Individual Practice, Common Endeavour: Making a Manuscript and Community in the Second Half of the Twelfth Century

Abstract

This article examines the production of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 343, a manuscript written in the second half of the twelfth Century and comprising Old English and Latin works originally composed before the Norman Conquest. In examining the practices of the two scribes, it is suggested that the process of compilation, accumulation, and aggregation represents an active archival endeavour, an effort that not only preserves and protects but also opens material up to disparate uses. The manuscript’s production, which implies a textual community and institutional support, stands in marked contrast to contemporaneous efforts to produce book collections conforming to dominant Norman or continental models of repositories.