Lincoln College MS. Lat. 27
Miscellanea theologica; England (Sempringham), s. xii in. (V); s. xii2/3 (II); s. xii3/4 (I, VI); s. xii ex. (III, IV)
Contents
Physical Description
Collation
Binding
A mid-fifteenth-century binding—after 1462, the date on an endleaf—of quarter-sawn oak boards, cushion-bevelled, overhanging the text-block on all sides, and covered with whittawed skin. This cover has been patched with reverse skin where it has worn away or been torn, including on the spine; but it has not been rebacked. Sewn on five double whittawed thongs, raised at the spine. Both pastedowns are lifted, revealing the V-lacing arrangement of the top and bottom braces with the centre thong taken straight, all pegged. The supports are breaking where the quires were removed towards the centre of the volume; the fact of the gap here rather suggests that this is the original sewing. Endbands are structural and of blue and undyed thread, around an alum-tawed leather core, woven with three beads and worked through the covering of both head- and tailcaps. There is no use of red stain. Striations at the middle of the fore-edge of both boards are tying-up marks. There are in addition the grooves left in the upper board by paired fore-edge clasps. Their material is unknown, but they were each secured by two nails and fastened not to catch-plates, for which there is no evidence, but apparently to pins on the centre line of the lower board; these are sawn off but the metal remains visible. There are the marks of two chaining stations: it is probably the medieval staple which was attached at the foot of the fore-edge on the upper board; this staple was rectangular with two nail holes. The impress and nail holes of the usual early-modern College clip are at the fore-edge of the lower board towards the head. On the back cover north of centre is an oblong arrangement of eight nail-holes revealing the former position of the title-piece, which would have been fixed beneath a sheet of horn by a latten frame. The space bounded by the nail holes is 30 × 105 mm. The parchment title-piece is now pasted to fol. 7r (see Labels and marks); it is cut down, measuring 17 × 90 mm. Pastedowns and rear flyleaf are cut-down documents of the fifteenth century (two dated 1461 and 1462) from the diocese of Lincoln (see above), raising the likelihood that the binding was done for Robert Flemming, dean of Lincoln from 1452 until his death in 1483.
Labels and marks: The medieval title-piece from the back board is now pasted at the foot of fol. 7r. In the secondary Textura hand it reads, ‘Expositio Bernardi super Missus | est gabriel cum aliis contentis ex dono | Magistri Roberti Flemmyng’ Decani lincoln’’. Centred at the top of the same page is the James number ‘27’ written in Gerard Langbaine’s brown ink. The early-modern shelf-mark, ‘E. 47. 1’ is on fol. [ii]r, with the unidentified mark above it, ‘N.59.’ The College bookplate of 1703 is affixed at the centre of what was the front pastedown, now lifted. Beneath it is pencilled the Bodleian shelf-mark: ‘MS. Linc. Coll. (e) Lat. 27’. On the spine, vestiges of two square paper labels: at the head, a printed arabic numeral 2[[7]]; at the tail, the pale blue Bodleian label with printed modern shelf-mark.
History
Provenance and Acquisition
Parts VI and perhaps III were produced at Sempringham priory in Lincolnshire, part I was sent there. The other parts could have originated elsewhere; indeed, part V probably predates the foundation of the priory in 1131. The absence of a common annotating hand may suggest that the pieces had had a separate life for some time. They were brought together, not yet in the present form, by the late twelfth century, perhaps the 1190s, the approximate time of the contents list on 6v. This list reveals that the Statius and Macrobius (items 11–12) were substitutions for ‘De patribus ueteris testamenti’ (probably Isidore, De ortu et obitu patrum) and ‘Ymago mundi, secundum Henricum de Huntend’’ (probably the Imago mundi of Honorius Augustodunensis, sometimes called ‘Henricus’ and conflated here with the author Henry of Huntingdon, a canon of Lincoln whom Gilbert of Sempringham would have known). The two replacement texts, Statius and Macrobius, would have brought the resulting volume more into the thirteenth-century schoolroom. But it cannot be known if they were brought in so early: writing at the head of the first page of the Macrobius (85r) would rather suggest that this had been a separate quire for some time. The hand which crossed out the two original entries in the contents list and made an entry for the new ones is a sixteenth-century italic.
