Monk-Bishops and the English Benedictine Reform Movement: Reading London, BL, Cotton Tiberius A. III in Its Manuscript Context by Tracey-Anne Cooper (review)

Ten years after her PhD dissertation and following a number of essays devoted to different aspects of the manuscript, Tracey-Anne Cooper has published the volume Monk-Bishops and the English Benedictine Reform Movement: Reading London, BL, Cotton Tiberius A. iii in Its Manuscript Context. To deal with Cotton Tiberius A. iii (henceforth T) in its entirety is a daunting task, and the author is to be praised for making available a detailed survey of most of the manuscript contents. Cooper also takes a new stand on the date of the codex as well as on the beneficiary of the collection. Whereas in the past the exact nature of the manuscript proved hard to define, scholars have gradually assumed the existence a guiding thread connecting its different texts. In 1997, Helmut Gneuss surmised that T was a reference book compiled for an archbishop who was also a monk, concluding that "the collection is not as haphazard and incoherent as may appear at first sight" (in Of the Making of Books [1997]).

Ff. 2-173 of the manuscript were partly reshuffled by Robert Cotton. They contain glossed copies of the Benedictine Rule and the Regularis Concordia, followed by a wide variety of texts, including homilies, confessional tracts, offices, prayers, short didactic pieces such as Ælfric's Colloquy, charms, and prognostics. Several items concern pastoral care, and particularly relevant for the definition of T is the examinatio episcopi, a set of guidelines for the examination of a bishop before his consecration, which should have been of special interest to an archbishop in the fulfilment of his offices. Cooper yields particular weight to what would be suitable for pastoral use and describes T as a "commonplace book" for the archbishop of Canterbury. This function likely went beyond mere consultation and dictated the compiler's choice.

With the exception of Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, the book is mostly devoted to a survey of the contents of T, that provides an overview of the Benedictine reform in England. Indeed, not much space is given to the monk-bishops of the title. Their role and attitudes are rather re-enacted through an analysis of the texts (chaps. 3-5). Bishops were the central figures of late Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical life, and their importance in Europe at the turn of the millennium had Timothy Reuter speak of a "Europe of Bishops" (in Bischof Burchard von Worms [2000]). Much research has been devoted to this feature of the medieval church on the Continent, and M. F. Giandrea, in Episcopal Culture in Late Anglo-Saxon England (2007), has recently presented substantial evidence about bishops in Benedictine reform England. Cooper does not takes sides in the debate between the historians' assumption that bishops were the central ecclesiastical institutions and those who uphold the significant role maintained by monastic institutions. She hardly addresses themes such as the difficulty of monastic bishops who lived strictly by the rule engaging with the culture of the court, but focuses on the needs of the bishops who had no experience of pastoral care.

As to the origin of T, Gneuss (1997) made the case for Christ Church as the manuscript Schriftheimat, offering convincing counterarguments against an attribution to St. Augustine. Cooper does not call this thesis into question but focuses on the seat of the archbishop of Canterbury instead. A further suggestion put forward in the book, as far as the origin of T is concerned, is the assumption that there was an identifiable man behind the manuscript. This insistence on a specific name behind T is in line with a growing interest in prelates as either compilers or recipients of a single manuscript. Cooper often cites Ælfwine's Prayerbook, but...