St John's College MS 202
Jacobus de Voragine, selected saints’ lives
Physical Description
Layout
Writing area variable, approximately 120–5 × 90 mm. . In long lines, about 32 lines to the page. Infrequent prickings; bounded and ruled in lead and brown ink.
Binding
A modern replacement. Sewn on four thongs. At the front, a marbled paper leaf (dated ‘1907’ on the verso) and two modern paper flyleaves; at the rear, two modern paper flyleaves and another marbled paper leaf (iv–vi).
History
Provenance and Acquisition
‘Liber Fratris [erased] in quo continentur hec’, heading a contents table for the whole, numbered to 39 items (four added) (fol. 4v).
Ex prouisione Fratris Thome ⟨R⟩ussel Liber Monasterij sancti Martini de Bello Qui dicitur traditio patrum cum alijs [BVRG added at the end of the line] Et dicit liber iste tractatus Thome de aquino’ (fol. 4, s. xv), a reference to item 26 (?) (Ker, MLGB 8, 229).
‘Caleb Burdett possidet me’ (fol. 3, s. xvi in., beneath an erased ownership inscription). This would suggest that the volume, like others from Burdett, was part of John Stonor’s donation, although that is not noted in either the MS or the Benefactors’ Book.
An Added Quire of Front Matter = Fols. 1–5
Contents
Language(s): Latin and French
Cf. Walther, no. 19965. Fols. 1–2 include five different texts, four in different textura hands (one responsible for items a–b), s. xiii.
Walther, no. 7498, following the preceding without a break; also appears in Oxford, Trinity College MS 7, fol. 40. In the margin of fol. 1: (i) ‘apologia dicitur ab apo quod est res et logos sermo quasi de reali sermone’; (ii) ‘Murilegus consors in mensa sit tibi nunquam—Priuetur mensa qui spreuerit hec documenta’, five lines, perhaps the conclusion of (b).
Annals, mostly associated with the Nativity, including citations of CHRYSOSTOM and PAUL THE DEACON.
On Christ’s personal characteristics, followed, in the hand of (a) and (b), by instructions for a trental and a brief prayer. Fols. 4v–5 have the contents table for the volume, numbered to 35 items which match the numeration in the text rubrics and with four additional items at the end (added 3 + 1), introduced by the heading ‘Liber Fratris [erased] in quo continentur hec’.
In anglicana, s. xiv med.
History
The Book Proper
Contents
Language(s): Latin
Two theological notes follow the explicit, and the scribe adds on a leaf probably originally blank:
hom. 43 on Mt. 23, ed. PG 56:876?; followed by a note on St Martin.
ch. 6, ed. Th. Graesse (1890; Osnabrück, 1965), 40–7, . Added below is a series of seven sets of verses, mostly distichs, including ‘Quoque caro fenum Flos feni gloria carnis | hec nichil est […] ’ (not in Walther). In the main, the remainder of the volume comprises similar excerpts from Jacobus, for which only summary identifications are provided:
ch. 14, ed. Graesse, 87–94.
ch. 37, ed. Graesse, 158–66. Followed by an added paragraph (iii the scribal hand), with Jacobus’s conclusion (166–7) ‘Quedam alia matrona dum esset grauida—purificacionis prenottauit et integram sanitatem recepit’.
A new scribe begins writing at this point.
ch. 54, ed. Graesse, 235–42
ch. 70, ed. Graesse, 312–14. The lower half of fol. 36v is blank.
from ch. 45 (Mathias), ed. Graesse, 184–6.
ch. 72, ed. Graesse, 318–27. The last page has been filled in by another hand, and a few lines left blank at the foot.
ch. 68, ed. Graesse, 303–11; a new hand, writing textura semiquadrata with anglicana g.
ch. 170, ed. Graesse, 777–8.
ch. 27, ed. Graesse, 126–33.
A new scribe begins writing at this point.
ch. 119, ed. Graesse, 504–16.
ch. 145, ed. Graesse, 642–9. After the initial etymology the body of the legend in what is probably a new hand, beginning on lower fol. 82v. About five lines left blank at the foot of the last page.
A new scribe begins writing at this point.
ch. 30, the introduction and 4–5 only, ed. Graesse, 140, 142–5.
ch. 1, ed. Graesse, 3–12. A leaf has been cancelled after fol. 89, with no text loss.
chs. 31–4, ed. Graesse, 146–53. Two or three lines have been left blank at the foot of the last page.
