Middle English Texts in Transition: A Festschrift dedicated to Toshiyuki Takamiya on his 70th birthday (Manuscript Culture in the British Isles, 6) 1903153530, 9781903153536

Citation preview

Middle English texts_PPC 26/03/2014 08:54 Page 1

his exciting collection of essays is centred on late medieval English manuscripts and their texts. It offers new insights  into the works of canonical literary writers, including Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, William Langland, Walter Hilton and Nicholas Love, as well as lesser-known texts and manuscripts. It also considers medieval books, their producers, readers, and collectors. It is thus a fitting tribute to one the foremost scholars of the history of the book, Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya, whom it honours.

T

SIMoN HoRoBIN is Professor of English Language and Literature 

at the University of oxford;  LINNE R. MooNEy is Professor of Medieval English Palaeography in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of york. She is also Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies at york. 

Cover: Takamiya Deposit MS 8, Nicholas Love, Mirrour of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, folio 1, The Toshiyuki Takamiya Deposit at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, yale University.

HOR OBIN and MOONE Y (eds)

CoNTRIBUToRS : Timothy Graham, Richard Firth Green,  Carrie Griffin, Gareth Griffith, Phillipa Hardman, John Hirsh,  Simon Horobin, Terry Jones, Takako Kato, Linne R. Mooney,  Mary Morse, James J. Murphy, Natalia Petrovskaia, Susan Powell,  Ad Putter, Michael G. Sargent, Eric Stanley, Mayumi Taguchi,  Isuamu Takahashi, Satoko Tokunaga, R.F. yeager.

MIDDLE ENGLISH TEXTS IN TRANSITION

MANUSCRIPT CULTURE IN THE BRITISH ISLES

MIDDLE ENGLISH TEXTS IN TRANSITION

yoRK MEDIEVAL PRESS

an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com

A Festschrift dedicated to Toshiyuki Takamiya on his 70th birthday yoRK MEDIEVAL PRESS

Edited by SIMON HOR OB IN and LINNE R. MOONEY

Middle English Texts in Transition

ME Texts in Transition.indb 1

07/04/2014 00:03

york me di eval pre ss York Medieval Press is published by the University of York’s Centre for Medieval Studies in association with Boydell & Brewer Limited. Our objective is the promotion of innovative scholarship and fresh criticism on medieval culture. We have a special commitment to interdisciplinary study, in line with the Centre’s belief that the future of Medieval Studies lies in those areas in which its major constituent disciplines at once inform and challenge each other. editorial board (2014) Professor Peter Biller (Dept of History): General Editor Dr T. Ayers (Dept of History of Art) Dr Henry Bainton (Dept of English and Related Literature) Dr J. W. Binns (Dept of English and Related Literature) Professor Helen Fulton (Dept of English and Related Literature) Dr K. F. Giles (Dept of Archaeology) Professor W. M. Ormrod (Dept of History) Dr Lucy Sackville (Dept of History) Dr Hanna Vorholt (Dept of History of Art) Professor J. G. Wogan-Browne (English Faculty, Fordham University) consultant on manuscript publications Professor Linne Mooney (Dept of English and Related Literature) All enquiries of an editorial kind, including suggestions for monographs and essay collections, should be addressed to: The Academic Editor, York Medieval Press, University of York, Centre for Medieval Studies, The King’s Manor, York, yo1 7ep (E-mail: [email protected]). Publications of York Medieval Press are listed at the back of this volume.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 2

07/04/2014 00:03

ME Texts in Transition.indb 3

07/04/2014 00:03

ME Texts in Transition.indb 4

07/04/2014 00:03

Middle English Texts in Transition ••• A Festschrift dedicated to Toshiyuki Takamiya on his 70th birthday

Edited by Simon Horobin & Linne Mooney

york me di eva l pre ss

ME Texts in Transition.indb 5

07/04/2014 00:03

© Contributors 2014 All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2014 A York Medieval Press publication in association with The Boydell Press an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk ip12 3df, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, ny 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com and with the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York isbn 978–1-903153–53–6 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. This publication is printed on acid-free paper Designed and typeset in Adobe Minion Pro by David Roberts, Pershore, Worcestershire

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images please refer to the printed version of the book.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 6

07/04/2014 00:03

Contents ••• L ist of Illustrations

ix

L ist of Contributors

xii

Acknowledgements

xiii

Abbreviations

xiv

Preface Linne R. Mooneyxv

chaucer, gower and langland The Early History of the Scriveners’ Company Common Paper and its So-Called ‘Oaths’ Richard Firth Green

1

Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 201 and its Copy of Piers Plowman21 Simon Horobin Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis before Henry IV’s Usurpation?40 Terry Jones Le Songe Vert, BL Add. MS 34114 (the Spalding Manuscript), Bibliothèque de la ville de Clermont, MS 249 and John Gower R. F. Yeager

75

lyrics and romances Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 33: Thoughts on Reading a Work in Progress Phillipa Hardman The Rawlinson Lyrics: Context, Memory and Performance John C. Hirsh

88 104

Linguistic Boundaries in Multilingual Miscellanies: The Case of Middle English Romance Gareth Griffith & Ad Putter

116

What Six Unalike Lyrics in British Library MS Harley 2253 Have Alike in Manuscript Layout Eric Stanley

125

ME Texts in Transition.indb 7

07/04/2014 00:03

devotional writings Evidence for the Licensing of Books from Arundel to Cromwell Susan Powell

134

Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts: Walter Hilton, Nicholas Love and the Arundel and Holland Connections Michael G. Sargent

159

The Choice and Arrangement of Texts in Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2125: A Tentative Narrative about its Material History Mayumi Taguchi

177

‘Thys moche more ys oure lady mary longe’: Takamiya MS 56 and the English Birth Girdle Tradition Mary Morse

199

owners and users of medieval books Bookish Types: Some Post-Medieval Owners, Borrowers and Lenders of the Manuscripts of The Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy220 Carrie Griffin Laurentius Guglielmus Traversagnus and the Genesis of Vaticana Codex Lat. 11441, with Remarks on Bodleian MS Laud Lat. 61 James J. Murphy

241

The Travels of a Quire from the Twelfth Century to the Twenty-First: The Case of Rawlinson B  484, fols. 1–6 Natalia I. Petrovskaia

250

William Elstob’s Planned Edition of the Anglo-Saxon Laws: A Remnant in the Takamiya Collection Timothy Graham

268

a tribute to professor takamiya Gutenberg Meets Digitization: The Path of a Digital Ambassador Takako Kato & Satoko Tokunaga

297

A Bibliography of Toshiyuki Takamiya Isamu Takahashi, with the assistance of Ryoko Nakano, updated by Satoko Tokunaga

306

Index of Manuscripts

319

General Index

323

Tabula Gratulatoria

333

viii

ME Texts in Transition.indb 8

07/04/2014 00:03

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images please refer to the printed version of the book.

Illustrations ••• Richard Firth Green

1 London, Guildhall Library, MS 5370, Scriveners’ Common Paper, p. 281 (top half) (reproduced by permission of the Guildhall Library, Corporation of London, and of the Scriveners’ Company of London)  7 2 London, Guildhall Library, MS 5370, Scriveners’ Common Paper, p. 281 (bottom half) (reproduced by permission of the Guildhall Library, Corporation of London, and of the Scriveners’ Company of London)  9 3 London, Guildhall Library, MS 5370, Scriveners’ Common Paper, p. 282 (top half) (reproduced by permission of the Guildhall Library, Corporation of London, and of the Scriveners’ Company of London)  11 Terry Jones

1 Huntington Library, MS Ellesmere 26 A.17, fol. 1, with the beginning of Gower’s Confessio Amantis (reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA)  44 2 Huntington Library, MS Ellesmere 26 A.17, fol. 1 (detail). Shield in outer margin. (reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA) 46 3 (a) John of Gaunt’s arms; (b, c) heraldic labels of three points used to distinguish junior members of a family (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ File:John_of_Gaunt_Arms.svg) 46 4 Richard II’s Royal Arms pre-1395 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ File:Royal_Arms_of_England_(1340–1367).svg) 46 5 Henry IV’s Royal Arms before 1406 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ File:Royal_Arms_of_England_(1399–1406).svg) 46 6 Richard II’s Royal Arms post-1395 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ File:Royal_Arms_of_England_(1395–1399).svg) 46 7 France ancient (pre 1376/1394) and France moderne (post 1376/1394) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_of_France) 47 8 Henry IV’s coat of arms after 1403 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ File:Royal_Arms_of_England_(1406–1422).svg) 47

ix

ME Texts in Transition.indb 9

07/04/2014 00:03

9 Huntington Library, MS Ellesmere 26 A.17, fol. 1 (detail). Initial O at beginning of Gower’s Confessio amantis. (reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA)  48 10 Huntington Library MS Ellesmere 26 A.17, fol. 1 (detail). Shield with three feathers (reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA) 49 11 Black Prince’s ‘Shield for Peace’, from his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral (photo: Terry Jones)  49 12 Tomb of the Black Prince, Canterbury Cathedral (photo: Terry Jones)  49 13 Henry IV’s feather (Charles Boutell, English Heraldry (London, 1907), p. 243, illus. 402)  49 14 Henry IV’s second Great Seal, c. 1406–8, from BL Additional Charter 11158 (detail) (by permission of the British Library)  49 15 Huntington Library, MS Ellesmere 26 A.17, fol. 1 (detail). Lion on chapeau crest. (reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA) 51 16 Lion on the Black Prince’s tomb in Canterbury Cathedral (photo: Terry Jones) 51 17 Crest on John of Gaunt’s seal, 1363 (Francis Sandford, A Genealogical History of the Kings and Queens of England … (London, 1707), p. 244)  51 18 Crest on John of Gaunt’s tomb (Sandford, Genealogical History, p. 255)  51 19 Crest on Henry of Monmouth’s seal (Sandford, Genealogical History, p. 244)  51 20 Henry Duke of Hereford’s seal, 1399, attached to British Library, Add. Charter 5829 (by permission of the British Library)  53 21 Richard II’s Great Seal (Sandford, Genealogical History, p. 190)  53 22 Henry IV’s first Great Seal (Sandford, Genealogical History, p. 244)  53 23 Henry IV’s first Great Seal, attached to British Library, Add. Charter 6016 (Birch 257) (by permission of the British Library)  53 24 Crest in the Huntington MS (reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA)  54 25 Henry of Monmouth’s crest as Prince of Wales (Sandford, Genealogical History, p. 245)  54 26 Henry V’s crest (Sandford, Genealogical History, p. 255)  54

x

ME Texts in Transition.indb 10

07/04/2014 00:03

Carrie Griffin

1 Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 878, fol. 1r (© The Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge)  224 2 Kneller bookplate, from Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 878 (© The Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge)  225 3 San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 64, inside coverboard with pencilled note (reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California) 233 4 San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 64, fol. 53r (reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California)  236 James J. Murphy

1 Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Cod. lat. 11441, Laurentius Traversanus, Nova Rhetorica (Lotte Hellinga, Caxton in Focus: The Beginning of Printing in England (London: British Library, 1982), p. 46)  242 Natalia I. Petrovskaia

1 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson B 484, fol. 1r; first page of the Imago Mundi fragment (reproduced with kind permission of The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford)  252 2 Hand switch at fol. 72r, lines 16–17 (reproduced with kind permission of The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford)  259 Timothy Graham

1 Tokyo, Takamiya Collection, MS 129, p. 84. William Elstob’s note dated 18 June 1714. 270 2 Tokyo, Takamiya Collection, MS 129, fol. 1r. Opening of the Judex transcript. 277 3 Tokyo, Takamiya Collection, MS 129, p. 13. Beginning of the list of variants for the laws of King Ine.  285

The editor, contributors and publishers are grateful to all the institutions and persons listed for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publishers will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

xi

ME Texts in Transition.indb 11

07/04/2014 00:03

Contributors •••

Timothy Graham University of New Mexico



Richard Firth Green Ohio State University



Carrie Griffin University of Bristol



Gareth Griffith University of Bristol



Phillipa Hardman University of Reading



John C. Hirsh Georgetown University



Simon Horobin Oxford University



Terry Jones Independent scholar and television presenter



Takako Kato De Montfort University



Linne Mooney University of York



Mary Morse Rider University



James J. Murphy University of California, Davis (emeritus) Natalia I. Petrovskaia University of Cambridge



Susan (Sue) Powell Salford University (emeritus)



Ad Putter University of Bristol



Michael G. Sargent Queens College of the City University of New York Eric Stanley Oxford University (emeritus)



Mayumi Taguchi Osaka Sangyo University



Isamu Takahashi Keio University



Satoko Tokunaga Keio University



R. F. Yeager University of West Florida

xii

ME Texts in Transition.indb 12

07/04/2014 00:03

Acknowledgements ••• We wish to thank the Royal Historical Society, the Bibliographical Society, and the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York for support of the 2011 joint conference of the Early Book Society and the York Manuscripts Conference at which many of these papers were first delivered. We also thank the Leavis Fund in the Department of English and Related Literature, University of York, and Magdalen College, Oxford, for grants to provide part of the subvention for publishing this volume. The editors are grateful to Professor Peter Biller, General Editor of York Medieval Press, and to all the staff of Boydell & Brewer for their care and attention to detail in producing this volume. We are also grateful to Dr Joshua Burson for assistance in editing the volume, and David Roberts for final editing and design. The editors and contributors nevertheless take responsibility for any omissions, misstatements or errors in the content of this volume.

xiii

ME Texts in Transition.indb 13

07/04/2014 00:03

Abbreviations ••• BL British Library CUL Cambridge University Library DIMEV Digital Index of Middle English Verse, ed. L. R. Mooney, D. W. Mosser and E. Solopova, with D. H. Radcliffe (http://www.dimev.net) EETS Early English Text Society   e.s. extra series   o.s. original series HUMI Humanities Media Interface IPMEP R. E. Lewis, N. F. Blake and A. S. G. Edwards, Index of Printed Middle English Prose (New York, 1985) LALME A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, ed. A. McIntosh, M. L. Samuels and M. Benskin (Aberdeen, 1986) LMA London Metropolitan Archives NIMEV New Index of Middle English Verse, ed. A. S. G. Edwards and J. Boffey (London, 2005) ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols. (Oxford, 2004) OED Oxford English Dictionary SCCP The Scriveners’ Company Common Paper, 1357–1628, ed. F. W. Steer (London, 1968) STC A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland, and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640, 2nd edn, ed. W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson and K. F. Pantzer, 3 vols. (London, 1976–91) UL University Library

xiv

ME Texts in Transition.indb 14

07/04/2014 00:03

Preface •••

S

cholar, teacher, collector and bibliophile, Toshiyuki Takamiya has been a central figure in the study of medieval English literary texts for almost four decades, not only in his native Japan but also among Western literary scholars worldwide. This exciting collection of essays, centred on late medieval English manuscripts and their texts, honours the contributions he has made in this field. It includes essays by internationally known scholars, offering new insights into the works of canonical literary writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, William Langland, Walter Hilton and Nicholas Love, as well as lesser-known or anonymous texts and manuscripts. Some articles offer new readings of texts, or new evidence in response to important questions about the authorship, transmission or use of medieval English texts. Others offer new insights into medieval books, their producers, readers, and collectors. This collection of ground-breaking essays is thus a fitting tribute to one the foremost scholars of the history of the book, Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya, whom it honours. As both scholar and collector, Professor Takamiya's life and career have been devoted to the study of medieval manuscripts and their texts. In another volume dedicated to him, The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya, its editors Takami Matsuda, Richard Linenthal and John Scahill in their Editors’ Preface (pp. xiii–xvi) summarized Takamiya’s illustrious career, from boyhood schooling through professorship at Keio University, Japan’s oldest and most revered university: two being his colleagues at Keio, and the third his book-collecting advisor and agent, they knew more of the facts about his life and career than I. What I would add, that also comes out in individual tributes in both that volume and this, is the gratitude of many scholars for the warmth and generosity of Takamiya’s personality that have led us to wish to pay further tribute to him. No other modern collector or owner of medieval manuscripts has befriended the scholars working in the field as Takamiya has done, none is so well known as a frequent presence at international gatherings of scholars, none has so willingly enabled scholars to conduct studies of the books in his collection as he has done. The generosity comes in his willingness to bring manuscripts to temporary repositories where scholars can have access to them, or to welcome scholars visiting Tokyo to spend time in his library (at the expense of his own time as he advised, assisted and supervised them). The warmth comes in the welcome one receives on visiting Tokyo, or on meeting with Professor Takamiya at a conference or other scholarly gathering. Now, as I write, he has announced his generous intention to deposit his collection of manuscripts at the Beinecke xv

ME Texts in Transition.indb 15

07/04/2014 00:03

xvi

Preface

Library at Yale University so that still more scholars will have access to it in the future. Many scholars know him not only by reputation but even on a first-name basis, consulting with him about questions relating to medieval manuscripts and early printed books and benefiting from his impressive knowledge in this field. For Professor Takamiya is also a scholar in this field in his own right, with a very long list of books and articles published in both English and Japanese, not to mention book reviews and the very numerous papers delivered to both scholarly and non-academic audiences. The books, articles, translations, book reviews and other published outputs are listed by Isamu Takahashi with assistance of Ryoko Nakano in The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector (pp. 497–505) covering the years 1969 through 2003; and this list is updated below to the current year 2014 by Isamu Takahashi and Satoko Tokunaga. Two particular strengths are studies of the Arthurian tradition with which he began his career and for which he has served as President of the Arthurian Society of Japan for many years, and studies of incunabula, including the Gutenberg Bible and books printed by William Caxton, with which he was particularly engaged in the years leading up to his retirement in 2009. An essay by Takako Kato and Satoko Tokunaga describes the work of Professor Takamiya as Director of the Humanities Media Interface (HUMI) Project at Keio University in embracing new digital approaches to manuscript and early print scholarship, which demonstrated to scholars worldwide the remarkable new findings that could result from application of the new technology. As they remark, Takamiya was the visionary and leading force behind the project, revealing his youthful-seeming ability to keep pace with and even take a lead in new scholarly directions in the latter part of his career. The present volume includes articles gathered under four principal headings: ‘Chaucer, Gower and Langland’, ‘Lyrics and Romances’, ‘Devotional Writings’ and ‘Owners and Users of Medieval Books’. Most of these essays deal with the manuscripts of English vernacular texts and their evidence of scribal practice, compilation, reading habits and reading communities, as one would expect a volume dedicated to Professor Takamiya would reflect his own scholarly and bibliophilic interests. The volume begins with essays relating to the three best-known Middle English poets of the latter part of the fourteenth century: Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower and William Langland. Richard Firth Green’s essay on the Scriveners’ Company oaths fills in the historical background of Adam Pinkhurst’s (Chaucer’s scribe’s) written oath in the Scriveners’ Common Paper, specifically when and why it was written down. Green’s detective work in documentary records reveals new evidence about the conflicts within the Scriveners’ Company amid the history of London guilds in the 1380s and 1390s. Simon Horobin next provides an important essay on the text of the Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 201 manuscript of Langland’s Piers Plowman. This manuscript contains the only complete copy of the smaller of two manuscript traditions of the B-text of Piers Plowman, which has played a significant part in disputes about the text of the poem. Setting aside other scholarly debate about this tradition, Horobin instead concentrates on the

ME Texts in Transition.indb 16

07/04/2014 00:03

Preface

xvii

extraordinarily interesting unique scribal readings: for instance, he points out that the scribe introduces new passus divisions, possibly, Horobin argues, to emphasize the poem’s dream vision structure more clearly. Next, Terry Jones marshalls an impressive array of evidence to demonstrate that John Gower did not in fact change his major poem, Confessio Amantis, to offer praise of Henry Bolingbroke before he became king in 1399. Jones argues that all the evidence cited by previous scholars as demonstrating Gower’s change of allegiance in the 1390s is pre-dated retrospectively in order to court favour with the new king. Jones’s arguments are persuasive, and this is one of the most important essays in the collection  –  a fitting tribute to his friend Professor Takamiya. Another scholar-friend, R. F. Yeager, offers a detailed study of the only two surviving manuscripts of a French-language love poem, Le Songe Vert, which an earlier scholar had suggested might be written by John Gower. Yeager examines the British Library Additional MS 34114, which was owned by Bishop Despenser of Norwich, who (Yeager argues) must have had the poem added to his collection of twelfth-century chansons de geste. Yeager concludes firmly that the poem was not written by Gower. The second group of essays focuses on ‘Lyrics and Romances’. Phillipa Hardman contributes a fascinating study of Sir Ferumbras in Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 33, wherein are found not only a complete copy of the poem but also fragments of an earlier draft written on paper wrappers. Comparing the portions of text that survive in both parts of the manuscript, Hardman concludes that the wrapper fragments and the copy written in full show us stages in the composition of the poem leading to the (perhaps) final version recorded in other manuscripts. John Hirsh’s study of a single leaf of Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D.913 that records well-known short lyrics and songs with brief titles or first lines of others is also a tour de force. Hirsh notes (as no one before has done) that the leaf was once folded, and goes on from there to argue convincingly that it first existed not bound in a codex but separately as a performer’s aide memoire, recording in full songs with which he was less familiar and simply noting others he knew by heart, in the order of a complete musical performance. Ad Putter and Gareth Griffith offer an overview of the contents of multilingual English and French literary manuscripts to make some generalizations about what sorts of texts appeared in them. In twenty-eight multilingual manuscripts they found numerous lyrics but only eight romances; and surveying their dates they discovered that such multilingual manuscripts became less common in the course of the fourteenth century. The last essay in this group is contributed by Eric Stanley, who examines six short poems from the famous British Library, Harley 2253 manuscript that are written as prose instead of in verse lines. Stanley grapples with the question of why the scribe should have written them as prose, and argues that modern editions should not depend upon the prose punctuation in setting them out as verse texts. A group of essays on ‘Devotional Writings’ follows, beginning with a wideranging and comprehensive study of the genre by Susan Powell, a survey of the evidence of books being ‘licensed’ in accord with the directives of Thomas Arundel’s Constitutions. Finding only two possible examples in fifteenth-century

