Vercelli Book Totally Explained

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The Vercelli Book (Vercelli, Cathedral Library, MS CXVII) is one of the oldest of the four Old English Poetic Codices. It is an anthology of Old English Prose and verse that dates back to the late 10th century. The text is stored in the cathedral town for which it's named, in northern Italy. It contains 23 prose homilies (The Vercelli Homilies) and a prose vita of Saint Guthlac, interspersed with six poems:

The Vercelli Book is one of a group of four major anthologies in Old English. The others are the Junius manuscript (also known as the Caedmon manuscript), the Exeter Book, and the Nowell Codex. The Vercelli Book is comprised of 135 pages which contain a group of 23 homilies, 6 poetic texts including "The Dream of the Rood" and two poems written by Cynewulf, "The Fates of the Apostle" and "Elene". A German man, Friedrich Bloom, discovered the Vercelli Book while searching for legal manuscripts. The Vercelli Book is thought to have been put together by numerous exemplars with no apparent design in mind (Treharne). Although the manuscript was likely copied in the late 10th century, not all of the texts found in the manuscript were originally written at this time. The poems ascribed to Cynewulf could have originated much earlier.
   In the words of a modern critic, "The Vercelli Book appears ... to have been put together from a number of different exemplars with no apparent overall design in mind. The manner in which the scribe did the copying is relatively mechanical. In most cases, he copied the dialect and the manuscript punctuation that was found in the original texts, and these aspects therefore aid in reconstructing the variety of exemplars. The texts therefore range in date for although they were all copied in the later tenth century, they need not all have been written in this period."
   The verse items occur in three randomly placed groups throughout the prose. Evidence suggests that the scribe may have assembled the material over an extended period of time. Elaine Treharne in Old and Middle English: An Anthology suggests: "Although the examples are diverse, and no apparent chronological or formal arrangement can be discerned, the texts suggest the compiler was someone in a monastic setting who wished to illustrate his personal interest in penitential and eschatological themes and to glorify the ascetic way of life. The homilies represent part of the anonymous tradition of religious prose writing in Anglo Saxon England."
   In his book The Vercelli Homilies D.G. Scragg claims that because of the existence of the poetry in the manuscript, the Vercelli Book "is in no sense a homiliary." He argues that most of the homilies in the Vercelli Book are sermons with general themes, while two of the homilies describe lives of the saints (XVII and XXIII). The manuscript contains two homilies (I and VI) that are primarily narrative pieces and lack the homiletic structure. Therefore, the arrangement of the homilies, coupled with the placement of the poetic pieces, creates a manuscript that Scragg considers "one of the most important vernacular books to survive from the pre-Conquest period." None of the homilies can be precisely dated, nor can they be assigned to a specific author.

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