Lost annals for AD 250–730?
Were there ever annals covering these years in the Chronicle of Melrose that have now been lost? Julius B XIII, Gathering VI (ff. 41–47) includes annals for AD 1–249, ending mid-sentence at f. 47v. This makes it tempting to assume there is lost material. The main source for this work is Bede’s Chronica Maiora, which runs from the Creation to the 720s. The scribe’s source could therefore have continued beyond AD 249. However, Gathering VI potentially has a final folio missing (although no stub is visible).
Faustina B IX, f. 2r does not read as though there is missing material before it. It begins with a brief introduction, referring to Bede’s Ecclesiastical History from AD 731 and then from AD 734 asserting ‘the history which follows has been excerpted here and there from various places’. It also begins fresh on a new gathering, and with space left for an enlarged initial.
The tally of folios on Faustina B IX, f. 11v (relating to the abbot of Dundrennan’s borrowing of the manuscript) suggests that there was, by the late 13th or early 14th century, no section with annals for AD 250–730.
More specific evidence can be found in a partially cropped statement in the margin of Julius B XIII, f. 30v. The note is attributed to Scribal profile 18, and appears adjacent to the ‘Chronological table of popes and emperors since the time of Christ’:
Hoc usque ad annum [ ]cxxxmium nulla [ ] sequentibus est conti[ ] set interrumpitur [ ]d iiimdcorum et [ ] annorum [ ] lxxxiiii anni
‘From here as far as the year [7]31, there is no cont[inuance in] the following materials, but it is interrupted, [for] 3600 and [?] years [?] 84 years.’
The translation attempts to reconstruct the Latin as comprehensibly as possible. The hoc (‘here’) refers to the year AD 249 mentioned in the text-block at that point. 481 years are missing (AD 250–730) but sense cannot readily be found in the final part of this sentence. It has been suggested by Julian Harrison that this could have read <cccc> lxxxiiii anni (‘484 years’) meaning the gap between 249 and 733, given that the opening of Faustina B IX in fact summarises Bede’s Ecclesiastical History for AD 731–733 (see Broun, The Chronicle of Melrose Abbey, p. 47, n. 39).
Scribal profile 18 appears in different parts of the Chronicle (in both Julius B XIII and Faustina B IX). It therefore likely belongs to a scribe who was generally familiar with the Chronicle’s overall contents. Scribal profile 18 is datable after 1198, probably before 1216, and possibly c. 1208 (see the Scribal profiles for details). If there ever were annals for AD 250–730, they must have been lost by this point in the early 13th century, and their existence and whereabouts unknown to an active scribe at the abbey. This would suggest, to this editor at least, that there were no annals for AD 250–730.