Thomas Walsingham, Archana deorum

Title

Thomas Walsingham, Archana deorum

Shelfmark

St John's College MS 124

Place of origin

England

Date

s. xv med.

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Vellum (FSOS/FHHF).

Physical extent

Fols. v + 152+ iii (numbered fols. vi–viii).

Hands

Written by four scribes:

scribe 1 = fols. 1–8v, 113–44, in anglicana formata;

scribe 2 = fols. 9–16 v, in gothic textura prescissa;

scribe 3 = fols. 17–113/2 or 3, in anglicana formata ;

scribe 4 = fols. 144v–52v, in mixed anglicana/secretary.

Scribe 1 does not punctuate; scribe 2 punctuates by occasional medial point and double point (some added virgulae); scribe 3 punctuates by occasional medial point; scribe 4 punctuates by point.

Decoration

Headings in red.

At text divisions, 2- and 3-line red lombards on purple flourishing to fol. 64v, blue flourishing thereafter.

In earlier portions, marginal finding notations in red half-boxes.

Item 2 adopts a genealogical presentation, with names in circles connected by family ‘lines’, with some prose explanations intruded. The circles are in red early, then in black crayon or unfilled.

Binding

A modern replacement, with the spine lacking. Sewn on three thongs. At the front, a modern marbled paper leaf, two modern paper flyleaves, and two medieval vellum ones (the first of these, fol. iv , a pastedown in a fifteenth-century binding on five thongs, the outer pairs pegged two to a hole, as in Pollard’s figure 6 ); at the rear, two modern paper flyleaves and another marbled paper one (vi–vii).

Provenance

Indication of contents ( fol. ivv, s. xvii).

‘Libellus Thomae de Walsingham de generatione naturaque Deorum simul cum interpretatione Ouidij Metamorphoseon Simoni Priori Sancti Albani dedicatus Praefatio in arcana Deorum’ ( fol. 9, upper margin; s. xvii).

The old shelfmark ‘Abac: ij. N. 92’ (fol. iv) .