ME Texts in Transition.indb 17

07/04/2014 00:03

xviii

Preface

manuscripts and two more in the time of Luther, she concludes that in such a climate of awareness many writers self-censored their writings, but also that given the evidence of the number of Wycliffite bibles circulating in this period it was perhaps difficult to police writing and circulation in manuscript. Next, a comprehensive study of the provenance of manuscripts of Nicholas Love’s Mirrour of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ and Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection is offered by the editor of both texts, Michael Sargent. From this evidence Sargent concludes that Hilton did not ‘go north’ with Archbishop Arundel (as often stated) and that most manuscripts of Love’s Mirrour were copied in London, not Yorkshire  –  with the important exception of the one that provides the occasion for this essay, Takamiya’s own MS 8. Mayumi Taguchi then offers her own tribute in the form of a detailed study of the devotional anthology Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2125. She first provides a detailed description of the make-up of the manuscript and its contents, and then analyses the additions to and deletions from the manuscript over the course of the fifteenth century and beyond to try to determine whether the manuscript was altered deliberately to guard the owners against heresy-hunters. Finally in this group is an article by Mary Morse, describing in thorough detail one of Takamiya’s own manuscripts, numbered 56 in his collection, a long scroll in the form of a ‘birth girdle’, including illustrations and prayers, the girdle itself to be worn and the prayers invoked by women to protect them during childbirth. The final group of essays deals variously with ‘Owners and Users of Manuscripts’. Carrie Griffin begins this group with a study of the late medieval and early modern owners of manuscripts of The Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy, finishing by tracing the ownership of a copy of this text that is now in Takamiya’s own collection, MS 39. James J. Murphy writes on the rhetorical treatises of Laurentius Gulielmus Traversagnus, including the Margarita eloquentiae, which was printed by the St Albans printer (one of seven books), and a partial copy of this text made in the manuscript Bodleian Library, MS Laud lat. 61. Next, Natalia Petrovskaia describes the travels of a quire dating from the early twelfth century, with a fragment of the Imago Mundi of Honorius of Autun, now bound in a notebook collected by Sir John Ware in the seventeenth century. The notebook is traced from Ware to Rawlinson, whereby it ended up in the Bodleian Library as MS Rawlinson B 484. The final essay in this festschrift, by Timothy Graham, is reprinted with additions from an article published in 2010 in Poetica. Graham studies a manuscript in Takamiya’s collection, a seventeenthcentury transcription of Anglo-Saxon texts made by William Elstob and his sister Elizabeth, also a noted Anglo-Saxon scholar. Graham reprints the article here ‘as an affectionate tribute to Toshiyuki Takamiya, whose extraordinary generosity afforded [him] the opportunity to study [t]his manuscript over an extended period’. Thus I began and have concluded this introduction in acknowledging the generosity of Professor Takamiya in sharing not only his wide-ranging knowledge of medieval English manuscripts but also his own personal collection. Those who have contributed here have all expressed this sentiment in footnotes or carefully

ME Texts in Transition.indb 18

07/04/2014 00:03

Preface

xix

worded phrases, and together with myself, we hope that the present volume goes some way to expressing our gratitude in these tributes to a scholar and friend who has enriched our knowledge and our lives.  Linne Mooney

ME Texts in Transition.indb 19

07/04/2014 00:03

ME Texts in Transition.indb 20

07/04/2014 00:03

Richard Firth Green

The Early History of the Scriveners’ Company Common Paper and its So-Called ‘Oaths’ •••

I

n an article that has received a considerable amount of attention,1 Linne Mooney links the professional legal scrivener Adam Pinkhurst, whose autograph appears in the earliest official record of the London Scriveners’ Guild, with the scribe memorably pilloried by Geoffrey Chaucer in an acerbic little verse: Adam scriveyn, if ever it thee bifalle Boece or Troylus for to wryten newe, Under thy long lokkes thou most have the scalle, But after my makyng thow wryte more trewe; So ofte adaye I mot thy werk renewe, It to correcte and eke to rubbe and scrape, And al is thorugh thy negligence and rape.2

This paper will attempt to answer two simple questions: when did Adam Pinkhurst subscribe his name to the Scriveners’ official record, and why was he required to do so? It will have nothing substantive to say on the question of whether Adam Pinkhurst is to be identified with the Adam Scriveyn of Chaucer’s squib, though it may help to fill in some of the historical background on that issue. The wider aim of the paper is to provide a fuller history of the early years of the Scriveners’ Company (properly, at this date, called the Craft of Writers of Court Letter) than has been available hitherto. Two obstacles stand in the way of anyone seeking to write a history of the origins of the Scriveners’ guild. The first is the extremely shabby state of the official guild record book, the Scriveners’ Company Common Paper.3 For a profession that made its living by its pen, the scriveners were remarkably inept at keeping their own records in order. The Common Paper has been re-bound more than once and, according to a note tipped into the back by Sir Hilary Jenkinson at the time of its repair by the Public Record Office in 1924/5, its original first gathering included not simply its opening pages (pp. 1–8), but pp. 53–66 as well; other fourteenth- and 1 L. Mooney, ‘Chaucer’s Scribe’, Speculum 81 (2006), 97–138. 2 The Riverside Chaucer, ed. L. D. Benson et al., 3rd edn (Boston, 1987), p. 650. 3 London, Guildhall Library, MS 5370.

1

ME Texts in Transition.indb 1

07/04/2014 00:03

2

Richard Firth Green

fifteenth-century entries are scattered throughout the volume (for instance, on pp. 67–91, 222, 281–2 and 296). The PRO did a thoroughly professional job and the volume is now solid, if very far from elegant. The second obstacle is Francis W. Steer’s calendar and partial translation (I use the word advisedly) of this Common Paper, undertaken for the London Record Society in 1968.4 Steer was a widely published archivist, but how he reached the heights he did with only the most rudimentary command of the skills of his trade is something of a mystery. His rendering of the early documents in the volume is littered with elementary errors of transcription and translation, some so crucial that, as we shall see, later researchers have been led seriously astray. The article on him in ODNB, written by G. H. Martin, says that he was ‘not always an easy colleague’, and describes him as a man ‘often at odds with his profession’ and ‘deeply sensitive to slights’,5 so it is perhaps a mercy that he is no longer with us to read this assessment of his work. The writers of court letter had acquired some form of corporate identity by the year 1357 when they, and their scribal cousins, the writers of text letter, were excused jury duty at London sheriffs’ inquests;6 at this period they do not seem to have had their own ordinances, but in 1364 they adopted a set of boiler-plate ordinances provided by the City of London.7 By 1373, however, they were becoming aware of an increasing number of foreigners (i.e. non-citizens) working as scriveners in London, and in an attempt to counter this threat they drew up their own customized ordinances.8 These were extremely modest, containing only four articles. The first two (forbidding foreigners to practice the scriveners’ craft within the city, and setting standards for admission to the guild), and the fourth (establishing fines for disobedience) were unproblematic, but the third was quite another matter. It required the members to subscribe their names to every deed they copied. On the surface this seems not unreasonable. Other medieval trades employed identifying marks to distinguish their handiwork: masons’ marks can still be found on medieval buildings and even bakers impressed their own stamps into their unbaked bread. However, for scriveners to set their names to the documents they copied was evidently to risk liability in the event of a lawsuit, since they were in effect casting themselves in the role of official witnesses in much the same manner as Continental notaries.9 Only three years after these ordinances were passed, 4 The Scriveners’ Company Common Paper, 1357–1628, ed. F. W. Steer (London, 1968) [hereafter SCCP]. 5 G. H. Martin, ‘Steer, Francis William (1912–1978)’, ODNB (http://www.oxforddnb.com/ index/101057812/). 6 SSCP, p. 1; Calendar of Letter Books Preserved among the Archives of the Corporation of the City of London at the Guildhall: Letter-Book G, ed. R. R. Sharpe (London, 1905), p. 88; G. Pollard, ‘The Company of Stationers before 1554’, The Library 4th series 18 (1937), 1–38 (p. 5). 7 SCCP, p. 1; Calendar of Letter Books: G, p. 174. 8 SCCP, p. 2; Calendar of Letter Books: G, p. 312. 9 See SCCP, p. 222 for a detailed set of objections to this practice, and see below for the argument that this page originally formed the recto of the last folio of the first gathering

ME Texts in Transition.indb 2

07/04/2014 00:03

The Early History of the Scriveners’ Company Common Paper

3

William Grendone, ‘called “Credelle,” scrivener’ was accused before the mayor and aldermen of London of having drawn up a set of apprenticeship indentures for a minor called Nicholas Flourman without the permission of Flourman’s father, and when ‘William acknowledged that such indentures had been by him made’, he found himself imprisoned in Newgate for his pains.10 This case may well have precipitated a crisis in the scriveners’ guild for around this time a number of its members seem to have challenged the new regulation and the guild broke apart over it. ‘And after this’, reports the Common Paper, ‘the said craft of writers of court letter was without wardens and rule and governance for fifteen years and more.’11 In 1391, however, two things happened to make the London scriveners change their minds and seek the protection of a guild once more. In the intervening years foreign (and allegedly improperly trained) scribes had begun setting up their stalls within the city, and in April of that year one in particular, Thomas Panter, or Pantier, fell spectacularly afoul of the authorities.12 A London citizen called William Bowyer had had a lease on an entailed tenement that had come to him by marriage forged and embellished with the genuine seals of a pair of earlier tenants in order to make it appear that his wife held the tenement in fee simple and thus had the right to sell it. In this subterfuge he was ably assisted by Thomas Panter, who was accordingly condemned to spend an hour in the pillory for his pains. Interestingly enough, Panter was caught because he had endorsed the forged deed himself, following the very practice that had caused such dissension in the scriveners’ guild fifteen years earlier.13 The second and still more traumatic event occurred at the end of June. Robert Braybrooke, bishop of London, sent a pastoral letter (a copy of it is entered into the Common Paper)14 to the priests of his diocese exhorting them to admonish those of their parishioners who continued to practise their trades on Sundays and religious festivals and to threaten them with legal action if they did not desist; amongst the trades he singled out for particular attention was that of the scriveners.15 His priests were given until the end of the year to report back to of the Common Paper. 10 See Memorials of London and London Life in the XIIIth, VIVth and XVth Centuries, ed. H. T. Riley (London, 1868), p. 397; Calendar of Letter Books Preserved among the Archives of the Corporation of the City of London at the Guildhall: Letter-Book H, ed. R. R. Sharpe (London, 1907), p. 34. 11 SCCP, p. 3. 12 SCCP, p. 4. See N. Ramsay, ‘Forgery and the Rise of the London Scriveners’ Company’, in Fakes and Frauds: Varieties of Deception in Print and Manuscript, ed. R. Myers and M. Harris (Winchester, 1989), 99–108 (p. 104). 13 The full record is given in translation in Memorials of London and London Life, ed. Riley, pp. 527–9. 14 SCCP, p. 5. 15 Barbers [barbitonsores] are also explicitly mentioned; Braybrooke sent a similar letter in April 1392, directed against leather tawyers (allutarii) who worked on Sundays; see Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. D. Wilkins, 4 vols. (London, 1737), vol. 3, p. 218; the original is in Bishop Braybrooke’s Register, London Metropolitan Archives [henceforth LMA], MS 09531, fol. 384v.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 3

07/04/2014 00:03

4

Richard Firth Green

him. The disgrace brought on the scriveners’ good name by Panter’s actions and the very real threat to their livelihood posed by Braybrooke’s campaign evidently prompted the more honest (or at least less corrupt) among them to seek to revive the guild. On 17 May 1392, reports London Letter Book H, ‘came unto the Chamber of the Guildhall good men of the art of writers of the court letter, and presented to the Mayor and Aldermen Martin Seman and John Cossier, whom they had elected masters of their art for the ensuing year.’16 Interestingly, in the Scriveners’ Common Paper copy of this letter-book entry the word electos has been written over an erasure.17 It is worth noting that both Seman and Cossier doubled as papal notaries and thus may well have had a particular interest in keeping Braybrooke happy. The Common Paper says nothing about it, but the contentious article about scriveners subscribing their names to their own documents was presumably dropped around this time, since a page of arguments against the practice (now SCCP, p. 222) appears to originate from this period. Seman and Cossier themselves, however, can hardly have had serious objections to the practice, since as notaries they would have been quite used to authenticating their own work with elaborate notarial marks.18 The first pages of the Scriveners’ Common Paper duly document Panter’s forgery, the ‘election’ of Seman and Cossier, and the full text of Braybrooke’s pastoral letter, but at this point the record begins to get a bit slippery. ‘For which abovewritten reasons’ [pur les queux causes auauntescrites], it says, the aforesaid masters and wardens passed a new set of ordinances.19 I shall discuss the content of these ordinances in more detail below, but for the moment I note only that their first item is a regulation that the wardens should require, on pain of being reported to the Mayor of London, all members of the guild to swear an oath pledging not to pre-date nor post-date deeds, nor to copy blank charters; and that their second is the provision that these members should then ‘witness that this same oath has been made by an entry written in their own hand in this the Common Paper of the said craft for future reference’. 20 This then is the warrant for the series of so-called ‘oaths’ (I prefer the term ‘confirmations’) of newly admitted members which runs from the late fourteenth century through to 1628, and the best known of which is now Adam Pinkhurst’s.21 The Common Paper says that Martin Seman and Thomas Cossier were wardens in 1392/3; it says that Robert Braybrooke’s letter of 1391 was the occasion for the new ordinances being drawn up; it says that the new 16 Calendar of Letter Books: H, p. 375. 17 SCCP, p. 4. 18 See E. Freshfield, ‘Some Notarial Marks in the “Common Paper” of the Scriveners’ Company’, Archaeologia 54 (1895), 239–54; Cossier and Seman’s marks, which appear in SCCP, p. 53, are reproduced as figs. 1 and 2 in Freshfield, ‘Some Notarial Marks’, pp. 241–2. 19 SCCP, p. 6. 20 ‘tesmoigne mesme le serment estre fait par lescripture de sa propre mayn entree en y ceste le comune paper du dit mestier pur le temps auenir’. 21 SCCP, pp. 53–218. The name is spelled ‘Pynkhurst’ in his signature in SCCP, p. 56, and elsewhere; I follow Mooney’s practice of modernizing the name to ‘Pinkhurst’ in her article ‘Chaucer’s Scribe’.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 4

07/04/2014 00:03

The Early History of the Scriveners’ Company Common Paper

5

ordinances were approved during the time of the aforesaid wardens (i.e. Seman and Cossier). The obvious conclusion we are meant to draw is that the old ordinances were resurrected early in 1392, that they remained in force long enough for Seman and Cossier to be appointed, and that during their wardenship (May 1392  –  June 1393) a new set of ordinances was framed and adopted to address the problems of 1391 (the pillorying of Thomas Panter and Robert Braybrooke’s letter). That is what the first eight pages of the Common Paper lead us to believe (I should even go so far as to say that that is what they want us to believe), and that is what scholars far more astute than Francis W. Steer have believed ever since.22 The reality, I shall argue, is rather different. At this point I should like to digress for a moment to consider the codicology of the Scriveners’ Common Paper. Its first eight pages consist of copies of a series of documents  –  a handful of entries in the London Letter Books, the old ordinances, Robert Braybrooke’s pastoral letter, and the new ordinances  –  linked by brief narrative passages. These documents, however, were not copied seriatim, since they are almost all in the same hand (Linne Mooney once suggested to me that it may have been Adam Pinkhurst’s, though my own slight preference would be for Martin Seman),23 nor, far more importantly, were they copied during the wardenship of Seman and Cossier. The evidence for this is twofold. The first is internal: the preamble to Robert Braybrooke’s letter tells us that it was issued by the man who was ‘at that time’ Bishop of London: ‘leuesque de Loundres qualors estoit fist pronouncier un maundement’.24 Now Braybrooke was consecrated Bishop of London at the beginning of 1382 and he remained in this office until his death in August 1404; thus, whoever copied his letter and the set of new ordinances that follows it into the Scriveners’ Common Paper must have done so after 1404. The codicological evidence is equally compelling: Sir Hilary Jenkinson tells us that the first gathering originally consisted of pp. 1–8 and 53–66, that is to say, twenty-two pages, or either five bifolia with an extra leaf tipped in, or six bifolia with a leaf torn out. As I shall argue, there is good reason to believe it was the latter. Now the series of scriveners’ written confirmations begins on p. 53, so either the scriveners did not begin to subscribe their names until after 1404,25 or they began to write their names on the ninth page of a booklet of twenty-four (or possibly twenty) pages and left the first eight pages blank for someone to copy in the new ordinances and other relevant documents at a later date. This is in fact clearly what happened. For the first three pages the spacing is quite generous, but whilst copying page three the 22 See e.g. P. R. Robinson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts in London Libraries, 2 vols. (London, 2003), vol. 1, p. 37, and Ramsay, ‘Forgery and the Rise of the London Scriveners’ Company’, p. 104. 23 If the hand is indeed Seman’s, it is worth pointing out that these first eight pages must have been written between 28 August 1404 (the date of Braybrooke’s death) and 11 April 1405 (the date of Seman’s will). 24 SCCP, p. 5. 25 This is manifestly impossible since at least three of the subscribers, John Cloune, Robert Huntyngton and John Hakedy, were already dead by then.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 5

07/04/2014 00:03

6

Richard Firth Green

scribe began to realize that he wouldn’t have enough room for all the documents he needed to include. One of these was evidently a page of eight arguments against the requirement that scriveners must subscribe their names to their own documents; he copied out most of the first of these arguments and then, presumably to save space, reduced the remaining seven to a couple of phrases: ‘pur la quele cause et pur autres causes resonables et pur plusours meschiefs que pourront avenir par lavauntdit escription de lour nons a les faitz.’ He must then have had second thoughts about this abridgement and decided to copy out the whole document on the final page of the booklet (in my reading, on fol. 12b), for then he inserted a reference to it above the line: ‘come pluys pleynement appiert al fyn diceste paper’. Even after this deferral our scribe had barely left himself enough room (he was a writer of court letter, after all, not text letter), and p. 8 finds him far less generous in his spacing (though the impression of crowding is increased by another hand having squeezed in a final ordinance at the bottom of the page). At this early stage, we may imagine, the run of scriveners’ confirmations was a long way from filling up the whole booklet, but by 1425 the series finally reached fol. 11b,26 and in March 1426, with the twelfth folio presenting an obstacle to continuing the sequence, someone must have decided to remove it. (This, then, explains why Jenkinson concluded that the first gathering contained twenty-two, not twenty-four, pages.) The original fol. 12, now an orphan leaf, must have floated around on its own for some time, until it was finally bound in as p. 222 of the present Common Paper. (Interestingly, p. 221, my hypothetical fol. 12a, remains blank to this day.) The Common Paper as it stood in, say, 1405 offered yet one more barrier to future expansions. Since the new ordinances ended on page eight and the series of confirmations began on p. 9, there was no room to copy in any similar ordinances that might be passed in the future. At some point a further ordinance concerning apprenticeship was squeezed in on the bottom of p. 8, but in 1439, when the guild successfully submitted five new articles for approval to the mayor,27 the only solution was to break up the original first gathering and insert extra pages to accommodate the new ordinances. This then explains the pagination that confronted Jenkinson in 1924. Once we are in a position to recognize that pp. 1–8 contain a later and, I argue, somewhat sanitized, narrative of the events of the early 1390s, we can begin to reconstruct what really happened. The key to such a reconstruction lies in another orphan leaf (now containing pp. 281–2), written in a hand contemporary with that of the scribe of pp. 1–8 and 222, but quite distinct from it (figs. 1–3). The significance of this leaf has been missed hitherto because Francis Steer made an unusually 26 From p. 62 onward there are regularly five names to a page, but on p. 66 only three names (Walter Culpet, John Kendale, Robert Wade) were written in 1425, with a fourth (William Fanside) added in 1426. The next booklet (p. 67) begins with John Daunt (also in 1426), but in 1440 when he was appointed notary Daunt made use of the space left at the bottom of p. 66 to add his notarial mark to the Common Paper: Freshfield, ‘Some Notarial Marks’, p. 245. 27 SCCP, pp. 8–10.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 6

07/04/2014 00:03

Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of the book.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 7

Fig. 1  London, Guildhall Library, MS 5370, Scriveners’ Common Paper, p. 281 (top half)

Disclaimer:

07/04/2014 00:03

Richard Firth Green

8

thorough job of obscuring its meaning; I have therefore included a transcription and translation of it as Appendix 1 below. The first thing it tells us is that John Cossier and Martin Seman, the two wardens who resurrected the guild in 1392/3 after a sixteen-year hiatus, returned to reprise their wardenship in 1394/5, only a year later. (In the intervening year, 1393/4, we know that John Cloune and Thomas Lyncoln had acted as wardens.)28 Their second wardenship was not to be a happy one for Cossier and Seman. Some attempts appear to have been made over the previous two years to stop rogue scriveners from working on Sundays, but they had clearly been ineffectual, for on 28 February 1395 the wardens were sent a summons by the president of the London Consistory Court (fig. 1). It demanded that they supply the court with the names of all those in their guild who had contravened or resisted the bishop’s mandate against working on Sundays and Feast Days, together with a suitable time and place for their correction, and it set a deadline of Easter (that year, 11 April) for a reply. A note adds that five names were duly supplied, and then, under the heading ‘scriptores’ there appear five sets of charges (fig. 2). The first reads: That he keeps his stall without a workshop open on Sundays and important feasts [literally festis duplicibus, ‘double feasts’] and writes and exercises his craft openly on the aforesaid days in the sight of the people, and hangs outside many documents and various writings to the great disgrace of all the honest men of his craft and as a wicked example to other workmen, and in clear contempt of dear mother church and against the command of the lord bishop.29 The remaining four repeat these charges with minor variations, but two, three and five include, ‘against the prohibitions of the wardens of his craft’,30 and three also adds at the end, ‘and despite having been punished before in the Consistory for the same offence’. 31 Francis Steer explains in a footnote that ‘the sense is that what follows are the forms of allegation employed against those five unnamed scriveners who contravened the instruction about closing their premises on festivals.’ But the scriveners are not unnamed, at least not in the sense that Steer means it. Their names have been carefully erased from the left-hand margin of the page by a later reader (see fig. 2). (There are also at least four erasures in the right margin, where it seems likely that a record of their punishments would originally have stood.) In its original state, then, p. 281 must have recorded the names of five scriveners, together with the charges against them, as supplied to the Consistory Court by the wardens 28 Calendar of Letter Books: H, p. 397. 29 ‘Quia tenet shopam siue oppellam suam apertam Diebus Dominicis et festis duplicibus et scribit ac facit artem suam aperte predictis diebus in visu populi  –  et extra pendet plures cedulas et diuersa scripta in magnum scandalum omnium proborum hominum artis sue, et in exemplum perniciosum aliorum artificiorum et in contemptum alme matris ecclesie manifestum et contra mandatum Domini Episcopi’. 30 ‘et contra defencionem Custodum artis sue’. 31 ‘et contra hoc quod pro eodem casu antea castigates fuit in Consistorio’.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 8

07/04/2014 00:03

Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of the book.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 9

Fig. 2  London, Guildhall Library, MS 5370, Scriveners’ Common Paper, p. 281 (bottom half)

Disclaimer:

