Dublin, Trinity College, MS 492: A New Witness to the Old English Bede and its Twelfth-Century Context

This article draws attention to a series of seven English annotations in a mid-twelfth-century copy of Bede’s from Bury St Edmunds. It demonstrates that the annotations reflect the comparison of Bede’s Latin with a now-lost manuscript of the Old English Bede shortly after the twelfth-century codex’s production. The annotations are shown to hold a respect for the authority of the Old English Bede that contrasts with the prevailing twelfth-century attitude of gentle suspicion towards earlier vernacular translations.