The Textual Transmission of Aldhelm’s Carmen de virginitate, with a Revised Handlist

Abstract

Rudolf Ehwald published the last scholarly edition of Aldhelm’s col-lected works in 1919. However, in the passing century, little atten-tion has been given to the manuscripts that contain Aldhelm’s poetry or how they relate to one another. Even more strikingly, little to no work has been done on the transmission of these manuscripts and or how Aldh elm’s works were read and copied. Instead, Ehwald’s lists of manu scripts containing Aldhelm’s works are still widely considered the established corpus. This article will introduce eight previously unat-tested manuscripts and fragments containing Aldhelm’s Carmen de vir-ginitate and will further address manuscript variants between the now twenty-nine manuscripts of the Carmen. Most importantly, the anal-ysis of these previously unattested manuscripts will be a springboard for reassessing the transmission and reception of Aldhelm’s Carmen. A Revised Handlist of manuscripts containing Aldhelm’s Carmen de virginitate follows the article as Appendix A.