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MS. Rawl. D. 3

Summary Catalogue no.: 12900

Geoffrey Chaucer, Treatise on the Astrolabe

Rubric: Astralabium

Incipit: Lityl lowys my sone

Ends with the section of 'the wyrkyng of þe conclusyon to knowe yf þat ony planete be direct or retrograde'

Language(s): Middle English

Physical Description

Form: codex

Support: parchment

Extent: 49 leaves

Decoration

Pächt and Alexander iii. 1109

Good borders

Good initials

Binding

Alexandra Gillespie observes that very few well-known vernacular manuscripts have survived in their medieval bindings and that MS. Rawl. D. 3 is one of only four of Chaucer’s works that has a pre-1500 cover. Gillespie names the other three Chaucer manuscripts as MS. Selden Supra 56, Cambridge, St John’s, MS E. 2 and London, Institution of Engineering and Technology Library, MS Thompson 1 ('Bookbinding' in The Production of Books in England 1350–1500 ed. by Wakelin and Gillespie [Cambridge University Press, 2011], p. 158 and p. 165)

History

Origin: 15th century, third quarter ; England

Provenance and Acquisition

Thomas Rawlinson, 1681–1725

Richard Rawlinson, 1690–1755

Bequeathed to the Bodleian in 1755

Record Sources

Description adapted (May 2023) by Stewart J. Brookes from the Quarto Catalogue (W. D. Macray, Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum Bibliothecæ Bodleianæ...viri munificentissimi Ricardi Rawlinson, J.C.D., codicum...complectens, Quarto Catalogues V, fascicle 3, 1863), with additional reference to published literature as cited. Decoration, localization and date follow Pächt and Alexander (1973)

Quarto Catalogue, vol. 1, col. 2

Quarto Catalogue, vol. 1, col. 3

Summary Catalogue, Vol. 3, p. 224