Durham University Library Archives & Special Collections Catalogue
Parchment
Modern ink foliation
flyleaf, I-IX8, X7 (= 8 lacks leaf 8 after f.79), XI-XII8, XIII7 (= 8 with final leaf probably blank, lost or cancelled)
32 lines
(a)-(f), (h), (i). Protogothic of Canterbury prickly type. Seemingly a single scribe, his hand slightly more compressed on fol. 97r (the end of (h) and the start of (i)) than elsewhere. Item (i) cannot have been written before March 1123.
(g) Protogothic, densely written but neat.
(j) Protogothic, small and light-weight.
(k)1-3 Textualis semi-quadrata, neat, compact. The writing is consistently placed midway between the horizontal rulings. The three texts were seemingly written as a single stint, no earlier than 1170.
(k)4 Documentary hand, neat.
(a) is headed by a 10-line embellished initial in green and red. Incipits and main subdivisions of (b) - (i) (including each entry in (f)) are marked by 3-7-line plain initials of Christ Church type, green, purple or red. Clauses in (a), subsections in (b), extracts in (h) and clauses in (i) are headed by a 2-line coloured capital, red, green or purple, of Christ Church type.
Standard Tuckett binding, mid 19th century full brown calf over thick wooden boards (Charles Tuckett, binder to the British Museum, rebound many Durham manuscripts in the 19th century).
Written in Christ Church, Canterbury, early 12th century, with additions made in Durham later that century.
The Durham interest of (k)2 suggests Durham provenance by late 12th century and the volume is likely to be either the "Excerpta canonum" or the "Exceptiones decretorum", items 10 and 11 of the late 12th century booklist.
Inscriptions: Excerpta decretorum, 14th century, f.iv, top.
liber Sancti Cuthberti de dunelm' , 4th century, f.iv.
Pressmarks: T , later 14th century, f.1r, top centre; subsequently crossed through.
Excerpta decretorum, 15th century, f.1r, top centre.
2a 8i K, 15th century, f.1r, top right.
Listed as Excerpta decretorum ii fo cione eterna in the 1392 and 1416 Spendement catalogues.
Abridged version.
Excerpts
Incomplete.
14 documents
Breaks off incomplete in chapter 8, owing to the loss of the final leaf of quire.
7 groups of texts, mainly by St Augustine of Hippo, also includes Ceolfrith’s letter to Nechtan, king of the Picts, concerning the celebration of Easter from Bede's Historia ecclesiastica.
Clauses 1-12, 17 and 15.
18 clauses. Added mid-late 12th century.
4 documents
Catalogi veteres librorum Ecclesiae cathedralis
dunelm. Catalogues of the library of Durham cathedral, at
various periods, from the conquest to the dissolution, including
catalogues of the library of the abbey of Hulne, and of the mss.
,
Surtees Society 7, (London: J.B. Nichols and Son, [1838]).
Mynors, R.A.B., Durham Cathedral
manuscripts to the end of the twelfth century. Ten plates in
colour and forty-seven in monochrome. With an introduction
[including a list of all known Durham manuscripts before
1200] ,
(Durham: 1939)