The volume came to Lincoln College from the bequest of Robert Flemming (1416–1483), dean of Lincoln, as is stated by the medieval title-piece (see Labels and marks). It arrived by bequest in 1483, for it is not found in the library inventory of 1474. Was this volume acquired by Flemming in Lincolnshire? He never held a prebend that included Sempringham, but, as dean of the cathedral, his connections in the diocese ran deep: this volume might have been gift or loan from the canons, such as the one he had had from the Augustinians of Worksop (Lincoln College MS. Lat. 63). It was apparently Flemming who had the pieces bound up, or rebound. The endleaves are documents from the diocese of Lincoln dating from his time, the mid-fifteenth century. The sewing, though, is original, from the end of the twelfth century, for the loss of material towards the centre has left a gap between the quires. It is not impossible that it was Flemming who added the Statius and Macrobius at the rebinding, although it is not likely.
In Oxford, Balliol College, MS 33 (s. xivmed), a copy of William of Nottingham’s commentary on the Vnum ex quattuor of Clement of Lanthony, is a note by the Oxford theologian Thomas Gascoigne (1404–1458) on Maria Salome: ‘Opinio vulgi et contra opus prioris Kirkam’ (340v). Roger Mynors (Balliol, 24) understood that Gascoigne’s knowledge of Maurice of Kirkham’s work derived from our manuscript. However, our volume was only received at Lincoln College after the death of Robert Flemming in 1483, so Gascoigne, who died in 1458 when Flemming was in Italy, could not have seen this copy. It may also be noted that our manuscript does not contain Gascoigne’s hand or any of his familiar marks.
Booklists: James, Ecloga, no. 27; CMA 1/2. 1375.
Lincoln College MS. Lat. 27 - I
Contents
Language(s): Latin
Ed. C. J. Mews & A. Ijäs, Salome and the Kin of Jesus (Toronto 2024), 1–25, with discusison at pp. cxvii–cxxiv; M. R. James, ‘The Salomites’, JTS 35 (1934) 287–97; Naydenova-Slade & Park, ‘The earliest Holy Kinship image’, 103–4; Sharpe, Latin Writers, 375. This is the unique copy of the short version. The long version in Bodl. MS Hatton 92 (SC 4073) comprises a dedicatory letter to Gilbert of Sempringham and five chapters on the kin of Jesus with a closing admonition; it also includes an epistle on the same subject addressed to Roger of Pont l’Evêque (d. 1181), archbishop of York, and an exchange of complimentary verses between the author and the archbishop. There was a copy at York minster among the books left by the canon John Newton (d. 1414) (Willoughby & Ramsay, Cathedrals, SC172. 15d: ‘cum aliis tractatibus . . . Mauricii de sancta Salome in vno volumine pro lectura in capitulo’).
The status of this piece merits some speculation, since the manuscript has a provenance from Sempringham, and the tract was addressed to St Gilbert of Sempringham by the author. The work seeks to counter the widespread notion that Salome (properly the mother of James and John) was a man and the third husband of St Anne. The quire is constituted in a very unusual way: two bifolia and a singleton in a bifoliate wrapper. The ordering of the principal two bifolia is reversed, and what is now fols. 3r–4v have the start of the text and 1r–2r have the end. Fol. 5r supplies a portion from the middle that was missed in the copying: in the margin against the last line is a signe-de-renvoi in the form of a quatrefoil, which connects to the head of the continuation on what is now fol. 1r. There were therefore two blank pages, 2v (the original blank last verso) and 5v (the back of the added leaf), both of which came to be filled with other contents (items 2 and 3). The present disordering occurred at a rebinding, very probably the earlier one when Statius and Macrobius were added and Isidore and the Imago mundi of Honorius Augustodunensis were taken out (see contents list at 6v). In other words, the text was written on these bifoliate schedulae, from the recto of the first leaf through to the verso of the second, then continued like that on to the next bifolium, going one after the other, and not across a gathered quire in the normal way. These leaves rather resemble epistolary briefs (albeit the valedictory at the end is not typical for treatises otherwise written in epistolary form). It is true that these are poor pages in terms of script, textual presentation, and parchment, but in this they may embody a spirit of conspicuous thrift—something that would have appealed to the personal austerity of both men. There is a good possibility that these were the very leaves that Maurice sent from Kirkham to Sempringham.
