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Brasenose College MS. 9

Contents

Language(s): Middle English

Pseudo-Bonaventura, Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ (translated by Nicholas Love)

Written by "Scribe Δ"; dialect is South Buckinghamshire.

Physical Description

Form: codex
Support: Parchment
Extent: 149 leaves [+ 2 front flyleaves, 1 back flyleaf]
Dimensions (leaf): 265 × 191 mm.

Collation

Catchwords, some in decorative cartouches.

Layout

Brown ink, single column, 32 lines, marginalia, running titles and words for emphasis in red. Written space 180 × 112 mm.

Decoration

Decorative initials in red and blue ink.

full illuminated borders on leaves 5r, 7v, 31r, 43r, 63r, 118v.

Binding

17th century calf over boards; gold stamped centrepiece; gold tooled fillets towards outer edges of boards; cloth ties; chain staple mark on upper board edge; very fragile, upper board detached.

History

Origin: c.1410 ; England

Provenance and Acquisition

Initials of Love in gold letters on first page. Possibly written at or for the Priory of Mount Grace, Yorkshire (see Alexander & Temple). Others think it may have been a stationer's copy (see: David J. Falls, Nicholas Love's Mirror and Late Medieval Devotio-Literary Culture : Theological Politics and Devotional Practice in Fifteenth-century England. 2016).

There appear to be 2 records of ownership on leaf 2: "Opera venarabilis doctoris Bonaventure de vita christi sanctissima Rich = Maria Donbyll [Domby?]", C16?

Beneath in later hand: "Liber Aulae Regiae et Collegij de Brasen-nose ex dono ornatissimi viri Ricardi Ruerdon in medicina doctoris et comitat. Lane oriundi AD 1662".

Record Sources

Description by Sophie Floate. Previously described in H. O. Coxe, Catalogus codicum mss. qui in collegiis aulisque oxoniensibus hodie adservantur, II (1852) [sections separately paginated], Brasenose, p. 2

Bibliography

    Love, Nicholas, and L. F. Powell. The Mirrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ. London ; Edinburgh: H. Frowde, 1908.
    Love, Nicholas, and Michael G. Sargent. Nicholas Love's Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ : A Critical Edition Based on Cambridge University Library Additional MSS 6578 and 6686. New York ; London: Garland, 1992. Garland Medieval Texts ; V.18, pp. lxxviii-ix.
    Alexander & Temple, no. 430.
    Rand, Kari Anne, ed. Index of Middle English Prose: Index to Volumes I to XX. Boydell & Brewer, 2014
    . Jeremy J. Smith (2017) The Afterlives of Nicholas Love, Studia Neophilologica, 89:sup1, 59-74.
    Description by Ryan Perry from microfilm - http://www.qub.ac.uk/geographies-of-orthodoxy/resources/?section=corpus&id=10

Abbreviations

View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.

Last Substantive Revision

2023: First online publication.