Stephen Langton; Anselm; etc.; England, s. xiiiin

Title

Stephen Langton; Anselm; etc.; England, s. xiiiin

Shelfmark

Exeter College MS. 23

Place of origin

England

Date

s. xiiiin

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment FHHF

Physical extent

198 leaves preceded by one post-medieval paper flyleaf and one medieval membrane flyleaf, and followed by one post-medieval paper flyleaf. Parchment of inferior quality. Fols. 184–6 are badly stained by a brown liquid.

Hands

Protogothic bookhand barely turning into gothic, by a number of scribes. All the scribes write above top line. Punctuation by low point and punctus versus. At the foot of fol. 159v, is ‘.xx. qtas’: as that leaf is the fourth leaf of the quire 14 and writing continues in the same hand to the end of the quire, it is unlikely to be the scribe’s calculation of work done but may refer to the stage he had reached in his exemplar.

Decoration

1/5-line plain red and green initials. Rubrics; red paraphs and stroking of letters; lemmata underlined red.

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. At the foot of fols. 198 back to 196 are stains which are probably from a chain clasp on an earlier binding.

Provenance

Of monastic, possibly Cistercian, origin.

At the top right-hand corner of fol. 1r is ‘Liber J. Exon’, in the distinctive hand of John Grandisson, bp. of Exeter 1327–69, in which there are also added titles before items 7, 8, 12, and 13. On him see BRUO.

On fol. 1r, in the hand that wrote the same inscription in MS 43, is ‘Hunc librum dedit magister Thomas Plymyswode Collegio seu Aule de Stapyldonhalle Oxon’ ad chathenandum in libraria ibidem. Oretis pro eo.’ The Rector’s Accounts for 1417/18 record two payments for the carriage of ‘libros legatos’ to the College and a third payment for binding MS 43, the other identified survivor. Plymyswode was a fellow of Exeter College in 1384, inter alia rector of Heavitree, now part of the city of Exeter, in 1396, and d. 1418 (BRUO). Judging by the date of the hand, prices on fols. 198r (xiijs. iiijd.) and 198v (xvjs.) may relate to his ownership.

Recorded at Exeter c. 1600 as Ecloga, no. 3, then in CMA, no. 38.

Exeter library identifications are: on the front pastedown, ‘Ex: Coll: Oxon:’, ‘Q, 8–3 Gall’ (deleted), ‘172.G.3.’, ‘Coxe Cat. no. xxiii’ and the book stamp.