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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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When can a text in French and Latin be described as Anglo-Saxon? When an Anglo-Saxonist like Rory Naismith says so.
The law-code known as ‘IV Æthelred’ has been identified since the mid-nineteenth century as a text concerned with tolls, trading and currency in London, dated to around the year 1000. This contribution argues that ‘IV Æthelred’ may have had little if anything to do with Æthelred II (978–1016). By re-evaluating the law-code’s transmission, contents and date, it is proposed that the text consists of two distinct segments, probably put together around 1100 and surviving only in Latin translation.
One part is a series of tenth-century decrees on currency crimes, and represents the most detailed statement on this topic to survive from Anglo-Saxon England. The other relates more specifically to London, laying out the tolls incurred by merchants coming to the city from across northern Europe. Frequent use of French terminology marks this portion of the text out, and suggests a date in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest. |
There is no edition of the law codes earlier than the 12th century according to the University of London research group
| They exist only in later editions of Quadripartitus. |
The Quadripartitus is the name given to a large collection of laws produced during the reign of Henry I and was used in the Middle Ages. No original manuscript exists.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Dom Jean Mabillon, O.S.B.
Dom Jean Mabillon, O.S.B., (23 November 1632 – 27 December 1707) was a French Benedictine monk and scholar of the Congregation of Saint Maur. He is considered the founder of the disciplines of palaeography and diplomatics.[1] |
I reckon Jean has to be in the frame for making it up. Sorry Jean.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Jean Mabillon came up when we were investigating Bobbio, thank you for the reminder about this 'father of palaeography' monk, Wiles.
| The Bobbio Missal Paris, BNF lat. 13246[1]) is a seventh-century liturgical codex containing a lectionary, a sacramentary and some canonical material (such as a penitential). It was found in Bobbio Abbey by the Benedictine monk Jean Mabillon, sometime between June 4 and 9 of 1686. It is the earliest liturgical manuscript surviving from the medieval period. Its specific authorship and provenance is much disputed, though general agreement points to the valley of the Rhône, with Besançon (Mabillon's suggestion) and Vienne given as two popular options. |
Mabillon turned up again in the context of the 8th - 9th century 'Frankish annals' purportedly written at the Abbey of Saint-Amand. which would be subsequently destroyed by the Normans in the ninth century.
The earliest example of literary vernacular French (Langue d'oil) is indeed noteworthy. The trouble is there is no original manuscript. As reported by Wiki both the French and German texts are written in the same hand but not in the eighth century
It is first mentioned in a 12th-century catalog of the library of Saint-Amand Abbey, although the production of the manuscript has been dated to the early 9th century. It is not known with certainty where it was produced.
The manuscript is less significant for its original content, however, than for the empty pages at the end that later scribes filled in with additional texts. These include:
the top half of f141: a 14-line Latin poem about Saint Eulalia (Cantica uirginis eulalie)
the top half of f141v: the Sequence of Saint Eulalia in vernacular Romance
from the bottom of f141v to the top of f143: the Ludwigslied (Rithmus teutonicus), written in a variety of Old High German. |
Despite what is obviously (to us) going on, modern medievalists are still inclined to take Mabillon's word at face value
| According to Rosamond McKitterick, the Annales sancti Amandi are probably the earliest Frankish annals | |
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Bobbio Abbey's famous library, reportedly founded by St Columbanus, contained manuscripts that he'd brought with him from Ireland.
| It appears that when Greek was almost unknown in western Europe, certain Irish monks at Bobbio read Aristotle and Demosthenes in the original Greek. |
The thousands of books are now lost, given/taken to other libraries or in collections.
There is no evidence of a monastic library at Bobbio or anywhere in Europe before printing and the Renaissance. Yes, there are 11th - 12th century manuscripts and books that turn up, hardly enough to make a library let alone the hundreds of 'libraries' that historians believe existed.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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According to Anglo-Saxon historians there are four main collections of Anglo-Saxon poetry, all of which are problematic in terms of date, place and purpose. Some are incomplete and it is suspected that many haven't survived in 'their original form'.
The most famous is probably the Beowulf Manuscript or Nowell Codex from the Cotton Library, which got badly burned, and the largest is the Exeter Book, 'big enough to be thought of as a display book or a presentation book' and, unlike the Beowulf, with an intact centre section
| no image can do justice to the pristine condition of the middle folios of the manuscript; it might have been written in the very recent past,so clear and undamaged do the display openings appear. |
but 25% of the text has been lost due to damage to the book's beginning and end -- the first eleven folios have been cut and there is a deep burn mark on the back, damage apparently inflicted by a monk
| It is thought that the cuts at the beginning of the manuscript were caused by its use as a chopping or cutting board, and that the burn at the back was caused by even more wilful negligence: the placing of a red-hot rebrand on the book by a careless medieval monk, using the manuscript as a placemat |
The other two collections are the Junius Manuscript, in the Bodleian, and the Vercelli Book, roughly the same impressive size as the Exeter Book.
