Lichfield Gospels - Marginalia

Marginalia

There are eight marginal inscriptions written in Latin and Old Welsh, which are some of the earliest written Welsh extant. The first records in Latin the gift of the manuscript "to God on the altar of St. Teilo" by a man named Gelhi, who had bought the manuscript for the price of his best horse from Cingal. The 'altar of St. Teilo" has in the past been associated with the monastery at Llandaff but, as it has been determined that the third, fourth and sixth marginal inscriptions refer to lands within fifteen miles of Llandeilo Fawr, it is now thought that the book was given the church there. The second such inscription contains a unique example of early Welsh prose recording the details of the resolution of a land dispute. These two inscriptions have been dated to the mid ninth century while the rest date from the ninth and tenth. The marginalia were edited by J. Gwenogvryn Evans with John Rhys in their 1893 edition of the Book of Llandaff.

Gifford Thomas-Edwards and Helen McKee have also identified 9 dry-point glosses - glosses that are scratched into parchment without ink and so are only visible from an angle and hard to decipher. The first and final groups of three are decipherable as Anglo-Saxon personal names and it is likely that the others are as well. In order they appear in the glosses as follows;

• P.217 1. Wulfun, 2. Alchelm, 3. Eadric (All of these are at the lower left of the page.)
• P.221 1. DVLF, 2. 7 + Berht/elf (These are in the centre of the left-hand margin.) 3. t (This is in the bottom margin.)
• P.226 1. Berhtfled, 2. Elfled, 3. Wulfild (All of these are in the bottom margin.)

It is possible there are other glosses on this text, and on other Insular gospel books, that have not yet been identified. The names themselves are significant if they can be dated, as the provenance of the manuscript is disputed between Anglo-Saxon England and Wales. An eighth century date would support an Anglo-Saxon origin but if they were added in the ninth century or later at Lichfield then they tell us little.

The form of dry-point writing means it is difficult to determine if the same hand wrote the text and added the glosses but Charles-Edwards and McKee do not believe so. The letters contain elements of Insular minuscule, which appears to be a late-ninth century invention, in response to Carolingian minuscule, and continued in use until at least the eleventh century. It is therefore more likely these were additions after the Gospels had been moved to Lichfield.