The Catholic World, Vol. 20, October 1874‐March 1875Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 20, October 1874‐March 1875
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
Then come _The Gospels of Maelbride Mac Durnan_, Archbishop of Armagh from
885 to 927, a small and beautifully‐written copy of the Gospels, made
apparently by the same scribe, Ferdomnach, who wrote the _Book of Armagh_,
and at about the same period. The initial page of each Gospel is very
gracefully illuminated, and to each is prefixed a page bearing the figure
of its writer, surrounded by a border of delicate tracery. The pages
selected are the first four, comprising the “Liber generationis” and the
inscription in capitals, the face of folio 5 being the beginning of S.
Matthew’s narrative; the dorse of folio 65, which contains his account of
the scourging and mocking, and at the foot this note by the scribe: _Mór
assársa for Coimdid nime agus talman_ (“Great this violence upon the God
of heaven and earth”); the dorse of folio 69, containing the following
letter, written in Saxon, is probably the earliest known contemporary copy
of a petition for restitution of temporalities to an English bishop:
“Wulfstan, Archbishop, greets Cnut his Lord and Aelfgyfe the Queen humbly,
and I make known to you two, liege, that we have done as the certificate
came to us from you with regard to the Bishop Aethelnoth, that we have now
consecrated him. Now pray I for God’s love, and in the name of all God’s
saints, that ye will have respect to God and to the holy order. That he
may be admitted to the possessions that others before him were: namely,
Dunstan the good and many another: that he may be likewise admitted to
rights and honors. In which case it shall be for both of you meritorious
before God, and eke honorable before the world.”
At the end of S. Matthew’s Gospel there is, in addition to Archbishop
Wulfstan’s (of York) letter, this memorandum in Latin: “Cnud, King of the
Angles, has given to Christ’s Church an arm of S. Bartholomew the Apostle,
with the great pall and the golden crown of his head; and the port of
Sandwich and all issues of the water of the same from either side of the
river; so that a ship floating in the stream when the water shall be high,
at the distance of the cast of a very small hatchet from the shore, the
droits of the ship are to be received by the servants of Christ’s Church.
And no man whatsoever has custom in the same port except the monks of
Christ’s Church. Theirs also is the ferry over the port, and the boats and
toll of boats and of all ships which come to Sandwich from Peperness as
far as Northmouth. If, however, anything be found on the high sea, being
brought to Sandwich, Christ’s Church shall take half, and the remaining
part shall rest with the finders.”
The volume is preserved in the library of Lambeth Palace, but it is a
singular fact that it finds no place either in the catalogue of that
library published in 1812, or in the catalogue of the library of Corpus
Christi College, Cambridge, where Archbishop Parker’s collection of MSS.
is preserved.
To Be Concluded Next Month.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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