Nicholas Cantilupe, Historiola, and associated documents concerning the University of Cambridge; England, s. xv3/4

Title

Nicholas Cantilupe, Historiola, and associated documents concerning the University of Cambridge; England, s. xv3/4

Shelfmark

Christ Church MS. 138

Associated place

Cambridge

Place of origin

England

Date

s. xv3/4

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Parchment (HSOS).

Physical extent

Fols: iii + 8 + xii. Pastedowns and flyleaves added with binding.

Hands

Written in secretary.

Punctuation by point only.

Decoration

Headings in text ink, in bastard secretary. At the openings of the texts, three- and four-line unflourished blue lombards. Some texts are divided, by penwork capitals (item 4) or blue paraphs (item 5).

Binding

Brown leather over millboards, s. xx, with a stamped rectangular inner border with quatrefoil design. Probably flat-backed rather than on thongs. A ChCh bookplate on the front pastedown.

Provenance

From what codex these folios may have been extracted is unclear. Early signs of use include some erased notes on the subject matter (upper margin fol. 1, s. xvex), and the name ‘Richard’ (upside down, fol. 8v). What is definite is that this quire had been separated from its parent by the early eighteenth century, when Thomas Hearne saw this manuscript and, indeed, used it as the base text for his edition of Cantilupe’s text. We can date precisely his acquaintance with our manuscript: in his diary, he noted on 9th March 1712 that he had examined ‘in the Dean of Xt Church’s Study’ the books of Henry Aldrich (who was recently deceased) and among them was ‘Cantilupes Historiola Cantabrigiensis, & I am promis’d the loan of it’: Hearne, Remarks, 3:319. Confirmation of its presence in Aldrich’s collection is provided by the catalogue of his library, where it is recorded as ‘Nic. Cantilupi historiola Univ. Cantabrigiensis MS’: ChCh Library Records 11, fol. 9v; see David Rundle, ‘Nicholas Cantilupe and Thomas Hearne in Christ Church’, Christ Church Library Newsletter, 8 (2011–12), 34–35. Hearne must have returned the quire to ChCh and it then entered the Library.

Hearne was not, however, the first antiquary to study this manuscript, as is revealed by the fact that Thomas Tanner, later bishop of St Asaph, provided the title and author at fol. 3. His designation of himself as OAS, that is Omnium Animarum Socius, helps date the note to after his election to the Fellowship of All Souls on 2nd November 1696 but presumably before his departure from Oxford to Norfolk in 1701; on the timing of Tanner’s antiquarian studies, see Richard Sharpe, ‘Thomas Tanner (1674–1735), the 1697 Catalogue, and Bibliotheca Britannica’, The Library, 5th ser., 6 (2005), 381–421.

The manuscript contains, in the lower margin of fol. 1, the New Library shelfmark ‘F.8’ (see Appendix IV).