Priscian, Institutiones I–XVI; Canterbury?, England, s. xiiin

Title

Priscian, Institutiones I–XVI; Canterbury?, England, s. xiiin

Shelfmark

Exeter College MS. 4

Place of origin

Canterbury, St Augustine's Abbey?, England

Date

s. xiiin

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment HFFH

Physical extent

143 leaves of English appearance and variable quality; numbered in modern pencil, preceded and followed by an 18th-century paper flyleaf. The outer and lower borders of fol. 143 have been entirely cut away.

Hands

In two styles of English Caroline minuscule, one the round and the other the Norman-influenced angular style, which can be compared in N. R. Ker, English Manuscripts in the Century after the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1960), pls. 2 and 3, 4 and 5, etc. The English script, by one hand, is used for quires 1–6 (fols. 1–47v) and is thereafter in general replaced by one or perhaps two hands writing a script of Kentish aspect. In eight places the round script appears for lines immediately preceding and following a major initial and rubric at the beginning of a new book, viz. fol. 48v (3 + 2 lines, i.e. 3 before and 2 after), fol. 84v (3 + 5½ lines), fol. 106r (3¼ + 6½ lines), fol. 113v (4½ + 8½ lines), fol. 119r (fol. 7½ + 3½ lines), fol. 125r (4½ + 6½ lines), fol. 133v (7 + 5½ lines), fol. 140rv (4 + 7 lines). The round script is also used for fol. 54v/1–7, two lines in the lower margin of fol. 56v and notes in margins elsewhere. The scribe of the round script therefore seems to have been a corrector and perhaps wrote the lines before and after the major initials because they included unfamiliar square and rustic capitals as well as the minuscule script (which, however, another scribe did well on fol. 65v, using the angular script).1 Watson's Plates. I(a) and I(b) reproduce fols. 24v and 48v respectively.

Decoration

Major illuminated initials, on fols. 1r, 1v, 8v, 15r, 24v, 34v, 48v, 65v (not quite completed), 84v (drawn, and dark blue colour only), 113v and 140v (drawn, dark blue and crimson only) in a continental style. For the initials that this artist actually finished or nearly finished, there are threads or holes that indicate the one-time presence of covers and on fol. 15r is a surviving fabric cover.

Throughout the text are also 2/3-line initials in blue, red, or green, some plain and some with simple flourishing, and on fols. 1–6r, 119r, 125r, and 135v blue-and-red lombards were added in s. xiii. I am grateful to Michael Gullick for his examination of this book and observations on the script.

Rubrication throughout is by the first scribe: see above.

Alexander and Temple, no. 8, pl. 1, repr. initial fol. 34v, reduced. Watson's Plates I(a) and I(b) reproduce initials on fols. 24v and 48v respectively.

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

The script suggests that the book originated in SE England, perhaps Kent, perhaps St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury (see above, Script, Decoration), where an English scribe was joined by a continental visiting scribe to produce a luxury book that was abandoned by the artist before completion.

No evidence survives in the manuscript to show where it was in the centuries before it reached Exeter College unless a London connection is to be inferred from a pen-trial(?) of s. xiv on fol. 143v, ‘Londonias et Willelmus Kyrkeby salutem in domino Willelmo de Stanton iii s. Nicholao andreu Johanni s. quatraginta In Lundonijs soluendis Henrico Sueth [or Sneth].’

There are two inscriptions in a hand of s. xv on fol. 143v: ‘Post mortis morsum vertit dileccio dorsum Finita vita finit amicus ita’ (Walther, Proverbia, 22027) and ‘Ingenium nisi sit studium flos est sine fructu’ (ibid., 12376), but how the book reached Exeter is unknown.

It is not recorded in Ecloga but may nevertheless have been at the College in the medieval period: see Watson, Exeter, Introduction, pp. xxii–xxiii. Perhaps CMA, no. 30, ‘Linguae Antiquae Dictionarium perantiquum’.

Exeter library identifications are on the front pastedown: ‘Ex: Coll. Oxon: Q6–4–Gall’, ‘174–K–4’ deleted and replaced by ‘170–I–4’, the College book stamp and ‘Coxe iv’ (pencil).