Manuscripts

London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1370 Mac Durnan Gospels

Latin, Early Irish
s. ix^ex/xⁱⁿ
Irish manuscripts
parchment

An Irish manuscript of the Four Gospels, which was commissioned or written by Máel Brigte mac Tornáin (d. 927), abbot of Armagh, for whom the gospelbook is named. A later inscription provides evidence that it had found its way into England by the early 10th century and that Æthelstan, king of England (r. 924-939), apparently its owner, donated it to Christ Church, Canterbury.

Identifiers

Location

England London, Lambeth Palace Library

Shelfmark

1370

Title

Mac Durnan Gospels

Book of Mac Durnan

Type

gospelbooks

Provenance and related aspects

Language

Latin Secondary: Early Irish

Date

s. ix^ex/xⁱⁿ

Late 9th century, or early 10th.

Origin, provenance

Origin: Ireland

Ireland

No short description available

See more Ard Macha

Ard Macha ... Armagh

County Armagh

No short description available

See more ass. with Máel Brigte mac Tornáin

Máel Brigte mac Tornáin

No short description available

Provenance: EnglandEngland

Entry reserved for but not yet available from the subject index.

See more ass. with Æthelstan

Æthelstan

(r. 924–939)

King of England (r. 924–939), son of King Edward the Elder.

Later provenance: EnglandEngland

Entry reserved for but not yet available from the subject index.

See more Canterbury, Christ ChurchCanterbury, Christ Church

Entry reserved for but not yet available from the subject index.

Hands, scribes

Hands indexed:

Scribe (Máel Brigte?)

Scribe unknown, possibly Máel Brigte mac Tornáin (Mac Durnan), abbot of Armagh.

Máel Brigte mac TornáinMáel Brigte mac Tornáin
No short description available
See more

Hand of inscription on f. 3v (Koenwald?)

On f. 3v, a metrical inscription is written in square capitals, possibly by Koenwald (later bishop of Worcester), which tells that the manuscript was written by or at the behest of Máel Brigte mac Tornáin and that Æthelstan, king of England (r. 924-939), donated it to Christ Church, Canterbury.

Koenwald [bishop of Worcester]Koenwald ... bishop of Worcester

Entry reserved for but not yet available from the subject index.

Canterbury hand(s)

Hand or hands responsible for adding texts of Anglo-Saxon charters and writs (ff. 69-70, 114-115) in the 11th century; probably associated with Canterbury. Two further writs are found on a detached leaf, now London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. IV, f. 87.

Additions

Metrical inscription of f. 3v

Codicological information

Material

parchment

Foliation

1 f. (flyleaf) + 216 ff. + 1 f. (flyleaf)

Palaeographical information

Script

Category: Irish minuscule

Illumination

four symbols of the Evangelists (prefatory folio); portraits of three Evangelists (initial pages).

Table of contents

Legend

Texts

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- If a catalogue entry is both available and accessible, a direct link will be made. Such links are blue-ish green and marked by a bookmark icon.
- When a catalogue entry does not exist yet, a desert brown link with a different icon will take you to a page on which relevant information is aggregated, such as relevant publications and other manuscript witnesses if available.
- When a text has been ‘captured’, that is, a catalogue entry exists but is still awaiting publication, the same behaviour applies and a crossed eye icon is added.

The above method of differentiating between links has not been applied yet to texts or citations from texts which are included in the context of other texts, commonly verses.

Locus

While it is not a reality yet, CODECS seeks consistency in formatting references to locations of texts and other items of interest in manuscripts. Our preferences may be best explained with some examples:

f. 23ra.34: meaning folio 23 recto, first column, line 34
f. 96vb.m: meaning folio 96, verso, second column, middle of the page (s = top, m = middle, i = bottom)
- Note that marg. = marginalia, while m = middle.
p. 67b.23: meaning page 67, second column, line 23

The list below has been collated from the table of contents, if available on this page,Progress in this area is being made piecemeal. Full and partial tables of contents are available for a small number of manuscripts. and incoming annotations for individual texts (again, if available).Whenever catalogue entries about texts are annotated with information about particular manuscript witnesses, these manuscripts can be queried for the texts that are linked to them.

Irish manuscripts

Sources

Primary sources This section typically includes references to diplomatic editions, facsimiles and photographic reproductions, notably digital image archives, of at least a major portion of the manuscript. For editions of individual texts, see their separate entries.

[dig. img.] Lambeth Palace Library, Online: Lambeth Palace Library, ?–present. URL: <https://www.lambethpalacelibrary.org>.

direct link

Secondary sources (select)

Keynes, Simon, “King Athelstan’s books”, in: Michael Lapidge, and Helmut Gneuss (eds), Learning and literature in Anglo-Saxon England: studies presented to Peter Clemoes on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. 143–201.

McNamara, Martin, “The Echternach and Mac Durnan Gospels: some common readings and their significance”, Peritia 6–7 (1988): 217–222.

James, M. R., A descriptive catalogue of the manuscripts in the library of Lambeth Palace, Cambridge, 1932.

[id. 1370.]