07/04/2014 00:03

Richard Firth Green

10

of the Writers of Court Letter. It would be gratifying to be able to supply these five names from some other source, but unfortunately the earliest London Consistory Court Records to survive date from 1467.32 At the bottom of the page is written absolucionem habuerunt ‘they had absolution’, meaning that the cases must have gone to trial and the offenders received the appropriate discipline. Medieval guilds were an odd mixture of management and union: they regulated their members, but they were also expected to protect them. At worst, disputes that could not be settled in-house might be referred to the Mayor and Aldermen of the City (even where they concerned matters of ecclesiastical jurisdiction),33 so a warden prepared to hand over five of his own masters to some other authority might have expected to provoke a reaction. The next page (p. 282; fig. 3) suggests that Seman and Cossier certainly got one. Its first paragraph is worth quoting in full: Item, soon after the said five persons were assoiled, attracting to them others of the said craft, they proposed to form an opposition against [de faire partie encountre] their wardens and their said craft, not wishing to attend their meetings; for these reasons the wardens presented the bill that follows:34 Before looking at this bill, we might pause to ask ourselves how large the craft of writers of court letter actually was in 1395. Working back from the later entries, which were regularly dated, it is possible to say with some confidence that the guild must have numbered around twenty masters in 1395.35 Recalling that it had only 32 R. M. Wunderli, London Church Courts and Society on the Eve of the Reformation (Cambridge, MA, 1981), p. 161. 33 In 1413, for instance, the City disciplined the Barbers for practicing their craft on Sundays. Calendar of Letter Books Preserved among the Archives of the Corporation of the City of London at the Guildhall: Letter-Book I, ed. R. R. Sharpe (London, 1909), p. 115. 34 ‘Item tost apres que les ditz ·v· persones issint assoilles accrochauntz a eux autres persones du dit mistier [encountr’ crossed through] se proposerent de faire partie encountre lour Gardeins et lour dit mistier, et ne voloient venir a lour assemblez; pour les queux mesmes les Gardeins pursuerent le bill ensuaunt:’ 35 The first forty-one confirmations in the Common Paper have no dates, but soon after 1417, when John Chesham is the first to date his entry (SCCP, p. 64), all new members are following his example. In the fifty-year period from 1417 to 1467 the guild admitted sixty-seven new members, or roughly one-and-a-third a year; by assuming a simple 1.34 per year ratio for the twelve years between 1395 and 1407 and subtracting this figure from forty-one, we arrive at a sum total of eleven, which is almost certainly too low. However, the guild was steadily expanding in the early years of fifteenth century (there were eleven new members in the decade 1417–27, thirteen from 1427–37, and fifteen from 1437–47); this progression, had it remained constant from the beginning, would give us nine for 1407–17 and seven for 1397–1407, so by adding one more for the two-year period between 1395 and 1397, we would arrive at twenty-four, which is possibly a little high. A figure of twenty, then, represents a reasonable compromise. It is worth noting that John Hakedy, the twentieth name on the list, died in 1398 (M. Fitch, Index to Testamentary Records in the Archdeaconry Court of London, 2 vols. (London, 1979–85), vol. 1, p. 167) and that John Spark, the twenty-second, was made warden as late as 1421 (Calendar of Letter Books: I, p. 288).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 10

07/04/2014 00:03

Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of the book.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 11

Fig. 3  London, Guildhall Library, MS 5370, Scriveners’ Common Paper, p. 282 (top half)

Disclaimer:

07/04/2014 00:03

Richard Firth Green

12

just recovered from a controversy that had led to a sixteen-year hiatus, then, we may appreciate that the potential defection of five masters who had won over a number of others to their cause (in other words, possibly nearly half the membership) presented the wardens with a very real threat. They dealt with it, as administrators will often do under such circumstances, by isolating the ringleader. The bill that the wardens drafted seems to have puzzled Francis Steer (‘the next paragraph is difficult to translate’, he writes), but it is quite unambiguous: To the most honourable lord mayor of the city of London: the wardens of the guild of writers of court letter in the said city complain against one Robert Huntyngton, scrivener, that for a long time the said Robert has been a rebel against the said wardens, and because of his rebellion certain other persons of the said order, taking their bad example from him, have become similarly rebellious against the said wardens, causing great dissension and disunity [a graunt desbat et disserueraunce] in the said guild, for which reason the said wardens are hindered in the performance of their duties and have no control over their said guild [ne puissent mye lour dit mistier ruler], for which they solicit a remedy according to the customs of the said city, as an act of charity.36 The mayor did not let them down; in a different hand (perhaps Martin Seman’s) someone has added, ‘on the strength of this bill the said Robert was judged by the mayor and aldermen and committed to prison until he had complied with the rules of the said guild and afterwards he paid a fine for his rebellion.’37 Was Robert Huntyngton a member of the original gang of five, or was he a senior master who had taken up their cause and sought to stage a coup against Seman and Cossier? Complete certainty is impossible, but three wills that survive in the London archives (those of the warden Martin Seman, of his successor John Cloune, and of Robert Huntyngton himself),38 along with an inquisition into Huntyngton’s will preserved among the Ancient Deeds of St Paul’s Cathedral,39 open a fascinating window onto the relative status of these men. By far the briefest of the three wills is Martin Seman’s, drawn up just before he undertook a pilgrimage to Canterbury on 11 April 1405, and proved in the Archdeaconry Court on 21 January in the following

36 ‘A treshonurable seigneur le mair de la Citee de Loundres: eux pleignount les Gardeins del mistier des Escriueyns de court lettre du dite Citee, vers vn Robert Huntyngdon Escriueyn de ceo que le dit Robert par longes temps ad este rebell enuers les ditz Gardeins et pour quell rebellerie certeins autres persones du dit mestier pronauntz [   for prenauntz?] par lui mal ensaumple sount deuenuz ensement rebell enuers les ditz Gardeins a graunt desbat et disseueraunce en le dit mistier Pur le quell les ditz Gardeyns sount destourbes de lour office affaire et ne puissent mye lour dit mistier ruler Dount ils priount de remedie solunc lusage du dite Citee, en oeuure de Charite.’ 37 ‘Par vertue de quell bill le dit Robert estoit iugge par le Mair et Aldermans et commys a prison tanque il se auoit conforme a son mistier et apres fesoit fyn pur la rebellerie.’ 38 I am grateful to Caroline Barron for drawing my attention to these wills. 39 I should like to thank Nigel Ramsay for drawing this inquisition to my attention.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 12

07/04/2014 00:03

The Early History of the Scriveners’ Company Common Paper

13

year;40 he makes no detailed inventory of his property and names only one beneficiary: his daughter Agnes, who is also to act as his executrix. Interestingly, he concludes by naming two of his fellow scriveners, William Broun and Richard Claidich,41 as beneficiaries should his daughter predecease him. Seman’s will leaves us with the impression that he was neither wealthy nor particularly well connected, and reinforces the impression, left by their respective confirmations, that he played second fiddle to his fellow warden, John Cossier. By contrast, John Cloune’s will, registered in the Consistory Court and dated 28 July 1399, is much longer and more detailed.42 He leaves £3 6s 8d for the furnishing of his tomb and over £20 in numerous small bequests to friends and relatives; he makes provision for three named apprentices (none of whom appears in the Common Paper) and to a number of others should they complete their terms; finally, he appoints his wife, Matilda, and John Brikwyld as executors. Robert Huntyngton, who died at the beginning of November 1398, appears to have been the wealthiest of the three.43 His only beneficiary (and also his executrix) is his wife Isabelle, but he leaves her tenements and appurtenances in both ‘Cookyslane’ and ‘Phillippisslane’, and his estate was valuable enough to justify an inquest into his will held before the mayor of London, as royal Escheator, in March of the following year. The jurors were evidently asked whether Robert held proper title to his tenements, whether Isabelle was his wife, and whether he had any other heirs. They replied that he held his tenements in free burgage and that he had a right to leave them to whomever he wished [in testamento suo potest legare omnia terras et tenementa cuicumque voluit] (his Phillippsslane tenements, we also learn, were worth thirty shillings a year). The jurors say that he died without issue, and the details they give concerning his marital state are particularly interesting: ‘the foresaid jurors say that this same Robert Huntyngton betrothed the foresaid Isabella in the manner and form of matrimony with banns published by them at the church door and for that reason they call her his wife though no other spousals were solemnized or celebrated between them’ [et dicunt predicti iurati quod idem Robertus Huntyngton affidavit predictam Isabellam modo et forma matrimonali bannis inter eos in facie ecclesie editis et ea de causa vocant eam uxorem suam sed non aliquibus sponsalibus inter eos solemnpnizatis aut celebratis]. Finally we learn that he had been a citizen for over thirty years. It is tempting to imagine that Robert Huntyngton’s marital arrangements imply a man who had little use for ecclesiastical bureaucracy  –  the kind of man who might easily have resented episcopal regulation of his fellow scriveners’ working hours  –  but this is probably unwarranted.44 The jurors say that he departed this world [ab luce huius seculi migravit] between the publishing of the banns and the 40 LMA, MS 9051/1, fol. 167r. 41 The confirmations of Claidich and Broun appear on pp. 58 and 60 of the SCCP. In the copy of the will Claidich’s name appears as Claydell. 42 LMA, MS 9171/1, fol. 443r. 43 LMA, MS 9051/1, fol. 68v. 44 Huntyngton’s will reveals him as a conventionally pious man: he makes bequests to both St Paul’s and St Alphege’s.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 13

07/04/2014 00:03

14

Richard Firth Green

church solemnization of his marriage, so in all likelihood he married Isabelle at the very end of his life (a fact that helps explain why the inquest was held at all). In any event, Isabelle herself would not long remain a widow: by 1401 she was already married to a man called Richard Polhille.45 One thing, however, is perfectly clear: at the time of his rebellion against Seman and Cossier, Robert Huntyngton was a well-to-do and well-established citizen  –  hardly the kind of man who would have needed to work on Sundays to make ends meet. It seems unlikely, then, that he was one of the original gang of five; more probably he was a senior master who took up their cause and used it as pretext to challenge the authority of Cossier and Seman. It is equally clear that it was Robert Huntyngton’s rebellion in 1395 that provided the immediate occasion for drafting the new ordinances for the Scriveners’ Company and set on foot the series of confirmations that are such a distinctive feature of its Common Paper. If Bishop Braybrooke’s letter of 1391 provided its final cause, then there can be little doubt that it was Huntyngton’s rebellion of 1395 that furnished its efficient cause. I shall offer five pieces of evidence for this assertion: First, had the ordinances been in existence at the time of the laying of charges against the gang of five, these charges would have included some such phrase as ‘against the ordinances of the said craft’, since the second of the new ordinances prohibits the masters from holding open stalls on Sundays or double feasts [null dymenge ne iour de double feste]  –  the very term that appears in the set of charges against the five. Second, the sixth of the new ordinances deals with the election of wardens. The old wardens are to appoint one of their successors, and the other is to be appointed by the remaining masters; if, however, there should be any disagreement about the appointment, it must be referred to the whole guild and the outgoing wardens are to be barred from returning to office for three whole years. Had such a provision been in place in 1392/3 it is very unlikely that Seman and Cossier could have returned as wardens in 1394, or indeed that they could ever again have served as joint wardens. This provision appears to be a clear concession to those who were dissatisfied with Cossier and Seman’s apparent stranglehold on the wardenship in the election of 1394. Third, the same sixth ordinance also directs that the election of wardens is to take place on the first Sunday after the Nativity of John the Baptist (24 June). In 1393, 24 June fell on a Tuesday so had these ordinances been in effect by the end of Cossier and Seman’s first wardenship the election of their successors would have taken place on the 29th. However, we learn from Letter Book H that John Cloune and Thomas Lyncoln were sworn in as wardens on 10 June. Fourth, John Cossier begins his own confirmation by desiring heartily to banish and eliminate (evadere et adnullare) whatsoever deceptions, faults and scandals are to be imagined in his craft (a phrase that is echoed by his fellow warden, Martin Seman, with the addition of the word ‘falsehoods’). While the primary reference 45 See Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office: Henry IV, vol. 1: A.D. 1399–1401 (London, 1903), p. 497, and Ninth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, part 1, appendix (London, 1883), p. 2 (no. 566).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 14

07/04/2014 00:03

The Early History of the Scriveners’ Company Common Paper

15

here is probably to the wording of the actual oath, it seems likely that Cossier and Seman also intended their phrasing to make a covert allusion to Robert Huntyngton and his recent troublemaking. Finally, the first two confirmations, those of Wardens Cossier and Seman46 are floridly phrased, carefully inscribed and accompanied by elaborate notarial signs. The third confirmation is short, carelessly written and plain. It makes no reference (as do those of Cossier and Seman) to the ordinances having been drawn up by ‘the masters and upright men of the guild’ (magistros et probos homines artis), and it contains two significant insertions: before the word iuramentum (‘oath’), the writer has added the word huiusmodi (‘of this kind’), and before the word ordinaciones (‘ordinances’), he has written in novas (‘new’). These insertions leave the strong impression that someone has supervised the writing of the confirmation and required the author make corrections in order to ensure that it was watertight. This third confirmation is Robert Huntyngton’s,47 and it is difficult not to read into it the work of a man forced to make a humiliating public acknowledgement of his own defeat. Sometime after 1404, someone (perhaps Martin Seman) did his best to remove all evidence of this discreditable affair from the Scriveners’ official record. He wrote out the new ordinances immediately after Bishop Braybooke’s letter, implying that the one was the result of the other; if this was not exactly false, it was certainly not the whole truth either. We should never have known what really happened had not someone else bound an account of Huntyngton’s rebellion (an account that had also been sanitized) into the back of the book. After the confirmations of Cossier, Seman and Huntyngton in the Common Paper, the next two  –  those of Geoffrey de Kettryngham and John Loune  –  are almost as unadorned as Huntyngton’s (were they perhaps his lieutenants?),48 but with John Cloune and Thomas Lyncoln (the previous year’s wardens) we return to a more confident style.49 The next entry, the eighth in the series, is the longest, the most rhetorically ornate, and the most elegantly copied of all; it is Adam Pinkhurst’s.50 It speaks volumes, I suggest, about Pinkhurst’s prominent position in the pecking order of the fledgling scriveners’ company.

46 SCCP, p. 53. 47 SCCP, p. 54. 48 SCCP, pp. 54, 55. They too omit any reference to magistros et probos homines. 49 SCCP, p. 55. 50 SCCP, p. 56. In view of Pynkhurst’s recent celebrity, I have provided an accurate transcription of his confirmation in Appendix 2.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 15

07/04/2014 00:03

16

[p. 281]

Richard Firth Green

appendix 1

ffait a remembrer que en lan du regne le Roi Richarde Seconde dysnoefisme en le tempes John Cossier et Martyn Seman adunques gardeins avient les caases cy ensuauntz [different hand] pur les shopes overtz les iours festivall les ditz Gardeyns fesoient garuante de les eyns closer encountre quell garuante ascuns ceo ne voloient faire pur le quell avient come desouth est escript. Presidens consistoris Londoni discretis viris Martino Seman & Johanni Cossier scriptoribus Londoni salutem in auctore salutis. Quia, ut accepimus, nonnulli publici scriptores littere curialis civitatis Londoni, quorum quidem scriptorum custodes ut asseritur estis deputati, shopas sine oppellas suas sacris diebus dominicis et aliis festivis ad honorem Dei institutis, contra formam et tenorem quarundem litterarum reverendi in Christo patris et domini divini Roberti Dei gratia Londoni episcopi certas moniciones legitimas in se continecium, factarum et habitarum cunctis pro artifico eorum venientibus tenent et prebent, apertas censuras in dictis litteris contentas dampnabiliter incurrendo. Vobis igitur committimus et mandamus quatinus de nominibus et cognominibus omnium et singulorum huiusmodi scriptorum dictis monicionibus contraveniencium siue non pro[d]encium51 diligenter inquiratis, et nos citra festum Pasche proximum future congruis loco et tempore debite certificetis ut remedium in hac parte debitum ad veniam animarum ipsorum, sic delinquencium correccionem apponere valeamus. Datis Londini ultimo die ffebruarii sub pede sigilli officialitatis Londini quod de presente ad manus habemus, Anno Domini millesimo CCC nonagesimo quinto. Par vertue de quell mandement les avauntditz gardeyns presenterent a le consistore susdit les nons en le manere cy ensuauntz: Scriptores Quia tenet shopam sine oppellam suam apertam diebus dominicis et festis duplicibus et scribit et facit artem suam apperte predictis diebus in visu populi et extra pendet plures cedules et diversa scripta in magnum scandalum omnium proborum hominum artis sue et in exemplum perniciosum aliorum artificiorum et in contemptum alme matris ecclesie manifestum et contra mandatum domini episcopi. Quia shopam suam tenet apertam diebus dominicis et festis duplicibus et scribit et facit artem suam apperte in visu populi predictis diebus et extra pendet plures cedules et diversa scripta in magnum scandalum omnium proborum hominum artis sue et in exemplum perniciosum aliorum artificiorum et in contemptum alme matris ecclesie manifestum et contra defencionem custodium artis sue ac contra mandatum domini episcopi. Quia shopam suam tenet apertam diebus dominicis et festis duplicibus 51 I should like to thank my colleague Leslie Locket for suggesting this emendation.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 16

07/04/2014 00:03

The Early History of the Scriveners’ Company Common Paper

17

sic quidem omnes cedule sue et diversa scripta in shopa sua pendenter viduntur et scribit et facit artem suam apperte predictis diebus in visu populi in magnum scandalum omnium proborum hominum artis sue et in exemplum perniciosum aliorum artificiorum et in contemptum alme matris ecclesie manifestum ac contra defencionem custodium artis sue et contra mandatum domini episcopi, et contra hoc quod pro eodem casu antea castigatus fuit in consistore. Quia tenet parcellam shope sue apertam diebus dominicis et festis duplicibus et extra pendet cedules suas et diversa scripta ac scribit et facit artem suam in visu populi in magnum scandalum proborum hominum artis sue et in exemplum perniciosum aliorum artificiorum et in contemptum alme matris ecclesie manifestum et contra mandatum domini episcopi. Quia tenet parcellam shope sue apertam diebus dominicis et festis duplicibus et extra pendet cedules suas et diversa scripta ac scribit et facit artem suam apperte in visu populi in magnum scandalum omnium proborum hominum artis sue et in malum exemplum aliorum artificiorum et in contemptum alme matris ecclesie manifestum et contra mandatum domini episcopi, et contra defencionem custodium artis sue. Absolucionem habuerunt &c. [p. 282] Item tost apres que les ditz .v. persones issint assoilles, accrochauntz a eux autres persones du dit mistier, se proposerent de faire partie encountre lour gardeins et lour dit mistier et ne voloient venir a lour assemblez, por les queux mesmes les gardeins pursuerent le bill ensuaunt: A treshonureable seigneur le mair de la citee de Loundres, eux pleignount les gardeins del mistier des escriveyns de court lettre du dite citee vers vn Robert Huntyngdon escriveyn de ceo que le dit Robert par longes temps ad este rebell envers les ditz gardeins et pur quell rebellerie certeins autres persones du dit mestier pronauntz par lui mal ensaumple sount devenuz ensement rebell envers les ditz gardeins a graunt desbat et disseueraunce en le dit mistier pur le quell les ditz gardeyns sount destourbes de lour office affaire et ne puissent mye lour dit mistier ruler, dount ils priount de remedie solunc lusage du dite citee en œuure de charite. [different hand] Par vertue de quell bill le dit Robert estoit iugge par le mair et aldermans et commys a prisoun tanque il se auoit confourme a son mistier et apres fesoit fyn pur la rebellerie. [p. 281] [French] Be it remembered that in the nineteenth year of the reign of King Richard the Second in the time of John Cossier and Martin Seman, then being Wardens, occurred the cases which here follow:

ME Texts in Transition.indb 17

07/04/2014 00:03

18

Richard Firth Green

[different hand] on the matter of stalls being open on feast days the said wardens gave a guarantee that they should be closed immediately. Faced with this guarantee, some did not wish to do it, for which occurred what is written below. [Latin] The President of the Consistory Court of London to the discreet men, Martin Seman and John Cossier, scriveners of London, greetings, in God’s name. Because, as we have learned, some public writers of court letter in the city of London (of which writers, indeed, you have been appointed wardens, as is said) keep and present their stalls (without workshops) of made-to-order and readymade [documents] for all who come for their handiwork, on the holy days of Our Lord and on other festivals instituted to the honour of God, against the form and intent of certain letters of the reverend father in Christ and holy lord, Robert, by the grace of God, Bishop of London, containing in them certain legitimate admonitions, they must culpably incur the open censures contained in the said letters. Therefore we enjoin and command that you diligently seek out the names and surnames of each and every writer of this kind who contravenes or does not support the said admonitions, and duly inform us [of them] by next Easter with a suitable future time and place, so that due remedy may be administered in this regard for the benefit of their souls and we may thus be able to dispense correction to the delinquents. Given at London on the last day of February, under the foot of the seal of the diocese of London, which we have at present in our hand, in the year of Our Lord, one thousand, three hundred and ninety-five. [French] On the strength of this mandate the aforesaid wardens presented the abovesaid Consistory with the names in the manner following: [Latin] Scribes [erasure] That he keeps his stall without a workshop open on Sundays and important feasts [literally festis duplicibus, ‘double feasts’] and writes and exercises his craft openly on the aforesaid days in the sight of the people, and hangs outside many documents and various writings to the great disgrace of all the honest men of his craft and as a wicked example to other workmen, and in clear contempt of dear mother church and against the command of the lord bishop. [erasure] That he keeps his stall open on Sundays and important feasts and writes and exercises his craft openly in the sight of the people on the aforesaid days, and hangs outside many documents and various writings to the great disgrace of all the honest men of his craft and as a wicked example to other workmen, and in clear contempt of dear mother church and against the prohibitions of the wardens of his craft and against the command of the lord bishop. [erasure] That he keeps his stall open on Sundays and important so indeed that all his documents and various writings are seen hanging on his stall and he exercises his craft openly on the aforesaid days in the sight of the people to the great disgrace of all the honest men of his craft and as a wicked

ME Texts in Transition.indb 18

07/04/2014 00:03

The Early History of the Scriveners’ Company Common Paper

19

example to other workmen, and in clear contempt of dear mother church and against the prohibitions of the wardens of his craft and against the command of the lord bishop, despite having been punished before in the Consistory for the same offence. [erasure] That he keeps part of his stall open on Sundays and important feasts and hangs outside his documents and various writings and writes and exercises his craft in the sight of the people, to the great disgrace of the honest men of his craft and as a wicked example to other workmen, and in clear contempt of dear mother church and against the command of the lord bishop. [erasure] That he keeps part of his stall open on Sundays and important feasts and hangs outside his documents and various writings and writes and exercises his craft openly in the sight of the people, to the great disgrace of all the honest men of his craft and as a bad example to other workmen, and in clear contempt of dear mother church and against the command of the lord bishop, and against the prohibitions of the wardens of his craft.

They had absolution, &c.