The following item is in a different hand.
An anonymous and apparently unique poem written against the fantastical stories ( fabellas ) of the Nauigatio S. Brendani (which is itself contained in this volume, item 19): ed. P. Meyer, ‘Satire en vers rythmiques sur la légende de Saint Brendan’, Romania 31 (1902), 376–9, at 378–9; ed. C. Plummer, Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae, 2 tom. (Oxford 1910), 2. 293–4; ed. D. Howlett, ‘A verse critique of the Brendan legend’, BLR 14/2 (1992), 125–35, at 125–6; and again in his The English Origins of Old French Literature (Dublin 1996), 112–18; also discussed briefly by G. Orlandi & R. Guglielmetti, Navigatio sancti Brendani: alla scoperta dei segreti meravigliosi del mondo (Florence 2014), ccxxv–ccxxvi, confirming the poem’s unique status in the transmission of the Nauigatio. The poem is poorly arranged on the page, verses 1–32 are written with one verse per line down the page to the foot, then verses 33–45, not arranged in verse lines, are continued in available space to the right, beginning halfway down; the concluding verses 42–52 are then given at the head of the page to the right, arranged two lines per verse, divided at the caesura.
The following item is in a different hand.
A table of numbers, ordinals and numerical adverbs.
The following item is in a different hand so is considered here separately, albeit it is related to item 3 by subject matter.
A short treatise on numerals.
Fol. 6v. A table of contents written at the end of the twelfth century, beneath an ex libris inscription in another hand, since erased but reading ‘Liber Canonicorum Sancte Marie de Semlingham’. ‘Ista continentur in hoc uolumine. | Exposicio bernardi . Super missus est Gabriel. | Epistola eiusdem ad henricum . Senonensium | archiepiscopum. | Epistola eiusdem ad .P. cardinalem Rom(anum). | Libellus qui appellatur Formula honeste uite. | Quidam tractatus de patribus ueteris testamenti. | Ymago mundi . secundum henricum de huntend’. \Statii Achilleis cum glosis. | macrob in somnia scipionis./ \Liber Merlini prophete. | Vita Sancti Brandani (sic) abbatis. | Liber qui appellatur sproht/.’ The original list refers therefore only to fols. 1–61, 181–207, showing that there was some rearrangement of material and replacement of the fifth and sixth items in this list with items 9 and 10 below. The original manuscript was more tightly focused on theological material. The final three items in this list are additions in another, but similar hand. The word ‘sproht’ is cryptic.
Physical Description
Layout
Written space of 145–56 × 95–100 mm. Ruled very faintly in lead for between 34 and 38 long lines, no bounding rules. Written above top-line. Each bifolium is pricked separately in inner and outer margins with the point of a knife.
Hand(s)
The principal hand here is romanesque at small size, well formed and consistent, albeit wavering slightly on the line. Ampersand is regular but Tironian et is also found, uncrossed and with flicked-up foot; abbreviations are frequent and of the common sort. Punctuation is by low point for minor pauses, punctus elevatus for clauses, and low point and following majuscule for sententiae. Ink is black. The same hand provided the rubricated headings in the margins for the names of authors cited in the text, as well as, twice, ‘Auctor’ (1v, 2r). Whether this hand is that of the author, Maurice of Kirkham, depends upon a judgement of the status of these pages. Mews & Ijäs, Salome, cxxii–cxxiii, found the hand to bear resemblance to that titling the marginal drawings of St Anne and her two husbands (Joachim and Cleophas, but not Salome) in BL MS Arundel 36, a twelfth-century manuscript produced at Kirkham and possibly under the supervision of Maurice of Kirkham (as discussed by Naydenova-Slade & Park, ‘Earliest Holy Kinship image’, 99–109). But in spite of these leading connections, the hands are not the same, and the one in our manuscript cannot be tied definitively to Maurice.
The other hands writing in spare space in this part are contemporary and similar to the main hand, especially that of item 2, which is discrepant only in small details. Items 3 and 4 are written in glossing scripts and a browner ink.
