Page:Englishhistorica36londuoft.djvu/556

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548 AVBANGHES MANUSCRIPT OF VACARIUS October by Montfaucon : x ' Libri ex universe- enucleato iure excepti et pauperibus praesertim destinabi ... in fol.' P's title also has excepti, while Ant onius Augustinus's burnt (Escurial) copy perhaps had excerpti. 2 True, P has precipue for praesertim, and we have no other authority for the real title. Besides this, Stolzel drew attention to a marginal gloss in P recording a right of fair granted by King John to the bishop of Norwich. This makes a connexion with Norwich, which was in the province of Canterbury and so in possible relation with Le Bee. To this may be added Bene- dictine, as opposed to Cistercian (B), glosses, and one gloss referring specifically to English law. 3 This is a slender argument, though not, as Dr. Liebermann has said, no argument at all, 4 and it is not exactly confirmed by the connexion between P and A, for this suggests a Norman origin for P, whereas Stolzel's conjecture would require that the manuscript had an English origin, and travelled to Le Bee some time after the beginning of the thirteenth century and before Montfaucon's catalogue of 1739. Considering Vacarius's early connexion with Archbishop Theobald, Le Bee is on the contrary a likely place for a contemporary manuscript of Vacarius. Indeed, at first sight one might have expected ' Robert's copy ' to be there. The entry in the chronicle is of 1149, and a letter of Robert's of 1183 5 expressly tells us that he left his chronicle for 1100-54 behind him, in the volume containing Eusebius, &c, and consequently only needed to send to Le Bee the chronicle for the last twenty-eight years out of the eighty-two. But it is worth noting that the paragraph about Vacarius is one of the many later additions made by Robert in the copy taken by him to Mont St. Michel (Avranches 159). 6 Moreover, no Vacarius is registered in the two twelfth-century catalogues of Le Bee books, 7 of a donation by Philip, bishop of Bayeux (ob. 1163), and of the books of the almarius (librarian) respectively. These come from fly-leaves of Robert's Mont St. Michel copy of his chronicle. The first catalogue contains 1 Op. cit., 1254, no. 146. 2 Antonius Augustinus, Opera, vii. 103 ' Incerti auctoris breviarium, sive excerpta ex enucleato iure Digestorum, et Codicis, pauperibus Anglicis destinata, ac novem libris comprehensa. R,egulae iuris. Liber in membranis annorum CD. forma folii.' 3 Stolzel, Zeitschr. fur Eechtsgesch. vi. 241-2. 4 Ante, xi. 310, n. 44. 5 To the abbot of Le Bee, reproduced by Bethmann, p. 841, and Delisle, ii. 240. 6 Bethmann, p. 498, notes of the paragraph ' in rasura '. Delisle, ii. 249-50, explains that the passage about Vacarius was inserted in place of some verses about the death of Lethardus, sixth abbot of Le Bee, but that by marginal marks its proper place, after the next entry about the election of Roger, seventh abbot, was indicated by Robert, though misunderstood by some later copyists. 7 Ravaisson, pp. 375-95. They have been frequently reprinted, e. g. Catal. gen. ii. 375 ; Becker, Catal. Bibf. Anfiq. ; Migne, Patrol. Lat., vol. 150, col. 768 ff.