The greater interest in the display of skill demonstrated by the creators of the intricate Leeds Cross is visible at the level of the individual knot, the single chisel mark. The more meticulous, the more regular the artistic effort is, the less it draws attention to itself beyond the broader and immediate aesthetic impact. Deviation from that precision and regularity thus becomes a visual intrusion: apparent chisel marks are noticeable; similarly, hands in manuscripts that are irregular or painstaking in the formation of letters stand out and demand (often rapid and critical) scrutiny. In the Western tradition of chirography, unlike the Eastern, it is conformity to the model script and consistency of the scribal performance that is prized. Palaeographers’ terminology for medieval scribes’ efforts is notoriously subjective, and impelled by an unstated aesthetic that owes much to the field of calligraphy; thus, hands are criticised for being ‘irregular’, ‘clumsy’, ‘sprawling’, and ‘uneven’, and praised for looking ‘regular’, ‘fluent’, ‘tidy’, and ‘stately’.
1 Elaine M. Treharne, ‘The Good, The Bad, The Ugly: Old English Manuscripts and their Physical Description’, in The Genesis of Books: Studies in the Scribal Culture of Medieval England in Honour of A. N. Doane, ed. Matthew Hussey and John Niles (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), pp. 261–83. In other words, conformity to the model script and regularity of strokes equates to the finest work; deviancy (perhaps idiosyncrasy?) draws criticism. A handful of accomplished scribes from pre-1200 England are known by name to scholars: Eadwig Basan (in numerous manuscripts, including Hanover, Kestner-Museum, WM XXIa, 36); Eadmer (in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 452, among other manuscripts); and Frithegod (in London, British Library, Cotton Claudius A. i), for example. While there is a correlation between scribal expertise and intellectual engagement, it is certainly not a given. Wulfstan, archbishop of York (d. 1023) and senior statesman of kings Æthelred and Cnut, has a hand that can be described as competent, at best. In London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian A. xiv, Wulfstan underlines and annotates text in the Letter Book; and, at folio 148v in that manuscript, a Latin poem is believed to be written by Wulfstan himself.
2 The manuscript is digitised in full at the British library website: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_vespasian_a_xiv_f114r. The hand is narrow, with limited chiaroscuro, elongated ascenders and descenders, and some unevenness in the formation of letters. Both Caroline and English Vernacular Minuscule forms of
a,
f,
g, and
s are used, while upright Caroline
d but English Vernacular
h are evinced.
Notably, the form of
r is hybrid, for while it sits on or close to the scored line as a Caroline
r would, its split shoulder is reminiscent of English Vernacular Minuscule, and there is, generally, a semi-currency to the whole effort. The idiosyncrasy of the hand makes it identifiable in a small number of manuscripts, such as London, British Library, Cotton Nero A. i at folio 120r. Other scribes are also identifiable from the manuscripts and texts that they copied, such as Coleman of Worcester and Ælfwine of Winchester, while many hundreds more – especially women scribes – have left only their anonymous writing to testify to their existence.
3 On Coleman, see: David F. Johnson and Winfried Rudolf, ‘More Notes by Coleman’, Medium Ævum 79 (2010): 1–13. On women scribes, see: Elaine Treharne, “‘Ic þæt secgan mæg”: Women, Song, Story, Presence’, in Women’s Literary Cultures in the Global Middle Ages: Speaking Internationally, ed. Kathryn Loveridge, Liz Herbert McAvoy, Sue Niebrzydowski and Vicki Kay Price (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2022, forthcoming).Unlike Wulfstan’s hand – which in the notes and interventions he made generally exemplifies the work of a rapid reader and writer, whose stints do not follow a model script as a singularly professional scribe’s might – some scribes from the earlier medieval period shared what was presumably more extensive and focused training to create a similarity between hands, such that their accomplished scribal stints are almost impossible to separate one from the other. In this way, rather like the crafters of the Ruthwell Cross, no individual draws attention to themselves in the provision of a set of books produced for an institution. In his article, ‘The Nature of Matched Scribal Hands’, Patrick Conner considers the palaeographical and codicological minutiae that might be tested to assert whether or not a scribe is the same throughout the production of a manuscript the extensity of which demonstrates subtle differences in the writing.