Decoration
Decoration is restricted to plain carmine initials, which are used to mark the start of new sententiae. The primary initial R (3r) is a little larger, three lines high and rising above the headline, its oblique limb extended into a fleuron. There is a two-line red initial Q for the new text on 6r.
The new text on 5v uses red and green inks alternately for the words of the headings, and red ink for each initial in the table.
History
Lincoln College MS. Lat. 27 - II
Contents
Language(s): Latin
SBO 4. 13–46; Stegmüller Bibl. 1726. J. Leclercq (SBO 4. 6, 9) identifies our manuscript as one of the three oldest witnesses to the recensio breuis , with Bodl. MS Laud Misc. 344 (SC 1275) (Durham cathedral, s. xiiin) and Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 118 (Bury St Edmunds abbey, s. xii2). Like these, ours contains hom. 1–3, but in a defective way which elides a sentence towards the end of the last chapter of hom. 1 with the second sentence of c. 2 of hom. 2, something that might plausibly have happened by eyeskip on the word ‘humilitas’ across an opening. The lacuna is supplied by a hand of the early thirteenth century on an inserted bifolium, fols. 28–29. In the rubric on 7r, Bernard is referred to as abbot of Clairvaux rather than as saint, which opens the possibility that the manuscript was copied before his canonization in 1174.
SBO 7. 100–131; dated by Leclercq to c. 1127/8. In the same hand as the previous item.
SBO 7. 66–9; dated by Leclercq to summer 1126.
Fol. 53r. The last two lines and all of the verso are blank.
Physical Description
Layout
Ruled in plummet for 23 long lines, with a written space of 148–50 × 88–90 mm. Vertical bounding lines are single and run to the edges; horizontals run to the edges at ll. 1–2, 4–5 and 19–20, 22–3. Written above top-line. No visible prickings.
Hand(s)
An English romanesque bookhand, well spaced and of consistent style. The strokes have weight but there is little sign of any lateral compression. Descenders are extended at the foot of the page and given decorative flourish. Abbreviations are regular and of the common sort. The common mark of suspension curls back strongly. Tironian nota for et is uncrossed. Punctuation is by punctus elevatus , with low point and following majuscule for sententiae. Ink is black. Rubrication is by the scribe.
Decoration
An attractive major initial S, of six-line height, a plain blue lombard with green arabesques to the interior.
The initial M on the same page is of five-line height and plain red, so too the L on 20v, D on 30v (four-line but decorated on the broad strokes with patterns in reserve), and H on 40v. Others are smaller, plain red of two lines, but more finely wrought are the initials on 35r (a green C with red and yellow arabesques and a yellow Q with red and green) and 35v–36r (a V and P, green with red arabesques and red with green, each with patterned shafts in reserve).
(Space was left for others on 37v, 51r.)
History
Lincoln College MS. Lat. 27 - III
Contents
Language(s): Latin
Our text is continuous without chapter headings. The text breaks at the foot of 58r (c. 7, ‘ne suspiciose & timide manum’) and is concluded by a different hand on a half-sized inserted bifolium, fols. 57v+60r. The supplied text was written in long lines across this leaf before it was bound in, so that text is hidden at the spine fold.
Two short passages on the monastic life. (1) An excerpt from Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos (CPL 283), here from the tract on Ps. 83, starting at c. 4 and breaking off before the end of the chapter. (2) An excerpt from Anselm’s Epistola ad Lanzonem nouitium (ep. 37): SAO 3. 144–8; here omitting the contextual clauses of greeting from the opening, as in BL MS Royal 6 B. XI, fol. 123r, and others.
Fol. 61r. The first three lines are written on, the rest of the page is blank. The following item was added on the blank verso by a late twelfth-century hand.
Notes on the calendar and leap years: unpr. and apparently unique.
Physical Description
Layout
Ruled in lead point for 30 long lines, written space of 138–40 × 90–92 mm. Vertical bounding lines are single and run to the edges; horizontals run to the edges at ll. 1–2 and 30. Written above top-line. No visible prickings.