[p. 282] [French] Item, soon after the said five persons were assoiled, attracting to them others of the said craft, they proposed to form an opposition against their wardens and their said craft, not wishing to attend their meetings; for these reasons the wardens presented the bill that follows: To the most honourable lord mayor of the city of London: the wardens of the guild of writers of court letter in the said city complain against one Robert Huntyngton, scrivener, that for a long time the said Robert has been a rebel against the said wardens, and because of his rebellion certain other persons of the said order, taking their bad example from him, have become similarly rebellious against the said wardens, causing great dissension and disunity in the said guild, for which reason the said wardens are hindered in the performance of their duties and have no control over their said guild [ne puissent mye lour dit mistier ruler], for which they solicit a remedy according to the customs of the said city, as an act of charity. [different hand] On the strength of this bill the said Robert was judged by the mayor and aldermen and committed to prison until he had complied with the rules of the said guild and afterwards he paid a fine for his rebellion.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 19

07/04/2014 00:03

20

Richard Firth Green

appendix 2 [p. 56] Ego Adam Pynkhurst civis et scriptor littere curialis civitatis sepedicte (licet indignus minimusque in facultate arte sive scientia huiusmodi prothdolor repertus) senciens tamen iuramentum prescriptum ex magna indigentia et fidelitate et industria discretorum et circumspectorum virorum artis mee memorate pro exheredacionibus precipue quibuscumque scandalisque deceptionibus opprobriis et falsitatibus universis pro posse totaliter evitando pariter et deponendo-ac tam pro honoris et bone et laudabilis fame incremento artis antedicte quam pro statu gentis universe (in quantum ad me in arte mea predicta pertinet sive pertinere poterit in futurum) salvando-factum esse provisum pariter et ordinatum, spontanee tactis dei sacrosanctis dictum prestiti iuramentum corporale, non coactus aliqualiter de promissis, consenciensque preterea ex mea mera et libera voluntate ad alias ordinaciones et bonas regulas quascumque antedictas pro honore et utilitate artis mee supradicte provisas stabilitas et iam noviter ordinatas et eas in quantum ad me attinet iuxta mei posse firmiter et stabiliter cupiens observare, hanc paginam per manus mee proprie scripturam voluntarie feci evidencem in maioris rei testimonium et fidem de promissis ac omnium et singulorum promissorum, promittensque bona fide qua teneor deo promissis aliquibus nec alicui eorundem absque assensu maioris et dignioris partis sive numeri virorum seu personarum artis mee memorate presencium sive futur[or]um nullatenus de cetero obviare. I, Adam Pynkhurst, citizen and writer of court letter of the oft-mentioned city (although found unworthy and inconsequential in the practice of this kind of skill or knowledge, alas), yet recognizing that the prescribed oath was made, provided, produced and arranged out of the great need, fidelity and industry of the discrete and circumspect men of my famous craft, especially for avoiding and also suppressing certain disherisons and scandals, wicked deceptions, and all falsehoods, as far as possible, and for both increasing the honour and good and laudable reputation of the aforesaid craft, and for preserving the estate of all men (as far as pertains to me in my aforesaid craft, or may pertain in the future), having touched the holy gospels I have freely made the said corporal oath, provided and equally appointed to be made, not compelled in any way to promise, and moreover with pure and free will consenting to whatsoever other aforesaid ordinances and good regulations are provided, established, and now newly ordained for the honour and utility of my aforesaid craft, [and] desiring to keep them as strictly and inviolably as I can, insofar as pertains to me, I have willingly made this page, written in my own hand, giving witness of the greater thing [i.e. the oral oath] and trust in the promises (and of each and every promise), promising from henceforth, by the good faith in which I am held by God, in no way to oppose each or any of the same promises without the consent of the greater and more worthy part or number of present or future men or persons of my famous craft.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 20

07/04/2014 00:03

Simon Horobin

Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 201 and its Copy of Piers Plowman •••

O

xford, Corpus Christi College, MS 201 (F) is an early fifteenth-century manuscript of Piers Plowman, which presents an idiosyncratic and textually divergent copy of the poem. But while textual critics have been tempted to discard it as an unreliable witness, with numerous erratic and evidently scribal readings, its status as one of only two surviving witnesses to the alpha textual tradition of the B version means that it cannot be ignored, especially in cases where the other alpha witness, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson Poetry 38 (R), is clearly corrupt or missing text. When editing the B version, Skeat did not have access to R and consequently was unaware of the alpha sub-group, leading him to discard F completely; more modern editors, especially Kane and Donaldson, have made considerable use of F. The proposal that F can be rejected as a witness to the poem has been argued more recently by Sean Taylor, who claims that the close relationship between F and R is not the result of a shared exemplar, but rather due to the F scribe copying directly from R. If this argument were to be accepted, then F could simply be discarded by editors as having no independent textual value: ‘If F descends from R in a linear fashion, its value as a corroborative witness to the original intentions of the author in composing the B-text must be denied’. 1 There are various types of evidence cited in support of this argument. The textual evidence includes readings in F which appear to be direct responses to errors in R. These instances, however, are not especially compelling. In all cases, readings in both R and F could be attempts to repair an error in their shared copytext. None of the readings cited from F can only be explained with reference to R. For instance, Taylor argues that the R scribe’s mistaken copying of ouerhuppe as oue huppe at 15.380 caused the F scribe to render oue as oon. According to Taylor, this error is ‘directly traceable to the error in R’, where the letters and are written identically. But R is not the only medieval scribe who traces these letters identically; it is perfectly possible that both scribes are responding to confusion in their exemplar, perhaps caused by the omission of an abbreviation. But the biggest difficulty with Taylor’s arguments concerns the many unique readings in R which are not duplicated in

1 S. Taylor, ‘The F Scribe and the R Manuscript of Piers Plowman B’, English Studies 77 (1996), 530–48 (p. 545).

21

ME Texts in Transition.indb 21

07/04/2014 00:03

22

Simon Horobin

F. For instance, at B 11.390b R has the reading ‘hymself goed to the poeple’ which the F scribe renders simply ‘hymselue’. Either the F scribe has made an intelligent emendation on his own authority, or he is simply copying from a different exemplar without the R error. In this instance there is no parallel beta line to compare with; however, for many more minor errors in R, F agrees repeatedly with beta, indicating its use of a different source. Taylor also cites palaeographical evidence in support of his argument that F is directly copied from R. The strongest evidence of this kind concerns the revision of the incipit to passus 8 in R (fol. 33v); here, part of the original incipit has been erased, leaving just ‘Passus octauus’, while a different scribe has added ‘de visione Petri Plowhman. Incipit Dowel. Dobet. & Dobest’. Taylor argues that the hand responsible for this addition can be identified as the scribe who copied F, thereby proving his access to R. The palaeographical evidence of the emended rubric is certainly compelling, and the features highlighted by Taylor recall similar features in F; however, in such a small sample certainty is impossible. In a second example, Taylor identifies the F scribe as the corrector who inserted ‘dwellis’ to repair the R scribe’s mistranscription of ‘Sire Dowel dwelleth’ on fol. 35v of R; but here the evidence is less persuasive. Taylor’s assertion that only a scribe trained in Norfolk or Essex could have used the same combination of verb endings is not supported by dialect evidence, nor does it help to explain why the F scribe should have written ‘dwelliþ’ rather than ‘dwellis’ in his own copy. An intriguing reading also discussed by Taylor concerns F’s unique variant at 18.50, where F alone describes Christ being nailed to the cross with four rather than three nails. While R agrees with all other B manuscripts here, a different hand (also identified by Taylor as that of the F scribe himself) has added ‘foure’ in the margin. None of these palaeographical examples, however, is overwhelmingly convincing. Even if they are accepted, they need only show that the F scribe had access to R and not that he used it as his exemplar. Taylor’s attempt to close down study of the F scribe’s endeavours by arguing that it is a straightforward copy of R risks overlooking the fascinating evidence that F provides for the reception of the B version. As well as being one of just two witnesses to the alpha textual tradition, F also preserves numerous unique variants which demonstrate a detailed engagement with the poem, its content and form. So extensive is this body of scribal rewriting that the editors of the CD-ROM edition of F have attributed it to a separate redactor, whose interventions were subsequently copied by the F scribe.2 Further support for a separate scribal layer between alpha and F concerns the dialect layers found in F. The dialect of the F scribe was mapped by LALME to Essex3 and, despite discovering a few additional forms, the editors of the CD-ROM confirmed this localization. In addition to these Essex forms, the CD-ROM 2 Piers Plowman Electronic Archive, vol. 1: Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 201 (F), ed. R. Adams et al. (Ann Arbor, MI, 2000). All quotations from F are taken from this edition. 3 A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, ed. A. McIntosh, M. L. Samuels and M. Benskin (Aberdeen, 1986) [henceforth LALME], LP 6110.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 22

07/04/2014 00:03

Corpus Christi College 201 and Piers Plowman

23

editors identify a discrete layer of more Northerly forms, characteristic of the Norfolk dialect. These include the spelling kyrke ‘church’, er ‘or’, feyȝr, fyȝr ‘fire’, ȝeet ‘yet’, keeme ‘came’ and the ending for the third person singular present indicative. Another form which is predominantly East Anglian in its distribution is þerknesse ‘darkness’. This word appears just once in F, in the following line: ‘In a þursday in þerknesse / þus was y / [he] taken’ (F 12.170; cf. B 16.160). But while þerknesse is more restricted in its distribution than þesternesse, the scribe’s use of this form rather than derknesse may have been conditioned by alliteration as much as dialect. These forms could, of course, be indicative of a separate layer of scribal copying distinct from the process of redaction, but there seems little requirement to multiply entities unnecessarily. Alternatively, these Norfolk features could derive from the alpha copytext rather than from an intervening stage of copying. M. L. Samuels identified a distinct layer of East Anglian forms in R, which he attributed to the R scribe himself, whom he characterized as an ‘immigrant Suffolk scribe’.4 The forms in R attributed by Samuels to this Suffolk scribe include swiche ‘such’, helde ‘hold, a ‘have’, quatz ‘said’ and spellings of words like meddel ‘middle’, menstrales ‘minstrals’, Westmenstre ‘Westminster’. As these spellings do not overlap with the Norfolk dialect forms that appear in F, their presence in R does not conflict with the view that F’s Norfolk forms derive from a separate stage of copying. In one case, the Norfolk spelling in F is restricted to a line attested only in alpha: ȝeet, which appears just once in F, is found in the alpha line: ‘ȝeet þat goome with grete oþis / his garnement was soiled’ (F 10.411; cf. B 13.399). By contrast, the spelling kemen, found in a number of instances in F, appears in a variant reading unique to F, suggesting that it is attributable to the dialect of the F redactor. Where other B manuscripts read ‘Wiþ þat ran þer a route of Ratons at ones’ (B P.146), F has ‘With þat kemen a rowhte / of Ratonys manye’ (F 1.139). The combination of textual and dialectal evidence suggests that F was not copied directly from R, but rather descends directly from alpha, likely via an intermediary copy which substantially revised and reworked the text. Further evidence in support of attributing these interventions to a separate redactor rather than to the scribe himself concerns a number of contaminations from the A version. If these intrusions from an A manuscript were the work of the F scribe himself, we might expect to find physical evidence in the manuscript itself of their inclusion. But instead these lines appear within the text column with no visible traces of their imported status. A readings which appear in F include F 1.89 ‘& summe be Clerkis of þe kyngys bench / þe cuntre to shende’, which is the equivalent of A P.95 ‘And ben clerkis of þe kinges bench þe cuntre to shende’, a line dropped by Langland in the B revision. The motivation to include this line may have been its added venom directed at those priests who forsake their parishes in service of the king, an issue that, as we shall see, provoked the F redactor. In F passus 6 there is a cluster of lines attested only in A manuscripts, their distribution perhaps

4 M. L. Samuels, ‘Langland’s Dialect’, Medium Ævum 54 (1985), 232–47; reprinted in The English of Chaucer and his Contemporaries, ed. J. J. Smith (Aberdeen, 1988), p. 78.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 23

07/04/2014 00:03

24

Simon Horobin

lending support to the theory that the scribe was consulting a manuscript copy of this version rather than being prompted by his memory of the A version. At F 6.45 (following B 8.49) the following line appears: ‘If þou folwe þy fowle fleshȝ / & þe feend þere-after’. There is no equivalent of this line in other B version manuscripts; A manuscripts have ‘Folewe þi flesshis wil & þe fendis aftir’ (A 9.45), upon which the F line seems clearly to be based. Kane and Donaldson use the F reading to justify the inclusion of the original A reading in their edition of B; but this policy seems hard to justify given that it appears in no B manuscript, and given that F has clearly been contaminated with readings from A. Other instances in the same passus include F 6.77 ‘& meeke in his herte / & myȝlde of his speche’ (after B 8.81), which is based upon A 9.71: ‘Whoso is mek of his mouþ, mylde of his speche’. A few lines later there is a passage with a number of A intrusions. F 6.101 ‘& weryn vn-buxum to don his byddyngge / & bown to do Ille’ is not recorded in any other B manuscript, but is found in the A version as ‘And were vnbuxum at his bidding, and bold to don ille’ (A 9.93). Just two lines later, another line from A appears as F 6.103: ‘& pitte hem þere in penawnce / with-oute pite or grace’ (cf. A 9.95: ‘And putten hem þere in penaunce wiþoute pite or grace’). It is not only complete lines that show contamination from A; F 6.98, ‘& to rewle al þe rewhme / be reed of hem alle’, has a different b-verse from all other B manuscripts, which read ‘by hire þre wittes’. F’s b-verse is identical with that found at A 9.99: ‘And rewele þe reaum be red of hem alle’. While it is likely that these additions were included by the F redactor in a separate layer of transmission, it is less clear what they represent. Do these additions indicate that the F redactor had access to a separate copy of the A version which he collated with his B copy? Or are these readings evidence of memorial contamination: lines added by the scribe from memory? Ralph Hanna views the copyist as a ‘scribal editor’, who at certain moments ‘preferred the locutions offered by his copy of A, rather than those present in the B manuscript he usually followed’.5 The fact that these lines do not appear in F’s textual twin, R, indicates that they were introduced by the F redactor rather than in alpha itself. But, once we have isolated such instances of conflation in the F redactor’s work, we are still left in the dark as to his motives. Why should the F redactor have preferred the A reading at these, and only these, particular moments in the poem. Are we to assume that the scribe was reading both versions simultaneously, switching between one and the other depending upon his preferred reading? The distribution of these A readings might, however, force us to question the theory that these readings were simply introduced at the whim of the scribal editor. All but one of these A readings appear in a section of some fifty lines in passus 8 of B. Kane and Donaldson noted this distribution and concluded that this implied that they were original B lines restored in F by correction with a better copy of B.6 This explanation was part of a larger 5 R. Hanna, ‘George Kane and the Invention of Textual Thought: Retrospect and Prospect’, Yearbook of Langland Studies 24 (2010), 1–20 (p. 16). 6 Piers Plowman: The B Version, ed. G. Kane and E. T. Donaldson, rev. edn (London, 1988), p. 171.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 24

07/04/2014 00:03

Corpus Christi College 201 and Piers Plowman

25

argument, with widespread implications for their edition of B, about the status of unique readings in F. By claiming that these represent original readings restored by correction using a better copy of B, rather than conflations from a manuscript of a different version, Kane and Donaldson justified the adoption of numerous unique F readings in preference to those attested by the majority of witnesses.7 But Kane and Donaldson’s explanation ignores the fact that, in this section of the text there are other anomalies in both F and R that might indicate problems in their common exemplar. Along with these conflated lines from A, F lacks B 8.100–1: ‘And as dowel and dobet dide hem to vnderstonde/Thei han crowned a kyng to kepen hem alle’. R lacks lines at 8.102, 104 and 107, and runs the a-verse of 101 together with the b-verse of 108; both R and F lack 8.106. Because F has the lines missing in R, these omissions have not been related to issues in their common exemplar. But the B lines present in F here are in fact identical with parallel lines in the A version. Rather than viewing the F redactor’s conflations from A as individual lines imported without obvious motivation in preference to the equivalent lines from B, it is simpler to read the entire passage as lifted from an A version manuscript. The reason for the conflation also becomes clear: these lines were missing from alpha, as is apparent from the gaps in R. F 6.96 (KD 8.107) ¶ And þus dowel . & dobet . & dobest þe thrydde. F 6.97 (KD 8.108) Haue crowne / crowne[d] oon to be kyng / & be here conseyl wirche F 6.98 (KD 8.109) & to rewle al þe rewhme / be reed of hem alle. F 6.99 (KD 8.110) & be non oþir-wyse / but as þey þre wille assente. F 6.100 (KD 8.102) ¶ For if þat dowel or dobet / dyden a-geyn dobest. F 6.101 (KD 8.103) & weryn vn-buxum to don his byddyngge / & bown to do Ille. F 6.102 (KD 8.104) Þanne sholde þe kyng come / & comawnde hem to presoun. F 6.103 (KD 8.105) & pitte hem þere in penawnce / with-oute pite or grace. Here is the equivalent passage from the A version:8 Þat ȝif dowel & dobet dede aȝens dobest And were vnbuxum at his bidding, and bold to don ille, Þanne shulde þe kyng come & casten hem in presoun, And putten hem in penaunce wiþoute pite or grace But dobest bede for hem abide þere for euere. Þus dowel, & dobet, & dobest þe þridde, Corounid on to be kyng & be here counseil werchen, And rewele þe reaum be red of hem alle, And oþere wise & ellis nouȝt but as þei þre assente. (A 9.92–100) The most substantial difference between F and the equivalent passage in A is the 7 Ibid., pp. 165–73. 8 The A Version is quoted from Piers Plowman: The A Version, ed. George Kane, rev. edn (London, 1988).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 25

07/04/2014 00:03

26

Simon Horobin

different ordering of the lines, so that in F the A lines 92–5 appear following lines 97–100. But this is not a major objection, considering that the ordering of these lines relative to the B version equivalent appears much more haphazard. What this evidence appears to indicate is that the F redactor, aware that lines were missing in the alpha copytext, turned to a copy of the A version to make good this omission. The motivation appears, therefore, to be the need to replace missing text, rather than a preference for an alternative version of these lines. In addition to showing contamination from the A Version, F also records a number of readings taken from the C Version. Many of these C readings occur in a stretch of text where R now lacks its fourteenth quire, which would have carried 18.413–20.26. This distribution has prompted Hanna to propose that this loss may have occurred before the F scribe acquired R, thus compelling him to obtain another source. This scenario could have resulted in the scribe unwittingly acquiring a C manuscript rather than a B, demonstrating what Hanna calls the ‘frequent medieval indifference to the poem’s versions’. 9 This conclusion leads Hanna to reject Lawrence Warner’s recent claims for the C origins of B passūs 19–20,10 but also to reassert Taylor’s earlier conclusion that F constitutes a ‘“codex eliminandus”, a book to be eliminated from any consideration in constructing the text’. But while F’s frequently idiosyncratic text is a frustration to editors of the poem, showing little concern for the modern view of integrity of three separate versions, it does preserve valuable evidence of contemporary responses to the text. The most striking change imposed by F is the redistribution of the passus structure, compressing the work into sixteen passūs rather than a prologue and twenty passūs. It was this structural revision that struck Skeat as ‘most curious’, leading him to suggest that the scribe was working without any divisions and imposing them himself: ‘It would seem as if the scribe had endeavoured to divide it into Passus how he could, without any guide, and had added a few lines by way of conclusion and introduction to each, for it is just at the points of division that the readings seem to be the wildest’.11 The reorganization of the poem into sixteen passūs is achieved by conflating two or three passūs into a single unit, so that passūs 3 and 4 become a single passus 4 in F, passūs 5, 6, 7 become passus 5 and so on. The evidence that, in many cases, the original passus boundaries remain stable should have alerted Skeat to the fact that the scribe could not have been working without any structural markers. Another indication that these structural changes were not imposed upon the scribe by his exemplar is that they relate to a further set of changes concerning the dream vision framework. While passus breaks often coincide with the end of a dream vision in Langland’s poem, this is not always the case. One of the effects of F’s reorganization of the poem is to bring vision and passus breaks into alignment. Thus, where the first vision ends three lines into Passus 5, the F scribe transfers the 9 Hanna, ‘George Kane and the Invention of Textual Thought’, p. 17. 10 For this argument see L. Warner, The Lost History of Piers Plowman: The Earliest Transmission of Langland’s Work (Philadelphia, 2011). 11 W. W. Skeat, The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman in Three Parallel Texts, rev. edn (Oxford, 1954), p. xxvii.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 26

07/04/2014 00:03

Corpus Christi College 201 and Piers Plowman

27

opening two lines to the preceding passus, ensuring a closer relationship between vision and passus. Another function of F’s reorganization of the passus structure, according to James Weldon, is the elimination of the category of the inner dream.12 There are two inner dreams in Langland’s work; in both cases, however, F’s rehandling of these dreams is more complicated than suggested by Weldon. At the beginning of passus 11 of the B version, Will continues the conversation with Scripture from the previous passus. He then suddenly falls asleep, whereupon he is ravished into the land of longing. In F the passus break is delayed so that the interaction with Scripture is completed by the end of F passus 7, in order to introduce the dream of the land of longing at the beginning of a new passus. To clarify the dream structure further, F introduces additional lines at the end of passus 7, reporting the dreamer’s waking from his dream: & of myn wynkynge y a-wook / & wondrede þanne Of alle þe dremes þat y drempte / so daungerous þei were. & turned me on þe oþir syde / for to take myn eese. (F 7.502–4) Further supplementary lines added at the head of the following passus then report the dreamer’s falling asleep, thereby removing the inner dream entirely: And as y lay & lookede / vpon þe launde grene. I þouhte on þe Metelis / hou merveylous þei were. Tyl sodynly hevynesse / on slepe brouht me þanne.

