Читать книгу A Catalogue of Manuscripts Known to Contain Old English Dry-Point Glosses - Dieter Studer-Joho - Страница 27

The existence of dry-point writing in Anglo-Saxon MSS was already known in the early days of their study. In the preface of his great Catalogus of Anglo-Saxon MSS, published in 1705 as the second volume of George Hickes’s Linguarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus, Humphrey Wanley (1705: 12) briefly discusses the use of the stylus in Anglo-Saxon England:

Præterea, Styli sive Graphii Metallini usum non nesciverunt Majores nostri Anglo-Saxones. Immo Doctissimus ille Anglo-Saxonum Rex Ælfredus in Præfatione præmissa Gregorii Magni Pastoralibus a se versis, singuli Episcopalibus Angliæ Ecclesiis cum libro isto Æstel, i.e. Stylum se ait dedisse. Stylo autem ad scribendum in Pugillaribus etsi maxime utebantur, nonnulla tamen propria hominum Nomina libro Evangeliorum Lichfeldensi S. Ceade dicto, quem Catalogi pag. 281 & 290 descripsi, instrumento isto Saxonice inscripta esse notavi. Hæc breviter de Styli usu, cujus formam exhibuit Joan. Jac. Chifletius, in libro Anastasis Childerici Regis Francorum inscripto, paginis 182 & 194. (Wanley 1705: [xii], authorial italics)Lichfield, Cathedral Library Lich. 11

The association of Alfred’s æstel with the stylus, however, has been put into question by nearly all scholars following Wanley,2 and the DOE does not even include “stylus” in its lengthy list of possible meanings for this puzzling term: “pointer for use in reading, board of a book-binding, book-mark, handle for carrying a manuscript, decoration on the cover of a book, book-cover, book-binding, clasp, lectern, page weight, reliquary, fragment of the True Cross, wax tablet for taking notes” (DOE, s.v. “æstel”, the list is taken almost verbatim from Collins 1985: 42).

As Wanley already points out, an OE æstel is mentioned by King Alfred in his prefatory letter to Wærferth as being one of two objects that he decided to give to each bishop in his realm: A copy of the newly translated OE Pastoral Care, on the one hand, and an æstel, se bið on fiftegum mancessa, on the other hand.3 King Alfred stresses the importance of these two objects by proclaiming: Ond ic bebiode on Godes naman ðæt nan mon ðone æstel from ðære bec ne do, ne ða boc from ðæm mynstre4 (Sweet 1871: 9). Bearing in mind that a copy of the OE translation of GREGORY’s Pastoral careGregoryPastoral Care was an object of quite substantial value, it is difficult to imagine that the accompanying gift would consist of a simple stylus – unless the stylus would have enjoyed some sort of symbolic power, of which, however, no record is extant. In addition to that, we are given a very precise estimation of the value of the unidentified æstel, namely 50 mancuses. This is a considerable sum, equivalent to half a pound of gold (Webster 1999: 29), which is more in line with an object like the so-called “Alfred Jewel” – an Anglo-Saxon artefact made of enamel and quartz enclosed in gold, whose function cannot be established with confidence, now held in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford – than with a simple piece of metal, such as a stylus. Moreover, Alfred’s phrasing suggests that the æstel belonged to the book in some unspecified way; again, this is not a property that is in line with a stylus.

While it seems clear that the æstel is not a stylus or any kind of writing implement, scholars are still divided over the question what object Alfred referred to. The gloss evidence is inconclusive, unfortunately. In one of the two main witnesses of Alfred’s prefatory letter to Wærferth – Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 12Cambridge, Corpus Christi CollegeMS 12[K:30] –, æstel is glossed L. festuca, but the broad semantic range of that word, given by Page (1987: 15) as “stick, twig, stalk, straw, rod of office, wand”, would allow for both a stylus or a book pointer. Moreover, it is by no means certain that the L. glossator knew for sure what this æstel actually was. In Ælfric’s GlossaryÆlfric of EynshamGlossary the word æstel (spelling variants are: æstyl and estel) is listed as a translation of L. indicatorium (cf. Zupitza 1880: 314), whose meaning is equally uncertain, though its etymology hints at a pointing function of the mysterious æstel rather than a writing function. Collins (1985: 49) argues in favour of a book-cover, seeing a lavish book-cover “as viable candidate for something which shows or points out something, in this case an important book underneath.” Page (1987: 16), while analysing the sequence of semantic fields in Ælfric’s Glossary, notes that L. indicatorium is “surprisingly distant from other book-words in the list, so it is unlikely that an æstel is an essential part of the structure of a book, as a book-cover, for instance” and he observes that “indicatorium is associated with the chancel (chorus: chor) of a church”. Combining this information with the notion that the donation of the æstel along with the copy of the translated Pastoral Care was meant to boost the quality of priestly teaching in the provinces, it may well be that the æstel served a practical function, perhaps being a book pointer of sorts. The possible identification of the “Alfred Jewel” as an example of such an æstel seems to be in line with that hypothesis, too (cf. Webster 1999). The remnants of the “Jewel” can then be interpreted as an elaborate handle, with the pointing end broken off; and the iconography of the “Jewel’s” enamelled figure, perhaps representing “a personification of Sight or of the Wisdom of God”, would be “very appropriate to its supposed function as an instrument associated with the reading and teaching of holy texts” (Webster 1999: 29). There is not enough evidence at the moment to resolve the issue conclusively. However, it can be surmised with a good deal of confidence that the stylus is currently not one of the strong contestants.

While Wanley’s identification of King Alfred’s æstel as ‘stylus’ is likely to have been misguided, his observation that there are dry-point entries in the “Lichfield Gospels” (Lichfield, Cathedral Library Lich. 1Lichfield, Cathedral Library Lich. 1 [G:269]) is the earliest recorded description of dry-point material in an Anglo-Saxon MS in the modern era. Wanley also gives a short edition of his successful readings in his catalogue entry on the “Lichfield Gospels”:

Denique, Graphio seu Stylo Metallino, sine Atramento, scripta (cujus generis scripturæ perpauca mihi videre contigerit specimina,) habes, fol. 109 Nomina virorum, Wulfun. Alchelm. & Eadric. fol. 113,b. Nomina fæminarum Berhtfled. Elfled. & Wulfild. (Wanley 1705: 290)5

Charles-Edwards & McKee’s (2008: 81–82) edition of the dry-point names confirms Wanley’s readings and they do not report any further glosses on the respective MS pages (pp. 217 and 226 in their page counting). Other dry-point scribbles that Charles-Edwards & McKee detect on p. 221, however, apparently had escaped Wanley’s scrutiny.

I have not encountered other early references to dry-point material, but similar remarks or commentaries on dry-point glossing may well be hidden in early, especially unprinted, resources. Hand-written MS descriptions, compiled by early researchers, may slumber unpublished in the library archives and they may report observations that have since been forgotten. Therefore, researchers working on a specific MS are well-advised to check for such resources in the respective libraries.