Hand(s)
Two scribes, writing romanesque bookhands, the first very regular and with good line discipline, the bowls large in respect of ascender and descender height; the second, from 56r l. 4, is less consistent, a little sharper with a leftwards lean. The second scribe abbreviates more, common suspensions. Ampersand is found with uncrossed Tironian nota. Punctuation is by punctus for minor puases, punctus versus for major, and punctus with following majuscule for sententiae, Rubrication only for the titulus, which was done by the first hand. The hand of the supply leaf is roughly coeval. Two further hands for the two long excerpts of item 9, both rather rougher, the second of glossing size. Punctus versus for minor medial pauses, punctus elevatus for major medial pauses, and punctus for the end of a sentence. Ink throughout is very dark brown.
Decoration
A space was left blank for a three-line major initial.
Other initials are plain red square capitals of two lines: 54r (unfulfilled), 54v, 55r, 55v (unfulfilled). Only a small space left by the subsidiary hand on 58v, intending the initial I to extend in the margin.
History
Lincoln College MS. Lat. 27 - IV
Contents
Language(s): Latin
Here going with a commentary and scholia. The text was first printed Venice 1472 (Goff S695), &c.; ed. H. W. Garrod, OCT (1906); ed. O. A. W. Dilke (Cambridge 1954). The medieval transmission and accessus traditions are discussed and edited by P. M. Clogan, The Medieval Achilleid of Statius: Edited with Introduction, Variant Readings, and Glosses (Leiden 1968); our manuscript was consulted for the edition, but is not one of the primary manuscripts. For central discussion, see H. Anderson, The Manuscripts of Statius, 3 vols (Arlington, VA, 2009), with detail on our manuscript at 1. 289–90. The commentary here is the oldest witness to the so-called Tradition A, dating from the eleventh or twelfth century and originating probably in northern France. The notes are further assigned by Anderson to Group 3xxii (CTC 13 (2020), 255–7, and MSS of Statius, 2. 122). Bk II begins on 66r, III on 70r, IV on 75v, V on 81v. The text breaks at the last page and the final ten lines of the work have been supplied at the foot of fol. 84v by a fifteenth-century hand: doubtless there was originally an added singleton here that became detached.
Physical Description
Layout
Ruled faintly in lead for initially 30 or 31 long text lines, then 23 or 24, the gloss interlineated. Written space variable but roughly 140–50 × 85 mm. Written above top-line. Lineation for the first pages of text is cramped, leaving little space for the glossing; spacing improves from 65r. Marginal apparatus is arranged in unruled triangles.
The preface is given in two columns of 43 lines, with an intercolumnar space of 6 mm. Horizontal bounding rules are singles and run to the edges; vertical rules are doubled at 5 mm distance. Beginning in Q2, at the end of each line at the juncture of the horizontal and vertical rule, a dot of black ink is placed to help navigation between the text line and the gloss. Paired prickings by awl at the outer edge, mostly ploughed away in QQ2–3.
Hand(s)
One text-hand throughout, a small, smart protogothic bookhand of squarish basis, written during the last two decades of the twelfth century. The letters have density from a slant nib: bows are breaking but not biting, The final minim of m, n, and i- longa are extended in a strikingly long inward-turning hairline. Tironian notae for est and et are found, the latter made with a crossbar but not yet with elaboration of the headstroke or foot. The common mark of abbreviation is flat. Deletion is by subpunction. Punctuation is by punctus versus for minor pauses and non-restrictive clauses and low point for major. Ink is black. The start of a new book is distinguished by an initial. One or sometimes two descenders on the last line are extended into the lower margin and given a fleuron to terminate. Alphabetical guide-letters link the notes to the text. Some rhetorical tituli are given in red. There are rubricated headings in the margin (e.g. ‘Incipit liber tertius’) done seemingly not by the main hand.
Decoration
The decorative effect of the pages is very striking and is produced by the dense use of two colours, red and green. Initials are lombards, usually red with green arabesques to the interior, sometimes reversed: those on 63r for the start of the text proper are of four and three text lines in height with patterning on the shaft in reserve. The comment is given in the margins in the decorative arrangement of an inverted triangle with fleurons at the top left-hand corner, sometimes from both sides uniting in a central fleur-de-lys. There is much pointing of the text with red and green.
Diagrams form part of the commentary: for example, at the foot of 71r is a zodiac, showing the orbits of the sun and moon about the earth, with two notes: ‘Zodiacus quia latine dicitur signifer circulus est in spera celesti per obliquum dispositus continens .xii. signa . . .’ and ‘Luna quia breuiorem habet circulum et terre uicinior est . . .’
