Miscellany: grammar/dictamen, alchemy, medicine

Title

Miscellany: grammar/dictamen, alchemy, medicine

Shelfmark

St John's College MS 172

Associated place

Oxford

Place of origin

England

Date

s. xv2/4

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Vellum (FSOS/FHHF).

Physical extent

Fols. iv + 324(numbered fols. 1–323, v) + ii (numbered fols. vi–vii).

Hands

Written in anglicana with a few secretaryforms. Punctuation by point only.

Decoration

Headings in red.

Three-line champes with marginal floral sprays at the heads of texts.

In works with chapters, 2-line blue lombards on red flourishing at chapter heads; some works have chapters broken with red paraphs and/or red-slashed capitals.

In item 10, later added running titles to indicate chapter numbers.

See AT, no. 450 (45), where it is suggested that the volume may be Oxford work.

Binding

A modern replacement (the spine from an earlier binding). Sewn on three thongs. At the front, a marbled paper leaf (dated ‘1747’ on the verso), a modern paper flyleaf, and two medieval vellum flyleaves (formed by folding a blank waste sheet, pricked, bounded, and ruled in double columns for about 50 lines), a College bookplate on fol. iiiv; at the rear, a modern paper flyleaf and another marbled leaf (vi–vii). Fol. iii has holes and verdigris stains from a staple clasp in Watson’s position 6.

Acquisition

‘Liber Collegii Divi Johannis Baptistae Oxon’ ex dono Domini Gulielmi PaddeiMilitis et ejusdem Collegii olim Convictoris 1634’ (fol. 2, upper margin).

Provenance

A contents table in the scribal hand (fol. iiiv).

Pen-trials (fols. iiiv and vv, s. xv).

‘Istum librum Magistri Aldert egauit Ad orandum pro anima eius et animabus parentis et parochialibus eius. [then more formally:]Istum librum legauit Magister Iohannes Alwartquondam Rector ecclesie parochialis de Stoke bruern vniuersitati oxon’ vt oraret pro anima eius et animabus parentum et parochianorum eius’, followed in another hand? by ‘Tr q a qa(fol. vv; anglicana, s. xv) (Ker, MLGB 143, 289). The inscription transcribed in William Dunn Macray, Annals of the Bodleian Library Oxford (1890; rept. Oxford, 1984), 11.

‘Liber Collegii Sancti Joannis Baptistae Oxon (fol. 1, upper margin).

Two cancelled shelfmarks ‘Abac: ij. No. 9’ and ‘D.10’ (fol. iiiv).