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The structure and reliability of the Codex Wintoniensis (British Museum, additional ms 15350; the cartulary of Winchester Cathedral Priory).

Rumble, AR; (1979) The structure and reliability of the Codex Wintoniensis (British Museum, additional ms 15350; the cartulary of Winchester Cathedral Priory). Doctoral thesis , University of London. Green open access

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Abstract

The Codex Wintoniensis, a medieval cartulary of Winchester cathedral priory, is a composite manuscript whose text was written by sixteen scribes over a period of three centuries. Its earliest section (Cod. Wint. I; fos. 9-11V 13v -67,67V- 110V), written c. 1129 X 1139 by scribes a and b, consists of a transcript of 185 historical records intended to illustrate the Anglo-Saxon endowment of Winchester Cathedral. This section may be associated with Bishop Henry of Blois's efforts to restore the cathedral endowment; - its lavish palaeographical features suggest that it may have been intended as a symbol to be used in a ceremony of royal confirmation. A collation of the surviving exemplars of Cod. Wint-I to their cartulary-texts shows that scribe a was an English speaker; although unfamiliar with insular script and archaic vocabulary, he was able to modernise the vernacular language of documents. The only discernible attempt at falsification of textual content during transcription occurred in Quire X of Cod. Wint. I (fos. 81-8), where the descriptions of beneficiaries in the rubrics differ from those endorsed on the exemplars. Cod. Wint-II and III represent twelfth-century, and later medieval, additions to the cartulary by scribes b-h, and l-s respectively The sources of the Codex as a whole had been produced in more than one scriptorilum, and belonged to more than one archive. An appreciation both of this variety of source provenance and of the composite nature of the -Codex is -vital-to the criticism of the cartulary's constituent documents, most of them otherwise unknown. All the individual documents should be judged on-their own diplomatic merits and in relation to the editorial practices and skills of a particular cartulary-scribe, rather than being summarily condemned, As hitherto, through their mere coincidental -association, in the Codex, with some obvious forgeries.

Type: Thesis (Doctoral)
Title: The structure and reliability of the Codex Wintoniensis (British Museum, additional ms 15350; the cartulary of Winchester Cathedral Priory).
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Language: English
Additional information: Thesis digitised by British Library EThOS. Some images have been excluded due to third party copyright.
UCL classification: UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of History
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1349464
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