Gregory the Great, Epistles

Title

Gregory the Great, Epistles

Shelfmark

St John's College MS 63

Place of origin

England

Date

s. xii / xiii

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Vellum (HSOS/HFFH).

Physical extent

Fols. iii + 135(numbered fols. 1–134, iv) + iii (numbered fols. v–vii).

Hands

Written in a variety of protogothic bookhands and transitional protogothic bookhand/gothic texturas (the final one most emphatically texturain its duct, if not letter formation), above top line. Punctuation by point and occasional punctus elevatus. The volume is a disorganized communal job, not apparently well supervised. There may be as many as a dozen scribes contributing, often very small stints; at least provisionally, I would identify these major divisions in the work: one scribe for fols. 1–44 ; fols. 45–9alternating between two other scribes; two new scribes for fols. 50–73 and 74–88, the second perhaps also responsible for fols. 101v–16(with some other hands in the first five leaves of the first stint); fols. 89–101v a different scribe, with fols. 91–4copied by yet another individual not otherwise involved in the volume). Three new hands follow at 116–21v, 121v–4vb, and 124vb–34. The appendix may indeed be a tribute to this form of production. The scribal ‘team’ sought to make good omissions by checking contents against an exemplar and collecting items overlooked in the earlier copying. But the relative disorder in which items have been added appears every bit as random a procedure as the original copying seems to have been.

Decoration

Headings in red, some unfilled and some in rustic capitals (all those in quire 5, for example).

At the head, fol. 1ra, space for a 4-line capital unfilled.

Only books 13 and 14 have large decorated capitals, 4-line arabesque initials, the first (fol. 101 vb)with a marginal descender in red and blue, the second (fol. 117ra)formed by a red and blue vine design.

At the heads of individual letters, 2-line alternating red and blue arabesque capitals on flourishing of the other colour.

Running titles in red with book numbers (ending on fol. 122at the end of the main series of letters).

Binding

A modern replacement. Sewn on five thongs. At the front, a marbled paper leaf and two modern paper flyleaves; at the rear, two modern paper flyleaves, and another marbled paper leaf (v–vii).

Acquisition

'Iohannes White de Suthwyk in Comitatu Southt Armiger dedit hunc librum Thome Whitede london’ miitis ad vsum Colegij per ipsum de nouo erecti in Oxon’ Anno 1555’, with an old College shelfmark ‘63’ ( fol. 1, upper margin). Although the MS lacks any ex-libris, White’s donation may well indicate that the volume came from Southwick (Hants., OSA); the compilers of Registrumentered a copy of Gregory’s register from the house under R.2.7 (59, 262) .

Provenance

‘karissimo domino et amico suo willielmo salt ’, in blue ink (nearly cut off, fol. 56v, lower margin; s. xiii2). The same hand writes a note on the Trinity in rubricator’s red ( fol. 41, lower margin) and a third note in brown ink ( fol. 69, lower margin).

A label, identifying the MS as the second part of Gregory’s epistles (pasted on fol. iii v, s. xviii).