Notes
(For facsimiles of the MS fragment from the University of Illinois Library at Urbana see: Kraus, H. P., Catalogue 88: Fifty Mediaeval and Renaissance Manuscripts (New York, 1958), p. 8, item 4; Wallach, Liutpold, 'The Urbana Anglo-Saxon Sylloge of Latin I).
*This collection of epigrams and verses by various authors, some named and some anonymous, was made by (or for) Milred, bishop of Worcester (d. 774x775) and now survives only in three fragments in later sources. The three groups of surviving material will be referred to by the following sigla:
C1-41 [41 papal inscriptions and epitaphs in William of Malmesbury edition of the Liber Pontificalis preserved in Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk. 4. 6, fols 224-80]
C42 [additional epitaph of Sabinian (d. 606) recorded in Canterbury, Cathedral Roll, Cart. Antiqu. A. 42; this source also contains ten inscriptions appearing in the Cambridge MS]
L1-29 [Twenty-nine quotations and summaries of poems seen by Leland in the sixteenth century in 'a very ancient book of epigrams' at Malmesbury, edited in Commentarii de scriptoribus Britannicis auctore Joanne Lelando, ed. A. Hall (Oxford, 1709), i.113 and 134-5, and Joannis Lelandi antiquarii de rebus Britannicis collectanea, ed. T. Hearne, 2nd ed. (London, 1774), iii.114-18, 265, 276. The material was re-edited by Lapidge 1996 (1975) and is numbered according to his edition. Hearne's edition of Leland's Collectanea remains the better edition of two poems by Bishop Cuthbert of Hereford (L20-1), now most conveniently transcribed with translations and comments in @Sims-Williams 1995, pp. 340-2: see @Sims-Williams 1983, p. 12 and n. 14.]
U1-16 [a MS bifolium now in the library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, it probably is the MS originally seen by Leland, although it contains only two poems found in Leland's transcript (L9-10 = U14-15)]
None of the above represent the original MS owned by Milred: the Urbana bifolium was copied by a mid-tenth-century Anglo-Saxon scribe.
In addition to the editions reported below, the most significant recent scholarship on the collection includes the following works:
Dieter Schaller, 'Bemerkungen zur Inschriften-Sylloge von Urbana', Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 12 (1977), 9-21 , reprinted with some addenda in idem, Studien zur lateinischen Dichtung des Frühmittelalters (Stuttgart, 1995), pp. 184-96 and 423-4 [notes serious transcriptional errors in Wallach's edition];
Daniel J. Sheerin, 'John Leland and Milred of Worcester' Manuscripta 21 (1977), 172-80 [recognized Leland's hand in the Urbana bifolium];
Rodney M. Thomson, 'William of Malmesbury's Edition of the Liber Pontificalis', Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 16 (1978), 93-112.
Patrick Sims-Williams, 'Milred of Worcester's Collection of Latin Epigrams and its Continental Counterparts', Anglo-Saxon England 10 (1982), 21-38, reprinted in idem, Britain and Early Christian Europe: Studies in Early Medieval History and Culture, Variorum Collected Studies Series; CS514 (Aldershot and Brookfield, VT: Variorum, 1995), no. IX and Addenda , p. 6 [connections with some earlier and later syllogae preserved on the Continent];
P. Sims-Williams, 'William of Malmesbury and La silloge epigrafica di Cambridge', Archivum Historiae Ponficiae 21 (1983), 9-33, reprinted in Patrick Sims-Williams, Britain and Early Christian Europe: Studies in Early Medieval History and Culture, Variorum Collected Studies Series; CS514 (Aldershot and Brookfield, VT: Variorum, 1995), no. X and Addenda , p. 6 [concludes that William took all, or nearly all, the poems he interpolated into his edition of the Liber Pontificalis from the MS represented by the Urbana bifolium; Sims-Williams also provides stemma for the extant fragments].
Patrick Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature in Western England, 600-800, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 328-59 [a chapter entitled 'Milred, Cuthbert and Anglo-Latin Poetry];
David N. Dumville, 'English Square Minuscule Script: The Mid-Century Phases', Anglo-Saxon England 23 (1994), 133-64, at pp. 148-9 [dates the hand of the Urbana bifolium to 940x959].
