Andreas

While traveling in Italy during the year 1832, Dr. Blume, a German scholar, discovered in the cathedral library at Vercelli an Old English manuscript containing both poetry and prose. The longest and the best of the poems is the Andreas, orLegend of St. Andrew. How did this manuscript find its way across the Alps into a country where its language was wholly unintelligible? Several theories have been advanced, the most plausible being that advocated by Cook. 1] According to this view it was carried thither by Cardinal Guala, who during the reign of Henry III was prior of St. Andrew's, Chester. On his return to Italy he built the monastery of St. Andrew in Vercelli, strongly English in its architecture.