Gran Via Societa & Comunicazione > Le notizie > Clienti > The Leornuncraeft project online database

The project has been carried out by a research group from the University of Palermo (P. Lendinara, F. Alcamesi, C. Giliberto and L. Teresi) together with two other research units from the LUMSA, in Rome, and from the University of Udine and has aimed to cast light on the nature and development of medieval English learning, so as to improve and expand our understanding of the forms and contents of instruction in Anglo-Saxon England. The database (whose main manager is F. Alcamesi) has been designed and implemented by the Palermo research team and aims to identify and study the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts containing literary texts that have been used for teaching purposes, whether in the classroom or for self-study.

These texts, which represented the test bench where students and masters were to practise Latinate literacy and learning, often occur together and are accompanied by glosses, long scholia and commentaries. The presence of glosses is not per se evidence of the instructional use of a text or a manuscript (and the field of Anglo-Saxon glosses is vast and still largely unexplored, especially as far as Latin glosses are concerned). However, the presence of prosodic and/or grammatical interpretations as well as of glosses which, for example, point to the use of a rhetorical feature in the text they accompany, may be particularly revealing. Syntactic glosses are especially relevant. Construe-marks are found in several Anglo-Saxon copies of Latin texts and take various forms. They assisted the reader to construe the Latin correctly and undoubtedly denote a scholarly approach to a text which was to be expounded to the class. Works such as the Disticha Catonis generally circulated with a trail of glosses and commentaries, and Anglo-Saxon England is no exception. The same can be said of Sedulius’s Carmen Paschale, with its paraphernalia of small poems written by and for Sedulius, as well as the series of works by Prudentius or Prosper of Aquitaine which tend to occur in clusters.

These texts were undoubtedly part of a core of intermediate and advanced school texts, the Anglo-Saxon curriculum consisting of canonical authors (mainly poets, grammarians and commentators), largely inherited by the Carolingian masters. As the analysis of the manuscripts’ contents shows, the Anglo-Saxon curriculum also comprised many minor works, which were relevant either for their form or for the moral lesson they could impart. The detailed analysis of the contents of these manuscripts and a cross-comparison of their contents have provided a number of criteria for the assessment of their didactic character, thereby allowing the identification of further Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and texts meeting such criteria. As a result, several minor works, occurring alongside well-known curriculum texts, such as the Disticha Catonis or Sedulius’s Carmen Paschale, have been identified and studied in the light of a possible instructional use (e.g. ‘Iudicii signum’ [ICL 8945], ‘Nocte pluit tota’ [ICL 10279], ‘Sedulius Domini’ [ICL 14842], ‘Sedulius Christi’ [ICL 14841], and ‘Ut belli sonuere’ [ICL 16845]). The database, whose access is presently restricted by a password, includes so far 32 manuscripts, among which Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 173, fols. 57-83; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 448; Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, 18.7.7; London, British Library, Cotton Domitian i; London, British Library, Harley 3271; and Worcester, Cathedral Library Q.5. It is accessible through a web browser interface, so that users can easily explore the database or retrieve any type of specific information they are looking for.

For each recorded manuscript, the on-line archive provides the following information: language, date, origin, provenance, reference numbers in Ker’s, Gneuss’s and Gameson’s catalogues, bibliography, detailed list of contents, including glosses and illustrations whenever present. Each item in the manuscript is linked to a dedicated page which provides the following information: incipit, explicit, and rubric of the text as it appears in the manuscript, together with specific bibliographical information on it, followed by a reference to the text in general, with details about author, language, editions, Clavis number (for Latin texts) or Cameron and/or DiPaolo Healey-Venezky number (for Old English texts). A cross-reference to the other English manuscripts in which the same text is preserved has also been inserted, so that users can also compare contents and contexts. Finally, an internal search engine allows users to look for a particular manuscript or text through keywords: town, library, collection, shelfmark, date, or origin/provenance for the manuscripts, and title or incipit for all the works included in the database.