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The Vercelli Book
from VercEly : the Song of Friendship , by G.Baucero (Vercelli, 2007) The Vercelli Book is preserved in Vercelli : see Museo del Tesoro del Duomo http://www.tesorodelduomovc.it/ The Vercelli Book is a late tenth century manuscript also known as “Codex Vercellensis”. or “Codex CXVII”. Compiled in a scriptorium of southern England, it is one of a group of four major anthologies in Old English (700 / 1100), the language of the Anglo-Saxons. More precisely, the language of the manuscript is generally West Saxon. The codex is made up of 136 folios of thin parchment, (of about 31 x 21 cm), which are well preserved and contain between 23 and 32 lines each. The manuscript contains miscellaneous religious works in prose and poetry. It consists of 23 homilies, a prose life of St. Guthlac and 6 poems. The texts have an ascetic character and a didactic aim.
It has been suggested that the scribe was someone who wished “to illustrate his personal interest in penitential and eschatological themes and to glorify the ascetic way of life” (Elaine Treharne).
The homilies deal with important feasts (Christ’s Passion, the Feast of Purification, Epiphany, Jesus’ Birth) and other religious topics ( the last Judgement, Hell, the transience of earthly things, mortal sins, the Christian Virtues).
The six poems are untitled; they are organised without any precise order and have been classified as follows:
ANDREAS: the poem is made up of 1722 lines; it deals with the missionary labours of St. Andrew among the Mermedonians, cannibal Ethiopians whom the saint converts to christianity.
THE FATES OF THE APOSTLES: The poem was considered anonymous until Napier discovered that it contains Cynewulf’s signature in runic characters. The poem consists of 122 lines, in which each of the twelve apostles gives an account of his martyrdom.
ELENE: the poem is made up of 1321 lines. It is the story of the finding of the Holy Cross by St. Helena, the mother of the emperor Constantine.
SOUL AND BODY: the poem deals with a damned soul which every seventh night leaves its place in hell to see what it has lost and visits its body, which indulges in worthly pleasures (namely, eating and drinking) instead of worrying about the day when God will want to hear of the actions of every man.
BI MANNA LEASE (HOMILETIC FRAGMENT 1): it is a fragment revolving around the theme of man’s falsehood. It is related to Psalm XXVII.
THE DREAM OF THE ROOD: in a dream a first-person narrator sees the Holy Cross, which begins to speak and tells the story of Christ’s Passion. The poem is considered as the earliest English dream-vision. It is divided into three parts: a dreamer’s vision of the Cross, the speech of the Cross, the dreamer’s conclusion on the role of the Cross. The words of the Holy Cross are inserted in a sort of framework whose protagonist is an unidentified speaking voice. The poem is made up of 156 lines, which are among the finest verse in Old English religious poetry and are considered as the masterpiece of Anglo Saxon Christian literature. In the Vercelli Book the poem appears in the following leaves: 104v (lines 1/21) ,105r (lines 22/61/a),105v (lines 61/105),106r (lines 105/156). It may be interesting to know that some lines of this poem have been found inscribed in runic letters on an eighth-century stone cross known as Ruthwell Cross, which is a sculptured monumental cross of the late seventh or early eighth century. It stands in a small church in Ruthwell, south of Dumfries, in Dumfriesshire (south-west Scotland). Originally set up outside, the cross was badly damaged in the seventeenth century, when some of its parts broke into fragments. In the eighteenth century it was moved into the church and during the following century a process of reconstruction was started. The presence of some lines of “The Dream of the Rood” chiselled on the cross seems to prove that the poem is quite early.
All the texts contained in the Vercelli Book are anonymous, except for Elene and The Fates of the Apostles, which have been ascribed to Cynewulf. The attribution is proved beyond doubt by the poet’s signature in form of runic acrostics inserted in each poem.
It seems interesting to underline that:· The meticulous hand is Anglo-Saxon square minuscule, which was typical of the time; - The copying of the texts may be attributed to one single scribe, who compiled the manuscript on several occasions;
the compiler copied dialectical and punctuation differences;in other terms, he copied the dialects and punctuation he had found in the original texts;
· the pagination is irregular;
· there are different types of incipit.
The whole manuscript contains only three zoomorphic initial letters.It seems safe to say that the compiler had planned to insert more pictures, but in the end he changed his mind.
