St John's College MS 94
Hours of the Virgin and Middle English devotional texts
Contents
Language(s): Latin and Middle English. The scribal dialect is Northern, but ‘with a component firmly localised along the Salop—Herefords border, suggesting that John Lacy was perhaps connected with Lacy of Weobley’ and noting family properties near Ludlow (LALME, 1:153). Lacy’s unusual devotion to Winifred, a Shrewsbury saint, would also support such a suggestion.
Suffrages for thirty-one saints: the Trinity the Annunciation, Anne, Mary, Michael, Peter, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, James, James the Less, Andrew, Bartholomew, George, Dionysius [‘\cum socijs suis/’, later in the margin], [four further suffrages missing on a lost leaf], Cosmas and Damian, Vincent, Giles, Martin, Nicholas, Anthony, Alexis, Germaine, Leonard, Paul, Katherine, Margaret, Barbara, Mary Magdalene, Winifred, Zithe, Apollonia, Agnes.
calendar, with entries in green and gold, additions in blue (as well as the expected red and black), including astrological signs, information on the length of days; a note on humours and seasons (fol. 10v, lower margin). Included, none among the specially coloured days, are Chad and Cuthbert (2 and 20 March); Dunstan (19 May); Medard and Botulph (8 June); Swithin (15 July); Oswald (5 August); the translation of Cuthbert (4 September); Winifred (3 November).
An annex to item 1, suffrages for Ignatius and Agatha, with additional prayers: ‘antiphona Aue ihesu rex celorum fili regis angelorum […] ’, ‘oracio Domine ihesu criste fili dei viui rex foster […] ’, ‘Omnipotens mitissime deus respice propicius […] ’
The Hours proper, those of the Virgin with the Hours of the Cross intercalated (the explicit). Suffrages after Lauds for the Trinity, Cross, John the Evangelist, John the Baptist, Laurence, Nicholas, Katherine, Winifred, All Saints, and for peace.
The litany; it includes Cuthbert, Gildard, Medard, Albinus, and Swithin among confessors; Genevieve, Praxed, and Winifred among virgins.
with musical settings.
The psalm of commendation (118) and Ps. 138, followed by a brief prayer, ‘Tibi domine comendamus animas famulorum […] ’
Latin prayers, including that of AQUINAS (fols. 106–7), ed. Doyle, 234–6.
The abbreviated Psalter
ed. OT 87–8 (items 3–12), arguably added as a filler later on a blank leaf. Such mnemonics, often without protracted explanation, are frequent features in instructional MSS, e.g. BodL, MS Lyell 29, fols. 99v–104; or those ed. George A. Plimpton, The Education of Chaucer (London, 1935), plate ix.3–11; or Curt F. Bühler PMLA 69 (1954), 686–7 New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS M 861, fols. 1–7).
An exemplum from the Vitae patrum, unique and unpublished, inserted at the end of the first chapter (xv) of the preceding item.
Notes added by Lacy.
IMEV 2372, unpublished and, as IMEV Suppl. indicates, ‘sometimes falling into prose’.
More notes added by Lacy: active and contemplative life, charity, contemplation, etc.
Added texts:
One should note the explicit to item 18 above: production of the MS went on over a protracted period, and its continuous form substantially belies the compiler’s method of working. Indeed, as noted in Textual Presentation below, fol. 144va exists in a state suggesting that the volume was never formally completed. Thus, odd portions of the text, especially at booklet ends, look as if they were provided to avoid blank spaces. Potential evidence confirming such a view come from many Latin theological notes, usually written in a smaller script, often in unruled portions of the page foot. Telling examples (for a full account is not provided) include material ascribed to Gregory the Great on the originally blank fol. 1 or materials on fasting added among the prayers on fol. 109vb. Especially interesting in this regard are sequences of such added Latin oddments in the midst of the English texts 16 and 19.
Given this progressive production, only one item truly qualifies as an ‘added text’: on fol. 153vb, an anglicana hand of s. xv med. has written in a form of absolution.
Physical Description
Collation
The MS was produced as a series of six booklets, as marked above, and ending at fols. 16, 38, 102, 119, 127, and v respectively. Fol. 38 is packed with text, in a frame 210 mm x 130 mm, 26 lines on the recto and 33 on the verso. In conjunction with the short quire 5, this textual presentation points to a booklet boundary. Like the scribal invocation at the end of booklet 1 (see the description of the illumination programme below), item 10 appears to be planned as conclusive. The final page and one-half of the quire, like that at the end of booklet 1, appears packed with text. In fact, item 11 may represent materials added later in a blank space. The inscription on fol. 102 includes, in part, the injunction that ‘neuer man ne woman lete departe þe engeliche from þe latyn’, indicating separate production of the Latin and English portions—the split falling between fols. 119 and 120—and that they are equally integral to the composition, as much so as the Psalter to the Hours in MS 82.
