116v

[Anton]

I've been not very active in the forum of lately, but David's note in another thread made me recall what I wanted to drop down in here for a record. He says (about f116v) that the crosses are there in order for one to know when to cross himself when casting the spell.

That's the well-known puspose of crosses in written spells in general, and of course I've naturally been of the same opinion in respect of f116v.

However, what I recently saw in Egerton MS 747 (which Marco brought into light in another thread) made me re-assess the potential purpose of these particular crosses in f116v.

In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. of MS747, the first two lines contain what looks like some sort of mnemonic dedicated to the calendar discussed. I don't understand it in depth, but I'm sure that if one reads the text attentively, s/he will recognize what's the application of the mnemonic. Now, note how syllables in the mnemonic are separated by verticals. I guess that has some special purpose, making the verse a mnemonic.

So it occurred to me that crosses in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. may serve the same purpose. In which case the "anchiton" lines cease to be a spell and appear to be a mnemonic. Now, crosses as separators do not divide this text in syllables, but on the other hand this explains away the inserted cross in the middle of "maria". Otherwise I'm at a loss why a cross to cross yourself would be inserted in the middle of a word.