St John's College MS 178
Miscellany: medicine and astronomy; Bestiary; Guillaume de Conches, Dragmaticon; Cato and glossaries in Anglo-Norman
Physical Description
Decoration
The main scribe portions only: headings within texts in red; colophons and incipits written in text ink in a larger, more decorative anglicana.
Two- and 3-line alternate red and blue lombards on flourishing of the other colour at textual divisions.
Some texts divided by red- or ochre-slashed capitals (the latter only in item 21) or red paraphs.
Numerous coloured diagrams in texts 1, 5, and 21.
Full illuminations include the zodiac man (fol. 142).
The Bestiary is illustrated to fol. 194v, with about ninety small pictures, typically set into the text area. The largest illumination occupies three-quarters of fol. 169v, with three cartoons to illustrate Canis. Other largish illuminations include another for Canis (fol. 170), Adam naming the animals (fol. 171v), and a dragon waiting under the tree ‘perindeus’ for doves to fall off into its mouth (fol. 185).
The MS appears at Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts, 1285–1385, 2 vols. (London, 1986) as, no. 39 (2:45). See AT, no. 264 (27), identifying the hand as London work (Calendar of St Peter’s, Westminster) and plate xvi (fols. 142, 169v, 185). Illustrations from the MS, especially the zodiac man, have often been reproduced: see Sandler, plates 86 (fol. 165, the goat from the Bestiary) and 87 (fol. 142, the zodiac man); Marcel Destombes, Mappemondes A.D. 1200–1500, nos. 27.11 (fol. 37v, 61) and 41.10 (fols. 324v, 333v, 107); Sandler, The Psalter of Robert de Lisle in the British Library (Oxford, 1983), 17, 102 nn. 24–5, fig. 9 (fol. 142); Fritz Saxl and Hans Meier, ed. Harry Bober, Catalogue of Astrological and Mythological Illuminated Manuscripts of the Latin Middle Ages 3, 2 vols. (London, 1953), 1:413 and 2:figure 240 (plate xcii, fol. 142).
Binding
A modern replacement. Sewn on five thongs. At the front, a marbled paper leaf, and six vellum flyleaves, four part of the actual volume (fols. iii–vv are waste, bounded and ruled, fol. v pricked); at the rear, four medieval vellum flyleaves and another marbled leaf (viii–xii).
History
Provenance and Acquisition
‘Isti libri continentur in hoc volumine beati petri Westm’ (fol. iii; anglicana, s. xv2/4) (Ker MLGB 197).
‘Symondus Hampton Iste liber est Ecclesie Beati P’ [around this in ink ‘Symond’, ‘Philippus Symond’ ‘Iohanna Symond’ ‘Iohannes Symond’] (fol. xv, s. xv in red around a 4-line musical stave); the same names appear again on fol. xi, with the addition of ‘Ricardus Sowtbroke’.
A note on the zodiac, which includes names: ‘Iohannes ⟨.....⟩ Iohannes hunger⟨...⟩ ’ (fol. 38v, lower margin, erased, s. xvi1/2).
An erased inscription (fol. vi).
Various pen-trials (fols. iv [s. xvi ex.], viii, and fol. xv [both s. xvi in.]).
'sum libellus Nich’ Sykys’ (fol. iii, upper margin, s. xvi); he also owned our MS 171.
'George Whalley owth this boke’ (fol. vv, s. xvi), below it two verses in Spanish: ‘No es mego de riere Alenez cara […] (s. xvi ex. italic).
MS 178 - Flyleaf texts
Flyleaf texts
Contents
Language(s): Latin and Middle English
a cropped vellum leaf from a noted Breviary in double columns (s. xv), mounted with the page foot at leading edge, with a College bookplate on the verso.
‘Isti libri continentur in hoc volumine beati petri Westm’, a table of contents, in anglicana, s. xv2/4.
ruled in red for music.
‘Ihesus passion be myn helpe’, with four or five sets of verses (only one in Walther) in the same hand, mixed anglicana/secretary, s. xv med.
(i) ‘Secundum ingeniolum meum carismate aspirante compendiose declarabo etc.’
(ii) ‘Cum pare pugnare dubium forciori dampnum | Cum puero pudor est sic pax super omnia prodest’.
(iii) ‘Silencium est frenum claustralium et ideo claustralis sine silencio est quasi equus sine freno’.