A wyvern at the foot of 62v is a jeu d’esprit: it takes the width of col. a, outlined in red with green infilling, a thick green tongue extended towards the opposite recto, where the lower margin is filled with filligree like an ostrich plume arrayed horizontally, of the same two colours.
History
Lincoln College MS. Lat. 27 - V
Contents
Language(s): Latin
Fol. 85r. At the head of the first page is ‘Folium .j.’ in a pale ink and ‘Iste quaternus continet Macrobium’, both s. xiv. Above the latter, ‘Sancti spiritus assit nobis gracia’, s. xv2. There is also an erasure here.
Ed. L. von Jan (Quedlinburg/Leipzig 1848); ed. J. Willis, Teubner (19702); Bk I, ed. M. Regali (Pisa 1983); A. Hüttig, Macrobius im Mittelalter: ein Beitrag zur Rezeptionsgeschichte der Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis (Frankfurt am Main 1990). As often, the work is prefaced by the text of Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis (i.e. De re publica VI 9–29; ed. K. Ziegler, Teubner (1969), 126–36).
According to the table of contents on 6v, this component replaces an original treatise ‘Ymago mundi secundum henricum de huntend’’, which was probably the Imago mundi of Honorius Augustodunensis, sometimes called ‘Henricus’ in early manuscripts, including three from Lincoln, and confused here with Henry of Huntingdon (as is suggested by Mews & Ijäs, Salome, cxix).
The following item was added on the blank verso by a late twelfth-century hand.
This copy breaks at the end of § 7.
Physical Description
Collation
Layout
Ruled in dry point on the hair-side for 21 long lines, written space of 120–30 × 80–85 mm. Bounding rules are single and pass to the edges. Written above top-line. No visible prickings.
Hand(s)
A fine romanesque hand of the early twelfth century, the letters separate and consistent with a delicate sharpness to the serif that sometimes tends to a hairline. Tironian nota for est is found, and a stylish ampersand, its arm sweeping below the line; use of e-caudata is routine. Abbreviations are restrained and of the common sort. Majuscules derived from Rustic capitals for the first and final words. Punctuation by low point. Ink is black.
Decoration
A plain presentation with some modest decoration: a plain green capital C of four lines for the major initial.
On 90v a tall initial I is done in blue ink with red hairline flourishing at the outer edge. There is no rubrication.
The canonical Macrobian diagrams are present: the Globus terre (138r), that showing the attraction of weights to earth (143r, lacking the vertical axis), the zonal diagram (153v), and the celestial-terrestrial zonal diagram (157r).
There is also the world map (illustrating Bk 2.9.7–8) of the received type, still with the inscription written in four places around the perimeter of the circle, ‘Refusio oceani ab occidente in septentrionalem’, etc. The division is into five zones: the temperate southern zone is labelled ‘Temperata antipodum’; the Orcadas are marked, and the Caspian Sea, and ‘temperata nostra’. (For more on this in general, see A. Hiatt, ‘The map of Macrobius before 1100’, Imago Mundi 59 (2007) 149–76.)
History
Lincoln College MS. Lat. 27 - VI
Contents
Language(s): Latin
The latter part of the text, in a version closest to Redaction IV, ed. T. Silverstein (London 1935), 220–21; the text printed in PL 94. 501–502, ends in a way that is closer to Redaction V (ed. Silverstein, 202). Mews & Ijäs (Salome, p. cxix) state that this portion is copied in the same hand as the texts of St Bernard, making a case for the components’ disorderment in the manuscript. But while they are similar, the hands are not the same; the present one is slightly later in date.
Unpr. and apparently unique.
A prose summary of the trinubium hypothesis, deriving from Haimo of Auxerre’s Epitome, in the so-called recension 2b: ed. Mews & Ijäs, Salome, pp. lxxxvii–lxxxviii, listing seven manuscripts, including ours. This recension eliminates all reference to Esmeria and greatly reduces the final extended eulogy of Mary’s consecrated womb. Ours omits the final sentence. It is followed by the same prose text about the husbands of St Anne that provoked Maurice to write the Contra Salomitas, and then another about the question as to whether Christ loved John or Peter more, drawn from Augustine, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus, tract. 124 (ed. R. Willems, CCSL 36 (1954), 680–88).
