I have looked at this problem while working on the Hermathena article and
in connection with Aldhelm's Vergil text - on which I hope someday to
publish, if I live so long -
I cannot speak to the later period. I have only worked with the circle of
Boniface and Aldhelm and Bede. We do not have a Anglo-Saxon manuscript of
Vergil earlier than the tenth century - and for those we are left to
consider whteher those manuscripts descend from earlier Insular manuscripts
or from 'new' Carolinguan manuscripts from the continent.
Gneuss catalogues four pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon Vergils, three of which
have been reduced to fragments, one hopes through long and vigorous use.
Gneuss 477. Aeneid fragment. London, Royal 8.F.xiv, fols. 3-5. saec xi in
Bury?.
Gneuss 503. Aeneid fragment. London, Arundel 30 fols. 5-10 and 208. saec x
Bury.
Gneuss 648. Aeneid fragment. Oxford, Lat. bib., Lat. class. Lat. liturg.,
Lat. misc. and Lat. th.: Lat. class.c.2., f. 18 [with Deene Park Library,
near Kettering, Northamptonshire, Oldham roll FP. a (6)] saec x/xi.
Gneuss 919. Rome Reg. lat. 1671 saec x2 Worcester?
Full description in Bishop (1971, 17): ' The text has numerous mistakes of
its own, mostly uncontrolled by the discipline of scansion, the MS. has
(besides the Prefaces and the headings of the Eclogues) enough variant
readings to be capable of being placed in the tradition; where the readings
of 9th-century codices are recorded in the apparatus of the editions the
MS. is relatively (not consistently) close to Berne 184.'
Campbell (1953,5-6) remarks that 'such was the authority of Virgil that any
phrase used by him would probably be felt as a Vergilian echo in the period
with which we are concerned. ... Virgil at once emerges as the perpetual
handbook of them all. ... At the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon literary
period, the second influence to Virgil was undoubtedly early religious
epic.' Those Christian poets are, however, saturated with Vergilian
reminiscences and vocabulary, and it is possible that Vergil must be placed
second to his Christian descendants.
I want to stress the last line of that paragraph - part of the commentary
handbook - since it occurs to me now that a peculiar reading or allusion
might also be affected by a knowledge of the deeply Vergilian patristic
poets.
I have always checked the manuscript variants given by Ribbeck (which,
however old it is, I love - if anyone knows of a copy of his Prolegomena
for sale - let alone the edition, please let me know!) and Mynor. I now
include a check through Geymonat too, having finally had a chance to handle
his edition this spring. I also check the lemmata in Servius Danielis,
since we have a fragemnt from the cicle of Boniface, and at least one
Boniface allusion demonstatres the text filtered through the commentaries.
One must also check the works which may be lie behind a given work - for
instance Patristic writers for Bede's Genesis writings, grammarians for
Aldhelm. The question of correcting or accepting the reading in a source
is a highly suggestive one - if we could be certain of original readings -
but of all authors, which is more likely to be 'corrected in quotations' by
a scribe? If there is any correspondence between a particular reading in a
Vergil text manuscript and a quotation - I note them.
More often than not there isn't a problem - there is no difference - this
may be, of course, because editors have silently corrected Vergilian lines
according to whatever their idea of a standard edition is (God be good to
Rudolf Ehwald for he gives the manuscript readings in his apparatus) - I
am appalled at using the Loeb for this sort of thing - I would have
expected Mynors at least, but then recently I found a well-published
medievalist unaware of the existence of the Weber Vulgate and using
Colunga-Turrado (Clementine) and getting away with it!. Now I'd use CT for
roughing out research (it after all costs a lot less to put initially on
the shelf at home), but I'd check quotations againt Weber and use the Weber
text and punctuation.
With all this checking one is still left with little solid to go on
- there are some small indications in Aldhelm, but I doubt if there is
enough to be staistically viable, although I keep hoping. Somewhere in my
notes I believe I have someone suggesting Aldhelm had access to a
manuscript like P - they may have really gone out on a limb and said P
itself. I once suggested to someone that if we created a base of all
Vergilian quotations in Anglo-Latin before 800, we might have a chance, but
I immediately started seeing problems there -
By the by, I am waiting with bated breath to hear what everyone has
to say about Fulgentius.
Helm's edition has a list of manusvripts. Anytime I've chased a mention f
Fulgentius down for my period I've ususlly found it was either the treatise
on language or the Mythologies that was actually quoted. I need to check
Savage's article, but I don't think the Paris manuscript whose commentary
on the sixth Aeneid he suggested might have connections with the later
'Chartrian' exegesis had any of his Vergil allegory. Oddly enough,
however, I have always suspected that the Old Irish 'King and Hermit' (and
all readers be warned - all of the editions since Meyer's of 1901 are
severely trunacated for no reason except to make the poem more like the
Lake Isle of Inishfre)
may have been inflenced by Fulgentius's remarks on the Eclogues at the
beginning of the work.
Helen COB
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