(iv–v) ‘Quondam scire nichil vicium fuit est modo risus | Est modo nil vicium preter habere nichil || Antiquo more sapiencia prefuit auro | Presenti vere m\e/lius nil indico stauro [l. stanno?]’.
‘Si culpare velis culpabilis esse cauebis | Dogma tuum sordet cum te tua culpa remordet’ (Walter, Sprichwörter, no. 28372, varied), in a hand resembling that which copied the contents table; and recopied below, s. xv ex.
‘Sancti spiritus assit nobis gracia | Que corda nostra sibi faceat habitacula | Expulsi inde cunctis spiritalibus’ (s. xv ex.).
Robertum sarum robur decus ecclesiarum | Te matri carum vis—Ille suis donis sedem det nunc vnionis’, below the preceding, in six couplets, s. xv3/4, not in Walther.
History
Manuscript 1 = Fols. iv–vii, 1–8
Contents
Language(s): Latin
‘Hec est tabula terminorum que est prima de compoto comuni’, with a table of moon signs (fol. 2v) and calendar (fols. 3–8v). Among feasts in red are ‘cathedra sancti Petri’ (21 February), Guthlac, Elphegus, Botulph, Philbert abbot, and Edmund Rich.
Physical Description
Collation
History
Manuscript 2 = Fols. 9–144
Contents
Language(s): Latin and French
CPL 1188, ed. J. Fontaine, Traité de la nature (Bordeaux, 1960), 167–327. A contents table on fols. 9v–10 with a second one-sentence prologue. In this portion of the MS, persistent instructions to the rubricator in crayon at the page foot.
TK 1539, cited from Erfurt, Wissensch. Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Amplonianum F.346, fols. 18v–19.
On the cylinder, with further notes on various kinds of measurement (TK 567).
ed. Libellus de anni ratione seu ut uocatur uulgo Computus Ecclesiasticus (Paris, 1550), fols. 5–54. Fol. 103v has a ‘Cribrum BOETIJ de Multiplicacione numerorum’.
part 1 only (Sharpe, no. 102 [51–3]); only excerpts have been printed, ed. Paul Meyer, ‘Notice sur les Corrogationes Promethei d’Alexandre Neckam’, Notices et extraits des Manuscrits de Ia Bibliothèque Nationale 35, ii (1896), 641–82.
TK 468.
TK 145. The material on the moon is followed by a second chapter, including verses on the planets, a table of lunar houses, and materials on the zodiacal signs; fol. 142 has a full-page illustration of a zodiacal man, with two distichs below the text, inc. ‘Ista sex signa que sunt a principio arietis […] ’ Lynn Thorndike discusses items 11–14 in ‘Notes on Some Less Familiar British Astronomical and Astrological Manuscripts’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 22 (1959) 157–71 at 160–1.
Further zodiacal notes (TK 877). In this and the two following texts, a variety of added notes in the lower margin.
Recipes, more than half in French (TK 1172).
Physical Description
Collation
Layout
In long lines, 22 lines to the page. Prickings rare; apparently bounded and ruled in lead but either faded or erased.
Hand(s)
Written in anglicana, s. xiv in.; the hand is reminiscent of that in the Shropshire miscellany BL, MS Harley 2253. Punctuation by point only.
History
Manuscript 3 = Fols. 145–55
Contents
Language(s): Latin and Anglo-Norman
TK 837, analogues noted in Thorndike, 1:680 n. 1. The text also appears in Cambridge, Trinity College MS O.7.23, fol. 68v. Followed (fol. 149rv) by a variety of medical notes and verses.
A unique guide for procedure, presumably in Westminster courts and postdating the canonical collection Extra (1234), discussed by Linda Fowler-Magerl, Ordo iudiciorum vel ordo iudicarius, Ius commune 19 (Frankfurt a. M., 1984), 144–5.
Physical Description
Collation
Layout
In long lines, 29 lines to the page. No prickings; bounded and ruled in brown crayon and lead.
Hand(s)
In gothic textura rotunda with anglicana letter forms, s. xiii2. Punctuation by point only.
History
Manuscript 4, Booklet 1 = Fols. 156–261
Contents
Language(s): Latin
a text of the ‘second family’; see M. R. James, The Bestiary, Roxburghe Club (Oxford, 1928). There is missing text between fols. 172 and 173.
