Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/311

 Notes on the Study'of the Bible among our Forefathers. 301 letters to the court-physician, Theodorus, and is therefore a good index of his judgment with regard to the unlimited diffusion of the Scriptures even among the laity : " Imperator cceli, Dominus hominum et angelorum, pro vita tua tibi suas epistolas transmisit; et tamen, gloriose fili, easdem epistolas ardenter legere negligis. Stude ergo quaeso, et quotidie Creatoris tui Verba meditare" (Epist. iv. 31). Gregory was himself a scholar. As such we find him placing a large supply of books ("codices plurimos") at the service of the missionaries (a. d. 601. Bed. I. 29). He was also actuated by a purely evangelic spirit, and accordingly we might anticipate that some of those numerous books were copies of the holy Scriptures. Such in truth they must have been, if we accept the testimony of a chronicler belonging to the abbey of St Augustine at Canterbury 3. Among the codices surviving in the library of the mother-church, he mentions " Biblia Gre- goriana in duobus voluminibus, Psalterium Augustini, textus Evangeliorum cum decern canonibus" [i.e. the Eusebian canons] : after which are enumerated other copies of the Bible, the Psal- ter, and the Gospels. These all, according to the writer, were presents made by Gregory himself, and therefore worthy to be called " primitiae librorum totius Ecclesiae Anglicanee." We should bear in mind, however, that although some part of the materials may be older, the chronicle was not compiled until the reign of Henry V, and for this reason the value of its testimony is proportionately lessened. Still if we allow that many of the codices had found their way to Canterbury at a somewhat later date, our main position is unaffected. They were all indis- putably ancient copies of the sacred books, and two at least of them we have the satisfaction of being able to identify with biblical manuscripts presented to the original missionaries. The first is the British Museum MS. (Reg. 1 E, vi), which one of the most competent of living authorities, Mr West wood, pro- nounces a veritable portion of the Biblia Gregoriana (Archaeo- logical Journal, No. xl. p. 292). The second is a well-known MS. preserved in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cam- bridge (No. cclxxxvi). Its claim to rank in the same category 3 See the passage extracted at length Sacra Picioria, speaks of it as belong- in Wanley's Lib. Vet. Septentr. Catal. ing to Trinity College, Cambridge. It pp. 172, 173. Mr Westwood, who re- is in the library of Trinity Hall, fers to the MS. in his Palceographia 212