MS. Don. e. 128

Summary Catalogue no.: Not in SC (late accession)

(fol. iii recto-verso)

Numbered list of contents.

(fols. 1–256)

Letters (nos. 1–47 in the collection of 123)

Rubric: Epistola Damasi pape ad hieronimum presbiterum

Incipit: Dilecto in christo filio hieronimo Damasus papa. Dormientem te

(Bernard Lambert, Bibliotheca Hieronymiana manuscripta: la tradition manuscrite des oeuvres de Saint Jérôme (Instrumenta patristica, 4: Steenbrugis, 1969), no. 35, etc.).

Language(s): Latin

Physical Description

Secundo Folio: comune

Form: codex

Support: parchment

Extent: ii (paper) + I (original parchment) + 256 + I (original(?) parchment), + iii (paper).

Dimensions (leaf): 175 × 120 mm.

Dimensions (ruled): 120 × 80 mm.

Foliation: Foliated in modern pencil, i-iii, 1–260.

Collation

In quires of eight leaves: I-XXXIII⁸ (fols. 1–256); quires XIV-XV should come between VII and VIII; catchwords throughout, except the last quire, to the right-hand side of the lower margin; leaf signatures of the type 'ai'-'aiiij' in the first 25 quires only: '+', a-f, j-o, g-h, p-z, '[tironian] &'.

Layout

Frame ruled in brown crayon. 20 or 21 lines of text per page.

Hand(s)

Written by Robert Flemmyng (see under Provenance) in Italian humanistic script

Decoration

Headings in pink.

One four-line 'puzzle' initial in red and blue to the first initial (very similar to that in Oxford, St. John's College, MS. 5, also owned by Flemmyng); plain blue two-line initials to subsequent letters.

Binding

Sewn on five(?) cords, and bound in 18th(?)-century speckled brown polished leather over pasteboards, the covers undecorated; the spine tooled in gilt with foliate designs, and with a red and a green leather titlepiece, tooled in gilt, respectively, 'EPISTLÆ | SCTI | HIERONYMI' and 'VOL: I | M. S.'; marbled endpapers; the joints cracked.

History

Origin: 15th century, c. 1450–1460 (?) ; English

Provenance and Acquisition

Copied, probably in England, in humanistic script by Robert Flemmyng, one of the first English scholars to learn to write 'humanistic' script, and nephew of the founder of Lincoln College; perhaps given by him to Lincoln College after 1474 (since it does not appear in the Lincoln catalogue of that date) and later alienated.

The set of two or three volumes was presumably still together when the present spine-title was lettered in the 18th(?) century.

Thomas Weld of Lulworth castle : with his bookplate; for the later history of the Weld manuscripts see Eric George Millar, The Luttrell Psalter: two plates in colour and one hundred and eighty-three in monochrome from the Additional manuscript 42130 in the British Museum (London, 1932), 7–8.

Bought by the Bodleian through Sotheby's by private treaty, in memory of R. W. Hunt, and paid for with the help of donations from his friends, 1980.

Record Sources

Typescript description by Peter Kidd, late 1990s.

Abbreviations

View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.

Last Substantive Revision

2017-07-01: First online publication.

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