Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturale; England, s. xiiiex

Title

Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturale; England, s. xiiiex

Shelfmark

Exeter College MS. 15

Place of origin

England

Date

s. xiiiex

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment parchment FHHF

Physical extent

470 leaves, numbered in modern pencil

Hands

Written in university hands by several scribes. Scribe 1 writes fols. 16r to 112v, the end of book 9, and the end of quire 10, and Scribe 2 as far as fol. 216vb/44, the end of book 16, where the remaining 16 lines of the page are written by Scribe 3, who writes the next quire, 19, of 14 leaves. Scribe 1 returns to write fols. 231–408va/44, in which line the continuation is perhaps by Scribe 4. At fol. 428ra/53 Scribe 3 reappears and continues to the end of book 30 (fol. 454r), where Scribe 1 returns and continues to the end. Scribe 1 punctuates by medial point; scribe 2 by medial point and punctus elevatus; scribes 3 and 4 by low point.

Decoration

No initials, and no spaces left for them. Red and blue paraphs, red stroking, and underlining. Rubrics in capitula.

Binding

Sewn on five bands. Standard Exeter binding: simple and quite elegant, calf over millboards, the calf bearing blind decoration of a floral type, early 19th century.

Provenance

Despite the presence of several St Albans abbey ex libris, the book is not a product of the St Albans scriptorium; see D. R. Howlett, Studies in the Works of John Whethamstede (Oxford D.Phil, diss., 1975), 193. They are (1) fol. 15v, ‘Hunc librum ad usum Conuentus Monastery sancti Albani assignauit Venerabilis pater dominus Johannes Whethamstede Abbas Monastery antedicti. Vinculoque anathematis innodauit illos omnes qui aut titulum illius delere curauerint aut ad usus applicare presumpserint alienos’, the usual Whethamstede ex libris and anathema, written in the usual St Albans bookhand (s. xv); (2) fol. 16r at top, ‘Hic est liber sancti Albani de libraria Conuentus’; (3) fol. 16r, at bottom, visible only by ultraviolet light, covered by a title and not noticed by Howlett, ‘1 line Hic est liber sancti Albani qui Cum Iuda Traditore Anathemantis Gladio feriatur. Amen’ (s. xiv, a date which casts doubt on the later ex libris, s.n. Whethamstede, that Whethamstede gave the book to the abbey). At the top of fol. 1r are (1) a title which may be either a St Albans or an Exeter one, ‘Speculum naturale fratris Vincencij de ordine fratrum minorum’ (s. xv); (2) above it ‘a myrror or looking glasse’ (s. xv); and (3) ‘Ego christianus qui lege naturali non sum contentus sed potius supernaturali qui per secula seculorum regit in’ (s. xv).

There is no evidence to explain when or why the book reached Exeter but, despite its absence from Ecloga, it may have been at the College in the medieval period: R. M. Thomson, ‘What is the Entheticus?’, in R. M. Thomson, England and the 12th-Century Renaissance (Aldershot, 1998), ch. 12, 291 n. 18, has remarked that St Albans manuscripts tended to stray into college libraries in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, generally Oxford ones (see also Watson, Exeter, Introduction, pp. xxii–xxiii). Its first appearance in an Exeter list is CMA, no. 50.

Exeter library identifications are, on the front pastedown: the Exeter book stamp, ‘Ex: Coll: Oxon:’, ‘Q–78 Gall’ (deleted), ‘174–k–1’ altered to ‘170–I–1’, and ‘Coxe xv’ (pencil). ‘1’ is on a round paper label at the top of the spine.