Rant of the Day: Manuscript Catalogues

[highlyeccentric]

My somewhat obsessive friend MrsBacon, who has spent much of the last couple of months chasing down crusader letters by haphazard chains of catalogue searches, word of mouth, the history of french libraries after the Revolution, and midnight telephone calls to confused non-english speaking librarians who just might have something in a 'little box' downstairs, assures me that I am blessed in my choice of field, because the English generally and Anglo-Saxonists in particular are obsessed with cataloguing and record-keeping, and that I should be overjoyed to have access to big fat manuscript catalogues and so forth.

Nevertheless, having finally laid hands on Helmut Gneuss' Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, i found it immensely frustrating. It didn't take much to discover that 'Cotton Nero' wouldn't be in the list, and that it would be found headed by its location. After peering at the index for some time, wondering why 'British Library' doesn't appear before 'Cambridge University Library', i noticed the neat little comma: 'Cambridge, University Library'. Deft use of the index took me through the various manuscripts containing "Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: homilies" and brought me at last to 'London, British Library, Cotton Nero A.i". So far so good- all inconveniences at the feet of my own incompetence.

Gneuss turns out to contain a very short paragraph and no more information than I could have rattled off from the top of my head, save for the size of the MS itself. Perhaps useful for cross-referencing across manuscripts, it was quite disapointing for my current purposes. (What are they? I'm not sure... )

Next i turned to Neil Ker's Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon, which DID contain useful- if barely comprehensible- information, several pages of it. This, however, took me another half an hour to find, as I stared at the gap between Lincoln, Cathedral 298 no. 2 and London, British Museum, Additional 9381, wondering where the British Library had got to. I checked at the other end of British Museum, and L had not been mysteriously moved to after M. To the indexes i returned, and sifted through manuscripts containing the handwriting of Wulfstan- which was at least a vaugely relevant tour- only to end up at London, British Museum, Cotton Nero A.i.

Why has no one told me that the British Museum and the British Library are the same thing? Furthermore, how does one figure out which to refer to?

Comments

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

hehe, thanks dude. you sound pretty organised to me - you've got a topic, primary sources... the rest is easy! :)

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

i have such a flippy topic though... i wants a QUESTION, dammit! i feel like i'm trying to contain an excitable kitten or something... it won't sit still and it's hard to tell how many legs it's got.

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

haha i still don't have a question!

well, i thought i had one last week, but apparently i don't anymore.

what is your topic? all i really know is it's about that dude?

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

it is indeed about that Dude, and that dude's manuscript... At Awesome's suggestion i've narrowed in on Cotton Nero A.i, which is a version of Wulfstan's 'handbook', containing a handful of his sermons, assorted law codes he wrote, parts of TWO versions of the 'institutes of polity', his work on the principles of government and social order, plus assorted latin works by other authors- canon law, penitential, some sermons by Abbo of St Germain, and some other stuff i can't remember. This manuscript was in his possession, has his scribbled notes and changes in the text, and was probably pulled apart, re-ordered and supplemented by him or by others under his direction some time after it was first compiled.

it's a transitional manuscript, particularly as concerns the Institutes, and his most famous sermon, the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos. so hopefully i'll be able to say something about the development of his political thought/theological thought over time... i need a new word, though. it's not political AND theological thought; he doesn't go in for much in the way of exclusively theological thought at all... i'm wondering if i can use the term 'socio-theological' or something similar. He's all about creating a whole, holy Christian society... *frowns* yeah. so i want to look at that. but that's not really a QUESTION. hmph.

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

what sort of things have other people done about your Dude?

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

as in, what other aspects of him are interesting, or something.