The Vercelli contains The Dream of the Rood poem and it's supposed to have been taken to the Italian city of Vercelli in the eleventh or twelfth century perhaps 'by a senior ecclesiastic on a pilgrimage' who accidentally left this huge tome behind. Another explanation, that it was a gift , has been rejected on the grounds that anything written in Anglo-Saxon would be completely incomprehensible to Italian clergymen. Either way it was clearly not considered of great significance for seven hundred or more years until
| It was found in the library by Friedrich Blume, in 1822 |
Friedrich Blume, or Bluhme, was a legal historian and published his find in 1824 without causing much if any excitement. The first printed edition came out ten years later.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Willibrord's portable altar has come up in Dutch Anglo-Saxonist's Twitter.
Historians believe it belonged to Willibrord because of
| the medieval inscription (added later) stating the altar was Willibrord's: HOC ALTARE BEATUS VVILLIBRORDUS |
The altar is part of Trier Cathedral's treasury, not Echternach's as one might have expected. In fact Wiki explains it has rather more important associations because according to the afore-mentioned inscription
| it also informs that the altar contained relics of the True Cross and of Jesus' sudarium (it now contains relics of the Virgin Mary's dress); the ivories and silver reliefs were added later; until 1794 it was part of the treasury of the Liebfrauenkirche (also in Trier, 'the earliest Gothic church in Germany') | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Cor lummee, you've got 'em bang to rights on a number of issues there, missus, and no mistake. First off, the 'name and shame' rule. Apart from my school gym shorts, very few objects in the world bear the name of its owner. Except in the World of Forgery. If you took that to Sotheby's without Willibrord's name on it they'd probably say, "Nice nineteenth century repro occasional table, sale estimate two to three hundred pounds."
But pop Willibrord's name on it, go round the corner to Christie's and they'd say, "Nice eighth century portable altar, sale estimate two to three hundred million pounds." Now you would think, given this situation, that a famous name would be at least a red flag. But in practice the opposite happens. Scholars are drawn to write about it because of the Big Name so very soon it has been tacitly endorsed by so many experts that it is proof against any attack on the grounds of such a trivial matter as authenticity. I haven't looked at the Twitter exchanges but it's a safe bet that a few more have just joined the throng.
Again, without the name, it might get labelled "early medieval portable altar" but it can at least be quietly removed without fanfare if someone comes along and points out it's a fairly blatant fake. With the name you'd need an Act of Parliament. Ah, but which parliament? That's the next giveaway.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Willibrord, like Caesar's Gaul, comes in three parts. There's his portable altar, that's in Germany. There's his Gospel Book, that's in France. And there's his body, that's in Luxembourg. The first was removed thanks to the French Revolution. The second was removed because of the ... wait for it ... French Revolution. The third wasn't removed during the French Revolution because they'd built a filthy great sarcophagus over it.
So that gives us two of our other rules, the first being "Vikings about, provenance is out" though in this case it's revolutionists going in opposite directions. So long as the provenance is accounted for, it doesn't matter much who the miscreants are. We first met the French Revolutionary 'Vikings' with the Franks Casket, if you recall. Since most of the historical fakes in our museums are a) French and b) nineteenth century, they have proved an abiding source of comfort when accounting for lost provenances. Willibrord himself, by the way, got claimed by Luxembourg because 'Frisian pirates' drove him out of the Netherlands. "Don't forget your altar, Wills."
The other rule is the old fave "Now you see it, now you can't". You used to be able to see the body because Willibrord was a standard late medieval pilgrimage attraction, and pilgrims were a lot less gullible than modern academics. 'Show us the body!' Admittedly any body but then you might say the same about his gospel book and his portable altar.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Wiki visuals give this portable altar as 12 th century.
Given that Pope Sergius (in 695) renamed Willy, St Clement the inscription is a bit of a mystery.
Presumably a Pope at some point wanted to take over the highly successful Willy cult.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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I reckon you will find links between the Willy cult, so-called early abbeys and and monasteries, and Villas.
eg Willibrord established an abbey at a Roman villa of Echternach, in Luxembourg, near Trier
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Trier Cathedral is no older than 12th or 13th century. Some of its more valuable relics are supposed to be somewhat older but dating Willibrord himself is no easy matter as there's not much in the records.