(F 8.1–3)

But while F’s handling of this inner dream fits with Weldon’s account, F’s treatment of the second inner dream is less easily explained. Rather than adjust the passus boundary at the beginning of B passus 16 (F passus 12) to coincide with a waking episode, F adds a few additional lines. But these lines do not describe a waking episode; the dreamer merely reports his continued sleeping: Ageyn y gan to sleepe softe / & my syȝde y gan to turne. & a-noon y seyȝ . as y seyȝ erst / & spak to hym with mowþe. (F 12.1–2) Andrew Galloway sees this depiction of the dreamer ‘nearly waking then resuming deep sleep’ as a deliberate manipulation of dream vision conventions, perhaps inspired by similar moments in the poem, such as the dreamer being woken by the argument between the priest and Piers at B 7.145.13 While these lines may represent a deliberate manipulation of convention, they fail to supply the waking 12 J. Weldon, ‘Ordinatio and Genre in MS CCC 201: A Mediaeval Reading of the B-Text of Piers Plowman’, Florilegium 12 (1993), 159–75 (p. 163). 13 A. Galloway, ‘Reading Piers Plowman in the Fifteenth and the Twenty-First Centuries: Notes on Manuscripts F and W in the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 103 (2004), 232–52.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 27

07/04/2014 00:03

28

Simon Horobin

up episode necessary for Weldon’s view of the scribe’s elimination of the category of inner-dream. Furthermore, when the dreamer swoons into his inner ‘louedreem’ at lines 19–20, F makes no attempt to introduce a waking episode at that point either. As a consequence, the inner dream is preserved and is not accorded a new passus beginning. F does, however, introduce a new passus break at the end of the inner dream, adding two additional lines at the end of F passus 12, and a further extra line at the opening of F passus 13: & for y hadde so soore y-slept / sory was y þanne. & on þe dremynge y drempte / euery doynge y þowhte. And whan y hadde longe leyn / y lawhte to me herte. (F 12.177–13.1) Thus, while F does introduce a passus break at the end of the second inner dream, there is no such break at the beginning of this dream. The introduction of spurious lines referring to the dreamer’s sleeping state at the beginning of the passus, combined with the additional lines at the end in which the dreamer reflects on his dreams, helps to highlight its status as a discreet vision. But the lack of any explicit waking episode at the beginning of F passus 12 means that the dreamer is still asleep when he falls asleep at B 16.19–20 and the inner dream structure is maintained. While Weldon’s characterization of F’s reorganization of the passus structure is largely accurate, there are other changes whose motivation remains difficult to determine. For example, F introduces an additional passus break within the third Vision, coinciding with the entry of Kynde at B 11.320. Where Langland’s dreamer simply reports that: Ac much moore in metynge þus wiþ me gan oon dispute, And slepynge I seiȝ al þis, and siþen cam kynde (B 11.320–1) F inserts additional lines in which the dreamer awakes and muses upon his dreams: & þus y fel in þowhtis feele / flappynge in myn herte. Þat alle myn spiritys weryn sore stoned / & þerwith y waknede. & as manye & feele þowhtis / felle flappynge in myn herte. Alle myn spirytis weryn stoned / & þerwith y a-wakede. & ful sore syȝhede / þe syghte was so mervylous. & streyhte me / & turnede me / & to my-selue y seide. Þis ys a mychil merveyle / what menynge it meneþ. & in þis þowht stille y lay / a long tyme after. (F 8.326–333) At the beginning of the next passus the dreamer promptly falls asleep again and B passus 11 continues with the intervention of Kynde: As y lay & lokede forþ / lowe vp-on þe greene. I fel in a slumbrynge / & sone to me cam keende.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 28

(F 9.1–2)

07/04/2014 00:03

Corpus Christi College 201 and Piers Plowman

29

It may be that Langland’s reference to dreaming and sleeping, which often signal a juncture between dreams, was sufficient to prompt the F redactor to insert a new passus break at this point. But the fact that he was compelled to author a waking episode to correspond to the passus break makes it difficult to argue that he was motivated by a desire to bring these two structures into closer alignment. Weldon argues that the restructuring was intended to give the inner dreams equivalent prominence to the outer dreams; however, this passus break does not coincide with the end of the inner dream. The inner dream ends at B 11.406–7; a point not marked with a passus break in F: And awaked þerwiþ; wo was me þanne That I in metels ne myȝte moore haue yknowen

(B 11.406–7)

Weldon’s simplified account of the restructuring of the poem in F is further undermined by other instances where passus breaks continue to appear without any corresponding ending of a dream vision (e.g. at B passūs 9 and 10). It may be that the restructuring of the passus breaks was designed to foreground waking episodes because of their human interest: the insights they give to the character of the dreamer and his responses to his visions. Such an interest is particularly apparent in the lines added at the end of F passus 8, which provide an extended insight into the dreamer’s psychological and physical responses to his vision. Andrew Galloway has similarly remarked that F’s reorganization of the passus structure shows an interest in the dreamer’s responses to his dreams, in addition to marking their opening and closure. A concern with the effects of the dreams is perhaps most apparent in the break introduced between passūs 12 and 13 of F (B 16.167). Here F introduces a passus break to coincide with the lines within passus 16 which describe the dreamer waking up: And I awaked þerwiþ and wiped myne eiȝen And after Piers þe Plowman pried and stared

(B 16.167–8)

Not content with simply dividing the text at this point, F adds several lines in which the dreamer reflects uneasily upon the earlier account of the crucifixion: & for y hadde so soore y-slept / sory was y þanne. & on þe dremynge y drempte / euery doynge y þowhte. And whan y hadde longe leyn / y lawhte to me herte. (F 12.177–13.1) The dreamer’s response to his dream on waking is certainly a consistent feature of the spurious lines introduced by F, witnessed by the lines added at the juncture between F passus 7 and 8 quoted above: & of myn wynkynge y a-wook / & wondrede þanne Of alle þe dremes þat y drempte / so daungerous þei were.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 29

07/04/2014 00:03

30

Simon Horobin & turned me on þe oþir syde / for to take myn eese. And as y lay & lookede / vpon þe launde grene. I þouhte on þe Metelis / hou merveylous þei were. Tyl sodynly hevynesse / on slepe brouht me þanne.

(F 7.502–8.3)

A grasp of the conventions of the dream vision is also apparent from F’s inserted lines, which include the typical setting of the locus amoenus, the ‘launde grene’ of F 8.1. Weldon suggests that the use of the word launde may originate with B 8.66: ‘And vnder a lynde vpon a launde lened I a stounde’. But another possible source, in which the word is more clearly linked with the locus amoenus setting appropriate for the opening of a dream vision, is C P.8: ‘And in a launde as y lay lened y and slepte’. As well as showing an interest in the dreamer’s response to his dreams, the F redactor makes revisions which imply a sensitivity to the effects of the narrative on the first person narrator. For example, at B 8.128–31 the F redactor converts Thought’s third-person discourse into a more immediate first person: Fayn wolde y wete witt / If þou cowdist me telle. Wheyþir he be man / or noon / y wolde fayn a-spyȝe. & worchen as ȝee þre wolde / þis were myn entente.

(F 6.122–4)

In addition to a reworking of the passus and dream vision structure and a concern with the persona of Langland’s dreamer, the F redactor shows a particular sensitivity towards issues raised within the text itself, which provoke further editorial activity. For instance, the F redactor incorporates a number of editorial interventions in lines concerning Langland’s satirical treatment of certain members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. When Conscience refuses to marry Lady Meed in B passus 3, he objects to her loose tongue and morality, and her association with monkes, mynstralys and meseles (lepers) (B 3.131–3). The F redactor appears to have objected to the inclusion of monks among this dubious company, and consequently replaced monkes with masonys (F 4.122). A similar motivation appears to lie behind a variant b-verse at B 5.165. Here Wrath includes monks with the nuns that he is familiar with: ‘Manye Monþes wiþ hem, and wiþ Monkes boþe’. The F redactor rewrote the b-verse, exempting monks from this implied criticism: ‘Fele Moneþis of þe ȝeer / & Mawgre was my knave’ (F 5.157). A related revision to the text in F suggests a desire to promote the concept of the religious rule. Where Haukyn is described as belonging to a religious order comprising just one member, without any rule or obedience to a superior, the F redactor revises these lines so as to make them a defence of the importance of rules and obedience: But religioun is saved be rewle / & be resonable obedyence. It is lakkyng to lewid men / & to lerede men boþe. In lyknesse it is a leel lyf / & a lyȝere to his soule. (F 10.295–7)

ME Texts in Transition.indb 30

07/04/2014 00:03

Corpus Christi College 201 and Piers Plowman

31

It is not just monks who are defended by the F scribe’s editorial interventions. Revisions to B 3.149–50 may indicate a desire to deflect criticism from bishops and parsons. Where the B version reads: She blesseth thise bisshopes, theigh thei be lewed; Provendreth persones and preestes she maynteneth

(B 3.149–50)

F has an alternative version in which the implication that bishops are ignorant is revised, while parsons are silently dropped from the discussion: & she blessiþ bisshopis / & beggerys she hateþ. & prestys she meynteneþ / with mennes wifes to deele. (F 4.138–9) At B 10.47 there is a specific attack on canons of St Paul’s, who are accused, along with the king and knights, of rewarding minstrels simply on account of their harlotry and debauchery. F has an alternative b-verse, in which the canons of St Paul’s are replaced with ‘þe comoun peple’ (F 7.48). This need not be taken to suggest that the F redactor had some particular reason to favour canons of St Paul’s, or bishops, monks or parsons for that matter; but collectively these revisions do imply a sensitivity towards criticism directed at members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. As well as exhibiting a desire to suppress criticism of the church establishment, the F redactor omits or revises oaths which invoke the names of saints or other religious figures. Thus the b-verse of B 5.558: ‘I nolde fange a ferthyng, for Seint Thomas shryne!’ becomes ‘I nolde fongyn a ferthyng / for fyfty florenys tolde’ (F 5.569). In the case of B 5.600 the F redactor simply omitted the line: ‘Whan I thynke theron, theigh I were a Pope’. But where the F redactor seems concerned to disassociate certain religious figures from Langland’s satire, a single change at B 3.338 implies the reverse attitude towards nuns. Here Conscience attacks Lady Meed’s learning, likening her to a woman who read ‘Omnia probate’ and failed to turn the page and read the remainder of the verse: ‘Quod bonum est tenete’. Only in F’s version is the naive reader specifically identified as a nun: ‘But þou art lyk a Nunne Lady / þat a lessoun redde ones’ (F 4.331). Furthermore, while the F redactor is protective of the reputation of monks, he seems inclined to exaggerate criticism of friars, especially in relation to their undermining of the jurisdiction of parsons. Wrath’s confession recalls how he has been responsible for encouraging parishioners to turn to friars rather than their parsons to hear their confessions: And now is fallen þerof a fruyt þat folk han wel leuere Shewen hire shriftes to hem þan shryue hem to hir persons (B 5.142–3) In F the b-verse of 143 is revised to accentuate the harsh treatment of the neglected parson: ‘To shewyn here shryfte to hem / & for-sake here parsoun’ (F 5.143). The stark contrast between the forsaken parson and the friar is further

ME Texts in Transition.indb 31

07/04/2014 00:03

32

Simon Horobin

exaggerated in F by the revision of the b-verse of the following line, where F uniquely stresses the parishioners’ embracing of friars: ‘& now have parsones y-parceyvid / þat here parsshenys love freris’ (F 5.144). A similarly defensive attitude is implied by the replacement of parish priests with vicars at F 1.77 (B P.83): ‘Bothe parsonys & vikerys/ pleynede to þe bisshop’. This change is particularly striking for its disruption of the alliteration, suggesting that the redactor was more concerned with removing parish priests from the charge of deserting their parishes in order to seek more lucrative positions in London than with preserving a regular alliterative line. But while certain of the F redactor’s revisions suggest a protective attitude towards parsons, elsewhere his additions are intended to lend emphasis to Langland’s direct exhortation to practise what they preach. Where Reason urges priests to live out their teaching for their own spiritual wellbeing, the F redactor adds a line (F 5.44) warning, in a rather more practical, mundane manner, of the parish gossip that will otherwise ensue: Looke ȝee preche þe peple / & preve it on ȝoure-selue. & doþ it sadly in dede / & ȝee shulle drawe to goode. & ellis wille þe peple parle / in ȝoure parshȝ a-bowhte

(F 5.42–4)

As well as nuns and friars, the F redactor exaggerates the criticism of pardoners, adding two lines after P.75 which embellish the depiction of the pardoner’s financial and sexual corruption: & þorghȝ þe seelis on þe selk / syluer gret plente With wheche his konkebyne at hom / is klad ful klene

(F 1.67–8)

This same passage includes an attempt to absolve bishops from responsibility for licensing such frauds, reinforcing the earlier suggestion that the F redactor was sensitive to criticism of bishops. Following the line ‘It is noȝt by þe bisshop þat þe boy precheþ’ (F 1.73), the F redactor adds a unique line emphasizing that responsibility lies with the parson or priest: ‘But þe parsoun er þe preest / ys cawse of þe gilte’ (F 1.74). Here again we see the F redactor emphatically underlining the responsibilities of the parson and the parish priest. As we have seen in the preceding discussion, in addition to restructuring the text, the F redactor was sufficiently engaged with the text of Piers Plowman to compose a number of lines of his own. These contributions generally reveal an awareness of the importance of alliteration to the structure of the line, although the resulting alliterative patterns frequently differ from those employed by Langland himself. Some additional lines in F appear to serve little function beyond allowing the F redactor to indulge his enjoyment in composition. For example, F 3.62, unique to this manuscript, adds little to the content, while its five alliterating staves and alliterative stock phrases suggest a scribe composing for his own enjoyment.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 32

07/04/2014 00:03

Corpus Christi College 201 and Piers Plowman Forgowleres & vytaleris / & vocatis of þe archis. & manye oþir myster men / mo þan ben in myȝnde.

33

(F 3.61–2)

Smaller substantive changes to Langland’s text may also reflect a desire to regularize the alliteration, particularly by imposing the aa/aa pattern upon Langland’s more usual aa/ax structure. As an example we can compare the following, where the replacement of ‘she techeth’ with ‘wenchis’ supplies a fourth alliterating stave: Wyves and widewes wantounnesse she techeth

(B 3.125)

Boþe wyvis & wedewis / & wantowne wenchis

(F 4.114)

As another example we might compare the switch from ‘Neighebores’ to ‘conseyl’, presumably similarly motivated by a preference for aa/aa: And casteþ vp to þe crop vnkynde Neighebores

(B 16.42)

& casteþ vp / to þe croop / vn-kende conseyl ofte.

(F 12.43)

In some instances the desire to enhance the alliteration can take precedence over the accuracy of the text. So at B 11.12 Langland describes Fortune being followed by two ‘faire damyseles’. In F a desire to regularize the line to an aa/aa structure leads the redactor to emend ‘two’ to ‘foure’: ‘Þere folwede Fortune / foure faire damyselys’ (F 8.10). A similar desire to ‘fix’ the alliteration may lie behind the F redactor’s replacement of ‘Ysodorus’ with ‘ambrose’ at F 11.37 (B 15.37). But the F redactor is not content with regularizing alliteration in the a-verse; he also revises the b-verse so that the line scans aa/bb: Austyn and Ysodorus, eiþer of hem boþe

(B 15.37)

Awstyn & ambrose / have brevid on here bookis.

(F 11.37)

While these minor changes suggest the F redactor’s engagement in the form of the poem, there are several minor revisions that could indicate an interest in its use of personification allegory. For instance, where B 2.151 refers to those who are false, the F redactor creates a personification, Sir False: ‘& kestyn a-wey care / & conforte sire false’ (F 3.152). A line only found in F suggests an engagement with Langland’s allegorical technique, in its inclusion of a field called ‘False Flattering’ within Piers’s description of the way to the shrine of St Truth: ‘By-syde is a faire fyld / fals flaterynge ys þe name’ (F 5.593). Further evidence of the F redactor’s engagement with the poem is found in his participation in Langland’s satire, revealing a subtlety of response. Langland’s depiction of the wasters in passus 6 includes his ironic description of them helping to plough the half-acre by drinking and singing. The F redactor extends Langland’s satirical account of their ‘work’, reporting that, exhausted from this hard work, the wasters finally collapse on the floor: ‘Þat þey fillyn flat on þe floor / so feyþfully þey swonke’ (F 5.770). Further participation in Langland’s satire is apparent in the additional line found in the description of those priests who do not carry

ME Texts in Transition.indb 33

07/04/2014 00:03

Simon Horobin

34

the ‘porthors’, which should be their plough, and who refuse to say mass without payment. Here the F redactor adds the suggestion that the reason such priests do not carry their breviary is because they have pledged it at the tavern, to help fund their heavy drinking: Sire Iohan & sire Geffrey / haven gyrdlys of syluer. & a baselard or a ballokknyf / & botenys ouer gilt bryghte. But his portuos þat is his plowh / placebo on to seggen. Þat is be-take to tauerne hows / for ten schelyng plegge. (F 11.136–9; cf. B 15.123–5) This engagement with the poem’s narrative and literal plot has been noted by Galloway, who has argued that the F redactor is motivated by a desire to impose the narrative conventions of a romance upon Langland’s allegorical work.14 Galloway supported this claim by highlighting the F redactor’s revision of passus 4, where, following the failure of the attempt to marry Meed with Conscience, her supporters attempt to persuade Reason to accept her as his ‘paramour’: ‘Þat Meede myghte be his paramour/ resoun þey be-sowte’ (F 4.454). This revision is effected by the replacement of maynpernour, ‘surety, guarantor’, with paramour. Such a change is consonant with the kind of narrative engagement outlined above, although this is not entirely at the expense of an interest in the allegory, as we have seen. Other changes demonstrating an engagement with the literal plot include a reference to Will’s groaning stomach in place of an additional (perhaps superfluous?) reference to the Malvern Hills: ‘I was Moneles & Meteles / my Mawe gan groone’ (F 5.1140). This addition of realistic detail follows logically from the reference to the dreamer’s lack of money and food in the a-verse. The F redactor responds similarly to the confessions of the deadly sins, filling out Langland’s personifications with further naturalistic details. So in the confession of Envy, he adds a unique line supplying additional physical details of the effects of his jealousy: ‘Þerfore y brende betterly / þat myn brest-boon gan krake’ (F 5.111; following B 5.109–110). An interest in realistic detail probably lies behind the F redactor’s addition of gout as a factor in Will’s impotence. Where this is blamed on old age and on the dreamer’s wife at B 20.198, F has the equivalent line: ‘So eelde & þe gowte & she / hadde yt for-beete’(F 16.198). As well as showing an engagement with the poem’s narrative mode, the redactor’s interventions further testify to a particular interest in the persona of the dreamer and his physicality. Where earlier lines composed by the redactor emphasized Will’s emotional response to his dreams, here we find an emphasis upon his physical body through such telling details as his rumbling stomach and elderly and gouty body. I noted above that the redactor was concerned to stress Langland’s lines addressing parish priests. Related additions in F suggest a redactor keen to highlight the work’s moral teaching. So, where Conscience urges Haukyn to keep himself pure in his actions, the redactor supplies an additional line designed to 14 Ibid., pp. 239–41.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 34

07/04/2014 00:03

Corpus Christi College 201 and Piers Plowman

35

highlight the message further: ‘& þey þou slyde or stumble sore / soone vp þou ryȝse’ (F 10.498; after B 14.22). Another example appears where Anima accuses Will of being one of Pride’s knights and guilty of the sin which caused Lucifer to fall from heaven (B 15.50–1). This accusation is followed by an additional line in F, which serves to emphasize and clarify Lucifer’s sinful desire to be equal with God: ‘& held hym-selue as gret as god / swich grace he hade’ (F 11.58). This impulse to adopt, and participate in, the voice of authoritative moral teachers addressing ordinary laymen such as Will and Haukyn might imply that the F redactor was himself engaged in the provision of such moral teaching. Perhaps, given his sympathetic attitude towards parish priests, their rights and responsibilities, he himself was a member of the parochial clergy, charged with providing moral teaching and pastoral care. We get an insight into the F redactor’s potential audience for his copy of the poem from his treatment of the poem’s Latin quotations. These are frequently omitted in F, or replaced by vernacular paraphrases, perhaps indicative of a readership not literate in Latin. For instance, at B 9.33a Wit quotes Psalm 148:5 ‘Dixit et facta sunt’: ‘He spoke and they were made’. But instead of this compressed Latin quotation, the F redactor supplies three unique lines which expand upon the process of creation in some detail: For þorghȝ þe word þat he spak / wentyn forþ beestys. & grene gres grew sone / on grownde al a-bowhte. & trees weryn frawht with frut / fayre vpon erthe. (F 6.156–8) But while examples of omission, abbreviation or translation of Latin lines might seem indicative of a lay audience, this is elsewhere contradicted by a tendency to augment Latin quotations. So, the F redactor alone supplies the second half of the quotation from Ezechiel 18:10 given at B 10.114a: ‘Filius non portabit iniquitatem patris . nec pater iniquitatem filij’. This reinforces our sense of the redactor as a clerical reader, engaged with the poem’s content and with knowledge of its biblical sources. The stimulus to complete a quotation may perhaps be nothing more than an impulse reaction to a known text; a similar response to a quotation from Job 21:7 at B 10.25a leads the scribe to omit the second quotation from Jeremiah 12:1. Here F simply gives an extended quotation from Job: ‘Quare ergo Impij viuunt sulleuati sunt diuicijs’ (F 7.25). The F redactor further demonstrates his familiarity with basic Christian teaching, and a similar impulse towards supplementing quotations at B 10.246a, where he extends the quotation from the Athanasian Creed: Deus Pater, Deus Filius, Deus Spiritus Sanctus Deus pater / deus filius / deus spiritus sanctus. Non tres dij / sed vnus est deus.

