Ælfric, Boulogne-Sur-Mer 63, and the Institutio Canonicorum Aquisgranensis Get access Arrow

Abstract

The first part of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Biblothèque municipale, MS 63 (fols. 1–34), has long been associated with Ælfric of Eynsham. In Enid Raynes’s examination of the manuscript, she finds a ‘high proportion’ of the texts are ‘used or written by Ælfric’.1 Outside of Ælfric’s so-called private letter to Wulfstan,2 the rest of the contents are not exactly original compositions but rather adapted excerpts so heavily dependent on sources that this first part of the manuscript has been convincingly interpreted as a later copy of one of Ælfric’s ‘commonplace books’, which represents Latin notes and quotes that he put together to facilitate his own compositions.3 The text on folios 22r–23r, which is rubricated as De septem gradibus aecclesiasticis, consists of excerpts chiefly from Isidore’s Etymologiae and De ecclesiasticis officis, with varying degrees of revision.4 It is found in three other manuscripts, one of which, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 190 (pp. 201–5), has undergone further revision, perhaps by Wulfstan.5 In Boulogne-sur-Mer 63, as well as in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 246 (pp. 188–90), and Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, MS Gl. Kgl. S. 1595 (fols. 20r–21r and again though incomplete at fol. 82v), the text follows a short text of excerpts from Isidore’s De ecclesiasticis officis, rubricated Ysidore de sacerdotibus, and is followed by a text of excerpts from Jerome’s letters, rubricated Item beati Hieronimi excerptum de episcopis. Mainly due to the use of De septem gradibus aecclesiasticis in the pastoral letters for Wulfsige and Wulfstan, it has been attributed, alongside the two texts surrounding it, tentatively to Ælfric.6