The twelfth century, or, where it all went wrong

Today I get to look at the Red Book of Darley, one of my favourites ever. There's a nice early modern annotation at the back:
This booke was sumtime had in such reverence in darbieshire that it was comonlie beleved that whosoeuer should sweare untruelie uppon this booke should run madd.

Its first text is an almost unique English poetic dialogue between Solomon and Saturn: it's a sort of riddle contest in the Scandinavian tradition (as carried forwards by Bilbo and Gollum). The "O"s in Solomon were often written like fat hollow crosses. Then there's an excellent missal, with masses against idle desires, and for brotherly love, etc. It's surprising how many of the Anglo-Saxon liturgical books I look at have excommunications copied later into blank spaces; this one has a twelfth-century version, very long. The language is fiery enough to be slightly comic, as in Stedman's The Jackdaw of Rheims:

The Cardinal rose with a dignified look,
He call’d for his candle, his bell, and his book:
In holy anger, and pious grief,
He solemnly curs’d that rascally thief!
He curs’d him at board, he curs’d him in bed,
From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head!
He curs’d him in sleeping, that every night
He should dream of the devil, and wake in a fright;
He curs’d him in eating, he curs’d him in drinking,
He curs’d him in coughing, in sneezing, in winking;
He curs’d him in sitting, in standing, in lying;
He curs’d him in walking, in riding, in flying;
He curs’d him in living, he curs’d him in dying!
Never was heard such a terrible curse!
But what gave rise
To no little surprise,
Nobody seem’d one penny the worse.

But above it an early modern hand, perhaps associated with Parker, has written "detestanda execratio", detestable execration, which is a sympathetic statement, at least to my mind. (Assuming it's a judgement not a description...)