The twelfth-century rubrication of Anglo-Saxon legal texts in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 383

Abstract

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 383 is an English collection of Anglo‐Saxon legal texts produced in the late eleventh century or early years of the twelfth century, possibly at or for St. Paul's cathedral, London. This article focuses in particular on the scribal strategies and mise‐en‐page of the rubrics and emendations made to the manuscript by a scribal hand of the first half of the twelfth century. Developments in the concept and technology of the book were used by the scribes who emended and updated the manuscript to facilitate and direct (potential and actual) readers' interactions with the legal texts and allow intellectual interests in the continued role of Anglo‐Saxon law into the twelfth century to be discerned.

(Old) English, Anglo‐Saxon Legal Texts in the Later 11th to Mid‐12th Centuries

“…The final folio of the manuscript has two further texts added, a list of sailors owing service to St Paul's Cathedral, London and a copy of the West‐Saxon Genealogy (henceforth WSG) in the same hand. The manuscript has been dated on palaeographic grounds by Ker to the turn of the 12th century ( Catalogue 110) and emended in the Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220 catalogue to the beginning of the 12th century, following Elaine Treharne's dating criteria for 12th century hands (Gobbitt, ‘CCCC 383’; Gobbitt, Production and Use 121‐125; Treharne, ‘Production and Script’). The average dimensions of each folio are approximately 187 mm × 116 mm, which makes the manuscript small and potentially portable.…”