MS. Bodl. 768

Provenance and Acquisition

Salisbury, Wiltshire, Cathedral church of St Mary the Virgin: (MLGB3); see medieval manuscripts removed from Sherborne in 1078(?)

A Salisbury scribe (s. xii) wrote the letters 'D.M.' as a 'nota bene' sign in the margins of Aberdeen UL 216, MS. Bodl. 392, MS. Bodl. 444 (fols. 1-27), MS. Bodl. 756, MS. Bodl. 765, MS. Bodl. 768, MS. Bodl. 835, MS. Fell 1, MS. Fell 4, MS. Rawl. C. 723, Salisbury Cathedral, MSS. 10, 24, 25, 37, 67, 78, 88, 106, 128, 129, 135, 140, 154, 159, 165 (MLGB3); see Teresa Webber, Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury Cathedral c. 1075-c. 1125 (1992), pp. 132-139

Webber (p. 58) observes that 'Salisbury produced the earliest or one of the earliest extant English copies of [...] several opuscula of Ambrose (Oxford, Bodl. Libr., MSS Bodley 698, 768 and 835)'. Webber argues (p. 51 and fn 25) that the selection of texts by Ambrose in MS. Bodley 768, and several other manuscripts, 'appears to be peculiar to English manuscripts' and 'may represent the contents of a common imported exemplar'. This corpus of Ambrose texts is made up of De virginibus, De viduis, De virginitate, Exhortatio virginitatis and De lapsu virginis consecratae

'Liber Bibliothecae Saresburiensis 5' (s. xvii): No. 5 in a set of 7 numbered manuscripts from Salisbury (no. 1 has not been identified). The other 6 manuscripts are: No. 2: MS. Bodl. 756, No. 3: MS. Bodl. 698, No. 4: MS. Bodl. 765, No. 6: MS. Bodl. 516, No. 7: MS. Bodl. 835

Salisbury Cathedral library was raided in the English Civil War, and this manuscript was probably given (as part of the set of 7 manuscripts) to the Bodleian during or soon after the war, but it is not found in Bodleian lists until about 1655