The Bodmin manumissions are records included in a manuscript Gospel book, the Bodmin Gospels or St Petroc Gospels, British Library, Add MS 9381. The manuscript is mostly in Latin, but with elements in

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

and the earliest written examples of the

Cornish language Cornish (Standard Written Form: or ) , is a Southwestern Brittonic language, Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language family. It is a List of revived languages, revived language, having become Extinct language, extinct as a livin ...

, which is thus of particular interest to language scholars and early Cornish historians. The manuscript was discovered by Thomas Rodd (1796–1849), a London bookseller, and sold by him to the British Museum in May 1833 being now part of the British Library's collection. It is thought to have been made in Brittany - now part of France - and dates from the last quarter of the 9th century to 1st quarter of the 11th century.

Cornish Glosses

Recorded in the Old Cornish language, in the margins of a Gospel book, are the names and details of slaves freed in

Bodmin Bodmin () is a town and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated south-west of Bodmin Moor. The extent of the civil parish corresponds fairly closely to that of the town so is mostly urban in character. It is bordere ...

(the then principal town of Cornwall, an important religious centre) during the 9th or 10th centuries. There is also an Old Cornish Vocabulary, an English – Latin vocabulary from around AD 1000 to which was added about a century later a Cornish translation. Some 961 Cornish words are recorded, ranging from

celestial bodies An astronomical object, celestial object, stellar object or heavenly body is a naturally occurring physical entity, association, or structure that exists in the observable universe. In astronomy, the terms ''object'' and ''body'' are often us ...

, through church and craft occupations, to plants and animals. This, it is believed, is the only original record relating to Cornwall, or its Bishopric, which predates the Norman Conquest. The volume is in quarto, of rather an oblong form, and is very neatly written, though evidently by a scribe not well informed, or of great learning, even for those times. The entries seem to be contemporaneous with the manumissions which they record. The practice of manumitting

slave Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

s in the church, as recorded in the entries, appears to have existed from the early 4th century.Polsue, Joseph ''A Complete Parochial History of the County of Cornwall''

References

External links

Cornish (and Other) Personal Names from the 10th Century Bodmin Manumissions
by Heather Rose Jones {{DEFAULTSORT:Bodmin manumissions Cornish language Bodmin 10th-century illuminated manuscripts 10th-century biblical manuscripts British Library additional manuscripts Slavery in England

Cornish Glosses

References

Further reading

External links