4 Patrick Conner, ‘The Nature of Matched Scribal Hands’, in Scraped, Stroked, and Bound: Materially Engaged Readings of Medieval Manuscripts, ed. Jonathan Wilcox (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 39–73. One case study is the Exeter Book, which might have been copied by one, or up to three, scribes; and, if the latter is the case, then these scribes have been deliberately trained to write with remarkably similar, or ‘matched’, hands. Another case study is the Book of Kells (Dublin, Trinity College Library, 58) in which the possibly four matched hands exhibited by the scribes illustrate a
habitus ‘related to the discipline of the community as a whole. Durable and embodied, it extended from monks’ voices focused in an absolute and unvarying singing of the Psalter to the regulation of everything from the manner of eating, to praying, to reading, and thence to one’s very conception of one’s place in the world’.
5 Ibid., p. 46. The point is that within this environment scribes’ efforts are in harmony one with the other. From this interpretation of cultural practice, then, it is apparent that scribes’ identities are subsumed to the communal (more than the institutional). Indeed, as Conner points out, individuality is suppressed within the harmonic endeavor of copying communally.
Conner sees this scribal
habitus evolving alongside ‘other monastic practices, such as liturgical development, renewed interest in ascetic disciplines, and the multiplication of exegetical readings of scripture by those with adherents for whom such texts provide interactions with their leaders which can be ritualised and from which the emotional capital that would be required to live contentedly in a monastery might be derived’.
6 Ibid., p. 49. This is an exceptionally important sociological observation, for while Conner is principally concerned with the Book of Kells (c. 800), and the eleventh-century Abbotsbury Guild Statutes (Dorchester, Dorset History Centre, Anglo-Saxon Charter 4), another institution – Exeter, refounded under Bishop Leofric (d. 1072) in 1050 – suggests a similar deliberate impetus for and method of manuscript production involving closely matched hands.
Manuscripts such as London, British Library Cotton Cleopatra B. xiii, Part I (folios 1–58), and London, Lambeth Palace Library, 489 were products of the writing office that Leofric established at Exeter upon moving the see there from Crediton in 1050. All the evidence of the large number of surviving manuscripts in English and Latin attests to a determined and concerted effort to bring together a group of scribes quickly to furnish principally Leofric himself, as well as his canons presumably, with the books required for him to undertake pastoral and liturgical work throughout the diocese. Leofric’s own acknowledgement of the significance of written materials is crystal clear from his donation of books in 1072 to the Cathedral Library, but in establishing his library, he seems to have moved swiftly in the earlier years of his episcopacy, also acquiring books from elsewhere to ensure a breadth of materials available to him.
7 Elaine Treharne, ‘The Bishop’s Book: Leofric’s Homiliary and Eleventh-century Exeter’, in Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. Stephen Baxter, Catherine E. Karkov, Janet L. Nelson, and David Pelteret (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 521–37. See the classic studies by P. W. Conner, Anglo-Saxon Exeter: A Tenth-Century Cultural History (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1993); and E. M. Drage, ‘Bishop Leofric and the Exeter Cathedral Chapter, 1050–1072: A Reassessment of the Manuscript Evidence’, D.Phil. dissertation (University of Oxford, 1978).The issue of matched hands is two-fold: on the one hand, it speaks to the focus of this paper, which demonstrates how the work of the individual artist is subsumed beneath the larger communal or aesthetic intentionality and functionality of the object, whether sculpture or book; on the other hand, not being able to identify an artist, or disambiguate a hand has consequences for contemporary scholars’ understanding of the moments of production – where, why, and how an artefact was manufactured. The number of scribes at work in a book becomes crucial, for example, when scholars are attempting to determine whether or not an institution had a dedicated scriptorium, or a transient writing office; whether or not a writing office had seven scribes at work, or only two; and what kinds of resources were given over to the making of books and documents. This can be demonstrated with reference to the manuscripts Cotton Cleopatra B. xiii and Lambeth 489, which may have been part of a single copying campaign, together with a third manuscript (part of which was written elsewhere), Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 419 + 421.
The most notable discrepancy in the respective analyses of the scribes concerns the number of scribes copying Lambeth 489, and the precise points at which scribes in Cleopatra B. xiii and Lambeth 489 correspond. From a detailed reappraisal of the scribes in Lambeth 489, it seems most likely that T. A. M. Bishop, in his analyses of these manuscripts, is correct: there are only two scribes in this manuscript.
