A Digital Re-examination of the Scribal Hands in the Parker Chronicle

This article engages with the scholarly debate surrounding the scribal hands of the Parker Chronicle, the copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle found in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 173. In light of new tools and practices within the digital humanities, the author suggests that the number of previously differentiated scribes writing between folios 16v–28r ought to be reduced. Fleck examines Corpus Christi’s digital holdings through the tools afforded by Stanford University’s Parker on the Web Project, and addresses questions of scribal identity treated most recently and prominently by Janet Bately and David Dumville, collaborative editors of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In so doing, he demonstrates the utility of these digital tools for democratizing the practice of paleography.