The Bodmin manumissions are records included in amanuscriptGospel book, theBodmin Gospels orSt Petroc Gospels,British Library, Add MS 9381.[1] The manuscript is mostly inLatin, but with elements inOld English and the earliest written examples of theCornish language, which is thus of particular interest to language scholars and early Cornish historians. The manuscript was discovered by Thomas Rodd (1796–1849), a London bookseller, and sold by him to theBritish Museum in May 1833 being now part of the British Library's collection.[1] It is thought to have been made inBrittany - now part of France - and dates from the last quarter of the 9th century to 1st quarter of the 11th century.
Recorded in the Old Cornish language, in the margins of a Gospel book,[2] are the names and details of slaves freed inBodmin (the then principal town of Cornwall, an important religious centre) during the 9th or 10th centuries.[2] There is also an Old Cornish Vocabulary, an English – Latin vocabulary from around AD 1000 to which was added about a century later a Cornish translation. Some 961 Cornish words are recorded, ranging fromcelestial bodies, through church and craft occupations, to plants and animals.[3]
This, it is believed, is the only original record relating toCornwall, or itsBishopric, which predates theNorman Conquest. The volume is inquarto, of rather an oblong form, and is very neatly written, though evidently by a scribe not well informed, or of great learning, even for those times. The entries seem to be contemporaneous with themanumissions which they record. The practice of manumittingslaves in the church, as recorded in the entries, appears to have existed from the early 4th century.[4]