His 'testament or last will' (died 7th November 739) is believed to be genuine, certainly Echternach believes it to be, but it seems to have been mislaid if indeed it ever existed
| No writing can with certainty be attributed to St. Willibrord except a marginal note in the Calendar of Echternach giving some chronological data. On his testament or last will, which is probably genuine, see "Acts SS.", III Nov., 631. In the national library of Paris (No. 9389) there is a copy of the Gospels under the name of Willibrord; this is an old Irish manuscript and was probably brought by Willibrord from Ireland |
The portable altar is
which doesn't seem to make much sense but since the object is listed as an "8th century porphyry altar stone", presumably the inscription is agreed on as 14th century. Understandable enough, seven hundred years and stacks of relics later, a spot of cataloguing might be called for.
Giving someone a name 'that fits' is something we came across in the context of "witness lists" and signatories on charters. The story of Willibrord being given the name of 'Clement' seems to have a similar purpose, being well-used it's easy to accept as genuine and anyway there are so many Clements it'd be a job to sort one from another.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Hatilla the Hun wrote: | | The story of Willibrord being given the name of 'Clement' seems to have a similar purpose, being well-used it's easy to accept as genuine and anyway there are so many Clements it'd be a job to sort one from another. |
Still Clement is a name commonly associated with forgeries...
A 9th-century collection of church legislation known as the False Decretals, which was once attributed to Saint Isidore of Seville, is largely composed of forgeries. All of what it presents as letters of pre-Nicene popes, beginning with Clement, are forgeries, as are some of the documents that it attributes to councils;[26] and more than forty falsifications are found in the decretals that it gives as those of post-Nicene popes from Pope Sylvester I (314–335) to Pope Gregory II (715–731). The False Decretals were part of a series of falsifications of past legislation by a party in the Carolingian Empire whose principal aim was to free the church and the bishops from interference by the state and the metropolitan archbishops respectively.[27][28][29]
Clement is included among other early Christian popes as authors of the Pseudo-Isidoran (or False) Decretals, a 9th-century forgery. These decrees and letters portray even the early popes as claiming absolute and universal authority.[30] Clement is the earliest pope to whom a text is attributed. |
Maybe it's worth a look.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Wile E. Coyote wrote: | I reckon you will find links between the Willy cult, so-called early abbeys and and monasteries, and Villas.
eg Willibrord established an abbey at a Roman villa of Echternach, in Luxembourg, near Trier |
Archaeologists have noted somewhat warily the relationship between Roman villas and 'monasteries'
| The frequent discovery of house and villa remains beneath or near medieval monasteries, seemed general material proof of a villa-monastery evolution. Thus, as excavations revealed Roman and late antique phases at sites such as Ligugé or Subiaco, the foundation legends linking those monasteries to Martin and Benedict, and the late antique texts describing their early house-based communities together seemed to offer material proof of the house-monastery connection. |
Ligugé Abbey, which is famous for having been founded by St Martin in 361, is the only Gallic monastery ever to have been excavated. It was discovered to be on the site of a Gallo-Roman villa but “the archaeology has produced nothing of clear Martinian dateâ€.
Archaeologists call this situation a palimpsest
| Gaul, all of the proposed villa-monasteries shows a certain discontinuity of occupation between villa and church, sometimes by as much as several centuries. If a monastic church was simply built over a defunct villa or reused its ruined remains, the reasons for the palimpsest were legion – the reuse of land which ruins rendered unsuitable for agriculture, the association of ruins with sanctity in the early medieval imagination, or simply coincidence. In short, chronological precision was called for in evaluating villa-to-monastery claims |
Or pragmatism. Reuse of Roman building materials in Britain routinely transmogrifies into 'Saxon' churches in the modern imagination
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Oh, it's much more serious than that. You'll have noted several bogus 'systematic explanations' for the perplexing fact that there never seems to be anything very much between Roman and late(ish) Medieval eg
| the reuse of land which ruins rendered unsuitable for agriculture |
We usually find fifty years does it absolute tops, but they reckon five hundred years.
| the association of ruins with sanctity in the early medieval imagination |
Bad juju!
If all else fails.
| In short, chronological precision was called for in evaluating villa-to-monastery claims |
We've been calling for it for some time. Not a lot of luck so far.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Someone with a sound grasp of French should check out the Landevennec Gospels, just to make sure the Frogs are keeping up with us in the forgery business. They're a bit deliberately backwards on the arty front, the cheeky maires.
St. Matthew writing his Gospel, from the Landevennec Gospels, Landevennec, Brittany, 9th-10th century
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