Images: Digital Vercelli Book
Other identifiers: Vercelli Book
Physical description: parchment, 27 × 18.5 cm, 135 fols., 1 col.
Language: Old English
Date: ca. 975
Provenance: Prob. Canterbury
Contents:
Andreas (poetic adaptation of Acts of Andrew and Matthias) (fols. 29v–52v)
Fates of the Apostles (based on apostolic acts) (fols. 52v–54r)
Homily 6 (includes portions of Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew) (fols. 54v–56r)
Homily 15 (includes portions of Apocalypse of Thomas) (fols. 80v–85v)
Dream of the Rood (fols. 104v–106r)
Additional contents: additional anonymous Old English poems and homilies.
Editions and translations:
Förster, Max, ed. Die Vercelli-Homilien zum ersten Male herausgegeben. Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 12. Hamburg: Grand, 1932. Repr. as Die Vercelli-Homilien, I.—VIII. Homilie. Edited by Max Förster. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964.
Kemble, J. M., ed. and trans. The Poetry of the Codex Vercellensis, with an English Translation. London: Aelfric Society, 1856.
Krapp, George Philip, ed. The Vercelli Book. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 2. New York: Columbia University Press, 1932.
Nicholson, Lewis E., ed. The Vercelli Book Homilies: Translations from the Anglo-Saxon. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1991 (translated from Förster and Szarmach).
Scragg, D. G., ed. The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts. Early English Text Society, o.s. 300. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Szarmach, Paul E., ed. Vercelli Homilies, IX-XXIII. Toronto Old English Series 5. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981.
Catalogs and studies:
Dockray-Miller, Mary. “Female Devotion in the Vercelli Book.” Philological Quarterly 83 (2004): 337– 54.
Gatch, Milton McC. “Eschatology in the Anonymous Old English Homilies.” Traditio 21 (1965): 117–65.
Gneuss, Helmut, and Michael Lapidge. Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100. Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series 15. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014 (item no. 941).
Hawk, Brandon W. “A History of the Study of Apocrypha in Early England.” Bulletin for the Study of Religion 48.3–4 (2019): 13–26.
___________. Preaching Apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England. Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series 30. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018 (esp. pp. 9–10, 14–15, 51–69).
Ker, Neil R. Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon. Oxford: Clarendon, 1957 (item no. 394).
Ó Carragáin, Éamonn. Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the Dream of the Rood Tradition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.
Reading, Amity. Reading the Anglo-Saxon Self Through the Vercelli Book. Medieval Interventions 7. New York: Peter Lang, 2018.
Remley, Paul G. “The Vercelli Book and Its Texts: A Guide to Scholarship.” Pages 318–415 in New Readings in the Vercelli Book. Edited by Samantha Zacher and Andy Orchard. Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series 4. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.
Scragg, D. G. “The Compilation of the Vercelli Book.” Anglo-Saxon England 2 (1973): 189–207.
___________. “The Corpus of Vernacular Homilies and Prose Saints’ Lives before Ælfric.” Anglo-Saxon England 8 (1979): 223–77.
Treharne, Elaine. “The Form and Function of the Vercelli Book.” Pages 253–66 in Text, Image, Interpretation: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Its Insular Context in Honor of Éamonn Ó Carragáin. Edited by Alastair J. Minnis and Jane Annette Roberts. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007.
Wright, Charles D. The Irish Tradition in Old English Literature. Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature 6. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993 (passim).
___________. “Old English Homilies and Latin Sources.” Pages 15–66 in The Old English Homily: Precedent, Practice, and Appropriation. Edited by Aaron J Kleist. Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 17. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007.
Zacher, Samantha. Preaching the Converted: The Style and Rhetoric of the Vercelli Homilies. Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series 1. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.
___________, and Andy Orchard, ed. New Readings in the Vercelli Book. Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series 4. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.
Other online databases: none
Entry created by Tony Burke, York University ([email protected]), and Brandon W. Hawk, Rhode Island College ([email protected]), 25 March 2022.