The Tremulous Hand of Worcester

The Tremulous Hand of Worcester is the name given to a 13th-century glossator of Old English manuscripts with handwriting characterized by large, shaky, leftward leaning figures usually written in light brown ink. He is assumed to have worked in Worcester Priory because all manuscripts identified as his work have been connected to Worcester.

Variation in work

The variability of his work indicates that the Tremulous Hand of Worcester had a long career in glossing. He glossed sometimes in Middle English and sometimes in Latin and is thought to have written over 50,000 glosses.

In some manuscripts one out of every four words is glossed, while in others only one or two glosses appear on a page. While glossing Old English texts he is also known to have edited the works, adding punctuation marks and in what is identified as his early work changing the vowels and consonants of Old English words to be more like their Middle English counterparts.[1][2] His earliest work is predominantly glossed in Middle English, but later he begins to gloss equally in both Middle English and Latin.

Although he is most typically identified by light brown ink, the Tremulous Hand used multiple media types and his glossing evolved throughout his career, showing a considerable range characterized by variable "layers". His hand tremor grew worse with time; also whereas in his earliest glosses he uses contemporary Middle English that reveals a close kinship with the language of the Ancrene Wisse manuscript Nero A.xiv (his handwriting also resembles that scribe's), he later appears to be collecting Old English words in the margin, perhaps in order to compile a glossary.[2] He often indicates that something should be noted (using the Latin word nota or an abbreviation)[3] and sometimes makes a doodle.[1]

Layers

In order to differentiate the Tremulous Hand of Worcester’s varied glosses, Christine Franzen, a literary scholar, has categorized his work into seven "layers".

Franzen, however, commented informally at a later date that identification of as many as seven layers was perhaps "over zealous".[4]

Manuscripts

Notable glosses by the Tremulous Hand occur in Ælfric of Eynsham's Grammar and Glossary, and in the Worcester manuscripts, St. Bede's Lament, The Soul’s Address to the Body and an Old English translation of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum.[5] The Tremulous Hand is also thought to have glossed a segment of the Bodleian manuscript Junius, which contains the earliest Middle English translation of the Nicene Creed. He is considered to have over 50,000 glosses in total. Only one manuscript remains in Worcester, which was discovered in 1837 by the antiquary Sir Thomas Phillipps, bound into the cover of later Cathedral muniments.[6]

The Tremor

The weight of the evidence in the features of the handwriting of the Tremulous Hand points to "essential tremor" as his neurological condition.[4] This diagnosis takes into account characteristics of the tremor including its regular amplitude and regular frequency, and that it exhibited fluctuations in severity.[4] Evidence points away from other conditions such as Parkinson's disease, writer's cramp and dystonic tremor.[1][4] The tremor also shows signs of rapid improvement, possibly due to a combination of rest and alcohol consumption, and this response is consistent with essential tremor.[1][4]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Franzen, Christine (1991). "The Manuscripts". The Tremulous Hand of Worcester: A Study of Old English in the Thirteenth Century. Oxford English Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University - Clarendon Press. ISBN 9780198117421.
  2. 1 2 Drout, D. C.; Kleinman, Scott (August 2010). "Doing Philology 2: Something 'Old,' Something 'New': Material Philology and the Recovery of the Past". The Heroic Age (13).
  3. Collier, Wendy (2000). "The Tremulous Worcester Hand and Gregory's Pastoral Care". In Swan, Mary; Treharne, Elaine M. Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century. Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 30. Cambridge: Cambridge University. p. 198. ISBN 9780521623728.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Thorpe, Deborah E.; Alty, Jane E. (2015-08-31). "What type of tremor did the medieval ‘Tremulous Hand of Worcester’ have?". Brain 138: awv232. doi:10.1093/brain/awv232. ISSN 0006-8950. PMID 26324723.
  5. "Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum". http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk. Cambridge Digital Library. Retrieved 16 March 2015. External link in |website= (help)
  6. https://worcestercathedrallibrary.wordpress.com/2015/01/14/lost-manuscripts-discovered-by-sir-thomas-phillipps/

Sources

Franzen, Christine. "On the Attribution of Additions in Oxford, Bodleian MS Bodley 343 to the Tremulous Hand of Worcester". ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews, 2006 Winter; 19 (1): 7-8.

Franzen, Christine. The Tremulous Hand of Worcester: A Study of Old English in the Thirteenth Century. Oxford English Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. ISBN 9780198117421.

Franzen, Christine. "The Tremulous Hand of Worcester and the Nero Scribe of the Ancrene Wisse". Medium Ævum, 2003; 72 (1): 13-31.

Thorpe, Deborah and Jane Alty. "What type of tremor did the medieval 'Tremulous Hand of Worcester' have?". Brain, 2015.

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