Miscellany: medicine and astronomy; Bestiary; Guillaume de Conches, Dragmaticon; Cato and glossaries in Anglo-Norman

Title

Miscellany: medicine and astronomy; Bestiary; Guillaume de Conches, Dragmaticon; Cato and glossaries in Anglo-Norman

Shelfmark

St John's College MS 178

Associated place

London

Place of origin

England

Date

s. xiii2

s. xv

s. xiii1

s. xiv in. or xiv 2/4

s. xiv in.

s. xiv2/4

variously ss. xiii 1–xiv2/4

Language

Latin

Middle English (1100-1500)

French

Anglo-Norman

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Comprising six separate MSS, all on vellum (all FSOS/FHHF), of which the portions designated ‘Manuscript 2’ and ‘Manuscript 4’ below (fols. 9–144, 156–357) seem to be a core around which different parts have accreted.

Physical extent

Fols. iii + 415(numbered fols. iv–vii, 1–411) + v (numbered fols. viii–xii).

Decoration

The main scribe portions only: headings within texts in red; colophons and incipits written in text ink in a larger, more decorative anglicana.

Two- and 3-line alternate red and blue lombards on flourishing of the other colour at textual divisions.

Some texts divided by red- or ochre-slashed capitals (the latter only in item 21) or red paraphs.

Numerous coloured diagrams in texts 1, 5, and 21.

Full illuminations include the zodiac man (fol. 142).

The Bestiary is illustrated to fol. 194v, with about ninety small pictures, typically set into the text area. The largest illumination occupies three-quarters of fol. 169v, with three cartoons to illustrate Canis. Other largish illuminations include another for Canis (fol. 170), Adam naming the animals (fol. 171v), and a dragon waiting under the tree ‘perindeus’ for doves to fall off into its mouth (fol. 185).

The MS appears at Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts, 1285–1385, 2 vols. (London, 1986) as, no. 39 (2:45) . See AT, no. 264 (27), identifying the hand as Londonwork (Calendar of St Peter’s, Westminster) and plate xvi (fols. 142, 169v, 185). Illustrations from the MS, especially the zodiac man, have often been reproduced: see Sandler, plates 86 (fol. 165, the goat from the Bestiary) and 87 (fol. 142, the zodiac man); Marcel Destombes, Mappemondes A.D. 1200–1500, nos. 27.11 (fol. 37v, 61) and 41.10 (fols. 324v, 333v, 107); Sandler, The Psalter of Robert de Lisle in the British Library (Oxford, 1983), 17, 102 nn. 24–5, fig. 9 (fol. 142) ; Fritz Saxl and Hans Meier, ed. Harry Bober, Catalogue of Astrological and Mythological Illuminated Manuscripts of the Latin Middle Ages 3, 2 vols. (London, 1953), 1:413 and 2:figure 240 (plate xcii, fol. 142).

Binding

A modern replacement. Sewn on five thongs. At the front, a marbled paper leaf, and six vellum flyleaves, four part of the actual volume (fols. iii–vv are waste, bounded and ruled, fol. v pricked); at the rear, four medieval vellum flyleaves and another marbled leaf (viii–xii).

Provenance

‘Isti libri continentur in hoc volumine beati petri Westm’ (fol. iii; anglicana, s. xv 2/4) (Ker MLGB197).

‘Symondus Hampton Iste liber est Ecclesie Beati P’ [around this in ink ‘Symond’, ‘Philippus Symond’ ‘Iohanna Symond’ ‘Iohannes Symond’] (fol. xv, s. xv in red around a 4-line musical stave); the same names appear again on fol. xi, with the addition of ‘Ricardus Sowtbroke’.

A note on the zodiac, which includes names: ‘Iohannes Iohannes hunger ’ (fol. 38v, lower margin, erased, s. xvi 1/2).

An erased inscription (fol. vi).

Various pen-trials (fols. iv [s. xvi ex.], viii, and fol. xv [both s. xvi in.]).

'sum libellus Nich’ Sykys’ (fol. iii, upper margin, s. xvi); he also owned our MS 171 .

'George Whalley owth this boke’ (fol. vv, s. xvi), below it two verses in Spanish: ‘No es mego de riere Alenez cara (s. xvi ex. italic).