Often circulating separately, here without the prologue: ed. A. Griscom (London 1929), 383–97; ed. E. Faral, La Légende arturienne (Paris 1929), 3. 186–203 [§§ 106–118 in Faral’s text]; ed. M. D. Reeve & trans. N. Wright, The History of the Kings of Britain: An Edition and Translation of De gestis Britonum (Historia regum Britanniae) (Woodbridge 2007), 145–59. Our copy breaks in § 116 (Reeve & Wright edn, 155, l. 2).
This short tract might be influenced by pseudo-Bede, De officiis (PL 94. 537A), about the litany.
A short tract on the elements: unpr.
Unpr.; not in Sharpe, Latin Writers; discussed in précis by Mews & Ijäs, Salome, cxxi–cxxii. Gilbert died in 1189, and this copy would date from his lifetime.
Fol. 208r. Six lines of verse in a small glossing hand of the late twelfth century: ‘Terram nullus aret in qua spes seminis aret — ad quia pignus alis o dedale quod caret alis’ (WIC 19237, this manuscript only). Followed by one further line: ‘Dic pro uase batum . proprio pro nomine batum’. This on a blank flyleaf that was ruled lightly for two columns.
Fols. 208v–209r are blank.
Fol. 209v. A cut-down leaf with three lines of the end of an agreement with the subscription of the notary public John Wyllesford, clerk of the diocese of Lincoln, ‘month and year aforesaid’; the hand is the same throughout (s. xvmed).
Fol. 210r. Inverted, the reply dated 6 April 1462 of Richard Owre, rector of Old Somerby in Lincolnshire (‘Summerby iuxta Grantham’), to the mandate of the vicar general of Lincoln preserved on the verso. Written in a different hand (small, informal) to the more usual category of Secretary used by diocesan clerks (as found overleaf), suggesting it is the personal hand of the rector.
Fol. 210v. A mandate of the vicar general (‘Officialis’) of Lincoln to the rural dean of Grantham and the rector of Old Somerby (as above), dated 11 M[[arch]] 1461 (i.e. 1462).
Physical Description
Layout
Ruled faintly in lead for 24 long lines, written space of 155–60 × 100–105 mm. Horizontal rules pass to the edges at the top two lines and the last. Written above top-line. Prickings are visible in the outer margin, each quire pricked by awl after folding. In the second quire these were redone, so there are two sets.
Hand(s)
Two collaborating scribes of probably the third quarter of the twelfth century, working in stints, both writing protogothic script showing lateral alignment but no breaking of bows. The first hand is jauntier, more angled and ‘advanced’, with a form of g that puts out an oblique hairline to close off the lower bowl and extend it below the previous letter. Tironian et is usual, uncrossed but with flexed headstroke and a flick at the foot; ampersand occurs occasionally. Hand B takes over on 187r at the end of l. 5 and goes to the foot of 187v, and intermittently to 207r, l. 17, ‘consecramus’. It is less angular in its styling with a simplified Tironian et and two-bowl g; ampersand occurs rather more than in Hand A’s stints. Punctuation in both hands is by low point for comma, puntus elevatus for a pause with more weight, and low point with following majuscule for sententiae. Ink throughout is black.
Decoration
A plain production, there are enlarged lombardic majuscules in red ink for first initials.
The initial S on 187v is given arabesques; this is in the portion done by Hand B, which raises the likelihood that the scribe was also responsible for the decoration of his own part.
There is also rubrication and red stroking of initial letters.
Drawings in red in the margins of the Nauigatio Brendani respond whimsically to the contents: for example, a sheep and lamb on 191v next to the episode of the island of snow-white sheep; three birds stand next to the episode of the island of birds on 192v. There is a tonsured monk on 191r, and on the facing verso a shaggy, hook-nosed demon pointing to a line mentioning ‘opus diaboli’.
History
Additional Information
Record Sources
Digital Images
Digital Bodleian (full digital facsimile)
Bibliography
Abbreviations
View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.
Last Substantive Revision
2025-08: New description by James Willoughby.
Data
The TEI-XML file for this record can be viewed in a GitHub repository.
Tabular data derived from the TEI-XML files is available in a GitHub repository.