(B 10.246a)

(F 7.251–2)

My earlier suggestion that the F redactor may have been responsible for Christian instruction and pastoral care may also explain revisions made to lines in

ME Texts in Transition.indb 35

07/04/2014 00:03

36

Simon Horobin

which Langland deals with the central themes of justice and mercy. In B 18.387–9 Christ sets out the terms by which he grants absolution and determines a person’s fate, concluding that ‘I may do mercy þoruȝ my rightwisnesse and alle my wordes trewe’ (B 18.389). The F redactor revises that line so as to make a stark opposition between mercy and justice, perhaps a deliberate attempt to avoid giving any suggestion that mercy can be earned through righteous actions: ‘I may don mercy manyfold / with-outyn ryghtwisnesse’ (F 14.391). A particular concern to highlight God’s mercy leads the F redactor in a repeated misreading of the repeated line: ‘So is þe holy goost god and grace wiþoute mercy’, which appears at both B 17.218 and B 17.252, referring to his treatment of those sinners who will be rejected by Christ: ‘Amen dico vobis, nescio vos &c’ (B 17.253). In both instances the F redactor appears to have focused on the individual line rather than the wider context, leading him to ‘correct’ a perceived misrepresentation of God’s grace and mercy: ‘So is þe holy goost god / & grace with gret mercy’(F 13.297). A similar local misreading appears at F 15.78 (B 19.76), where Langland describes the three kings offering their gifts to the infant Christ, without requesting ‘mercy’ (i.e. thanks). The F redactor seems to have misread the line as suggesting that the gifts were offered without asking for mercy; consequently he revised this to read as follows: ‘Ensens / & myrre . & myche gold / with myche mercy asked’ (F 15.78). The F redactor’s concern to emphasize God’s mercy over any potentially Pelagian reading of Langland’s discussion of justice is balanced out by a five-line addition which highlights the importance of living an honest life and dutifully carrying out the task allotted to you as part of your Christian duty. The addition appears in passus 19, extending Grace’s establishment of an ideal Christian community in which all crafts are of equal merit; the F scribe adds lines which emphasize that working diligently and joyfully is more important that the nature of the task itself: Þat he þat vseþ fayr craft / to þe foulest y cowde a pyt hym. & he þat is ȝoure althir drevel / myghte mayster ben holden. If grace wolde haue grantyd hym / but þynk þou wel þerafter. If he leede weel his lyf / his Ioyȝe shal encresen. And al þat he swynkeþ harde heere / to blysse it shal hym turne. (F 15.250–4) Given the F redactor’s earlier interventions, it is striking that these lines imply that working hard on earth can earn heavenly bliss. Although these four lines occur only in F, the fact that R lacks this section of text means that it is impossible to be certain as to their authority. Schmidt categorizes them as ‘clearly spurious on grounds of sense, metre and style’, and their language and style, if not their content, do indeed seem characteristic of the F redactor. The word drevel, ‘druge’ or ‘menial’, is a Middle Dutch word which appears mainly in East Anglian texts, also implying that these lines belong to the Norfolk dialect layer contributed by this redactor. Another interpolation which reinforces the emphasis upon correct response to sin extends Repentaunce’s teaching on the necessity of restitution as a means to achieving absolution for sin, quoting St Augustine: ‘Non dimittitur peccatum nisi restituatur ablatum’. Where Langland’s text requires restitution at Judgment Day

ME Texts in Transition.indb 36

07/04/2014 00:03

Corpus Christi College 201 and Piers Plowman

37

(B 5.275–6), the F redactor focuses more specifically on the importance of repaying debts in this life: For alle þo þat have þyn good / as god have my trewþe

(B 5.274)

He is holde to ȝeelde it here / if he may it qwyte Or praye þe of for-gyfnesse / or to doon yt for þy sowle. & ellis he shal have evil hap / but he heendely wirche. His catel shal fallyn hym froo / or ellis hise freendis goode. Or ellis his soule shal drynke sour / at o dayes tyme. (F 5.280–5) Rather than postponing such actions and the potential consequences of non-compliance, the F redactor urges the requirement to make reparation at once, or face more tangible, financial and bodily penalties. By adopting Repentaunce’s voice at this point, in order to urge particular pastoral teaching, the F redactor appears to use Langland’s text as a means to deliver pastoral advice. The sense of the redactor as someone professionally engaged in issuing pastoral advice is further suggested by a telling revision to the b-verse of line B 7.181: ‘This is a leef of oure bileue, as lettred men vs techeþ’. Where Langland’s line refers to faith being taught by learned men, the F redactor refers directly to Scriptural authority: ‘Þis ys oure be-leve / þe gospel leyþ þe same’ (F 5.1174). The F redactor makes two revisions in lines which concern the eucharist. In the first of these, he adds the phrase ‘in forme of breed’, apparently to emphasize the efficacy of the eucharist: For goddis body myghte not be of breed / with-outyn clergye. Þe wiche body in forme of breed / ys boote to þe ryghtful. (F 9.211–12) In a separate instance, where Conscience calls on all Christians to partake of the eucharist ‘in help of hir heele ones in a Monþe twelfmoneþ’ (F 15.395), the F redactor substitutes ‘twelfmoneþ’, perhaps indicative of a more moderate expectation that Christians should take communion annually rather than monthly. Thus, while F offers a copy of Piers Plowman which has been heavily sophisticated, importing readings from the A and C versions, as well as unique readings of no authority, it is a fascinating record of the F redactor’s response to the text. F is the only manuscript to reorganize the passus structure and it also includes a striking number of scribally composed lines, demonstrating a detailed and sustained engagement with Langland’s poem, its form and its central issues. The F redactor’s method of composition recalls that employed by the scribes of the A version in its tendency to expand upon regular collocational sets and textual echoes drawn from elsewhere in the poem.15 The F redactor shows an appreciation for the alliterative metre, as well as an interest in the poem’s waking episodes and human responses, 15 For examples of this compositional method among A version scribes see H. Barr, Signes and Sothe: Language in the Piers Plowman Tradition (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 15–16.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 37

07/04/2014 00:03

38

Simon Horobin

suggesting particular similarities with the interventions implemented by the scribe of the A-version manuscript, London, Lincoln’s Inn Library, MS 150.16 As with other A-version scribes, the F redactor’s attention is particularly engaged by the poem’s ecclesiastical satire.17 The redactor’s tendency to accentuate certain aspects of this satire, especially at the expense of nuns and friars, whilst simultaneously protecting the reputation of monks and other religious groups, suggests that he himself may have been a member of a religious order. Other of the F redactor’s revisions have suggested someone who was involved in the provision of moral teaching and pastoral care, perhaps a member of the parish clergy directly responsible for preaching and hearing confession. It remains unclear what relationship, if any, the work of the F redactor had with the production of the Corpus manuscript itself. The Essex dialect of the Corpus scribe implies its copying in an Eastern location, not too far from the putative origin of the F redactor.18 Although we cannot be sure whether the scribal dialect is indicative of the place of production, the manuscript’s crude style of illumination is consistent with provincial, rather than metropolitan, production. The F redactor’s ecclesiastical interests are also consonant with the survival of a fragmentary copy of a manuscript of the didactic religious poem The Prick of Conscience, in the same hand as F.19 One further feature of the manuscript is potentially indicative of its intended function. Its tall and narrow dimensions are typical of the ‘holster’ format employed by several other Piers Plowman scribes, including those responsible for British Library, MS Harley 3954 and Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson Poetry 137. Both manuscripts were copied by scribes with demonstrable religious affiliations; Harley 3954 has connections with religious houses in East Anglia, particularly Norfolk, while Rawlinson Poetry 137 was copied by a secular canon attached to Chichester Cathedral in Sussex.20 The use of this distinctive format may be further indicative of the manuscripts’ uses, given that the holster format is often connected with books designed for transportation and oral performance.

16 For a detailed study of this scribe’s engagement with his copy of the A version of the poem see S. Horobin and A. Wiggins, ‘Reconsidering Lincoln’s Inn 150’, Medium Ævum 77 (2008), 30–53. 17 For parallel instances of scribes responding directly to Langland’s anticlericalism see W. Scase, Piers Plowman and the New Anticlericalism (Cambridge, 1989); S. Horobin, ‘Harley 3954 and the Audience of Piers Plowman’, in Medieval Texts in Context, ed. G. D. Caie and D. Renevey (London, 2008), pp. 68–84; K. Kerby-Fulton, ‘Langland “in his working clothes”?: Scribe D, Authorial Loose Revision Material, and the Nature of Scribal Intervention’, in Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions: Essays In Honour of Derek Pearsall, ed. A. J. Minnis (York, 2001), pp. 139–67. 18 See LALME, LP 6110. 19 On A. I. Doyle’s identification of the Corpus scribe as that responsible for the fragments of the Prick of Conscience preserved as Durham, Ushaw College, MS 50 see the appendix to Adams et al., Piers Plowman Electronic Archive, vol. 1. 20 See Horobin, ‘Harley 3954’, and S. Horobin, ‘The Scribe of Rawlinson Poetry 137 and the Copying and Circulation of Piers Plowman’, Yearbook of Langland Studies 19 (2005), 3–26.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 38

07/04/2014 00:03

Corpus Christi College 201 and Piers Plowman

39

Much scholarship of the last century concerned with manuscripts of Piers Plowman has been understandably focused upon the establishment of authoritative texts of the three authorial versions of the poem. The three volumes of the Athlone edition are now in print, as are the two volumes of A. V. C. Schmidt’s parallel-text edition,21 while a steady stream of CD-ROM editions of individual manuscripts are being published by the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive.22 As a consequence, we now have substantial resources for studying the cultural, social, literary and historical contexts within which the poem was transmitted and consumed. Studies of individual manuscripts, their variant readings, scribal hands, dialects, illustration and illumination will shed valuable light upon the ways that Langland’s poem was packaged and read in the over fifty surviving manuscripts produced during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

21 William Langland: Piers Plowman. A Parallel-Text Edition of the A, B, C, and Z Versions, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt, vol. 1: Text (London, 1995); vol. 2: Introduction, Textual Notes, Commentary, Bibliography and Indexical Glossary (Kalamazoo, MI, 2008). 22 For details of this project and its publications to date see http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/seenet/piers/.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 39

07/04/2014 00:03

Terry Jones

Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis before Henry IV’s Usurpation? •••

I

t is often repeated that sometime in 1392–3 John Gower removed his original (and delightful) dedication to Richard II from his poem Confessio Amantis, and replaced it with a rededication to Henry of Lancaster. Modern historians have generally taken this to indicate that, seven or eight years before Henry’s usurpation of Richard’s throne, Gower was so disenchanted with Richard’s rule that he was prepared to disown Richard and pin his colours to Henry Bolingbroke. It is, indeed, one of very few examples of contemporary opinion turning against Richard that can be cited. As Nigel Saul says, with reference to slightly later in the same decade, ‘It is difficult to survey in detail the popular response to Richard’s rule because of the shortage of evidence …’1 Chris Given-Wilson puts it more positively: ‘There is little contemporary evidence for Richard’s unpopularity in the mid-1390s, indeed quite the opposite.’ 2 In fact the evidence for Gower’s disaffection with Richard so early in the 1390s is also very elusive, and depends upon a chain of presumptions that might bear a closer look. The story of Gower’s shifting allegiances owes most to Gower’s great nineteenthcentury editor G. C. Macaulay, who performed an invaluable service to Gower studies by personally examining every manuscript of the Confessio Amantis that he knew of. It was Macaulay who distinguished the different forms in which the Confessio now survives, which he labelled the ‘first’, ‘second’ and ‘third recensions’. He assumed that these represented an ongoing process of revision and improvement. Thus he says of the earliest two manuscripts of the ‘second’ and ‘third’ recensions, I would like to express my appreciation to David White, Douglas Biggs, David Carlson, Martha Driver, Robert Yeager and particularly Peter Nicholson for their generous help in writing this essay. In no case, of course, should they be held responsible for the conclusions that I offer. I am also grateful to the Bodleian Library for allowing me to examine MS Fairfax 3 in 2009, and to the Huntington Library for giving me permission to examine MS El. 26 A.17 and allowing me to use their photographs. 1 Nigel Saul is here talking about the events after 1387, but his point about the lack of evidence for Richard’s unpopularity clearly holds true for the early 1390s. See N. Saul, Richard II (New Haven, CT, 1997), p. 388. 2 C. Given-Wilson, ‘Richard II and the Higher Nobility’, in Richard II: The Art of Kingship, ed. A. Goodman and J. Gillespie (Oxford, 1999), pp. 107–28.

40

ME Texts in Transition.indb 40

07/04/2014 00:03

When Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis?

41

‘Both are contemporary with the author, and it is perhaps difficult to say which best represents his final judgement as to the form of his work.’3 Macaulay also assumed that the manuscripts that we have, none of which date from early in the 1390s, represent accurately the history of the text at that time. Here is where the story gets a little complicated. The manuscripts of the ‘first’ recension bear the dedication to King Richard. In lines 22–8 of the Prologue, Gower writes: And for that few men endite In oure englissh, I thenke make A bok for king Richardes sake, To whom belongeth my ligeance With al myn hertes obeissance In al that evere a liege man Unto his king may doon or can. In some manuscripts of the ‘second’ recension and all manuscripts of the ‘third’, the reference to Richard is removed: lines 23–4 become ‘A bok for Engelondes sake / The yer sextenthe of king Richard [i.e. 1392–3]’, and a new dedication appears in lines 83–9: This bok, upon amendment To stonde at his commandement, With whom myn herte is of accord, I sende unto myn oghne lord, Which of Lancastre is Henri named: The hyhe god him hath proclamed Ful of knyhthode and alle grace. And in some of these manuscripts there is also a Latin marginal gloss that reads, ‘In the sixteenth year of King Richard II, John Gower composed and completed the present book, which he intended especially for his most vigorous lord the lord Henry of Lancaster, then Earl of Derby, with all reverence.’ Other changes also occur at the end of the poem. In most manuscripts of the ‘second’ and ‘third’ recensions, a passage in which Venus sends a message to Chaucer is replaced, and a new epilogue is provided that removes the complimentary references to King Richard that occur in the epilogue to the ‘first’ recension. We might simply take the alterations and side-notes at face value, as Macaulay evidently did,4 and as many later historians have as well. Thus Michael Bennett writes, ‘it is a mistake to dismiss him [Gower] as merely a Lancastrian propagandist. The revision to Confessio Amantis was made before 1393. His disaffection with 3 The English Works of John Gower, ed. G. C. Macaulay (Oxford, 1900; repr. 1969), vol. 1, p. cxxxvii. 4 Macaulay writes, ‘Having thus every step dated for us by the author, we may … proceed to conjecture what were the political events which suggested his action.’ The English Works of John Gower, vol. 1, p. xxii.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 41

07/04/2014 00:03

42

Terry Jones

Richard was deep-seated and probably well grounded.’ 5 Nigel Saul also takes the marginalia dating as plausible. He admits that it is ‘difficult to be confident about the exact dates to be assigned’ but continues to use the side-notes for dating both the Confessio Amantis and the Vox Clamantis.6 But Gower scholars have been aware for some years that the marginalia dating is suspect, ever since 1984, when Peter Nicholson drew attention to the problems with Macaulay’s model of the three ‘recensions’, and suggested that all of the side-notes might well date from after 1400.7 As Wim Lindeboom writes, ‘As long as the matter of its marginalia and changing dedications is not laid to rest, any conclusions in the footsteps of Macaulay and Fisher that draw on the Confessio Amantis as a document that is a priori perceived as historically dependable must remain fundamentally worthless.’ 8 For a start, the marginal note to the change of dedication from Richard to Henry is disingenuous, as Nicholson points out, in that it implies the poem was originally written exclusively for Henry. Nicholson adds, ‘Henry’s accession obviously made necessary some slight tampering with history.’ 9 Moreover, the phrase ‘then Earl of Derby’ implies that he was no longer just Earl of Derby, i.e. that the side-note was written after 1397, when Henry was created Duke of Hereford, or after 1399, when he succeeded to the titles of his father and then to the throne. If this note, added later, offers a conveniently revisionist history of the text, how can we be sure that the text itself, as it is preserved in the surviving manuscripts, does not represent something that never actually existed in 1392–3? Moreover, this post-1397 or -1399 side-note is the only evidence we have that Gower rededicated the poem to Henry in 1392–3. Nowhere in the poem itself does Gower actually claim to have dedicated the poem to Henry in 1392–3. He merely says he resolved to write (‘I thenke make’) the poem in ‘The yer sextenthe of kyng Richard’ (1392–3), and then sixty lines later he dedicates the poem to Henry. In any case, as Joel Fredell writes, ‘there is no compelling reason to take that date at face value as an absolute marker. We know for instance that Richard the Redeless was very likely to have been written after Henry’s accession, but the poem presents itself as being current with events late in Richard’s reign …’10 David 5 M. Bennett, Richard II and the Revolution of 1399 (Stroud, 1999; repr. 2006), pp. 5–6. 6 N. Saul, ‘John Gower, Prophet or Turncoat?’, in John Gower, Trilingual Poet, ed. E. Dutton with J. Hines and R. F. Yeager (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 85–97. 7 P. Nicholson, ‘Gower’s Revisions in the Confessio Amantis’, Chaucer Review 19 (1984), 123–43; P. Nicholson, ‘Poet and Scribe in the Manuscripts of Gower’s Confessio Amantis’, in Manuscripts and Texts: Editorial Problems in Later Middle English Literature, ed. D. Pearsall (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 130–42; P. Nicholson, ‘The Dedications of Gower’s Confessio Amantis’, Mediaevalia 10 (1988), 159–80. 8 W. Lindeboom, ‘Rethinking the Recensions of the Confessio Amantis’, Viator 40:2 (2009), 319–48 (p. 348), citing J. H. Fisher, John Gower (London, 1965). 9 Nicholson, ‘The Dedications of Gower’s Confessio Amantis’, p. 173. See also The English Works of John Gower, ed. Macaulay, vol. 1, p. 2n. 10 J. Fredell, ‘The Gower Manuscripts: Some Inconvenient Truths’, Viator 41:1 (2010), 231–50 (p. 235).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 42

07/04/2014 00:03

When Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis?

43

Carlson also draws attention to the deceit of being written in the summer of 1399 that is employed in Richard the Redeless, ‘On King Richard’s Ministers’, Gower’s Cronica Tripertita (inconsistently) and the so-called ‘prophecies’ reported in Thomas Walsingham’s and Adam Usk’s Chronicles. He relates them to the deceits used in ‘The Record and Process of the Deposition of Richard II’ ‘with its stunning preambular deceit, narrating Richard’s willing resignation of the crown (‘cultu hillari’), twice, on separate occasions.11 ‘In sum’, Fredell writes, ‘Macaulay’s and Fisher’s history for the main text of the Confessio does not work. Their fundamental assumptions depend on a long editing process by Gower  –  a series of ‘publications’ in the form of presentation copies  –  whose early stages are witnessed by supposed first- and second-recension manuscripts that are in fact later witnesses.’ 12 Indeed, the whole idea of Gower’s constantly rewriting his poem, employing scribes under his close supervision in his own ‘scriptorium’ is becoming increasingly untenable. Malcolm Parkes writes, ‘The patterns of scribal activity in the revision and augmentation of these copies suggest that the circumstances in which this was carried out are not those of a “scriptorium”, but patterns which reflect the activities of a few “neighbourhood scribes” who were employed ad hoc on commissions from Gower’s earliest readers and admirers.’ 13 It seems to be becoming increasingly clear that the changes form part of Henry IV’s propaganda campaign. As Lindeboom points out, ‘Macaulay never actively considered the possibility that some serious historical tampering might have been involved in the production of the MSS.’ 14 I would like to re-examine some of these questions and to reconsider the evidence that Gower rededicated his poem to Henry at any time before the usurpation. It may not be possible to come to a categorical answer, but in the process I hope to show that there is absolutely no support for the proposition that Gower switched his allegiance from Richard to Henry before the latter stole the throne, or even that he became disillusioned with Richard II at all. I start with the dating of the manuscripts. Much depends upon determining if any of the surviving copies of the poem date from before Henry’s accession in 1399. There are only two possible candidates, and they also happen to be the two most important manuscripts for the history of the text: San Marino, CA, Henry E. Huntington Library, MS Ellesmere 26 A.17, the earliest manuscript of Macaulay’s ‘second’ recension, and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 3, the earliest manuscript of the ‘third.’ 11 D. Carlson, ‘English Poetry, July–October 1399, and Lancastrian Crime’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 29 (2007), 375–419. 12 Fredell, ‘The Gower Manuscripts’, p. 242. 13 M. B. Parkes, ‘Patterns of Scribal Activity and Revisions of the Text in Early Copies of Works by John Gower’, in New Science out of Old Books: Studies in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in Honour of A. I. Doyle, ed. R. Beadle and A. J. Piper (Aldershot, 1995), p. 98. 14 Lindeboom, ‘Rethinking the Recensions of the Confessio Amantis’, p. 327.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 43

07/04/2014 00:03

44

Terry Jones

Fig. 1  Huntington Library, Ellesmere 26 A.17, fol. 1, with the beginning of Gower’s Confessio Amantis

ME Texts in Transition.indb 44

07/04/2014 00:03

When Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis?

45

Huntington Library, MS Ellesmere 26 A.17 The dating of the Huntington MS, however, is uncertain. Palaeographically it could date from before or after Henry’s accession. Macaulay dates it between 1397 and 1399 on the basis of the armorial bearings on fol. 1. Macaulay writes: The crest is evidently meant for that of John of Gaunt, though it is not quite correct, and the three ostrich feathers (properly named ermine) [sic] were used by him as a recognizance (see Sandford’s Genealogical Hist. p. 249), while the swan is the well-known badge of Henry his son … It seems probable then that the book was prepared for presentation to a member of the house of Lancaster, probably either John of Gaunt or Henry. If it be the fact that the swan badge was not adopted by Henry until 1397, this would not be the actual copy sent on the occasion of the dedication to him in 1392–3. On the other hand the absence of all royal emblems indicates that the book was prepared before Henry’s accession to the throne.15 Each of these elements and each of Macaulay’s inferences  –  (1) that the book might have been intended for John of Gaunt and (2) that it was made before the usurpation  –  deserves another look.

The Shield The lack of any evidence of a label indicates that the shield that appears in the outer margin of fol. 1 of the manuscript (fig. 2) was meant for a sovereign (i.e. either Richard or Henry) rather than any cadet branch of the royal family, such as John of Gaunt or his brothers (fig. 3). A. C. Fox-Davies writes, ‘The obligation of cadet lines to difference their arms was recognized universally in the fourteenth century …’16 There may be no ‘royal emblems’ (i.e. the fleur de lys and the lions), but the shield displays the fields of the Royal Arms as if ready for the emblems to be filled in. And if it is meant to designate the king, the evidence points to Henry rather than to Richard (figs. 4, 5), because Richard had impaled his arms with the attributed arms of Edward the Confessor in 1395 (fig. 6), thus changing the fields. Whoever is intended, the shield is obviously incomplete, and here we can only speculate on the reasons. One possibility is that the manuscript was completed when Henry had replaced Richard but had not yet been crowned. Perhaps it was a question of ‘to be filled in later’? It might then have been presented to him, and, once presented, it was simply forgotten that the illumination had not been finished. Perhaps an argument against this is the high quality of the finished manuscript. A. I. Doyle remarks, ‘Nothing quite at the same level as the beginning of this is found in the other early copies of Gower’s works in English, Latin and French …’17 15 English Works of John Gower, ed. Macaulay, vol. 1, pp. clii–cliii. 16 A. C. Fox-Davies, A Complete Guide to Heraldry (London, 1925; repr. 1996), pp. 477–9. 17 A. I. Doyle, ‘English Books in and out of Court from Edward III to Henry VII’, in English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, ed. V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne (London, 1983), pp. 163–82 (p. 170).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 45

07/04/2014 00:03

Terry Jones

46

Fig. 2  Huntington Library, MS Ellesmere 26 A.17, fol. 1 (detail). Shield in outer margin.

(b) (c)  

 

(a) Fig. 3  (a) John of Gaunt’s arms; (b, c) heraldic labels of three points used to distinguish junior members of a family

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the images on this page please refer to the printed version of the book.

Fig. 4  Richard II’s Royal Arms pre-1395

ME Texts in Transition.indb 46

Fig. 5  Henry IV’s Royal Arms before 1406

Fig. 6  Richard II’s Royal Arms post-1395

07/04/2014 00:03

When Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis?

47

As Macaulay notes, there is also ‘an unusual amount of gold’ in the floriated half borders and illuminated capitals.18 So it does not bear the marks of a rushed job; rather it shows signs of a de luxe production such as a king might order. If the dedicatee is, indeed, Henry IV, an intriguing possibility is that the manuscript may have been completed around 1403. In about 1376 or as late as 1394 (opinion seems divided) the French simplified the design on their arms from Azure semé-de-lys Or (a blue shield ‘scattered’ with small golden fleur-de-lys) to just three fleurs-de-lys. These are known in heraldic jargon as ‘France ancient’ and ‘France moderne’ (fig. 7).19 Sometime around 1403 Henry IV decided to bring the English royal coat of arms into line with the French and adopt France moderne (fig. 8).20 It is no stretch of the imagination to speculate that if the Huntington MS was nearing completion around 1403, there might be confusion as to what the king intended his coat of arms to be, and that to play safe, the armorial bearings were left blank, to be filled in later.

