Ambrosiaster: Nihil enim intulimus in mundum, verum quia nee auferre possumus quicquam.
Cod. Clarom. (d2): Nihil enim intulimus in hunc mundum, verum quoniam nee efferre (sic) possumus.
Cod. Boern. (g2, connected with St Gall): Nihil enim intulimus in hunc mundum, quod ('vel quoniam' added above the line) nee auferre aliquid poterimus.
Book of Armagh (A.D. 807): Nihil enim intulimus in hunc mundum, verum quia nee auferre quid possimus.
How are we to account for the presence of a very ancient form of OldLatin text in a West-Saxon charter of the seventh century?[1] The liturgical books of the Church even at the present day retain Old-Latin texts in certain passages which have never been assimilated to the Vulgate. But I am not able to find that this particular verse has been anywhere so preserved in ordinary use. Others may perhaps be able to supply my defect of knowledge, and in that case our question would find a ready answer. Otherwise we must suppose the existence in Glastonbury or elsewhere in Wessex of a copy of the Pauline Epistles with a 'Celtic' or a 'mixed ' text, which presented the verse in this ancient form. I can but put the matter forward tentatively, in the hope that it may receive attention in the proper quarter. We may however regard the presence of this primitive reading in our two charters as prima facie evidence of an early date.[2]
The interest of our proem is not yet exhausted. The same text and the same moral drawn from it appear in many other charters, though never again with the same simplicity of form. Thus the Pagham charter (B. C. S. 50), notorious for its unique phrase trimoda necessitas, has been fully discussed by Mr. W. H. Stevenson in the English Historical Review for Oct. 1914 (xxix. 689 ff.). It is written in what appears to be a Canterbury hand of the end of the tenth century; but it purports to be a grant made by Caedwalla, king of Wessex, to Bishop Wilfrid in a. d. 680. It begins thus:
✠ In nomine salvatoris nostri Jhesu Christi.
Nihil intulimus in hunc mundum, verum nee auferre quid poterimus: idcirco terrenis et caducis aeterna et caelestia supernae patriae premia mercanda sunt.
This may very well be an amplification of our proem, and derived ultimately from a genuine seventh-century Wessex charter. We have seen that 'poterimus' occurs in the 'Celtic' Cod. Boernerianus. It offers an
- ↑ We might have supposed that the Vulgate, introduced by St Augustine and his companions, would have reigned without a rival in the Anglo-Saxon Church. But this was so far from being the ease that we find almost at once the phenomenon of 'mixed' texts: that is, either copies fundamentally Vulgate but with a large admixture of 'Celtic' (Irish) readings, or copies fundamentally 'Celtic' but corrected largely from the Vulgate. Professor Souter writes to me: 'With regard to mixed Celtic texts, I hold the view that they are Old-Latin revised here and there from Vulgate, and not Vulgate into which Old-Latin readings have been put by substitution.'
- ↑ The addition of 'quid' in B. C. S. 25 is perhaps due to familiarity with the Vulgate on the part of a copyist.