In fact SIMON HINTON OP, Brevis expositio articulorum fidei or Summa iuniorum (Sharpe, no. 1637 [614–16]), unpublished, but described in A. Dondaine, ‘Le Somme de Simon de Hinton’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 9 (1937), 5–22, 205–18. The prose succeeded, after the explicit cited from fol. 120, by a septenary table and a distinctio of the sacraments.
The first ten lines on fol. 101 are written in a hand unparalleled elsewhere, the remainder in another new hand.
The text corresponds, with substantial paraphrase, to the copy of Hinton in BodL, MS Laud misc. 397, fols. 106–52rb, but with the text broken into two parts (at a point corresponding to Laud, fol. 131va) and the order of the two parts reversed. A hand of s. xv has added at the foot of fol. 139v the incipit of the eucharistic tract, which precedes in the MS, to indicate that it should in fact follow here. The number ‘26’ is assigned to the eucharistic portion only in the contents table, but the rubricator has numbered both parts ‘26’ in the rubrics and running titles. Fols. 140–3 were probably originally blank (perhaps for a conclusion?), now with added texts at the end of a booklet:
theological notes, distinctiones, prayers .
ch. 99, through 5 only, ed. Graesse, 421–7. Written in gothic textura rotunda, s. xv.
ch. 105, ed. Graesse, 444–7 (condensed).
Walther, no. 20409; for discussions see Peter Dronke, Medieval Latin and the Rise of the European Love Lyric, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1968), 2:571; Paul Gerhardt Schmidt, ‘Der Rangstreit zwischen Mann und Frau im lateinischen Mittelalter’, in G. J. Reinink and H. L. J. Vanstiphout (eds.), Dispute Poems and Dialogues in the Ancient and Medieval Near East (Louvain, 1991), 213–36, with a text; H. Walther, Das Streitgedicht in der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters (Munich, 1920), 137–9.
Unidentified.
in the excerpted version ed. PL 40:1131–4, ; joined with PETER DAMIAN, opusculum 59.4 ‘De novissimis et anticristo’, ed. PL 145:840–2. The contents table gives this section the joint title ‘De anticristo et xv. signis’.
Unidentified, but a version of the anecdote appears in Legenda aurea, ch. 46, ed. Graesse, 197–8. The text may be added filler on a blank folio.
An excerpt from RALPH OF COGGESHALL, Chronicon Anglicanum (Sharpe, no. 1238 [445–6]), ed. Joseph Stevenson, RS 66 (1875), 67–70, the last of the four added items at the end of the contents table. The text again appears added, in this case not rubricated by the person responsible for the rest.
ch. 158, ed. Graesse, 701–5. A very much later scribe, writing gothic textura semiquadrata, s. xv, is responsible for this item and the next, in a single-quire booklet apparently intruded later.
BHL no. 915, ed. Pio Paschini, ‘S. Barbara: note agiografiche’, Letteranum, 1927 at 38–50 (‘redazione B’).
ed. PL 184:485–508.
breaking off in ch. 26, ed. PL 40:1091–1103. Ten text lines have been left blank at the foot of the last leaf.
Unidentified. Five verses follow the explicit at the page foot, inc. ‘Percuciens clericum romam petat excipiuntur […] ’, (Walther, no. 13976, who cites two other English copies).
ch. 35, ed. Graesse, 153–4. In a new hand. About half the final page is blank, now with added verses:
about ten sets of distichs (Walther, no. 15792); part of the text has been written vertically in the gutter), s. xiv in.
ch. 100, ed. Graesse, 430–4. The first of the four items added to the contents table, without reference numbers, ‘De sancto cristoforo martire’.
ch. 86, ed. Graesse, 356–64, added in the contents table as ‘De natiuitate sancti iohannis baptiste’.
ch. 8, ed. Graesse, 364–7. The third item added to the table; only five lines written on the last page, with a few pen-trials beneath.
Physical Description
Collation
Hand(s)
Written in gothic textura semiquadrata (more than one hand). Punctuation usually by point; some scribes also use the punctus elevatus and/or virgula.
Decoration
Headings in red.
Two-line alternate red and blue lombards on flourishing of the other colour at the heads of texts. Although many have been fully or partly cut away, the person who provided the capitals wrote counts of them by the quire on the foot of the last verso, e.g. ‘iiij littere’ (fol. 27v).
Texts handled variously within sections: divided by red-slashed capitals, red paraphs, etc.
Two sets of running titles (one for each opening); the first, red arabic numerals to identify texts with the contents table entries; the second set in ink, some added later in scribal hands, provide titles.
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
2023-10: First online publication