Texts on prognostication; England (St Albans), before 1259

Title

Texts on prognostication; England (St Albans), before 1259

Shelfmark

MS. Ashmole 304

Place of origin

English, St. Albans, Benedictine abbey

Date

13th century, middle (before 1259)

Language

Middle English (1100-1500)

Anglo-Norman

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment

Physical extent

i + 72 + i (foliated i, 1–71; 33 and 56 are double)

Hands

Written by Matthew Paris, except for fols. 53r-55v.

Decoration

Fine miniatures (coloured drawings). Illuminated by Matthew Paris of St. Albans, d. 1259. The MS. is mutilated. (Pächt and Alexanderiii. 437, pl. XXXVIII) 'Author' portraits: fol. 2v: upper half of page, Euclid and Hermanus; fol. 31v, full page, Socrates and Plato; fol. 42r, full page, Pythagoras; fol. 52v, upper half of page, the twelve patriarchs. Fol. 1v, lower margin, battling monk. Fol. 2r, diagram of constellations. Fol. 3v, marginal drawings of the seven planetary towers. Fols. 33a-38, appropriate images in the spheres (flower, fruits, animals, birds, etc.). Fols. 43v-52r, images of the answering birds at the head of their stanzas.

Throughout: initials in red and blue, with pen-work flourishing in alternating blue and red.

Acquisition

Transferred to the Bodleian Library in 1860.

Provenance

Written at St Albans Abbey, mostly by Matthew Paris (d. 1259).

A copy was made from the MS. in the third quarter of the fourteenth century (MS. Digby 46).

The Middle English annotations, which probably date from the second half of the fifteenth century, perhaps suggest that the MS. was no longer in monastic ownership.

'Thomas West writt this same anno domini 1602': otherwise unidentified (fol. 67v, cf. fol. 1r).

A copy was made from the MS. in the seventeenth century (British Library MS. Sloane 3857)

'Ex dono – Vaughan coll. En. nasi schol.' (note in the hand of Edward Lhuyd, d. 1709, fol. 1r). Not in the 1697 catalogue, so presumably entered the Ashmolean Museum between 1697 and 1709 (Summary Catalogue V.82).