CCCC 009

Together with London, BL Cotton Nero E. I., CCCC 009 forms the "Cotton Corpus Legendary," the earliest extant multi-volume collection of saint's lives from England. CCCC 009 in particular records hagiographical accounts relevant to the months of October, November, and December, as well as a multi-folio series of calendrical and computistical tables. The Cotton Corpus Legendary has received a great deal of attention from scholars, namely because it is witness to the earlier, continental legendary from which the Anglo-Saxon writer Ælfric is believed to have quarried the majority of his hagiographical materials. It therefore has implications for our understanding of hagiographical knowledge in pre-eleventh century Anglo-Saxon England. The Parker volume of the Legendary is distinctly notable for its additions by Worcester scribes, including some saints' lives and Easter tables for the years 1032-62 and 1063-94. These additions have led scholars to hypothesize that the Parker manuscript was created before 1062. The volume features work by several different hands, but the script and general format of each page are more or less consistent throughout: the text is written in a clean Caroline minuscule and arranged into two columns. New sections of text are generally indicated by rubrics, by enlarged capitals in red, black, or blue, or by a new page. Additionally, most chapters in the volume are indicated by a header. For instance, the twenty-eighth life in the volume—that of St. Eugene—is headed by "XXVIII PASSIO SANCTE EUGENIE UIRGUM" on several of the folios on which it appears (206r-210r).