a number of thirteenth-and fourteenth-century copies of the Timaeus of English provenance, such as Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Digby 217, a late thirteenth-century copy that contains glosses that also draw heavily on William of Conches, and one manuscript was copied in Oxford in 1423.121 It seems that at both Paris and Oxford the Timaeus continued to be read but increasingly was relegated to the status of a familiar classic.122
The preceding rough-and-ready account may provide some sense of the riches in the first half of this famous manuscript. But apart from being brought together as one book, how much do the two parts really have to do with each other?
It is not clear quite when the two parts of the manuscript were joined. Henry’s name appears only on the opening folios of the Timaeus, but this inscription appears on paleographical grounds to be much later than the word “Chalcidius” or the verses of Juvenal. This indicates his name was added after the two parts are thought to have been brought together but also some time after Henry’s death, leaving his ownership of the Roland moot. For what it is worth, Samaran dates the word “Chalcidius” and the verses from Juvenal to the thirteenth century, but with such short examples it is hard to be sure.123 The joint manuscript might just possibly have belonged to Henry Langley, last heard of in 1263, but it could equally well have belonged to one of the Augustinian canons, possibly a friend of Henry’s, in which case the canons had kept Henry in remembrance for at least a few generations when they finally entered his name.
Later additions, doodles and pen tests, and the material copied into the opening leaves suggest that the book was still being consulted in the fourteenth century. The opening bifolium of Digby 23(1) includes an unidentified sermon on the Virgin that contains an echo of a sermon by Thomas de Cobham.124 On the last page, folio 55V, the page with the thirteenth-century glosses on the proportions of the world soul, there is a memorandum in a fourteenth-century hand of a request for materials for illuminations: “mitte mihi per iohanem fratrem tuum dimidium centum/ de partie Gold videlicet quinquaginta folia/ Item dimidiam libram de vermelon Item dimidiam/ unciam de bona azura” (Send me by your Brother John a half hundred of Gold, that is, fifty sheets. Item a half pound of vermilion. Item a half ounce of good azure). These are most likely materials for illuminating manuscripts, although they could also serve for panel paintings. Ian Short argues that, since the middle of a bound volume would scarcely be a convenient place for such an order, the two parts must still have been separate at this point, but how then can we account for the appearance of the word “Chalcidius” in part two?125 Turning to the second section, in addition to the verses from Juvenal and the reference to Chalcidius on the flyleaves, there are a variety of pen tests, usually confined to individual letters but once an entire phrase, “Domine, Dominus noster qui ad,” which runs across the top of folio 45V. In addition, on folio [73r] there are Middle English verses that have faded very badly and might date from the fourteenth or even fifteenth century. Samaran examined them under ultraviolet light, and transcribed them as follows:
… men among … he dos to wi ………
grene and gray … as sinful men w ……..
mykil wrong … mani …. at was ……
at maked his song of so ………..
all his ban …… say reant oym. W.….
him …. niht …. long for g …. was ….
allaye (?) to hurten we ……………..
long …………….. was ……..
…………. n…..es ful a songe ……
wryte…… s………………
Whenever it came to be bound with the Timaeus, it would seem that the Roland was still being read in the fourteenth century and read by clerics who also composed, or appreciated, lyrics in Middle English.
At first it might appear that the two halves of the manuscript have little in common and that their juxtaposition is of interest only as a reflection of the possibly idiosyncratic taste of an early reader. Indeed, some scholars have been at pains to disassociate the two even further, suggesting that the conjunction is largely accidental and that the canons kept the Roland out of respect for a donor or simply to add weight to the collection, rather than out of any desire to actually read the poem. Dominica Legge for one clearly believes that the Roland could have had no interest for the canons. She offers a number of reasons why they might have kept the book and bound it with the Timaeus. They might have meant to use it for flyleaves. It might have belonged to a patron, such as Sir Robert d’Oilli, founder of the collegiate chapel of St George, which was incorporated into Oseney in 1149. She even suggests they might have used it as a “makeweight,” as if padding one booklet with another in which one had no interest were an attested practice.126 Like Delbouille’s suggestion that the manuscript might have fallen into the hands of a jongleur during the first century of its circulation, these explanations seem a desperate effort to avoid the possibility that the canons kept the Roland because they enjoyed reading it.
Yet the two parts are closer in spirit and form than they might seem. Both are scholars’ books, largely unadorned and affordable texts, and they belong to the same cultural milieu. The first part, the Timaeus, was probably copied by a northern French scribe, probably from the schools, and was intended for the use of a scholar. In the hands of this scholar, or one of his colleagues, the book made its way to England, where roughly a century later we find it in the hands of the prebendary, Master Henry Langley, who donated it to the Augustinian canons living on the outskirts of Oxford, who had regular dealings with students, renting them housing and possibly hearing their confessions.127 The second part, the Roland, was copied by an Anglo-Norman scribe, who might well have received his training in the French schools. Its format is simpler than that of the Digby Timaeus, its script less elegant, its parchment of poorer quality. It too may have been intended for a scholar, however—in its rough script and simple format it resembles cheap copies of Boethius, Cicero, Seneca, and Juvenal, as well as other copies of the Timaeus. It is hardly surprising then to find that a century later this book is in the hands of the Augustinian canons of Oxford. The Timaens and the Roland might seem to belong to different worlds, but the Norman and Anglo-Norman scribes who copied them lived in the same one.
The Digby scribe appears to have had at best a limited knowledge of epic material, judging by his misspellings of famous names, but many clerics were steeped in it, or so ran the complaint. John Mirk, the prior of an Augustinian house in about 1400, claims that “the bad old priest is garrulous, wrathful, full of proverbs and given to fables; sitting among his boon companions, he recites the wars of princes [bella principum], and instils into the ears of his juniors anecdotes of his early life, which he ought to weep for rather than repeat.”128 The sharp-tongued Guibert de Nogent condemns the chancellor of Henry I, Gaudry, who became bishop of Laon, as “more of a soldier than a clerk … In word and manner he was remarkably unstable, remarkably lightweight. He took delight in talk about military affairs, dogs, and hawks, as he had learned to do among the English.”129 Not everyone disapproved of this interest, however. According to his biographer, Abbot Suger kept his monks awake by telling them “stories, sometimes into the middle of the night, about the deeds of strong men (gesta virorum fortium), that he had either seen or learned about.”130 Medieval preachers often referred to the epic heroes and their gesta to stir up their audience or drive home a point—thus providing one of the major sources of evidence for the circulation of these stories.131 Orderic Vitalis may have been shocked by the frivolities of jongleurs, but his work is filled with allusions to Charlemagne, Roland, and the legends of Troy and Thebes. Library catalogues suggest that monks often
