The Thorney Liber Vitae (London, British Library, Additional MS 40,000, fols 1-12r)
Edition, Facsimile and Study
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Published:18th Jun '15
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
First printed edition, with facsimile and studies, of a significant manuscript from medieval England. The Thorney liber vitae (BL, MS Add. 40,000, fols 1-12v) consists of many hundreds of names written in the front of a tenth-century gospel book. This liber vitae is one of only three such compilations surviving frommedieval England, the others being the Durham liber vitae (BL, MS Cotton Domitian A vii) and the New Minster liber vitae (BL, MS Stowe 944). Begun at Thorney abbey (Cambridgeshire) in the late eleventh century and continued into the late twelfth, it purports to be a record of the names of confraters of the abbey, that is of those people who, through their friendship and gifts to the abbey, were included in the daily prayers of the monks of the community. The present volume is the first complete edition of this important text, and includes a complete facsimile of the pages. It also contains studies of the manuscript context, of the names included and, where possible, the identities and relationship to the abbey of those named, many of whom are also entered in the priory cartulary known as the Red Book of Thorney. The introduction provides a wide-ranging historical context for the production of the liber vitae. Lynda Rollason is Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University. With contributions from Richard Gameson, John Insley and Katharine Keats-Rohan.
The Thorney 'Liber Vitae' provides a model for how future researchers might wish to edit, analyze, and present similar manuscript sources. . . . [A]ny would-be editor, paleographer, and codicologist would do well to browse its pages. * SPECULUM *
An invaluable research tool, one which will find a welcome place in all serious research libraries. * HISTORY *
This volume contains much material of high quality: the excellent facsimile pages, the clear printed text, the thoughtful accompanying essays. It is a work that will surely be used by many scholars working in the fields of Old English and Middle English, not only in onomastics but also in language and in history, and not only by scholars currently working but also by those in generations to come. In brief, this volume is an enormous contribution to scholarship. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *
Ebenso wie die zwei Indices (Manuscript Forms and Lemmata, S. 285-296, und ein weiterer, der vom Namenbestand des ersten auf die anderen Teile des Bandes verweist und diesen damit erst eigentlich erschließt, S. 297-317), gehören diese Ausführungen zum Gelehrtesten, was man in der Edition eines Liber Vitae wird erwarten dürfen. Per aspera: Der Band ist auf den ersten Griff nicht einfach zu benutzen. Wer seine Anlage verstanden hat, wird kaum Besseres finden. Hg. und Beiträgern ist zu gratulieren." (Along with the two indices (Manuscript Forms and Lemmata, pp. 285-296, and another that links the name inventory of the first to the other parts of the volume, thereby truly unlocking them, pp. 297-317), these sections rank among the most scholarly one could hope for in an edition of a Liber Vitae. Per aspera: the volume is not immediately easy to use at first glance. But once its structure is understood, one will hardly find anything better. The editor and contributors are to be congratulated.) * DEUTSCHEN ARCHIV *
ISBN: 9781783270101
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 1274g
387 pages