Cotton Vitellius A. xv
British Library MS Cotton Vitellius A. xv is a composite codex preserving the unique Beowulf manuscript. One may browse through the entire composite codex page by page from cover to cover, center on Southwick Codex or the Nowell codex, or choose any one of the individual works in them. An overview of these choices is presented below; for different ways to open, display, and study them, see Viewing Options.
The two, formerly three, Prefixed Leaves contain unrelated front matter, as well as a seventeenth-century elenchus contentorum, which omits, but leaves space for, a description of Beowulf.
The Southwick Codex is the first of the two main Old English codices contained in British Library MS Cotton Vitellius A. xv. It includes four items:
Soliloquies of St. Augustine, fols. 1-56v- Gospel of Nicodemus fragment, fols. 57-83v14
- Debate of Solomon and Saturn, fols. 83v15-90v7
- St. Quintin Homily fragment, fol. 90v8-18
The Nowell Codex is the second of two main codices in Cotton Vitellius A. xv. It comprises five items, including Beowulf:
- Life of St. Christopher, fols. 91(93)–95(97)r
- Wonders of the East, fols. 95(7)v–103v
- Alexander's Letter to Aristotle, fols. 104–128v
- Beowulf, fols. 129–198v
- Judith, fols. 199–206v
For details about Cotton Vitellius A. xv and its history, see Kiernan, 'The History and Construction of the Codex,' part 2 of Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript, pp. 65-169. For a masterly discussion of consequences of the 1731 fire on the Cotton Library as a whole, see Andrew Prescott, "'Their Present Miserable State of Cremation': the Restoration of the Cotton Library." Sir Robert Cotton as Collector: Essays on an Early Stuart Courtier and His Legacy. Editor C.J. Wright. London: British Library Publications, 1997. 391-454.