Cotton Vitellius A. xv is one of the four major Anglo-Saxon literature codices. It is most famous as the manuscript containing the unique copy of the epic poem Beowulf; in addition to this it contains a fragment of The Life of Saint Christopher, and the more complete texts Letters of Alexander to Aristotle, Wonders of the East and Judith. Due to the fame of Beowulf, it is also sometimes known simply as the Beowulf manuscript. The manuscript is located within the British Library with the rest of the Cotton collection.
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The current codex is a composite of at least two manuscripts. The main division is into two totally distinct books which were apparently not bound together until the 17th century. The first of these dates from the 12th century and contains four works of prose. It is the second, older manuscript that is famous.
This second manuscript is popularly known as the Nowell codex, after Laurence Nowell, whose name is inscribed on its first page; he was apparently its owner in the mid-16th century. It was then acquired by Sir Robert Cotton. In his library, it was placed as the 15th manuscript on the first shelf of the bookcase that had a bust of Vitellius.[1]
The Nowell codex is generally dated around the turn of the first millennium. Recent editions have specified a probable date in the decade after 1000.[2]
Vitellius A. xv was heavily damaged in 1731 when a fire partially destroyed the Cotton library. While the volume itself survived, the edges of the pages were badly scorched; no serious attempt at restoration was made until the 19th century, by which time the margins had crumbled irreparably, and the edges of many pages are now illegible.
The first codex contains four works of Old English prose: a copy of Alfred's translation of Augustine's Soliloquies, a translation of the Gospel of Nicodemus, the prose Solomon and Saturn, and a fragment of a life of Saint Quentin.
The second codex begins with three prose works: a life of Saint Christopher, Wonders of the East (a description of various far-off lands and their fantastic inhabitants), and a translation of a Letter of Alexander to Aristotle.
These are followed by Beowulf, which takes up the bulk of the volume, and Judith, a poetic retelling of part of the book of Judith. Great wear on the final page of Beowulf and other manuscript factors such as wormhole patterns indicate Judith was not originally the last part of the manuscript, though it is in the same hand as the later parts of Beowulf.
The somewhat eclectic contents of this codex have led to much critical debate over why these particular works were chosen for inclusion. One theory which has gained considerable currency is that the compiler(s) saw a thematic link: all five works deal to some extent with monsters or monstrous behaviour.[3]
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