8 T. A. M. Bishop, ‘Notes on Cambridge Manuscripts, Part II; Part III: Mss. Connected with Exeter’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society II (1954–58): 185–99. One of the discerning features of the first hand in Lambeth 489 identified by Neil Ker is that he ‘uses a long
s followed by a low
s in the combination
ss’.
9 N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957; repr., with supplement, 1991), p. 345. This feature, Ker appears to be saying, distinguishes the hand of folios 1–20 from those that follow. However, this particular feature also occurs in the hand that copied Lambeth 489, item 4, folios 25–31, a scribe who, according to Drage and Ker, is different from the first hand in the manuscript, and who also writes (though as different scribes) in Cleopatra B. xiii.
10 Drage, ‘Bishop Leofric and the Exeter Cathedral Chapter’, pp. 359–61 and 377–78. At folio 27r, line 10, ‘eadmodnysse’, or folio 27v, line 3, ‘þyssere’, for example.It seems certain that the hand of all but folios 20v–24v in Lambeth 489 is, despite the careful assessment of Ker and Drage, the same scribe, and thus, moreover, this is the same scribe appearing at folios 58r/12–58v in Cleopatra B. xiii (
contra Drage). While the minutiae of the hand vary slightly between stints and even folios within stints, the major features do not vary, with the exception of the crossbar of eth. The hand can be described as relatively round and upright in aspect, with a tendency to use the full height and depth of the interlinear space. At folios 1–20 of Lambeth 489, the nineteen-line writing grid permits for slightly flourished split ascenders and for tails to the left of many of the descenders; this same use of generous spacing is not replicated to the same degree by folios 24v–58 of Lambeth 489, where the spacing is now twenty-five lines to the page, where there is small increase in the number of words per line, and where abbreviations are noticeably greater, all suggesting that the scribe was more pushed for space than previously. This in itself would be sufficient grounds for perceiving a
prima facie difference in scribe.
11 For these scribes’ work, the manuscripts can be investigated online at the respective digital repositories: the British Library Digitised Manuscripts site at https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/; the Corpus Christi College, Cambridge manuscripts at the Parker on the Web site, https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/; and Lambeth Palace Library manuscripts at http://images.lambethpalacelibrary.org.uk/luna/servlet.The principal characteristics of this scribe’s hand are as follows:
æ is occasionally written with a high
e, often ligatured to a following letter, particularly if
æ occurs in initial position. This is much more noticeable when the scribe is writing nineteen lines to the page – the
e becomes considerably higher. The back of low, round-backed
d frequently ends in a small tag to the right.
12 The forms of æ, e and d as described here are discussed by Ker, Catalogue, in relation to Exeter manuscripts at p. lviii, where he also notes the high level of consistency between scribes. However, the remarkable degree of sameness in the script of these folios far outweighs any differences or, indeed, any convincing argument simply for ‘consistency’ between hands. The lower loop of
e often curves round towards the edge of the bowl. The tail of
g swoops round to the right before curving to the left; the bowl is usually closed. The
y is straight limbed, but curves in a relatively shallow fashion, often ending with a slight tick upwards to the right. The onset stroke of the
Tironian nota causes a small flick to the right and the descender curves round slightly to the left. Another abbreviation, that for
þæt, where the ascender of thorn is crossed by a horizontal bar, is quite distinctive: the left tag of the split ascender is often almost touching the bar. With regard to punctuation, hyphens occur at the ends and beginnings of lines where words run over, and they are usually written at the level of the ruled line.
The main mitigating factor against folios 1–20r and 24v–58 of Lambeth 489 being written by a single scribe is the form of eth. In the earlier folios, it is usually penned with the cross bar bisecting the up-stroke, tagged to the left at the top end; the ascender itself finishes with a marked movement of the pen to the left. In the later folios, the cross bar generally does not pierce the up-stroke, though the graph is otherwise the same.