PHILIP OF TRIPOLI’s translation (PAL, no. 81 [54–75], our copy noted at 69); ed. Reinhold Möller, Hiltgart von Hürnheim Mittelhochdeutsche Prosaübersetzung des ‘Secreta Secretorum’ (Berlin, 1963), 1–2, 14–164.
TK 999. Followed by a table of roman numerals and their arabic equivalents.
Physical Description
Collation
Layout
In long lines, 27 lines to the page. No apparent pricking, bounds, or rules.
Hand(s)
Written by the scribe of Manuscript 2, here the hand appearing more developed, perhaps of s. xiv2/4. Punctuation by point only.
Decoration
History
Manuscript 4, Booklet 2 = Fols. 262–357
Contents
Language(s): Latin
‘Questiones ad philosophum’ (table), in fact GUILLAUME DE CONCHES, Dragmaticon philosophiae, ed. I. Ronca, CCCM 152 (1997), 3–270, with our copy collated as O1 (described pp. LI–LII).
Roughly corresponds to WILLIAM OF GAP’s translation from Greek, to section 8 only, ed. Ben E. Perry, Secundus the Silent Philosopher (Ithaca, NY, 1964), 92–4.
Unidentified; not in Bursill-Hall.
Physical Description
Collation
Layout
In long lines, 22–5 lines to the page. No prickings, bounded and ruled in lead.
Hand(s)
In the same anglicana of s. xiv in. or xiv2/4 as the preceding (and MS 2). Punctuation by point only.
History
Manuscript 5 = Fols. 358–97
Contents
Language(s): Latin and Anglo-Norman
A grammatical commentary on the Paternoster (Bloomfield, no. 8464).
in Anglo-Norman verse, with the Latin original written in the gloss hand, both marginally and in alternate lines, unpublished; see M. Dominica Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and Its Background (Oxford, 1963), 182. A different scribe writing in the same page frame as the preceding MS. Fol. 397v is blank.
Physical Description
Collation
Layout
In long lines, 42 lines to the page. No prickings; bounded and ruled in brown ink.
Hand(s)
Written in gothic textura prescissa (text) and quadrata (gloss), different sizes for text and gloss, on the whole above top line, s. xiii1. Punctuation by medial point and punctus elevatus.
Decoration
History
Manuscript 6 = Fols. 398–411
Contents
Language(s): Latin and Anglo-Norman
The Latin is ALEXANDER NEQUAM, ‘De nominibus utensilium’ (Sharpe, no. 102 [51–3]), ed. Tony Hunt, Teaching and Learning Latin in Thirteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Brewer, 1991), 1:177–189/23.
Latin verses (Walther, no. 16086, , with half a dozen English copies), followed by eight verses over erasure and (from fol. 408) grammatical notes and verses in a variety of hands, s. xiii ex. These include (fol. 408va) the ‘versus de synonymis’ cited by Bursill-Hall, inc. ‘Balne⟨a⟩ cornici quid prosunt quid meretrici’ (Walther, no. 2052).
As item 22 above, and following on from its explicit, ed. Perry, 94–100., Followed by a pair of verses ‘Pacto lex cedit pacto lex omnis obedit | Quolibet in facto lex est obnoxia pacto’ (not in Walther).
A Latin-Anglo-Norman nominale, partly ed. A. Ewert, ‘A Fourteenth-Century Latin-French Nominale’, Medium Ævum 3 (14), 13–18, ; see further Tony Hunt, ‘The Anglo-Norman Vocabularies in MS Oxford, Bodleian Library Douce 88’, Medium Ævum 49 (1980), 5–25, , where our copy is collated; and cf. Hunt, Learning Latin, 401.
Physical Description
Collation
Layout
For text 27, writing area a central text column 162 × 55 mm. on alternate lines to allow glosses, between two gloss columns mm wide along the gutter and 40 mm wide along the leading edge. In long lines, 24 lines of text, 59 lines of gloss to the page. No prickings, bounded and ruled in brown crayon.
The remainder, to fol. 410, in rough double columns and a variety of different hands adding grammatical notes of various types. The succeeding nominale is in four columns.
Hand(s)
Written in gothic textura semiquadrata, s. xiii2. Punctuation by point, medial point, and occasional punctus elevatus.
History
Additional Information
Record Sources
Availability
For enquiries relating to this manuscript please contact St John's College Library.
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
2023-09: First online publication