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  • Nicolas Bell, Robert Laurie, Neil Harris, and David Mckitterick
The Book in the Cathedral: The Last Relic of Thomas Becket. By Christopher de Hamel. [London]: Allen Lane. 2020. 58 pp. £9.99. isbn 978 0 241 46958 3.

More than forty years ago Christopher de Hamel addressed the Bibliographical Society on the subject of Thomas Becket's books, and he returns to this theme in a little book published on the 850th anniversary of Becket's martyrdom. The list of 'libri sancti thome' in the fourteenth-century library catalogue of Christ Church Canterbury provides plentiful evidence of the breadth of Becket's learning, but makes no mention of an Anglo-Saxon Psalter, now MS 411 in the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, which is described in a note on its front flyleaf in an Elizabethan hand as having belonged to Thomas Becket and formerly having a jewelled silver binding. All earlier scholars have considered this attribution spurious, but de Hamel made news headlines in 2016 by connecting this inscription with a virtually identical description in the sacrist's inventory found in the very same manuscript as the Christ Church Library Catalogue. In a characteristically ingenious series of steps, we are told how the Psalter, originally written probably for Archbishop Ælfric around 1000, would have been inherited by Alphege, Becket's only precursor as a martyred Archbishop of Canterbury. Becket held Alphege in particular regard, and two of the narratives of his martyrdom report that his last words were to commend his soul to the care of St Alphege. It is an appealing thought that Becket may have treasured this book throughout his final years, though a leap of faith might be required to follow de Hamel's romantic notion that 'he probably took it to bed' and may have gathered up this book from his bedchamber en route to his execution, giving it the status of a secondary relic. But the story is so well told as to be undisprovable, and a welcome exploration of the wider status which a book could hold in the Middle Ages.

Catullus Carmen 17.6 and Other Mysteries: A Study in Editorial Conflict, Eccentricity, Forgery, and Restitution, with a Checklist of Significant Printed Editions of Catullus in Latin, 1472–2005. A Second Footnote to Bibliotheca Fictiva. By Arthur Freeman. London: distributed by Bernard Quaritch. 2020. 86 pp. £15. isbn 978 0 9933762 3 8.

The line which forms the title of this book is normally given in modern editions as 'in quo vel Salisubsili sacra suscipiantur', which might be rendered 'on which even the rites of the leaping priest are undertaken'. None of the earliest manuscripts employs the unique word 'salisubsilus', which first appears in the Aldine edition of 1502 (in the variant 'salisubsulus'), either deriving from a now lost manuscript tradition or perhaps newly coined as an editorial amendment to enable the line to scan in priapean metre. In 1521 Alessandro Guarino claimed an earlier provenance for this unusual word in a lost play of Pacuvius, and in 1554 Marc-Antoine Muret repeated this attribution, asserting that Pacuvius had used the word as a name for Mars. The reading has stuck in later editions to the present day. Muret's justification of the hapax legomenon is most likely spurious, but whether it counts as a deliberate forgery is one of the points of debate in this entertaining book. The major part is a survey of the history of editing Catullus seen through the particular lens of this editorial crux, exposing the lazy and sometimes wilful misinformation which has found its way into commentaries and critical notes over the centuries. This is prefaced with an overview of the manuscript tradition and publication of Catullus from 1472 to the present, and completed with an invaluable 'checklist of significant editions'. Though one might argue for the inclusion of a few other editions in this checklist, it is in some ways more valuable than a full bibliography, with an admirably concise format and excellent assessments of the relative merits of each edition.

Illuminating the Middle Ages: Tributes to Prof. John Lowden from his Students, Friends and Colleagues. Ed. by Laura Cleaver...

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