13 The cross bar does pierce the up-stroke at folios 31 onwards, and it is also the case that the end of the up-stroke of eth at these folios ends with a more rounded curve to the left. In addition, the ascenders are less split than they are wedge-shaped with small tags to left and right. One identifiable characteristic of one letter form hardly seems convincing enough to determine whether or not these folios could be written by different scribes, particularly as virtually every other letter form that has distinguishing features often looks identical. Allowing for variability within a single hand, folios 1–20r and 24v–58 could be written by one scribe – a scribe who shared not only in the copying of Cleopatra B. xiii, but also, like a number of his colleagues in the analyses above, in a very significant amount of vernacular manuscript production in Exeter in the first decade or so after the see’s foundation, attesting to the important status given to the vernacular in Leofric’s plans for the transmission of religious materials.
Within this group of scribes copying parts of Cleopatra B. xiii and Lambeth 489 is a small number who were responsible for the vernacular additions to CCCC 421, which, together with CCCC 419, originate in Canterbury. The additions made at Exeter are those at folios 3–96 and 209–24, and Bishop has plausibly suggested that these additions were originally intended as a companion volume or set of texts for Lambeth 489.
14 Bishop, ‘Notes on Cambridge Manuscripts, Part II; Part III: Mss. Connected with Exeter’, p. 198. The size and layout of the pages is essentially the same, with nineteen lines to the page at pages 3–96 and twenty-five at pages 209–24. If these pages of CCCC 421 were meant for incorporation or as an accompaniment to Lambeth 489, then, logically, they form the third part of the original composite volume that included Cleopatra B. xiii. The texts incorporated into CCCC 421 are entirely in keeping with the general tenor of those in the other two manuscripts, being entirely homiletic and hagiographic, and predominantly by Ælfric.
Ker detects three hands in these Exeter additions to CCCC 421: the first copied pages 3–93; the second wrote pages 94–96; and the third wrote pages 209–24.
15 Ker, Catalogue, no. 69, pp. 117–18 at p. 118. Drage proposes that the scribe writing pages 3–93 is the same as the scribe at folios 25–31/2 of Lambeth 489, while Bishop asserted that the scribe writing CCCC 421, pages 3–93 is the same as the scribe at folios 1–20 and 25–58 of Lambeth 489.
16 Drage, ‘Bishop Leofric and the Exeter Cathedral Chapter’, p. 151; Bishop, ‘Notes on Cambridge Manuscripts, Part II; Part III: Mss. Connected with Exeter’, p. 194. Drage proposes that the second scribe in CCCC 421, at pages 94–96, is the same scribe as appears in part of the Leofric Missal and a second Old English manuscript.
17 Drage, ‘Bishop Leofric and the Exeter Cathedral Chapter’, p. 156. The other Old English manuscript is CCCC 190B, pp. 351–59. She further proposes that the third scribe in Lambeth 489, writing pages 209–24 also wrote the whole of Cambridge University Library, Ii. 2. 11 (an important manuscript of the Old English Gospels), and Cleopatra B. xiii, folios 58r/12–58v and Lambeth 489, folios 20v–24v.
18 Drage, ‘Bishop Leofric and the Exeter Cathedral Chapter’, pp. 157–58. As mentioned, the scribe who wrote the latter two stints is not the same scribe; there are far too many distinguishing features in the hands for this to be the case. Bishop thought one hand to be responsible for most of the additions in CCCC 421 (pages 3–94, 209–24), and that this hand was also that of all of Lambeth 489, with the exception of folios 20v–24v.
