Codex CXVII of the chapter library of the cathedral
in Vercelli, Italy, is a manuscript generally
known as The Vercelli Book. This is one of four
manuscripts containing virtually all the extant poetry
in OLD ENGLISH. The manuscript seems to
have been copied in the late 10th century by a
monastic scribe, possibly at Worcester, and is made
up of 135 folios containing 23 sermons interspersed
with six poems on religious subjects. The
best known of these are The DREAM OF THE ROOD
and two poems attributed to CYNEWULF, named
ELENE and The FATES OF THE APOSTLES by modern
editors.
The scribe seems to have constructed the text
from a number of different pieces that came to
him, with no particular plan in mind. This is apparent,
in part, because he also seems to have
copied the dialects of each of the different texts. It
has been suggested that there is some thematic
connection between the sermons and the poems
that occur between them—for example the poems
Soul and Body and Falseness of Men are placed immediately
following a group of sermons dealing
with penitence and Judgment Day. But such connections
are rather loose.
How this manuscript of Old English religious
prose and poetry came to belong to a cathedral in
Italy is something of a mystery. It was discovered in
Vercelli in 1822, by a German jurist, Friedrich
Blume, while he was browsing for legal manuscripts.
One suggestion is that it had belonged to a
hospice for English pilgrims that had been
founded in Vercelli in the 13th century.
Bibliography
Krapp, George Philip, and Elliott van Kirk Dobbie.
The Vercelli Book. Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 2.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1942.