A catalogue of Western manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries and selected Oxford colleges

St John's College MS 340

John Lydgate, ‘Calendar’ bound with printed book b.2.24

Contents

Language(s): Middle English

Fols. 1–5v:
Incipit: || d With his blood dauyd he did me wedde | e praie for me with now with saynt Chadde
Explicit: lorde for thyne holy worde | A with Siluestir thy blisse þat hathe none ende Amen Amen Amen
JOHN LYDGATE, ‘The Calendar’ (IMEV 1721), ed. Henry Noble MacCracken, The Minor Poems, Part 1, EETS, ES 107 (1911), 365–76, here beginning imperfectly at line 60.

Physical Description

Secundo Folio: b philip
Form: codex
Support: Paper. Given the position of the watermarks on fols. 3 and 4, the remains of a quire folded in folio. The mark is not identifiable.
Extent: Fols. 5.
Dimensions (leaf): 253 × 180 mm.
Dimensions (written): 253 × 110 mm.
(width measured to the end of the longest line)

Collation

Probably 16(–1).

Layout

In long lines, 29–31 lines to the page. No prickings; neither bounded nor ruled.

Hand(s)

Written in anglicana. Unpunctuated.

Decoration

Offset dominical (and other) letters, those for Sundays ‘A’ in red.

The names of the saints also in red.

Binding

Plain brown leather over millboards, s. xvii. Sewn on five thongs. In the spine compartments, four red leather tags with indications of contents (directing attention to the prints only), gold stamped. Pastedowns modern paper, a College bookplate on the front pastedown. Pages red-speckled on all edges. Bound, as fols. 66–70 of the whole, among four books printed by William Caxton: ‘paruus Chato’ (STC 4852, 1483), ‘Lydgate's ‘court of sapience’ (STC 17015, 1480), followed by a blank flyleaf with Latin proverbs and distichs recto and verso and by the manuscript portion and a further, soiled flyleaf ‘the pylgremage of the sowle’ (STC 6473, 1483; the final leaf extremely soiled as if long unbound); and Eneydos (STC 24796, 1490?).

History

Origin: s. xv2 ; England

Provenance and Acquisition

Edward Bullyn’ eleven times, in whole or part; ‘Roberd Cranewelle’; and the pen-trial ‘A lytle wt honeste ys good’ (‘Parvus cato’, sig. d [iv]v, the blank final leaf; all s. xv/xvi).

Castell owith this book’, the opening of an incomplete ownership verse; ‘Castell liber’ (Eneydos, sig. [L vii]v, above Caxton’s device; s. xvi1); much written over and with further notes, some of s. xviii.

In the upper margin, ‘Anno 1553’ and in a different hand ‘Iemes Leonard owith this boke’ (also s. xvi); at the page foot, s. xvii or xviii, ‘Thom. Tanner’ and some pen-trials, early s. xvi (Eneydos, sig. B i).

The monogram ‘WS’, surmounted by a Greek cross and the signature ‘Wylliam sinvnsun/sinonsun’ twice; at the page foot a cancelled signature of ‘—— Danner’ (fol. 71, the flyleaf between the MS and ‘pylgremage’, s. xviii).

A smudged signature (Eneydos, sig. [C v], upper margin).

Sarah Pickring’ (fol. 1, the outer margin; s. xviii); another partial signature cut off at foot of fol. 2; ‘Memorandum xxiij die Septembris’ (fol. 4v, partly repeated; s. xvi in.).

The old shelfmarks [psi].100, cancelled with ‘Arch. A.50’ added (the front pastedown).

‘Liber Collegii Sancti Joannis Baptistae Oxon Ex Legato N Crynes A.M. Ejusdem olim Socii 1745’ (‘Parvus Cato’, sig. a ij).

Record Sources

Ralph Hanna, A descriptive catalogue of the western medieval manuscripts of St. John's College, Oxford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) with correction to a typographic error in transcription.

Availability

For enquiries relating to this manuscript please contact St John's College Library.

Digital Images

Digital Bodleian (full digital facsimile)

Bibliography

    Carleton Brown and Rossell Hope Robbins, Index of Middle English Verse (New York, 1943); Robbins and John Cutler (eds.) Supplement (Lexington, Ken., 1965).
    Henry Noble MacCracken (ed.), The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, Part 1, Early English Text Society, ES 107 (1911).

Funding of Cataloguing

Conversion of the printed catalogue to TEI funded by the Thompson Family Charitable Trust

Last Substantive Revision

2022-02: First online publication

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