Elizabeth Elstob’s excerpts from Textus Roffensis 1712
Bishop’s Chaplain Lindsay Llewellyn-MacDuff introduces the life of the Anglo-Saxon scholar behind the annotation of Saxon characters at the opening of Textus Roffensis, produced during the copying of her facsimile now to be found in the British Library.
Rochester Cathedral’s foundation charter
Elsewhere on the Textus Roffensis pages (link below) I have discussed the foundation charter of Rochester Cathedral, with its remarkable historiated initial ‘R’ – a historiated initial provides a story or narrative, often relevant to the text it accompanies.
Left, British Library, Harley MS 1866, folio 9r. Elstob’s copy of the foundation charter of Rochester Cathedral.
Right, Textus Roffensis, folio 119r. The foundation charter of Rochester Cathedral, with the historiated letter ‘R’ (for ‘Regnante’).
Is it a manticore?
British Library, Harley MS 1866, folio 9r. Detail showing a beast’s human head in Elstob’s copy of the Rochester Cathedral foundation charter.
Elstob’s copy of the historiated initial ‘R’ gives us something we cannot currently see fully in the original, namely, the head of the green beast whose neck passes behind the domed tower, top left of the ‘R’.
Evidently, when Elstob examined Textus Roffensis, it was not as tightly bound as it is now, and the head of the monster seems to have been fully visible to her, though we should accept the possibility that she was reconstructing it based on what she could partially see.
Presently, the head hides almost completely in the gutter of the Textus manuscript, though back in 2014 I was able to take a photograph that partially revealed it. Elstob recreates it in its entirety, and reveals that it is the head of a human man in profile. He has a long beard, and red highlights are used for his face and top of his head – what might pass as his hair. It does seem to complete what is suggested from my photograph.
Textus Roffensis, folio 119r. Detail showing a partial head of a beast in the gutter of the manuscript. © 2014 Christopher Monk
What kind of beast is this? I think to answer the question it makes sense first to consider what bestiaries – medieval books of beasts – might reveal about fantastical beasts with human heads.
There are a few human-headed, or human-faced beasts, found among bestiaries. These include the harpy, which has, unfortunately for us, a body of a bird (see images of harpy on David Badke’s wonderful online resource The Medieval Bestiary), and the mammonetus, the body of which is, alas, monkey-like (see images of mammonetus).
The Rochester Bestiary, London, British Library, Royal MS 12 F XIII, folio 24v. Detail showing the manticore.
Perhaps a better candidate for the Textus beast is the manticore. However, as we see from the example of the Rochester Bestiary, the manticore is typically drawn with a lion’s body (see more images of the manticore). Our red-faced, bearded human head is attached to a body that could hardly be described as leonine – it’s more like a long-necked worm that has had a big dinner!
We are left, then, with the strong possibility that our beast is not meant to represent any ‘known’ beast we find in bestiaries. Rather, perhaps, it was conceived as nothing more than a decorative element to the top part of the letter ‘R’ – a product of a vivid monastic imagination, all the same.
What is very interesting is that our man-headed beast appears to anticipate the later artwork of some psalters, such as the Ormesby Psalter (Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 366). As well as the magnificent double-human-headed letter ‘S’ (below), incorporating the story of Jonah and the Whale, there are numerous human-headed hybrids throughout, used as space fillers within the text.
Thanks, then – at least in part – must go to Elstob’s facsimile of the foundation charter, for we can now feel inspired to spend hours searching for human-headed hybrids!
Above, the Ormesby Psalter. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 366, folio 89r (early 14th-century). Detail of the letter ‘S’ formed from a dragon’s body which terminates both ends in a man’s head.
Below, MS. Douce 366, folio 81v. Detail of textual space filler depicting a human-beast hybrid reminiscent of the Textus Roffensis beast.
Link to the digitised facsimile of the Ormesby Psalter.
Æthelberht’s law code
Left, Textus Roffensis, folio 1r. The opening of Æthelberht’s law-code.
Right, Elizabeth Elstob’s excerpts from Textus Roffensis, London, British Library, Harley MS 1866, folio 2r. The opening of Æthelberht’s Law Code.
When we compare the opening page of the set of laws by King Æthelberht in Elstob’s facsimile with that in Textus Roffensis, it is very clear Elstob knew what she was doing. She rules the page as a medieval scribe would, to provide guidelines for the writing. She perfectly copies every letter and word – there are no mistakes – and faithfully imitates the script, reproducing what we now refer to as a protogothic, or transitional gothic, script. She, of course, has her own hand – the characteristic way one forms letters – which is neat and even and is perhaps, on this particular page, slightly more even than the hand of the medieval scribe.
If you’d like to know more how medieval scribes prepared manuscript pages, check out this British Library video.
British Library, Harley MS 1866, folio 2r. Detail showing Elstob’s scribal marks for ‘CI-ricean’ and ‘Clero-ces’.
British Library, Harley MS 1866, folio 2r. Detail showing Elstob’s drawing of the position of the hole on the Textus Roffensis folio.
The laws of Hlothere and Eadric
Elstob opens the second of the Kentish law-codes, that of Hlothere (king of Kent 673-685) and Eadric (king of Kent 685-686), with her well-executed rendition of the elegant purple ‘h’ (for ‘Hlothere’) of the original. Note how in the accompanying rubric (the red ink heading), she also replicates the stretched ‘N’ of the final word ‘asetton’ (‘set down’), and likewise at the end of ‘geworhton’ (‘had made’) two lines later.
British Library, Harley MS 1866, folio 4v. Detail showing the opening of the laws of Hlothere and Eadric.
On lines 10 and 11 of the second page of this law-code, we see that Elstob does not follow the Textus scribe. Did she make a mistake? Well, actually, she is correcting a mistake by the scribe!
A comparison, above, of British Library, Harley MS 1866, folio 5r, lines 10 and 11 with, below, Textus Roffensis, folio 4r, lines 10 and 11.
The laws of Wihtræd
Above, Elstob’s copy of the opening to the laws of Wihtræd, British Library, Harley MS 1866, folio 6r, detail.
Below, detail from the same folio showing ‘eac þan hrofesceastre bisceop se ilca gybmund (‘likewise the bishop of Rochester, which same was called Gebmund’).
We all make mistakes when copying text from a book or other work, even if these days it tends to be typos rather than handwritten mistakes. So, for the final Kentish law – that of Wihtræd (r. 690-725), the last king of a united Kent – we will take a look at one that Elstob made – but which she spotted and corrected.
Eight lines down from where the introduction begins with the large red Ð – interestingly, the introduction mentions that Gebmund, bishop of Rochester, was present at the king’s council – we see Elstob miss out the letter ‘d’ from the word ‘andward’ (‘present’). She spots her error and inserts a ‘d’ above the line, with a small mark below the line indicating where it should go.
British Library, Harley MS 1866, folio 6r. Detail showing Elstob’s correction of ‘andward’.
For me, as a scholar who specialises in Old English texts and manuscripts, and has been known to ‘have a go’ at replicating the work of medieval scribes – a painful exercise I would call it – it is a genuine pleasure to see Elizabeth Elstob’s work in more detail. There is undoubtedly more to learn from examining both this volume and her other facsimile of Textus Roffensis material. I look forward to bringing more of this to readers’ attention in the future.
Dr Christopher Monk
The Medieval Monk
Footnotes