MS. Douce 108

Summary Catalogue no.: 21682

John Mirk, Festial

Containing forty-four sermons and prologue

The signatures show breaks after fols 174, 190, 204, 282, but the book does not seem to be imperfect

Incomplete

Language(s): Middle English

Physical Description

Form: codex

Support: paper

Extent: iv + 358 pages. Contains two initial fly-leaves plus 354 numbered pages, pp. 351-354 being the end fly-leaves. The pages really amount to 358, since pages 203 and 281 are triplicated (Wakelin, 'The manuscripts of John Mirk's Festial' (1967) p. 105)

Dimensions (binding): 8.75 × 6.125 in.

Condition

Fol. 1 is injured. There is a hole burned in pages 2-3 and a 15th-century hand has rewritten the singed words at the edges (Daniel Wakelin, Designing English (Bodleian, 2018), p. 131 and fn. 343

Hand(s)

In the same hand as MS. Douce 60, the version of Mirk's Instructions which is contained in MS. Douce 103 (Wakelin, 'The manuscripts of John Mirk's Festial', p. 105),

Decoration

There is some rubrication, and some of the titles and the initial letters of some homilies are in red, but rubrication is used very sparingly between pages 65 and 112, 175 and 203, and after 270 (Wakelin, 'The manuscripts of John Mirk's Festial' (1967), p. 105)

Additions: Latin interpolations occur on pages 205 and 282. Francis Douce supplied an index of the contents

History

Origin: 15th century ; England

Provenance and Acquisition

On fol. 204v is 'Mary mircy, quod J. M.' at the end of a contemporary addition

Francis Douce, 1757–1834

Bequeathed to the Bodleian in 1834

Record Sources

Description adapted (May 2025) by Stewart J. Brookes from the following sources:

Catalogue of the Printed Books and Manuscripts Bequeathed by Francis Douce, esq. to the Bodleian Library (1840), p. 16

Martyn F. Wakelin, 'The manuscripts of John Mirk's Festial', Leeds Studies in English, NS 1 (1967), pp. 93-118

Summary Catalogue (1897)

Summary Catalogue, vol. 4, p. 524

Abbreviations

View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.

Last Substantive Revision

2025-05-22: Description revised to incorporate all the information in the Summary Catalogue (1897) and other printed sources

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