Pietro del Monte, Leonardo Bruni, Xenophon, Lapo da Castiglionchio, Basil of Caesarea, Isocrates, Guarino da Verona — 15th century, middle; England

Title

Pietro del Monte, Leonardo Bruni, Xenophon, Lapo da Castiglionchio, Basil of Caesarea, Isocrates, Guarino da Verona — 15th century, middle; England

Shelfmark

MS. Auct. F. 5. 26

Place of origin

England

Date

15th century, middle

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment

Physical extent

v (first paper, rest parchment) + 199+ ii (one parchment, other paper). Pagination (partly in pen [s. xvii], partly in pencil [s. xx]): i-x, 1-241. There are two errors in this pagination: first, there is no p. 11; second, the numbers 157-158 are repeated. So, from p. 12 to p. 158, page numbers are one greater than they should be, while from p. 158 bis to the end, they are one lower than is correct. Throughout, the corrected pagination proposed by David Rundle is used

Hands

Written in a Gothic book-hand by a scribe who is known to have worked with Henry Mereon MS. Bodl. 281 and who collaborated with a group of scribes in the 1460s (including William Salomon) on Oxford, Exeter College, MSS. 51-68. The scribe's handwriting is similar to Mere’s: g has an upright stem which ascends pronouncedly above the horizontal stroke; ahas two compartments; and i at the beginning of a word is often written as if it were a majuscule. The punctuation is very noticeable and there is a light, but clear, diagonal stroke dotting i. The scribe used black ink, with titles in red, and wrote many of the notes in the margin. David Rundle identifies the scribe as William Osborne(see Rundle, 'The Playpen: Reform, Experimentation and the Memory of Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester in the Registry of the University of Oxford', in Books and Bookmen in Early Modern Britain: Essays Presented to James P. Carley, ed. by James Willoughby and Jeremy Catto [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2018], pp. 28 and 37)

The contents list on p. x is likely to have been added to the manuscript not long after the main text was completed. Rundle argues that the scribe who added the contents list was John Manyngham(Rundle, 'The Playpen' [2018], pp. 38-39) and that Manyngham also wrote the word 'EXPLICIT' on p. 93 and was responsible for the corrections on pp. 9, 14, 6, 20, 39, 49, 91, 107, ?108, ?123, 131, 175, 189, 194, 204 and 206. The contents list is written in a script that experiments with Humanist letter-forms(note also the unusual g written with one stroke and looking something like a q written diagonally)

Another hand, in a small, lightly written Gothic script, corrected the text (e.g. pp. 119, 120, 121, 131, 203, etc.)

Albinia de la Mare suggested that one of the annotators in this manuscript also wrote a note on fol. 113 of MS. Selden Supra 22( Duke Humfrey’s Library & the Divinity School 1488–1988[Oxford, 1988], p. 66). Building on this identification, Rundle observes that a note on p. 122 of MS. Auct. F. 5. 26 may well be in the same hand, and that the maniculae with narrow cuffs and bases drawn with a jagged line on pp. 36, 98, 126, 191 in MS. Auct. F. 5. 26 resemble those found in MS. Selden Supra 22 on fols 113 and 156. Similarly, a flower nota-mark in MS. Auct. F. 5. 26 (p. 125; cf. pp. 37 and 131) is comparable to that on fol. 17 of MS. Selden Supra 22

Other annotations include those in a large 16th-century hand in black ink concentrated in Item 1, marking subject-matter (pp. 9, 12, 14, 18, 19, 30, 32, 33, 34, 36, 42, 51). At the front of the volume (pp. v-vii), another mid-16th century hand adds notes mainly on Item 1, offering quotations that follow the work’s line of argument

Decoration

Good borders

Good initials, e.g. p. 1and p. 116

Decorative initials appear on pp. 1, 84, 115, 178, 187 and 201, each adorned with half-borders comprising pen-strokes that are coloured with green and small balls of gold, creating a pattern of ‘fir cones’. This is the work of the English illuminator of MS. Bodl. 283and British Library, MS. Royal 18 D. ii, fol. 6 (see Kathleen L. Scott, The Mirroure of the Worlde [Oxford, 1980], pp. 34-40) and Kathleen L. Scott, Late Gothic Manuscripts, 1390-1490 [London, 1996], Pl. 387). This style has been related to the ‘Abingdon Missal Border Master’ who was London-based but also worked in Oxford in the 1450s and the 1460s (Rundle, 'The Playpen' [2018], p. 27)

Binding

Early plain parchment binding with remnants of four pieces of string which were used to tie the volume closed

Acquisition

Bought with part of £5 given by Joseph Maynard, fellow of Exeter college, Oxford, in 1658 along with nine other manuscripts: Auct. D. 2. 5, MS. e Mus. 146, MS. e Mus. 111, MS. e Mus. 116, MS. e Mus. 162, MS. e Mus. 164, MS. Auct. F. 5. 28, MS. e Mus. 244and MS. e Mus. 59

Provenance

At p. 1, shelfmarks 'e Museo olim 152' and 'Ms. e Museo 119' in a 17th-century hand (both shelfmarks are present on the binding). "17" is written on p. iii and on the front board