London, British Library, Cotton Otho E.xiii
A legal manuscript most likely written in Brittany around the year 900, principally containing a complete copy of the Collectio Hibernensis (A recension), but containing a number of other biblical, canonical and secular laws. Heavily damaged in the Cotton fire of 1731, the manuscript is today in a poor state. Many leaves are damaged or missing, and have some have been wrongly rebound. The manuscript's Breton origin is indicated by its script and the presence of Old Breton glosses. It appears to have been transmitted to Canterbury early in the tenth century.
The manuscript is digitized but currently (as of 07/24) unavailable due to the 2023 British Library cyber-attack.
In the current absence of the British Library's online catalogue, see this description (Biblissima).
Contents
- 1r: title page, possibly added by Cotton’s librarian, now mostly illegible. Ends ‘…7 dormientibus’
- 2v: Chapter De principalibus synodis, based on Isidore, Etymol. 6.16.5–9. See Flechner ed., p. 2 (Hib preface) [wrongly bound]
- 3r-v: fragment of Hibernensis table of contents
- 3v-9v: Liber ex lege Moysi
- 10r-11r: biblical and patristic excerpts on divorce (Hib 45.15, Matthew, Jerome’s comm. on Matthew, Paul, Mosaic law)
- 11v-127v: Collectio canonum Hibernensis (recension A, but augmented with material from recension B)
- 128r-130v, 131v, 133r-135v, 137r-139r, 143r-146r: excerpts from Hibernensis (recension B)
- 130v-131v: canons of the 721 synod of Rome (a.k.a. Anathemata of Pope Gregory II)
- 131v-132r: Excerpta de libris Romanorum et Francorum (extracts)
- 132v-133r: paragraph attributed to ‘libri Patricii’ (letter to bishops in ‘Campo Hai’)
- 136r: Prologue to Hibernensis A, followed by chapter De nomine sinodi, as in Flechner ed., p. 1
- 136v: several items, including extract from Innocent I's letter to Exuperius of Toulouse (JK 293) and several items attributed to ‘Lex Salica’ concerning thieves (in fact Ansegisus and Benedictus Levita)
- 139r-141v: Excerpta de libris Romanorum et Francorum (complete)
- 141v-143r: Lex innocentium (or ‘Canons’) of Adomnán of Iona
- 146v-149v: Passio septem dormientium (The Legend of the Seven Sleepers)
- 150r-179v: Hibernensis B, fragmentary [written in a different hand]
- 151r-v: excerpts from ‘Canons of Theodore’ [wrongly bound]
Literature
- Shannon Ambrose, ‘The Collectio canonum Hibernensis and the literature of the Anglo–Saxon Benedictine reform’, Viator xxxvi (2005), pp. 107-18, at 110-11.
- Caroline Brett with Fiona Edmonds and Paul Russell, Brittany and the Atlantic Archipelago, 450–1200: contact, myth and history (Cambridge, 2021), pp. 173-75
- Flechner, Hibernensis, pp. 135*-137*
- Kéry, p. 73
Categories
- digitized
- Western France
- Manuscript