Fig. 7  France ancient (pre 1376/1394) and France moderne (post 1376/1394)

Fig. 8  Henry IV’s coat of arms after 1403

The Swan A swan is incorporated into the initial ‘O’ with which the poem begins (fig. 9). The swan was the emblem of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford. Gloucester married Humphrey’s older daughter, Henry married the younger, but it was Gloucester who was famous for sporting the swan badge rather than Henry. They can be seen alternating in the compartments on the ground of his great seal.21

18 English Works of John Gower, ed. Macaulay, vol. 1, p. clii. 19 For dating see J. H. and R. V. Pinches, The Royal Heraldry of England (London, 1974), p. 88. 20 ‘A seal in the British Museum [Library], on a charter of 1403, of Edward, second Duke of York, son of Edward of Langley, which has France moderne in the first and fourth quarters is possibly the earliest …’ Pinches, The Royal Heraldry of England, p. 88. 21 N. H. Nicolas, ‘Observations on the Origin and History of the Badge and Mottoes of Edward Prince of Wales’, Archaeologia 31 (1846), 350–84 (p. 364). Francis Sandford, A Genealogical History of the Kings and Queens of England … (London, 1707), p. 125.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 47

07/04/2014 00:03

48

Terry Jones

Henry also used the white swan as a badge, but perhaps not until after Gloucester’s death in 1397.22 Since there is no other reason to believe that Gloucester was the intended recipient, Macaulay is surely correct in concluding that the swan provides another reason for dating the manuscript after 1397.

Fig. 9  Huntington Library, MS Ellesmere 26 A.17, fol. 1 (detail). Initial O at beginning of Gower’s Confessio Amantis.

The Three Feathers I now move on to the shield of three ostrich feathers depicted in the lower border of the manuscript (fig. 10). Macaulay suggests that the ostrich feathers on the shield were a recognizance of John of Gaunt, but in fact they were borne by several members of the royal family. The shield in the Huntington MS most closely resembles the ‘Shield For Peace’ (fig. 11) that the Black Prince, Gaunt’s older brother, wished to have carried at his funeral, can be seen to this day on the Black Prince’s tomb in Canterbury Cathedral (fig. 12).23 Gloucester also used the ostrich feather as a badge, but his feather was furnished with a garter and buckle displayed along the quill, and the Huntington shield shows a scroll, which gives another reason for ruling Thomas of Woodstock out as the intended recipient for the manuscript.24 Henry IV also distinguished his feather with a distinctive garter wrapped around the whole length, bearing the inscription ‘Sovereyne’ (fig. 13). But Henry also adopted the Black Prince’s ‘shield for Peace’, and his second Great Seal includes a miniature of the shield (flanked by two others) beneath the throne of the king (fig. 14).25 It is significant that the feathers are not entwined with the ‘Sovereyne’ scroll, but are identical to the Black Prince’s feathers and the feathers on the Huntington MS. 22 See The English Works of John Gower, ed. Macaulay, vol. 1, pp. clii–cliii. Henry also used other badges: an antelope, a fox’s brush and a greyhound; see J. H. Wylie, History of England under Henry the Fourth (London, 1884–98), vol. 1, p. 41. 23 Nicolas, ‘Observations on … the Badge and Mottoes’, p. 359. 24 C. Boutell, English Heraldry (London, 1907), p. 242. 25 Pinches, The Royal Heraldry of England, p. 89.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 48

07/04/2014 00:03

When Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis?

Fig. 10  Huntington Library, MS Ellesmere 26 A.17, fol. 1 (detail). Shield with three feathers.

49

Fig. 11  Black Prince’s ‘Shield for Peace’, from his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral

Fig. 12  Tomb of the Black Prince, Canterbury Cathedral

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of the book.

Fig. 13  Henry IV’s feather

ME Texts in Transition.indb 49

Fig. 14  Henry IV’s second Great Seal, c. 1406–8, from BL Additional Charter 11158 (detail)

07/04/2014 00:03

50

Terry Jones

Fox-Davies adds, ‘There is a note in Harl. MS. 304, fol. 12, which, if it be strictly accurate, is of some importance. It is to the effect that the ‘feather silver with pens gold is the King’s, the ostrich feather pen and all silver is the Prince’s [i.e. the Prince of Wales], and the ostrich feather gold the pen ermine is the Duke of Lancaster’s.’26 The feathers in the Huntington MS are very badly worn, but when I examined them, they looked silver to me, although I couldn’t be certain. There also seemed to be traces of gold at the base of the pen. So the identification with Henry IV as king and a post-usurpation date for the Huntington MS seems more and more plausible. However, the armorials could also signify Henry IV’s son, Henry of Monmouth (a possibility that Macaulay did not consider). He adopted the swan as a badge, and made use of the ostrich feather with a scroll across the pen as in the Huntington MS. When he became king, he simply took over his father’s second Great Seal, with the Black Prince’s ‘Shield for Peace’ at the base of the throne. As Prince of Wales his seal displays his escutcheon supported by two ostrich feathers, with scrolls at the base, in the mouths of two swans.

The Crest The crest in the outside border of the Huntington MS, above the shield with the empty fields of the royal coat of arms, is suggestive but elusive (fig. 15). The crest consists of a lion mounted on a ‘chapeau’. It is uncrowned, looks straight ahead and is ‘collared with a label’. It seems, from what I have seen of the crests of this period, that the lion is ‘collared with a label’ as long as the bearer is a cadet, but once his father dies and he becomes the head of the house, the heraldic beast loses the collar and takes on the full mane of the adult lion. The Black Prince’s effigy on his tomb, for example, has his head resting on a lion ‘collared with a label’, since of course he never became head of the family (fig. 16). But his lion seems to have the full mane, perhaps in acknowledgement of his years (he was forty-six when he died) and his valour on the field of battle. A seal of John of Gaunt dated 1363, when he would have been twenty-three and before the death of his father, Edward III, also shows a lion mounted on a chapeau, ‘collared with a label of three points’ (fig. 17);27 his crest after his father’s death shows the full mane of the adult lion without the collar (fig. 18).28 Unfortunately the only seal of Henry IV as Henry of Derby in the British Library is missing its crest, but the seal of his son, Henry of Monmouth, shows a lion ‘collared with a label of three points’, while he is still a cadet (fig. 19), but when his father dies and he ascends the throne as Henry V, it is replaced by the full mane of the adult male lion without a collar. It was clearly important for the cadet to get rid of the servile collar and adopt 26 Fox-Davies, Complete Guide to Heraldry, p. 466. 27 Pinches, The Royal Heraldry of England, p. 77. 28 John of Gaunt’s tomb is now destroyed. Fig. 18 is from an engraving in Sandford, Genealogical History, p. 255.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 50

07/04/2014 00:03

When Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis?

51

the full mane of the adult lion  –  at least it seems to have been important to Henry IV. There is a seal affixed to a charter in the British Library (Add. Charter 5829) which shows a lion without the collar and with the full adult mane, indicating that Henry had then become Duke of Lancaster after the death of his father in 1399

Fig. 16  Lion on the Black Prince’s tomb in Canterbury Cathedral

Fig. 15  Huntington Library, MS Ellesmere 26 A.17, fol. 1 (detail). Lion on chapeau crest.

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the images on this page please refer to the printed version of the book.

Fig. 17   Crest on John of Gaunt’s seal, 1363

ME Texts in Transition.indb 51

Fig. 18  Crest on John of Gaunt’s tomb

Fig. 19  Crest on Henry of Monmouth’s seal

07/04/2014 00:03

52

Terry Jones

(fig. 20). However, as Ian Mortimer points out, the inscription on the seal reads ‘Sir Henry of Lancaster Duke of Hereford earl of Derby and Northampton lord of Brecon’.29 This shows that the seal was created after he was made Duke of Hereford in 1397, but before John of Gaunt died in February 1399 and Henry became Duke of Lancaster. However, the charter to which the seal is attached commences by giving him his most recent title, ‘Henry Duke of Lancaster …’, and is dated at Lempster [Leominster] on 31 July 1399  –  nearly five months after the death of his father. Moreover, this is the day after Henry, on his own authority, had executed Scrope (Earl of Wiltshire), Bushy and Green, thus arrogating to himself sovereign power and acting like a king. David White, Somerset Herald at the College of Arms, suggested to me that scratching out the collar and turning it into a full mane would have been a good way of reusing an existing seal. When I examined the seal affixed to Add. Charter 5829 I found possible traces of a collar around the neck of the lion. The mane itself, however, stood out with unusual prominence. To explain the reason for this, I have to fast-forward to Henry IV’s first Great Seal. When Henry made himself king he simply took Richard’s Great Seal, and continued to use it  –  simply replacing ‘Ricardus’ with ‘Henricus’ (figs. 21, 22).30 Sandford writes, ‘The Royal Seal of this Henry [Henry IV] so exactly agrees with that of King Richard the Second, his Predecessor, that I am persuaded he usurped his Seal with his Crown and only [taking?] out the word Ricardus, engraved in the Place thereof Henricus …’31 When I examined the seal attached to British Library, Add. Charter 6016 (fig. 23), I found that the word ‘Henricus’ is raised, compared to the rest of the lettering. The explanation for this is that the alteration would have been made by scraping out the word ‘Ricardus’ and incising ‘Henricus’ into the die, which, of course, produces a deeper groove in the matrix, which in turn results in a correspondingly raised impression in the wax. This is, I believe, what happened with the lion’s mane on the seal of Add. Charter 5829, and why it sticks out so prominently. It was clearly more important to Henry to remove the servile collar than to change his titles in the inscription. However, in all these cases the lions differ from the Huntington lion in two ways: the lions are looking over their shoulders at the viewer rather than straight ahead, and they are crowned. There are also differences in the helm. John of Gaunt’s seal from 1363 is flatfronted and lacks the frog-mouth typical of the later fourteenth-century, with the slit for the eyes forming a projection. The crest on the Huntington MS looks closest to that of Henry of Monmouth. The helm is the same with a frog-mouth, the chapeau is the same, and the mantling or lambrequin descending from the chapeau is identical to his great seal as king.32 The lion, in Henry of Monmouth’s seal, is 29 I. Mortimer, The Fears of Henry IV (London, 2008), pp. 386–7. 30 Fig. 21 is drawn from British Library, Detached Seal XXXV. 344 (Birch 231). 31 Sandford, Geneological History, p. 265. 32 A. C. Fox-Davies writes, ‘From the Garter plates of the fourteenth century it has been shown that the colours of a large proportion of the mantlings approximated in early days to the colours of the arms.’ In this case the red of the mantling reflects the field of red behind the lions in the Royal arms. See Fox-Davies, Complete Guide to Heraldry, p. 390.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 52

07/04/2014 00:03

When Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis?

53

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the images on this page please refer to the printed version of the book.

Fig. 20  Henry Duke of Hereford’s seal, 1399, attached to British Library, Add. Charter 5829

Fig. 21  Richard II’s Great Seal

Fig. 22  Henry IV’s first Great Seal

Fig. 23  Henry IV’s first Great Seal, attached to British Library, Add. Charter 6016 (Birch 257)

collared with a label of three points, but again it is crowned and looking towards the viewer, not straight ahead. But the more I look at the lion in the Huntington MS the more it looks like a lion cub, which would fit with Henry of Monmouth’s age when his father took the throne. (He was only twelve years old.) If you compare the three images (figs. 24–6): the Huntington lion, the lion on Henry of Monmouth’s seal and the great seal of Henry V, it does look very much like a young lion cub  –  as yet not old enough to wear a crown  –  growing up and turning into the Lion King!

ME Texts in Transition.indb 53

07/04/2014 00:03

Terry Jones

54

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the images on this page please refer to the printed version of the book.

Fig. 24  Crest in the Huntington MS

Fig. 25  Henry of Monmouth’s crest as Prince of Wales

Fig. 26  Henry V’s crest

So to sum up: the swan in the initial ‘O’, the shield with the empty fields of the Royal Arms, and especially the Black Prince’s ‘Shield for Peace’ are all compatible with either Henry IV or with his son, and in either case indicate a date after Henry’s usurpation. There is no reason to believe they indicate John of Gaunt. The gold on the pens of the feathers may possibly indicate the king, but the lion cub collared with the label of three points seems to point to Henry of Monmouth. The argument about the confusion as to the Royal Arms incorporating France ancient or France moderne applies equally to the young Prince of Wales as to his father, and would therefore suggest a completion date for the manuscript of 1403. It might be argued that the date of the Huntington MS cannot be determined by the decorations, since they could have been added later. But the manuscript seems to have been carefully planned. The opening Latin rubric begins a third of the way down the page to allow room for the illumination of Nebuchadnezzar, and the branches, on which the crest rests and from which both the shields are suspended, form an integral part of the decorative border, and that begins and is linked to the capital ‘O’ and the swan decoration. There is nothing to indicate a delay in the completion of the manuscript. And the fact that it is such a high-class production also reinforces the impression that this may have been a royal commission  –  possibly paid for by the king as a gift to his son  –  as part of his ongoing propaganda campaign. In brief, all the evidence points to a post-usurpation date rather than a pre-usurpation one for Huntington Ellesmere 26 A.17. It is still possible that Gower might have dedicated a copy of the Confessio Amantis to Henry Bolingbroke before he became king, but this manuscript provides no grounds for believing that he did.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 54

07/04/2014 00:03

When Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis?

55

Bodleian MS Fairfax 3 All of this leaves Bodleian MS Fairfax 3 as the only indisputably pre-usurpation manuscript of the Confessio. However, all the passages in this manuscript that are relevant to the change of dedication were added in two later hands, and it is therefore the date of the revisions that is most significant. MS Fairfax 3 was originally a copy of what Macaulay termed the ‘first’ recension, and it presumably contained the original dedication to King Richard. The first revision in the manuscript is the removal and replacement of the entire first page with its dedication to Richard. The new leaf (now numbered fol. 2) extends to line 146 of the Prologue, and we may call the scribe who inserted it the First Revision Hand, though as we shall see, his work was not actually first in order of time. (Malcolm Parkes, in his study of the alterations in the manuscripts of both the Confessio and the Vox Clamantis, labels him Scribe 4.)33 Another scribe, the Second Revision Hand (though he appears to have done his work first; for Parkes he is Scribe 5) removed and replaced a passage in Book 8 beginning at line 2938, where the ‘first’ recension manuscripts contain Venus’ greeting to Chaucer. The first portion of the new passage is written over an erasure on fol. 184v (not fol. 41v, as Macaulay states) and continues onto a new leaf, replacing one that was cut away from the original manuscript. This leaf contains the text up to line 3146 of Book 8. Presumably a second leaf (now also cut away) contained the final lines of the poem and a version of the colophon, which is known by its opening words, ‘Quia unusquisque’. The rest of the poem now appears in a new quire that begins with fol. 185 and that is written (necessarily afterwards) by the First Revision Hand. This new quire contains not only the conclusion to the Confessio, the Explicit and the Latin verses that begin Quam cinxere, but also Gower’s Traitié pour essampler les amantz marietz, his Carmen de multiplici viciorum pestilencia, a version of the colophon Quia unusquisque, and some verses attributed to a ‘certain philosopher’ that begin ‘Eneidos Bucolis’. Even Macaulay acknowledged that the scribe that we have called the First Revision Hand must have done his work after Henry’s accession, because his version of Quia unusquisque contains a clear allusion to Richard’s ultimate fate: ‘The second book, composed in Latin verse [Vox Clamantis], deals with the various misfortunes that occurred in England during the reign of King Richard II, when not only were tribulations suffered by the magnates and commons of the realm, but also the cruel king himself, falling from on high because of his own misdeeds, was finally cast into the ditch that he had dug.’ 34 Parkes points out that the heading to ‘Eneidos Bucolis’ in the section done by the First Revision Hand contains an allusion to Gower’s death, indicating that he did his work even later, after 1408. His version of Quia unusquisque, however, 33 Parkes, ‘Patterns of Scribal Activity’, pp. 89–90. 34 The English Works of John Gower, ed. Macaulay, vol. 1, p. clviii; John Gower, The Minor Latin Works, ed. and trans. R. F. Yeager (Kalamazoo, MI, 2005), p. 39.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 55

07/04/2014 00:03

56

Terry Jones

has readings that imply that Gower is still alive. Parkes explains the discrepancy by suggesting that this scribe simply recopied the Quia unusquisque that had been provided by the Second Revision Hand on the page that he cut away in order to insert the new quire with all of its additions. And if that is true, then the Second Revision Hand must also have done his work after 1399 as well. Both scribes, then, did their work after Henry had come to the throne (and also quite possibly, for those who are interested in what the deletion of Venus’ compliment might imply about Gower’s relation with Chaucer, after Chaucer’s death in 1400). It is worth noting here that Parkes’ Scribe 4 is also responsible for the updating and revision of four different manuscripts of the Vox Clamantis, including the alterations that are intended to alter the portrayal of King Richard. I had a look at one of these manuscripts (Oxford, All Souls College, MS 98) and can confirm that every single passage disparaging Richard II is in a different ink, and written over an erasure. Clearly Henry IV (or Thomas Arundel) was putting considerable pressure on his poets to make them fall in line with the new political correctness, and  –  perhaps  –  funding them generously to get the work done as soon as possible. Perhaps it is in this context that Gower pleads blindness as an excuse for not doing more? MS Fairfax 3 is the most significant manuscript of the Confessio Amantis  –  being the one from which most modern texts are derived  –  and, according to Macaulay, the one on which all ‘third’ recension manuscripts are based. Macaulay writes, ‘All these alterations, as well as the points previously noted, in which F [MS Fairfax 3] originally differed from the other copies of the first recension, are reproduced in the other MSS of the third recension.’35 So it looks as if, after the usurpation, a strict eye was kept to make sure that the manuscripts conformed to the amended MS Fairfax 3, with its dedication to Henry. Since Huntington Ellesmere 26 A.17 appears to be post-usurpation, the only evidence of Gower rededicating his poem to Henry of Lancaster in 1392–3 is contained in a pre-usurpation manuscript that has been deliberately altered after Henry has seized the throne. To put it plainly: we simply have no reliable evidence that Gower rededicated the Confessio Amantis before Henry’s usurpation.

Rededication to Henry does not mean Gower switched allegiance Even if Gower really did rededicate his Confessio Amantis to Henry in the 1390s, there is still no reason to read into this that Gower was therefore disenchanted with Richard II. For the following argument, I am completely indebted to Peter Nicholson’s analysis. Nicholson points out that double dedications were not uncommon: both Hoccleve and Froissart, amongst Gower’s contemporaries, presented the same work to more than one dedicatee.36 Moreover the substituted 35 The English Works of John Gower, ed. Macaulay, vol. 1, p. cxxxv. 36 Nicholson, ‘The Dedications of Gower’s Confessio Amantis’ , p. 160. For what follows, see pp. 161–3.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 56

07/04/2014 00:03

When Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis?

57

lines do not even hint at any discontent with Richard II. Critics, expecting to find some criticism of Richard in the changes, read into these replaced passages exactly what they were expecting to find: What schal befalle hierafterward God wot, for now upon this tyde Men se the world on every side In sundry wyse so diversed, That it welny stant al reversed, As forto speke of tyme ago. The cause whi it changeth so It needeth not to specifie, The thing so open is at ye That every man it mai beholde. Confessio Amantis, Prologue, lines 26–35 This may sound full of ominous foreboding at what is to come, but seen in the context of the Prologue to the Confessio Amantis the passage is unexceptional  –  in fact the lines are simply a restatement of the beginning of the unchanged remainder of the Prologue that was originally dedicated to Richard: If I schal drawe in to my mynde The tyme passed, thanne I fynde The world stod thanne in al his welthe: Tho was the lif of man in helthe, Tho was plente, tho was richesse, Tho was the fortune of prouesse,  … Tho was ther unenvied love, Tho was the vertu set above And vice was put under fote. Now stant the crop under the rote, The world is changed overall … Confessio Amantis, Prologue, lines 93–119 Nicholson also points out the repetitious nature of the lines, in the changed version, and one is forced to conclude that Gower was padding out the verse to fit the allocated space. He even lifts a couple of lines from later in the Prologue: It needeth not to specifie, The thing so open is at ye Confessio Amantis, Prologue, lines 33–4 The thing so open is at ye It nedeth noght to specefie Confessio Amantis, Prologue, lines 865–6 The generalized nature of Gower’s jeremiads is such that the reader can read anything into it that he or she wants, and, in fact, there is nothing specifically

ME Texts in Transition.indb 57

07/04/2014 00:03

58

Terry Jones

anti-Richard in any of the substitutions he made when he rededicated the poem to Henry. Moreover, his dedication to Henry (Prologue, lines 83–9) is pretty perfunctory compared to the dedication to Richard: 223 lines in praise of Richard and only seven lines to Henry  –  and they contain no overflowing praise of Henry, just a pretty conventional ‘full of knighthood and all grace’. This bok, upon amendment To stonde at his commandement, With whom myn herte is of accord, I sende unto myn oghne lord, Which of Lancastre is Henri named: The hyhe god him hath proclamed Ful of knyhthode and alle grace. Confessio Amantis, Prologue, lines 83–9 The removal of the personal praise of Richard is simply what one would expect if the poet were presenting his poem to another patron. It does not indicate that he had become disillusioned with Richard’s rule. David Carlson has also drawn my attention to the Explicit at the end of the Confessio Amantis. Macaulay treated these six lines as a single poem. However, Siân Echard has pointed out that the last two lines are clearly added on. In the versions of the Confessio dedicated to Richard, she explains, the four-line Explicit ‘is purely a matter of the relation between the poet, his readers and his posterity.’37 The book is done; I pray So let it go its way That praise not calumny In readers’ mouths will be. Let Him in heaven’s seat Grant Britons be well pleased With this page of John As the years move on.38 Echard continues, ‘By contrast, the six-line Explicit continues, sending the book to Henry Bolingbroke’: To Derbyshire’s grand count Whose praise the poets recount Go book, unstained and free; His quiet subject be.39

37 S. Echard, ‘Last Words: Latin at the End of the Confessio Amantis’, in Interstices: Studies in Middle English and Anglo-Latin Texts in Honour of A. G. Rigg, ed. R. F. Green and L. R. Mooney (Toronto, 2004), p. 104. 38 The Latin Verses in ‘Confessio Amantis’: An Annotated Translation, ed. and trans. S. Echard and C. Fanger (East Lansing, MI, 1992), p. 95. 39 Ibid. The English Works of John Gower, ed. Macaulay, vol. 1, p. xxi, points out that these lines of the Explicit also occur in four manuscripts of the First Recension. But since these are all fifteenth-century manuscripts, Macaulay’s conclusion seems perverse: ‘It is noticeable, however, that even this first edition has a dedication to Henry earl of Derby, so that it is not quite accurate to say that the dedication was afterwards changed, but rather that this dedication was made more prominent and introduced into the text of the poem, while at the same time, the personal reference to the king in the prologue was suppressed.’

ME Texts in Transition.indb 58

07/04/2014 00:03

When Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis?

