Literary text, Early 12th century, c1100

Component identifier:

Item 8

Content Summary:

Origin: English (see notes below re script)

Content: Anselm of Canterbury, “Cur deus homo”

Script: Written in a small, efficient English Caroline minuscule (pointed ‘a’ and use of tironian notae reinforcing English -or elsewhere in the islands, origins

Extent: 1 leaf

Other details: Used as a pastedown. Possibly an early and potentially important copy of this text.

Immediate source of acquisition:

The documents in this collection were presented to the National Library of Australia by Sir Rex Nan Kivell in 1969. He referred to it as ‘The Nan Kivell Calligraphy Collection’. The documents were collected by him as specimens of early calligraphy and/or examples of early documentation. He acquired them over a number of years from varied sources which were not recorded. However, it seems likely that the group of legal documents in Series 1 relating to the Elliott family of Salisbury would have a single provenance. Nan Kivell had a country house in Devizes, Wiltshire, which is only a short distance from Salisbury.

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