Hugo Primas, Hildebert of Lavardin, Serlo of Wilton, Simon Chèvre d’Or, Bernard Silvester, Ovid, Ranulf de Glanvill (attrib.) — Late 12th or early 13th century. Rigg (p. 476) hypothesizes: The sequence of compilation could have been something like this: (1) Part IV, by A, with red, green and blue decoration; (2) addition of Part I by A; (3) addition of Parts II-III by B: (4) addition of Part V by C; (5) addition of Part VI; (6) quire numbering.; Rigg (p. 480), pointing to similarities between this manuscript and London, British Library, Cotton MS. Titus A. xx, argues that the manuscript was almost certainly written in England. The ‘Frenchness’ of MS. Rawl. G. 109 is explained by the fact that it is a fairly faithful copy of a lost anthology compiled some forty or fifty years earlier, probably in France.

Title

Hugo Primas, Hildebert of Lavardin, Serlo of Wilton, Simon Chèvre d’Or, Bernard Silvester, Ovid, Ranulf de Glanvill (attrib.) — Late 12th or early 13th century. Rigg (p. 476) hypothesizes: The sequence of compilation could have been something like this: (1) Part IV, by A, with red, green and blue decoration; (2) addition of Part I by A; (3) addition of Parts II-III by B: (4) addition of Part V by C; (5) addition of Part VI; (6) quire numbering.; Rigg (p. 480), pointing to similarities between this manuscript and London, British Library, Cotton MS. Titus A. xx, argues that the manuscript was almost certainly written in England. The ‘Frenchness’ of MS. Rawl. G. 109 is explained by the fact that it is a fairly faithful copy of a lost anthology compiled some forty or fifty years earlier, probably in France.

Shelfmark

MS. Rawl. G. 109

Associated place

Suffolk

Place of origin

Concerns estates of the Benedictine abbey of Bury St Edmunds.

Rigg (p. 480), pointing to similarities between this manuscript and London, British Library, Cotton MS. Titus A. xx, argues that the manuscript was almost certainly written in England. The ‘Frenchness’ of MS. Rawl. G. 109 is explained by the fact that it is a fairly faithful copy of a lost anthology compiled some forty or fifty years earlier, probably in France.

Date

14th century

Early thirteenth century

Late 12th or early 13th century. Rigg (p. 476) hypothesizes: The sequence of compilation could have been something like this: (1) Part IV, by A, with red, green and blue decoration; (2) addition of Part I by A; (3) addition of Parts II-III by B: (4) addition of Part V by C; (5) addition of Part VI; (6) quire numbering.

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment

Physical extent

127 leaves (pp. 1-254; the manuscript is paginated, not foliated). The leaves of the main text (pp. 3–250) measure approximately

Hands

Parts I-IV may have been written by the same scribe, but Rigg distinguished ‘hand A’ (Parts I and IV) from ‘hand B’ (Parts II–III). Parts V and VI were written by two different scribes.

Decoration

Initial letters of poems (and sections within poems) in red, occasionally blue, occasionally red with blue work (but the blue ink has faded); in Part IV (pp. 125–142), red, green, and blue. Cue letters are visible in Parts II-IV, but not in Part I.

Binding

Eighteenth-century brown leather binding and paper flyleaves (pp. i–iv, 255–258).

Acquisition

Bequeathed to the Bodleian on Rawlinson’s death in 1755.

Provenance

The villages mentioned in the flyleaves contain property owned by the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, as Rigg (p. 480) notes. MS. Rawl. G. 109 is not mentioned in any of the medieval catalogues of Bury St. Edmunds, nor does it bear a Bury pressmark: this is hardly surprising, as anthologies of ephemeral, mainly secular, Latin verse are rarely dignified by inclusion in medieval catalogues. On the other hand, the words ijº fo (= secundo folio) on p. 3 of MS. Rawl. G. 109 suggest that someone may once have prepared it for cataloguing.

The thirteenth-century glosses in the Ovid (pp. 151–153, 166–167) may have been made before this section was incorporated into the manuscript.

The fourteenth-century verses on p. 98 and the land exchange note on p. 198. On p. 198 there is also a note on grammar and some pen-trials.

There are many sixteenth-century scribbles, including the following names: Whithale (p. 3), Hartwell (pp. 157, 161), Willame Collen (p. 159), Walter Vaughan (p. 119), Clere (p. 2, twice, with notes on the contents: ‘Ouidius in suis Epistolis; Ouidius de remedio amoris cum alijs’), H. Guilmynus (p. 2). The line ‘dextra pars penne breuior leuior debet esse’ is written on pp. 77, 236. There are too many scribbles to itemize, but the word Pasquila (pp. 38, 41, 51), in a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century hand that has made many paragraph marks and textual notes, is interesting: it seems to refer to the legendary Pasquil or Pasquin, whose status in sixteenth-century Rome seems to have been akin to that of Primas in earlier times.

Richard Graves (1677–1729): in two letters to Hearne in 1723, Graves says that he is sending money ‘in a ms.’, ‘in an old book’, which he presents as gifts to Hearne. See MS. Rawlinson letters 6, Nos. 139 (1 June) and 136 (21 September); synopses in Hearne’s Collections 8 (Oxford Historical Society 50; 1907), 82. 117–18.

Thomas Hearne (1678–1735): ownership note on the modern paper flyleaf, ‘Suum cuique. Tho. Hearne 1723. Ex dono amici doctissimi Ricardi Graves de Mickleton in agro Gloucestriensi’. Hearne died in 1735 and his library was dispersed in 1747, passing into the collection of:

Richard Rawlinson, 1690–1755.