A couple of days ago I wrote to the British Library manuscripts department to enquire about the two manuscripts that contain versions of the medieval Latin “Life” of St Botulf.\u00a0 Yesterday I received a really quite helpful reply.<\/p>\n
\nCotton MS Tiberius D III is a Special Access (Select) manuscript, so I’m afraid it’s not permitted to take photographs of that. However, there is a surrogate microfilm,\u00a0Microfilm 2492<\/strong>, which you could take photos of for personal reference use.<\/p>\n
Cotton MS Tiberius E I has been divided into two volumes, and it looks like the\u00a0“Life” of St\u00a0Botulf [Botulph] is now in Volume 2, at\u00a0ff.14v-15v:<\/p>\n
Cotton MS Tiberius E I\/2\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0John Tynemouth, Sanctilogium Angliae, Walliae, Scotiae et Hiberniae
\nff. 1r: Sts Petroc (Bibliotheca Hagiogrphica Latina 6640), continued from the previous volume; ff. 1r\u20133v: Boniface (BHL 1406); ff. 3v\u20134v: Gudwal (BHL 3690); ff. 4v\u20136v: Robert of Newminster (BHL 7269); ff. 6v\u20137v: William of York (BHL 8910); ff. 7v\u201310r: Columba (BHL 1891); ff. 10r\u201311v: Ivo (BHL 4624); ff. 11v\u201313v: Margaret of Scotland, with marginal genealogies (BHL 5326); ff. 13v\u201314v: Odulphus (BHL 6321);\u00a0ff. 14v\u201315v: Botulph (BHL 1429);<\/strong>\u00a0ff. 15v\u201319r: Alban; … …
\nDecoration: Each life opens with an initial, either red with blue pen-work or blue with red pen-work. Small initials in blue and red throughout.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0A parchment codex.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a02nd half of the 14th century\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Latin<\/p>\nThere are no access restrictions for this, so you can take photos from the original manuscript.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The “select” manuscripts at the British Library are those which require special permission to access.\u00a0 In this case, I suspect that damage from the fire is the reason.\u00a0 I’ve written to check.<\/p>\n
The first manuscript is a copy of the full text, which is the one that I need, unfortunately.\u00a0 The other is an abbreviated “Life”, which I will work on later.\u00a0 But I may as well get what I need now.<\/p>\n
Looking at the British Library website, this says that imaging services, i.e. “photography” are unavailable.\u00a0 This is the legacy of the cyber-attack in October 2023.\u00a0 The attack must have been very impressive indeed, if it not only destroyed all the IT, and took all the manuscripts offline forever, but also ensured that the library staff were unable to use cameras even a year and a half later, or even hire a reprographics bureau.\u00a0 \u00a0Very strong stuff.<\/p>\n
But on the positive side it does mean that I can get some perfectly usable photographs with my smartphone with no fuss.\u00a0 Let us hope the microfilm is readable.<\/p>\n
So it seems that I shall have to make a visit to London town.\u00a0 The journey from here is long and expensive – it’s probably easier and cheaper to get a budget flight from Milan than to travel in by train – but what must be will be.\u00a0 I’ve not been down for many years.\u00a0 I prefer the countryside!<\/p>\n
It’s now more than forty years since I went down to London one Sunday afternoon, in order to start my working career on the Monday.\u00a0 I booked into a cheap hotel in Bloomsbury, where the doorman looked down his nose at this nervous lad with his rucksack.\u00a0 It rained that evening, and I walked down to Denmark Street, and I looked into the window of Forbidden Planet, the Sci-Fi bookshop that used to be there.\u00a0 London on a Sunday night can be very dark.\u00a0 But there was a recession on, and I knew that I was lucky to have got a job at all.\u00a0 It’s funny how some memories remain with you.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I shall have to discover how the trains work these days, and the underground.\u00a0 It will probably be in a couple of weeks.\u00a0 Meanwhile there is plenty of material to work with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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