Condition
Layout
Written in varying formats: (a) the Hours proper, fols. 17–102: writing area 195–200 × 120 mm. . In long lines, 20 lines to the page;
(b) fols. 103–19: in double columns, each column 190 × 58 mm. , with 8 mm between columns, in 30 lines to the column;
(c) the English, fols. 120–50: a bit variable, but typically in double columns, each column 202 × 55–60 mm. , with 8 mm between columns, in 56 lines to the column;
(d) fols. 151–3: writing area 195 × 120 mm. (with frequent run over past the bounds). In long lines, 42 lines to the page.
Prickings: bounded and ruled (often with double line rules) in reddish-brown ink.
Hand(s)
Written in gothic textura semiquadrata (universal anglicana g). Punctuation by low and medial point, double point, punctus elevatus, and punctus versus. See Watson, DMO, no. 873 (146–7) and plate 290 (fol. 16v, which separates fols. 1–9, 16 as the only precisely datable portion of the MS, 1420.
Decoration
At major textual divisions in booklets 2 and 3, at the head of ‘O intemerata’ and the litany of the Virgin (within text 12) and at the head of text 16, 3- to 5-line champes, some with painted floral centres, and full bar borders in blue and violet with floral clusters, twenty in all. Item 10 (fol. 101v) has a half-border with 3-line champe and arms (see Provenance) at the page foot. In booklets 5 and 6, 6-line champes with flower and leaf ornament and demivinets at chapter heads; on fol. 144va, the demivinet has not been completed, and the 13-line champe has neither gold nor internal painting.
At subsidiary divisions and in booklet 1, 2- to 4-line champes with floral sprays. Calendar pages are headed by a champe, and all have demivinets in blue and violet with floral sprays. In the Office of the Dead, the musical settings are introduced by swag capitals in text ink with faces, some bird and animal forms, and plant designs in pink and green.
Minor decoration includes red rubrics, alternate 1-line lombards (gold leaf on violet flourishing and blue on red flourishing), alternating blue and gold leaf paraphs and line-fillers of the same. In the Middle English, some green-washed marginal pointing fingers.
There are thirty-seven surviving miniatures of an original set of forty-two. In items 1 and 3, each suffrage is allotted a quarter-page miniature, two to the page, side by side above the prayers. See Scott, 2:32 on the wave of such introductory full-page sections in MSS s. xv in. A miniature to illustrate the Trinity has been cut out of fol. 1va, and a lost leaf following fol. 4 probably had four miniatures.
The survivors are: the Virgin as queen of heaven, with sceptre and holding a scroll with the Aue; the Annunciation with Mary and a dove; Jesus marked from his crucifixion emerging from the tomb; Anne holding the infant Virgin with a horn-book; Mary with three red roses holding the infant Jesus; Michael armed above the dragon; Peter holding a church and key; John the Baptist, in a skin, holding lamb and cross; John the Evangelist holding his eagle; James holding a staff; James the Less, in a similar posture; Andrew with his cross; Bartholomew holding a book and a knife; George spearing the dragon; Denis with a crosier and his decollated head; Cosmas and Damian with poor people and dogs (Scott, 2:364 identifies but a single English analogue, in BL, MS Egerton 2572); Vincent with a ladder and T-square; Giles with a crosier and a wounded doe tugging at his skirt; Martin with a crosier being blessed by a hand coming out of a cloud; Nicholas with a crosier and three naked women in a tub; Antony blessed by a hand coming out of a cloud, in grey and black hermit garb holding a book, with a pig at his feet; Alexis as a pilgrim with staff and scrip, holding a book; Germaine with a crosier blessing a kneeling congregation; Leonard holding a link of chain and a crosier; Paul holding a sword and a book; Katherine holding a sword beside her wheel; Margaret holding a sword and letting a sheep suckle at her breast, an incision all along her front, other sheep at her feet; Barbara holding a wool-carding comb by her tower; Mary Magdalene with an ointment jar; Winifred, with a red line on her neck, holding a sword and a book; Zitha with a gold band round her hair, a gold-coloured book at her belt and holding a bag; Apollonia with pincers and a book; Agnes naked in a fire with a descending dove; Ignatius with a crosier, a pair of lions pawing at him; Agatha with exposed bloody breasts and holding a knife and a book.