Why should the manuscript have ended up in Vercelli? The presence of this codex in Vercelli has been proved since the beginning of the 12th century. The manuscript has been preserved in the Capitular Library of Vercelli for centuries, but how and why it was brought from Great Britain to this part of northern Italy many centuries ago is still a subject of discussion. One of the current conjectures is that the Vercelli Book was left in the 11th or 12th century by a foreign pilgrim –probably an Englishman – who died in Vercelli or was grateful for the warm hospitality he had received in the little town during his pilgrimage to Rome, perhaps in the local hospital (which was dedicated to St.Brigid or Bridget of the Scots). It should be noted that, being situated on one of the major communication routes connecting Italy and the countries on the other side of the Alps, Vercelli was a meeting place for pilgrims, to whom it used to offer assistance and peaceful rest in the pilgrim hospices belonging to its monasteries. A related hypothesis is that the manuscript was brought to Vercelli by Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, the papal legate who played a leading role in England during the reigns of King John Lackland and Henry III. According to some other sources, the codex used to belong to a bishop, Leone (998/1026); it might have come to Italy from Wurzburg or Fulda, like some other manuscripts belonging to the same bishop. Of all these shared by the vast majotiry of scholars today.
The Vercelli Book was not decoded until 1822, when the German jurist Friedrich Blume found it (while he was looking for legal manuscripts) and realised that the codex was written in Old English. Before 1822 the code had always been virtually ignored owing to the obscure language of its texts. Paradoxically enough, however, the mysterious origin of the manuscript and the unknown language in which it had been compiled were what preserved the Vercelli Book. After 1822, the manuscript has become the main source for the study of the development of the English language and still helps us understand some important features of Old English literature.
Why is the Vercelli Book so important? · Because it provides important information about the development of the English language;· because it is a unique collection of Old English religious texts offering a fascinating glimpse of Anglo-Saxon spirituality;· because it offers clear evidence of the importance the town used to have in the Middle Ages.· because it dates back to the late 10th century, but more than that because the poems it contains are much older than the manuscript: it seems that Cynewulf lived in the second half of the VIII century and that the texts contained in the Vercelli Book were composed between 700 and 850. Owing to the lack of information, however, it is not possible to be dogmatic about the dates of compilation of the code and the year in which the poems were composed. · because it is one of the few surviving manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon literature: it is certain that only a small portion of A-S poetry- about 30,000 lines - has survived.
Almost all A-S poetry is preserved in four manuscripts, which are unique and late in date:
1. the Vercelli Book, or Codex CXVII;
2. the Cotton Vitellius Manuscript, which is preserved in the British Museum. This manuscript is extremely important because it contains Beowulf, the earliest Old English epic poem
3. the Junius Manuscript, which is preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford; its name comes from the name of its owner, Junius, who was a librarian to Lord Arundel. It was first printed in 1655 and contains the so-called Caedmonian poems; 4. the Exeter Book, which was given to Exeter Cathedral by Bishop Leofric. It contains some pagan elegies, among which the most remarkable are The Ruined Burgh, The Wanderer, Widsith, Deor, The Seafarer, The Lover’s Message and The Maiden’s Complaint. It has been estimated that these four manuscripts contain almost 90 % of the whole Anglo Saxon poetic output. The reason why so few manuscripts remain and why they were so strangely scattered is still unclear. It has been suggested that when, in the 16th century, King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, their libraries were burnt or plundered and most of the books they contained were destroyed.
What we know for certain is that poetry made its appearance long before monks and scribes began to compile their manuscripts. Cynewulf’s poems , for example, were probably composed in the late 8th century, but the manuscript in which they are contained –the Vercelli Book- was compiled two centuries later. The Vercelli Book proves the existence of deep cultural and religious links between Vercelli and England, particularly the area surrounding Cambridge and Ely. It may be interesting to know that there are clear similarities between some of the 23 homilies in prose contained in the code and ancient manuscripts preserved at Corpus Christi College, in Cambridge.Moreover, “Andreas” , one of the six poems of the Vercelli code, deals with the St.Andrew’s missionary labours in the lands of the cannibal, warrior-like Mermedonians: there are several Latin and Greek versions of the life of the saint, but it seems that only two Anglo-Saxon versions are still extant. One of them is preserved in Vercelli, the other one is preserved in Cambridge. A related coincidence is suggested by the life of St.Guthlac. He was a member of the Royal Mercian House, but in spite of his noble origin towards the end of the VII century he became a monk at Repton, in Derbyshire. In 699, at the age of twenty-six, he moved to Croyland (now Crowland), an island in the Great Fens, not far from Cambridge and Ely. He built himself a hermitage on the island and spent the rest of his life there, in complete isolation. He died in 714 of ague and marsh fever. Two years after his death, on Guthlac’s island King Ethelbald of Mercia started construction of Crowland Abbey. Not very many people know that parts of the life of the saint are contained in the Vercelli Book: this also means that in the Middle Ages the British pilgrims who stopped in Vercelli on their journey from the British Isles to Rome probably used to listen to Guthlac’s life being read in Old English.
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The Vercelli Book