19 Bishop, p. 198. It is evident that untangling the scribes responsible for the copying of these three closely related manuscripts is a thankless task, primarily because the script of most of the scribes discussed is so similar as to be considered ‘matched’. However, if the design behind the manuscript’s production could be hypothetically reconstructed, it is essential to analyse the scribal stints, particularly with a view to evaluating the order in which the scribes might have written their texts at the codex’s genesis. Supporting any evidence given by the palaeography is the lineation and quiring of the three parts. One such theoretical reconstruction would be: Quires 1–7 of Cleopatra B. xiii (nineteen lines per page, textually distinct scribal stints); quires 1–3 of Lambeth 489 (nineteen lines per page, textually distinct scribal stints); quires 1–7 of CCCC 421 (nineteen lines per page, textually distinct scribal stints); quires 4–8 of Lambeth 489 (twenty-five lines per page, almost entirely textually distinct scribal stints); quire 15 CCCC 421 (twenty-five lines per page, textually distinct scribal stint). Quire 8 of Cleopatra B. xiii is anomalous and possibly fragmentary, but the appearance of the same scribe at folios 58r/12–58v as at folios 25–31 of Lambeth 489 might provide some clues. This would create a manuscript containing texts as follows (where C is Cleopatra B. xiii folios and texts; L is Lambeth 489 folios and texts; and CC is CCCC 421: ff. 13–31 De initio creature; ff. 31–38 De dedicatione ecclesiae; ff. 38–43 Lectio Secundum Lucam; C. ff. 44–55 Dominica ante rogationum; L. ff. 1–11v Nativity; L. ff. 11v–20 Easter Sunday; L. ff. 20v–24v All Saints; CC. pp. 3–25 In die sancto pentecosten; CC. pp. 25–36 In natale unius apostoli; CC. pp. 36–54 In natale plurimorum Sanctorum martyrum; CC. pp. 54–76 In natale unius confessoris; CC. pp. 76–96 In natale Sanctarum uirginum; L. ff. 25–31 Sermo ad populum; L. ff. 31–8 Composite homily; L. ff. 38–44v Dedication of a church; L. ff. 44v–51 Dedication of a church; L. ff. 51–58v Dedication of a church; CC. pp. 209–21 Larspell; CC. pp. 221–4 Part of Napier 15. Free-floating texts – those that are impossible to place now – are C. ff. 2–7 In die iudicii; C. ff. 8r–12 Dominica II post pascha; C folios 56–58v (Promissio Regis, 2 short extracts, and the Old English Pater Noster and Creed). The most obvious discrepancy in any potential liturgical sequence of these texts is folios 20v–24v of Lambeth 489, Ælfric’s Catholic Homily I text for All Saints, which here contains only the first part of the full text. See: Peter Clemoes, ed., Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The First Series, Text, EETS s.s. 17 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), no. xxxvi. It is important to note that this preliminary re-appraisal of the Exeter scribes suggests there are fewer scribes operating at this scriptorium than the number that, certainly by Drage’s account, is generally thought to be the case at present.
One might usefully attempt to restructure the three manuscripts as they currently exist into a form that unites all three in a feasible manner – by quiring and
mise-en-page, by scribal stints and, within these external physical features, by discernible textual organisation. Such efforts, perhaps not surprisingly, do not result in any manner of incontrovertible clarity, nor in a form of volume that can easily be paralleled elsewhere.
20 The closest parallels in terms of content and structure would be the Worcester manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 113 and 114; and the Canterbury manuscript in which Exeter additions have been incorporated – CCCC 419 and 421. Nevertheless, certain trends in both the copying of these texts and in the nature of the texts themselves can be discerned. It is remarkable, then, how similar the majority of the scribes copying these various texts are in the principal characteristics of their hands. Such is the reason behind the difficulties in clearly identifying the different scribal stints. The form of writing evinced in these manuscripts Clemoes has called ‘the Exeter type’,
21 Clemoes, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, p. 24. and Ker has discussed the consistency of letter forms within the manuscripts produced at Exeter in Leofric’s episcopacy.
22 Ker, Catalogue, p. lviii. An identifiable form of writing like this, a set script, is rare, as Conner notes in his work on matched hands,
23 ‘The Nature of Matched Scribal Hands’, above. and raises the issue of whether or not one could label these hands as part of an ideologically impelled exercise in communal and spiritual development, consciously developed and maintained by Leofric himself. This rapid and visionary work by this bishop in his new diocese consciously sought to promote unity and harmony through the productions of these scribes. Unlike Wulfstan I, archbishop of York, Leofric seems not to have engaged in producing his
own writings, unless his work remains unidentified in these English writings; instead, he set about, or instigated, the collecting and compiling of texts that were essential to his episcopal remit.
24 And in this he was – despite being trained in Lotharingia – quite unlike his counterparts in other secular institutions, such as Giso at Wells, who was himself a Lotharingian. See: Elaine Treharne, ‘Producing a Library in Late Anglo-Saxon England: Exeter 1050–1072’, Review of English Studies 54 (2003): 155–72. The Old English materials, however, demonstrate not only the vitality of the vernacular in this period as a linguistic medium for the transmission of fundamental Christian doctrine to the congregations where the bishop carried out his public duties, but also the subordination of the individual scribal artists’ efforts to the overall effort of the community.