Excerptiones Egberti
| Title | Excerptiones Egberti |
|---|---|
| Key | ? |
| Alternative title | Excerptiones Pseudo-Egberti |
| Alternative title | Excerptiones de libris canonicis (Wormald) |
| Alternative title | Wulfstan's canon law collection (Cross/Hamer) |
| Alternative title | Collectio canonum Wigorniensis (Elliott) |
| Wikidata Item no. | Q16827379 |
| Century | saec. XI |
| European region of origin | England |
| Author | Christof Rolker |
| No. of manuscripts | some (2–9) |
The Excerptiones are an Anglo-Saxon canon law collection extant in five manuscripts. Content, structure, and wording of the material differ considerably between the extant manuscripts. While two copies refer to the collection as Excerptiones de libris canonicis, scholarship is divided about the correct title; in any case the attribution to Egbert of York has long been dismissed. Instead, the collection is generally accepted to be closely associated with Wulfstan of York (successively bishop of Worcester, London, and York), though it remains uncertain which role he had in the making of which version.
Kéry, Collections p. 239) lists two manuscripts of the first recension (Cambridge, Parker Library, 190 and London, British Library, Cotton Nero A.i), three manuscripts of the second recensio (Cambridge, Parker Library, 265, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Barlow 37, and Rouen, BM, U.109 (CGM 1382)) plus a fragment of an unspecified version (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 121). All manuscripts come from Worcester and are connected to Wulfstan one way or the other.
The collection was first described as such, and edited, by Henry Spelman in 1639. Ever since, it has attracted much scholarly attention as important Anglo-Saxon document. In 1999 James E. Cross and Andrew Hamer provided a new edition, and established that the longer version depended on the shorter, more stable version; they remained neutral on the exact role of Wulfstan, but argued for his influence, whether direct or indirect, in the evolution of the collection. Elliott argued that on account of the stability of the first recension it should not be seen as Wulfstan's work, while the very instability of the second was indicative of his involvement; he argued at length that the variety of the manuscripts, including the combination with different materials were a feature, but a bug:
Literature
Kéry, Collections pp. 238-239.- Wulfstan’s canon law collection, ed. and tr. J.E. Cross/A. Hamer (Cambridge, 1999).- Elliot, Canon Law pp. 1-29.- Patrick Wormald†, Archbishop Wulfstan’s Canon Law Collection, ed. Andrew Rabin. The Old English Newsletter, v. 46, no. 1 (2016).- 1. Elliot, The Worcester Collection of Canons: The Need for a New Edition, in: Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Toronto, 5–11 August 2012, ed. Dusil/Goering/Thier (2016) pp. 1-29.- Rolker, Canon law p. 18.
Weblinks
Michael Elliot, who has studied the collection in great detail in his PhD thesis (Toronto 2013), has published transcriptions of four of the five manuscripts, an analysis of the collection, and a version of his paper at the 2014 International Congress of Medieval Canon Law (shorter than the published version): http://individual.utoronto.ca/michaelelliot/manuscripts/texts/wig.html His thesis, which also contains transcriptions and analyses, remained unpublished, but is available in digital format online. For an archived version, see the Internet Archive.
