South English legendary

Title

South English legendary

Shelfmark

MS. Bodl. 779

Place of origin

English

Date

15th century, second quarter

Language

Middle English (1100-1500)

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Paper; four different types. Quire 2 and fol. 94 similar to Cercle, Briquet 3183; quires 3–6 similar to Hache, Briquet 7510; quire 8 (inserted) Balanace, not in Briquet, but cf. 4229; quires 7 and 9–14 Cœur, not in Briquet, but cf. 2615.

Physical extent

ii + 312 leaves

Hands

Written and extensively corrected likely by a single scribe in multiple phases in a cursive Anglicana.

Decoration

Red initial on a geometrical background at the beginning of the volume. Smaller initials introduce new works and occasionally major sections (mostly unfinished after fol. 270r).

Red paraphs. Rubrics on fols. 10–25 replaced with running heads in a blue or red frame (reversed on fol. 244r).

Binding

Contemporary white leather on boards, English.

Rebound in 1998. A phase-box contains the two wooden boards of the medieval binding, as revealed and preserved during a conservation programme of 1988–98. The fragmentary ends of the laced-in thongs and of the leather straps have been left in place where they survive in the upper board.

The larger lengths of thongs as preserved from the spine are now mounted inside the lid of the present box. The tawed leather which covered the boards has been lifted and stored at the end of the separate fascicule of fragments.

The former lower pastedowns are bound in at the end of the main text-block within its new binding, since they comprise the last two leaves of the final quire (XIII); they were lifted from the boards in 1988–9 and then foliated 308–309. The inside front board must already have been bare in the 17th century, when a smaller piece of paper of that period was pasted directly onto the wood: it was lifted during conservation and is now stored at the front of the separate fascicule. The fascicule also contains a selection (those with fragments of redundant writing) of the original parchment strengtheners which had been used to line the folds at the inside and outside of each quire, some or all before the main writing-campaign; some of the other strengtheners (blank parchment, and/or written over in the main script) have been left in place in the text-block.

Acquisition

Presented by William Harwood, prebendary of Winchester, in 1611.