the scribe has a tendency towards making an elaborate, unusually large initial N in other environments on occasion where there is no discernible reason for doing so, e.g. Nowgħt in l.152 and Nor in l. 294. It is clear that these are more elaborate than his usual capital N in, for example Nathan and Not on f. 112r, but unclear why they are so. Because of this uncertainty, none of these points are treated as textual divisions within the transcription, but they are noted here as a puzzling and potentially significant feature of this manuscript.
Elsewhere in the manuscript, decorative features are also sparse:
Items 1-2, no decoration apart from running heads
Item 3 (a recipe added later), no decoration
Items 4-13, 15-18, first letter of each line touched in red, paraphs touched in red, first occurrence of some running heads touched in red; some texts with explicit slashed with red
Item 14, paraphs and first letter of some sentences touched in red; explicit slashed with red
Item 19, no decoration
Items 20-37, 40-41, paraphs in scribal ink, obeli acompany running heads and some explicits, but no rubrication used; many first letters formerly touched in yellow, but now badly faded away.
Items 38-39, first letter of each line touched in red and paraphs touched in red; explicit slashed in red; first letter of each word in title touched in red and obeli touched in red
Binding:
The present binding was completed in August 1957 by the British Museum, and measures 222 mm in height, and 210 mm from the center of the spine to the fore edge. Half bound with brown leather spine and corners, brown bookboards. Five raised bands. Headband and tailband in red and yellow thread. A pair of thin, parallel gold-tooled lines run the length of the spine on either side, and similar lines define the top and bottom edge of each compartment on the spine. The bottom compartment, which is larger than the others, is further subdivided by another set of these lines so that there are two areas, one 26mm in height, and the other 11 mm in height. Compartments 1, 5, and 6 decorated with gold-tooled leaf and vine designs around outer edges. Compartments 2, 3, and 4 have gold-tooled text stamped on a green morocco field (other compartments are the same brown leather as rest of binding).
Compartment 2: MIDDLE ENGLISH / METRICAL / ROMANCES, / ETC.
Compartment 3: BRIT. MUS.
Compartment 4: COTTON MS. / CALIGULA / A. II.
In top compartment, a white oval sticker reading 691. In bottom compartment, a similar sticker, but the text has been torn away. Where the leather from the spine and corners meets the bookboard, a pair of thin, parallel blind-tooled lines. Cotton's coat of arms stamped on front and back.
There are several sets of flyleaves, some of which are apparently relics of earlier bindings. In the front, a pastedown and single flyleaf from the twentieth-century binding, plus five additional flyleaves, the innermost of which seem to be fairly early in date and are counted in the foliation. There are only two flyleaves at the back, the outermost of which is part of the modern binding and the innermost apparently from an earlier binding. Between the formerly separate manuscripts, and now numbered as folios 140-143, are what were formerly two paper and two parchment flyleaves, probably belonging originally to Vespasian D. XXI.
Contents:
This list is based upon and has been checked against that of Guddat-Figge, pp. 170-171, and shares her numbering of the contents.
1. Fols. 3r-5r
The Pistill of Susan IMEV 3553 (DIMEV 5607). Imperfect - lacks first 104 lines. (i.e., one leaf).
3. Fol. 13v four medicinal recipes, inserted later by another scribe taking advantage of the presence of a blank leaf
4-5. Fols. 14r-16v excerpts from John Lydgate,
Stans puer ad mensam and "Dietary." These are written contiguously as one work with
Stans puer ad mensam beginning on 14r and leading directly into "Dietary" on 15v.
IMEV 2233 (DIMEV 3588) and
824 (DIMEV 1356)11. Fol. 58v a Middle English poem on the Ten Commandments, incipit
The ferst yntroyte of sapyens / ys to drede god yn eu[er]y op[er]acyon IMEV 3345 (DIMEV 5273)14. Fols. 65v-66v a prose treatise on medicine for the pestilence
19. Fols. 69v-70r a prose confessional text, incipit I Crye god mercy and owre lady seynt Marye / and alle þe company of heuen
27-28. Fols. 89r-91r
Quindecim signa IMEV 1823 (DIMEV 3000), here preceded by a prayer of thanksgiving, incipit
Almyȝty god þat all hath wroght IMEV 256 (DIMEV 436). These seem to be intended as once text entitled
Quindecum signa in this manuscript, but in other manuscripts occur as independent texts.
32. Fols. 107v-108r song of Christ to the Virgin Mary, incipit
Surge mea sponsa so swete in sight IMEV 3225 (DIMEV 5059)34. Fols. 109r-110v a listing of kings of England from Brutus to Henry VI. The text by the main scribe of the manuscript ends at the bottom of 110v during the reign of Henry VI, which is consistent with the dating of the manuscript suggested by item 10. A later hand has added the extent and end of Henry VI's reign as well as Edward IV's reign: & Regnant xxxix et Iacet apud Wyndesore / Edwardus quartus Regnant xxiiii . Annos & Iacet apud Wydesore. The Readeption of Henry VI is not specifically mentioned. Another hand added a final entry, presumably for Edward V's brief reign, but this has been partially erased and is not fully legible, although the name Edward is visible.
39. Fol. 135r "Quinque Gaudia," incipit
Heyl gloryous virgyne ground of all our grace IMEV 1046 (DIMEV 1713). Ascribed in Bodleian, Ashmole 59 to "an ankaresse of Maunsffeld" and in BL additional 29729 to Lydagte.
Hanna-Lawton summarize the contents of part II, i.e., the former Vespasian D. XXI, as “constitutions of the Carthusian order from 1411-1504.”
Provenance: Guddat-Figge notes that "[h]ardly anything is known about the provenance of the MS, "aside from the note Donum Jo. Rogers on fol. 3r. On fol. 144v, i.e., the former Vespasian D. XXI, Thomas Cooke is written, but there is no way to know if this was written before or after the two halves were joined. As a group, the famous Cotton manuscripts were owned by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571-1631) and presented as a gift to the nation of Great Britain by his grandson, Sir John Cotton, in 1700. They were initially housed in Ashburnham House, Westminster, where a fire destroyed or damaged about twenty-five percent of them in 1731.
Bibliography:
Doyle, A. I. "The Manuscripts." Middle English Alliterative Poetry and its Literary Background: Seven Essays Ed. David Lawton. Woodbridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1982. 88-100 (96).
Foster, Michael. “Scribal Editing in Tundale as Theological Rhetoric in the Age of Romance.” Spiritual Temporalities in Late-Medieval Europe. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. 139-64.
Guddat-Figge, Gisela. Catalogue of the Manuscripts Containing Middle English Romances. Munich: W. Fink, 1976. 159-63.
Hanna, Ralph and David Lawton,
eds. The Siege of Jerusalem. EETS o.s. 320.
London: Oxford UP,
2003.
Kellogg, Allen Bond. The Language of the
Alliterative Siege of Jerusalem. Diss. U of Chicago,
1943.
Kölbing, E. and Mabel Day, eds.
Siege of Jerusalem. EETS o.s. 188.
London: Oxford UP,
1932. (Reprinted 2001)
McSparran, Frances. Octovian Imerpator. Middle English Texts 11. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1979.
Millar, Bonnie. The Siege of Jerusalem in
its Physical, Literary, and Historical Contexts.
Dublin: Four Courts
Press, 2000. 26-7.
Rickert, Edith. The Romance of Emaré. EETS e.s. 99. London: Trübner & Co., 1906 (issued 1908).
Woolf, Rosemary. The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968.