The two remaining miniatures each take up half a page. On fol. 16v, John Lacy, in his barred anchorhold, watches the crucifixion (defaced) with Mary and John, a partly defaced scroll from his mouth (see Provenance below), beneath the picture ‘Anno domini MCCCCxx.’. The only known English analogue for a portrait of the limner is the one probably John Siferwas in BL, MS Harley 7026 (Scott, 2:62).On fol. 56v, across the page-foot, the Last Judgement, with the dead arising to trumpeting angels, and a hell-mouth at the right foot; the image of God in the centre defaced.
See AT, no. 418 (42) and plate xxviii (fol. 5v); all major illuminations are reproduced on Bodleian Library film roll 201G.
Binding
A modern replacement. Sewn on five thongs. At the front, a marbled paper leaf; two modern paper flyleaves, and one medieval vellum leaf (probably a former pastedown, now pasted to a vellum stub); at the rear, two modern paper flyleaves, and another marbled paper leaf (vi–viii).
History
Provenance and Acquisition
Both copied and illuminated by John Lacy, Dominican recluse of Newcastle upon Tyne; cf. the signature in the lower border of fol. 17: ‘lacy scripsit et illuminat’. Other Lacy references in the MS include two entries in the calendar: under 8 March (fol. 11), obits for his parents, ‘Obierunt Iohannes lacy et tylote vxor eius pater fratris Iohannis lacy Anachorete’; and in the lower margin of fol. 15, an added obit, ‘Data patris bricij qui iacet inter fratres predicatores noui castri super tynam Anno domini MCCxxxxvj.’ In addition, the miniature on fol. 16v shows Lacy with a scroll from his mouth, ‘Criste lacy fratris anime (the rest erased)’ and below the date 1420; and cf. texts 10 and 21 above: associated with the first, in the lower margin of fol. 101v, the arms ‘or on a fess gules a fleur de lis or’, identified as the arms of Lacy, by Rotha Mary Clay, ‘Some Northern Anchorites’, Archaeologist Aeliana 4th ser. 33 (1955), 202–17 at 210 n. 33., For other discussions, see Clay, ‘Further Studies on Medieval Recluses’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 3rd ser. 16 (1953), 74–86;, Conrad Pepler, ‘John Lacy: A Dominican Contemplative’, The Life of the Spirit 5 (1951), 397–400;, Doyle. Lacy is associated with Newcastle from at least 1408; see the deeds involving a person of this name in Arthur Maule Oliver (ed.), Early Deeds Relating to Newcastle upon Tyne, Surtees Society 137 (1924), 187–9 passim., Lacy also owned BodL, MS Rawlinson C.258 (a Wycliffite New Testament). There his inscription of ownership appears on fol. 86, and an erased inscription, partly legible under ultraviolet light, associates the book with the Newcastle Dominicans (fol. 1); see Ker, MLGB 134, 284, . Another MS which he copied, now lost, contained ‘Grace dieu’, the 1413 prose translation of de Deguilleville’s Pèlerinage de l’âme; it later belonged to Henry Savile of Banke; see Watson, Savile, no. 60 (30); see further below.
In addition to Lacy’s injunctions on the use of his book (item 10), the MS also includes his bequest, indicating the conclusion of his work (fol. 1): ‘Orate pro anima fratris Iohanis lacy anachorite de ordine fratrum predicatorum noui Castri super Tynam qui hoc [later?] primarium dedit domino Rogero Stonysdale Capellano ecclesie sancti Nicholai noui Castri super Tynam ad totum tempus vite sue et post mortem predicti domini Rogeri volo ut tradatur alii presbitero dicte ecclesie secundum disposicionem dicti Rogeri ad terminum vite sue et sic de presbitero in presbiterum in eadem ecclesia remanendum dummodo durauerit ad orandum pro anima predicti Iohannis lacy Anachorite Anno domini Millesimo CCCCmoxxxiiijto.’ (Ker, MLGB 222). For further commentary on illuminated books as willed to ensure use, see Scott, 1:32 and 69 n. 18.
A list of contents, perhaps in the hand of Henry Savile of Banke (but the MS is not in his catalogue) (fol. ivv).
‘Ja Billingham’ (s. xvii ex., fol. iv verso).
Record Sources
Availability
For enquiries relating to this manuscript please contact St John's College Library.
Digital Images
Digital Bodleian (full digital facsimile)
Bibliography
Funding of Cataloguing
Conversion of the printed catalogue to TEI funded by the Thompson Family Charitable Trust
Abbreviations
View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.
Last Substantive Revision
2023-06: First online publication