59

She also points out that one scribe draws attention to the ‘additive quality’ of the extra lines, by marking them off with a display capital letter, ‘allowing one to separate the authorial appeal to posterity … from the political gesture …’40 Carlson concurs. Using his statistical analysis of rhyme distribution in Gower’s Latin poetry, he writes that ‘a quatrain beginning “Explicit iste liber” would end emphatically, with the four rhymes of –annis making a unisonant couplet. A six-line presentation confounds this function of the repeated rhyme …’. 41

Was Henry of Derby called Henry of Lancaster? And what of the rededication itself? Isn’t there something suspicious about Gower calling Henry of Derby ‘Henry of Lancaster’ seven years before his father dies and he inherits the title Duke of Lancaster? Derek Brewer was the first to draw attention to this problem. He noted that the revised prologue, and not just the note that accompanies it, was probably not composed until 1399 because Henry would not have been called ‘of Lancaster’ before his father’s death.42 The chroniclers support him. Before 1397 Walsingham, Knighton and the Monk of Westminster are consistent in referring always to ‘Henry Earl of Derby’. The Rolls of Parliament also refer to Henry of Derby or the ‘earl of Derby’ until 1397, when he is created Duke of Hereford, and is referred to twice as ‘Sir Henry of Lancaster Duke of Hereford’; otherwise they consistently refer to him as ‘Duke of Hereford’.43 Even Adam of Usk assiduously refers to Henry as ‘the earl of Derby’ until he has seized the throne, whereupon he becomes ‘Henry, duke of Lancaster’. 44 Nicholson, however, noted that Henry is referred to as ‘Henry of Lancaster’ in documents from the early 1390s published in Lucy Toulmin Smith’s edition of Henry’s accounts for his expedition to Prussia.45 It turns out, however, that the references to ‘Henry of Lancaster’ are not in the original accounts themselves, which consistently refer to him as ‘Henry Earl of Derby’, but are all contained in later additions. I had an opportunity to examine the account books in the National Archives, and discovered that all six references to ‘Henry of Lancaster’ were

40 Echard, ‘Last Words’, p. 104. 41 D. Carlson, ‘A Rhyme Distribution Chronology of John Gower’s Latin Poetry’, Studies in Philology 104 (2007), 15–55 (p. 22). 42 D. Brewer, Chaucer and his World (London, 1978), p. 212. 43 Rotuli Parliamentorum, ut et petitiones et placita in parliamento, 6 vols. (London, 1783), vol. 3, p. 383; see also The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, gen. ed. C. Given-Wilson, available online through British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/source.aspx?pubid=1241. 44 The Chronicle of Adam of Usk, 1377–1421, ed. C. Given-Wilson (Oxford 1997), pp. 62–3. 45 Nicholson, ‘The Dedications of Gower’s Confessio Amantis’, pp. 179–80. See also Expeditions to Prussia and the Holy Land made by Henry, Earl of Derby, ed. L. Toulmin Smith, Camden Society n.s. 52 (1894), pp. 1, 2, 147, 148 and 291. These pages of Toulmin Smith’s edition are transcriptions from Kew, The National Archives, DL 28/1/6 and DL 28/1/7.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 59

07/04/2014 00:03

60

Terry Jones

attached in some way, usually by being sewn onto the originals. Throughout the actual accounts, he is referred to as ‘Henry Earl of Derby’.46 The second book of accounts apparently contains a reference to ‘Henry of Lancaster’ at the end of the first line of the first page of the actual book itself.47 However, on closer examination it turns out that this page is also added on, and not a part of the original accounts. It is in fact the same sheet of vellum as fol. 45, to which has been stitched the ‘Allocationes’, fol. 44. The accounts themselves comprise three bundles which have been wrapped inside two sheets of vellum comprising fols. 3 & 4 and 43 & 44/45. It seems that these sheets are an attempt to keep the three separate bundles of accounts together. There are also summaries, written in a bolder hand, at the foot of each page, which repeat what the original scribe had written. In fact it looks as if someone, at a later date, tried to impose some sort of order onto the accounts  –  either for presentation or for preservation. The original accounts themselves thus give no indication that Henry styled himself ‘Henry of Lancaster’ in 1390–3, and the only mentions of ‘Henry of Lancaster’ are in documents attached to the original accounts. However, there is one attached receipt referring to ‘Henry of Lancaster’ that Richard Kingston issued for 3,000 marks supplied by Duke John on 19 July 1392. Since this document bears the indenture cuts along the top of the page we must assume that it is the original, and that therefore it was possible  –  though unusual  –  for Henry to be styled ‘Henry of Lancaster’ at this date. But every other indication is that Brewer was correct, and that the entire new dedication was crafted after the fact, probably at the same time as the marginal glosses that claim the poem was originally intended for Henry and as the colophon that describes with such grim satisfaction his predecessor’s fall.

Why should Gower have been disillusioned with Richard in 1392–3? Everything thus points to an effort to revise the textual history of the poem after Henry became king, effacing the references to his predecessor, inserting a claim that the poem was originally intended for the man who had stolen the throne, and even inserting a new, backdated dedication. Why Gower should have felt compelled to do this in 1399 is not hard to explain, but there is absolutely no reason why he should have become disillusioned with Richard in 1392–3. The received account of Gower’s change of loyalty is just not consistent either with what we know of Richard’s actions during this period or with what we can infer from Gower’s other writings. Richard had taken over the reins of power with compromise and reconciliation, and the period is considered the happiest and most successful of his reign. Anthony

46 Kew, The National Archives, DL 28/1/6, fols. 2, 1 (order reversed in Toulmin Smith’s edition). 47 Kew, The National Archives, DL 28/1/7, fols. 1, 2, 44 (from Toulmin Smith), now refoliated as 3, 4, 44.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 60

07/04/2014 00:03

When Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis?

61

Tuck writes, ‘Richard’s concern to bring justice, peace, and good government to his subjects in the early 1390s was in all probability genuine; his policies towards Scotland, France, and Ireland are consistent in this respect with his domestic policies. But his pursuit of these unexceptionable goals aroused mistrust and suspicion to the point where, in 1397, Richard felt it necessary to preserve his own security by making a pre-emptive strike against his opponents.’48 Some historians have recognized this lack of motive as a problem. R. H. Jones, for example, expresses puzzlement that Gower should have withdrawn his support for Richard in 1392–3, but continues, ‘Perhaps, for reasons which cannot be known, Gower had already determined shortly after 1390 that Richard would never be a suitable ruler.’ 49 I submit that ‘reasons which cannot be known’ constitutes no reason at all. John H. Fisher suggests that it was Richard’s quarrel with the City of London that upset Gower. However, why should Gower have identified with the interests of the City to the extent of withdrawing his support for his king? In both Mirour de l’Omme and Vox Clamantis he denounces the greed of merchants, many of whom made up the City of London. Moreover, Gower never mentions the quarrel with the Londoners anywhere in his work  –  not even in his most vitriolic denunciations of Richard in his disgraceful Cronica Tripertita. Nicholson gives a very good summary of all these issues in his essay ‘The Dedications of Gower’s Confessio Amantis’. 50 There is simply no credible evidence that Gower became disenchanted with Richard during his reign. We know that the Vox Clamantis was altered after the usurpation, because Gower inadvertently reveals that he knows Richard’s fate.51 As Fisher says, the whole question as to whether or not Gower changed his attitude to Richard before 1399 must ‘turn upon the textual history of the Confessio amantis rather than the Vox clamantis’.52 As we have already seen, the rededication to Henry was most probably done after the usurpation, and (even if it was done before) it in no way indicates that Gower had become disillusioned with Richard. 48 A. Tuck, Richard II and the English Nobility (London, 1973), pp. 156–7. 49 R. H. Jones, The Royal Policy of Richard II (Oxford, 1968), p. 148. 50 Nicholson, ‘The Dedications of Gower’s Confessio Amantis’, pp. 165–9. Robert Yeager has pointed me to a passage in the Cronica Tripertita that could possibly refer to this issue, but in A. G. Rigg’s verse translation it looks more like it refers to 1399 and Henry’s usurpation. But he is dark and knows no lights, who bears the Sun, When he for lodgings Troy’s domain attempts to dun: Troy was the first place where the Sun slid in descent. Eclipsed, the people pale, for holding back assent: Lest Phoebus climb inside their town, the crowds withstand, And so, with wings outspread, the Swan assumed command.  Cronica Tripertita, I, lines 57–62. John Gower, Poems on Contemporary Events, ed. D. Carlson, verse trans. A. G. Rigg (Toronto, 2011), pp. 254–5. 51 T. Jones et al., Who Murdered Chaucer? (London, 2003), p. 98. 52 Fisher, John Gower, p. 116.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 61

07/04/2014 00:03

62

Terry Jones

One Latin poem, which Gower says he wrote sometime between June 1396 and June 1397, seems to clinch the argument. The poem is specifically about the evils of the time, and is called Carmen supermultiplici viciorum pestilencia (A Poem of the Manifold Plague of Vices).53 This poem does not contain one iota of criticism of Richard himself nor of Richard’s court. If Gower really had written in 1386: ‘the king, an undisciplined boy, neglects the moral behaviour by which a man might grow up from a boy … the king’s court contains whatever vice exists. Sin springs up on every side of the boy, and he, who is quite easily led, takes to every evil …’54 one would have expected him to display his ‘growing disenchantment with Richard’55 with some force in 1397. Instead Carmen supermultiplici viciorum pestilencia commences with a diatribe against Lollardy, which basically says: no matter how convincing the arguments, just shut up and do what you are told by the Church: Believe only what the Church teaches, and do not be eager In any way at all for what is beyond what is granted you to know.56 There is no hint in the poem that the court might be infected with Lollardy, even though the chroniclers accuse four of Richard’s chamber knights of being Lollards: Clanvow, Clifford, Nevill and Sturry.57 Instead the poem goes on to make generalized condemnations of the sins of Pride, Lust, Perjury and Greed. Nowhere is the king or court attacked or even implicated in the criticisms, and the ‘satire’ is so unspecific that it lapses into literary cliché. The only material relating to Richard, that we are certain Gower wrote during Richard’s reign, is highly favourable to the king. Moreover the ‘first’ recension of the Confessio Amantis is not merely eulogistic, it actually describes Richard’s policy of peace with France and his reconciliation with his rebel nobles after 1390 with some accuracy: Mi worthi prince, of whom I write, Thus stant he with himselve clier And doth what lith in his power Not only hier at hom to seke / peace at home Love and accord, but outward eke, / peace abroad As he that save his people wolde. Confessio Amantis, VIII, lines 3014–19 This also echoes the generally accepted aim of the rightful ruler, as expounded in the books of rules for princes from Aquinas to Dante. Dante said that peace was ‘the goal to which all our human actions are directed as to their final end’, and the 53 Gower, Minor Latin Works, ed. Yeager, pp. 17–33. 54 Gower, Vox Clamantis, VI, lines 550–70, in The Major Latin Works of John Gower, trans. E. W. Stockton (Seattle, 1962), p. 232. 55 Saul, Richard II, p. 437. 56 Gower, Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia, lines 78–9; trans. Yeager, Minor Latin Works, ed. Yeager, pp. 17–33. 57 K. B. McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights (Oxford, 1972), p. 160.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 62

07/04/2014 00:03

When Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis?

63

jurist Bartolus of Sassoferrato wrote, ‘the peace and union of the citizens should be the final intention of the ruler.’ Giles of Rome (perhaps the most influential political theorist of the period) concurred: ‘peace and unity of citizens should be the final intent of he who gives the law …’ And we know Richard must have been instructed in Giles’s book because his tutor, Simon Burley, owned a copy. By ‘peace’ they meant peace at home and peace abroad.58 The line ‘And doth what lith in his power’ hints at the struggle Richard was having with his recalcitrant nobles, the so-called Appellants, who rose in armed rebellion against him in 1387: ‘And thogh the worldes chaunce in broghte / Of infortune gret debate’ (Confessio Amantis, VIII, lines 2998–9). He goes on to praise Richard for showing mercy to the leaders, Gloucester, Warwick and Arundel, and for not taking revenge on them: For he yit nevere unpitously Ayein the liges of his lond, For no defaute which he fond, Thurgh cruelte vengaunce soghte. Confessio Amantis, VIII, lines 2994–7 I quote the passage in full, because it so rarely gets read, and it demonstrates where Gower was coming from when he composed the Confessio Amantis in the sixteenth year of King Richard. Upon mi bare knees I preye, That he [God] my worthi king conveye, Richard by name the Secounde, In whom hath evere yit be founde Justice medled with pite, Largesce forth with charite. In his persone it mai be schewed What is a king to be wel thewed, Touching of pite namely: For he yit nevere unpitously Ayein the liges of his lond, For no defaute which he fond, Thurgh cruelte vengaunce soghte; And thogh the worldes chaunce in broghte 58 For Aquinas, see St Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship, ed. G. B. Phelan (Toronto, 1949), rev. I. T. Eschmann (Toronto, 2000), p. 65. For Dante, Monarchia, I iv, 5. For Bartolus of Sassoferrato, Treatise on City Government, chapter 8, ed. and trans. S. Lane, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/cource/bartolus.html. For Giles of Rome, see The Governance of Kings & Princes, ed. D. C. Fowler, The Governance of Kings & Princes, ed. D. C. Fowler, C. F. Briggs and P. G. Remley (New York, 1997), chap. 3, p. 326. See also T. Jones ‘Was Richard II A Tyrant?’, in Fourteenth Century England V, ed. N. Saul (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 134–8; Dante, Monarchia, I iv, 5; Bartolus of Sassoferrato, Treatise on City Government, ca 8, ed. and trans. S. Lane, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/ bartolus.html.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 63

07/04/2014 00:03

64

Terry Jones Of infortune gret debate, Yit was he not infortunat: For he which the fortune ladde, The hihe god, him overspradde Of his Justice, and kepte him so, That his astat stood evere mo Sauf, as it oghte wel to be; Lich to the Sonne in his degree, Which with the clowdes up alofte Is derked and bischadewed ofte, But hou so that it trowble in their, The Sonne is evere briht and feir, Withinne himself and noght empeired: Althogh the weder be despaired, The hed planete is not to wite. Confessio Amantis, VIII, lines 2985–3013

Andrew Galloway cautions against taking this passage at face value because of that qualifying word ‘yit’. Galloway writes, ‘But this is virtue exemplified by a temporary lack, so far (‘yit’), of viciousness; his pity is cruelty held in abeyance.’ 59 I find this argument forced. Richard is only vicious in his usurper’s rewritten history. His revenge on the Appellants in 1397 was confined to those who were guilty of treason, and, in the end, resulted in only one execution, one death and two exiles. At least one chronicler draws attention to Richard’s clemency in thus confining his revenge: ‘How admirable and longsuffering is the king’s forbearance! Previously the sun was hidden behind a cloud  –  in other words, the royal majesty was obscured by a hostile force  –  but now … he has dispersed the clouds with his sun, whose light shines ever more brightly.’ 60 The Appellants were guilty of far more viciousness not only killing but torturing more than a dozen of the king’s affinity. Yet they have not gone down in history as ‘vicious’ because one of them, Henry Bolingbroke, lived to rewrite history. Time and again Richard demonstrates the opposite of ‘viciousness’, such as when he pardoned so many peasants in 1381, and when he refused John of Gaunt’s urging to overrun the whole of Scotland, because, Richard said, the common soldiery would suffer starvation. ‘Though you and the other lords here might have plenty of food for yourselves, the rest, the humbler and lowlier members of our army, would certainly not find over there such a wealth of victuals as would prevent their

59 A. Galloway, ‘The Literature of 1388 and the Politics of Pity in Gower’s Confessio Amantis’, in The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England, ed. E. Steiner and C. Barrington (Ithaca, NY, 2002), p. 93. 60 The Kirkstall Abbey Chronicles, ed. J. Taylor, Thoresby Soc. 42 (Leeds, 1952), p. 117; Chronicles of the Revolution, ed. and trans. C. Given-Wilson (Manchester, 1993), pp. 94–6.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 64

07/04/2014 00:03

When Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis?

65

dying of hunger.’ 61 He certainly wasn’t being vicious when he resisted the church’s constant pressure to institute the burning of heretics,62 or when he stopped the judicial duel between Henry, Duke of Hereford and Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, or when he pardoned Thomas Haxey in 1397 and Lord Cobham in 1398. Instead, according to the Westminster Chronicler ‘mildness and goodwill’ were characteristic of Richard’s behaviour in settling disputes.63 Even when he finally took revenge on his bitterest enemy, Richard, Earl of Arundel, he didn’t allow him to be hung, drawn and quartered, but commuted the sentence to beheading.64 He seems to have had little relish for the refinements of torture and was generally moved by ‘a genuine abhorrence of the shedding of blood’.65 Galloway sees Richard’s pity as ‘false’ pity, ‘self-serving and duplicitous  –  that is as a means for enhancing one’s power … Richard clearly gloried in this kind of pity, the arbitrary gestures of grace proffered through and as sheer power’.66 I think this puts a modern construction on the medieval concept of power. All the books of rules for princes agreed (probably mistakenly) that Aristotle put forward rule by one man as the preferred form of government. Therefore, according to the books of rules for princes, it was not how much power that one man wielded that made him a ‘tyrant’ but how he used that power. If he used it in the interests of his people, he was a just and rightful ruler. If he used it in his own interests, he was a tyrant. That is the definition of a ‘tyrant’ that Richard II would have been taught at Simon Burley’s knee and, as far as I can see, it was the definition that he operated by, and, perhaps, to which he aspired.67 The books of rules for princes also required the ruler to imitate God in being implacable in his justice and stern in his punishment; but the queen could intervene, as the Virgin Mary, to mitigate the punishment or pardon the offender. We see this happening time and again under Richard’s rule. He pardoned the peasants of 1381 ‘out of reverence for God and His sweet mother St Mary, and at the special request of the noble lady, the Lady Anne, daughter of the noble prince Charles, late emperor of Rome, soon, if it please God, to be queen of England …’68 Similarly he pardoned, at Anne’s request, Thomas Faringdon for grabbing his horse’s reins and shouting at the king, and Godschalk van Han Kon for smashing up the arms

61 Westminster Chronicle, ed. and trans. L. C. Hector and B. Harvey (Oxford, 1982), pp. 125–31. 62 See H. G. Richardson, ‘Heresy and the Lay Power under Richard II’, English Historical Review 51 (no. 201) (1936), 1–28. 63 Westminster Chronicle, p. 329. 64 Chronicle of Adam of Usk, trans. Given-Wilson (Oxford, 1997), p. 31. 65 Saul, Richard II, p. 207. 66 Galloway, ‘The Literature of 1388’, p. 97. 67 See Jones, ‘Was Richard II a Tyrant?’, pp. 132–5. 68 Rotuli Parliamentorum, vol. 3, p. 103; online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=116481, item 32.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 65

07/04/2014 00:03

66

Terry Jones

of the king and queen.69 And, in 1397, even though Thomas Mowbray had been found guilty of treason, he granted him his life, ‘heeding the pleas for mercy of Lady Isabelle, queen of England … thus, tempering the wine of justice with the oil of clemency …’70 And so on and so forth. Richard pardoned people, because that was what the books of rules for princes instructed him to do: a show of stern justice followed by clemency at the behest of a woman. This was a process which Chaucer endorsed: his Tale of Melibee, An ABC and The Legend of Good Women, all put forward the woman as mediatrix, in imitation of the Virgin. And both Melibee and The Legend also propose the show of strength followed by mercy.71 Richard was not glorying in his power; he was diligently applying what Simon Burley and Giles of Rome and all the writers of the books of rules for princes had taught him. He was trying to be a good ruler, but his nobles wouldn’t let him. In the early 1390s an elderly French soldier and one-time chancellor of Cyprus, Philippe de Mézières, described Richard’s struggle to establish peace with France in the teeth of opposition from his war-mongering nobles. He depicts Richard as a miraculous White Boar surrounded by ‘big Boars, black and bristling, who once were the sons of the powerful black Boar, who so many times by divine permission destroyed the rows of beautiful vines in the great field of golden lilies [France]’. De Mézières goes on to the describe the atmosphere of intimidation that was rife: ‘It was true that there were some among the knights who no longer favoured the war [with France] but through fear of the Black Boars and in particular a certain count of Arundel, they did not dare say a word nor support their king.’ 72 From early in his reign Richard’s desire for peace with France pitched him into violent conflict with his uncles and other nobles, who stood to profit from the war. If Richard’s aim was to reduce the tax burden on his people, then he was acting in exactly the way that the Books of Rules for Princes recommended for the rightful ruler.

Why should Gower have turned to Henry of Derby? There is thus absolutely no evidence  –  from Gower’s own writings  –  that he became disenchanted with Richard II before 1399, and even if he had been, why on earth should he have turned to Henry of Derby of all people? Henry’s military experience and political importance have been much exaggerated. He is sometimes credited with having masterminded the defeat of the royal army at Radcot Bridge in 1387, but it is likely that he played a minor role. The campaign 69 The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, ed. R. B. Dobson (London, 1970), p. 210; Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office: Richard II, vol. 2: A.D. 1381–1385 (London, 1897), p. 114. 70 Kirkstall Abbey Chronicles, ed. Taylor, p. 117; Chronicles of the Revolution, ed. GivenWilson, pp. 94–6. 71 See Jones, ‘Was Richard II A Tyrant?’, pp. 144–51. 72 Philippe de Mézières, Le Songe du Vieil Pelerin, ed. G. W. Coopland, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1969), vol. 1, pp. 395, 402–3 (trans. Anna Soderstrom).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 66

07/04/2014 00:03

When Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis?

67

was orchestrated by Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick, and Henry was given the task of blockading the two bridges across the Thames at Radcot and Newbridge.73 Douglas Biggs writes: Henry’s forays into war in the early 1380s were confined to the one occasion when he followed his father on a meaningless raid into Scotland in 1384 that lasted all of three weeks. Henry was conspicuously absent from the list of great men of the realm who accompanied Richard II to Scotland the following year, and he did not take the opportunity to help any of the king’s lieutenants in Ireland throughout the 1390s. Henry also made no effort to accompany his father to Aquitaine in the early 1390s, and failed to attend the king on his triumphal Irish expedition in 1394/95.74 As for Henry’s much-vaunted campaigns to Prussia, it is highly unlikely that he gained much valuable military experience from them. There was, in fact, only one major military engagement: an opposed crossing of the River Neris (‘Wilia’ in Polish), on 28 August 1390. The ‘crusaders’ (I use inverted commas because the Lithuanians had already officially converted to Christianity) then moved on to Vilnius, where they proceeded to attack an unarmed procession of newly converted Catholics, proceeding from the Church of St Anne’s, which had been constructed a few years before. They then burned the city’s suburbs. Vilnius was protected by two forts. The Teutonic Knights managed to take the lower fort and burn it. They then laid siege to the upper castle, but gave up after about a month and dispersed.75 That is the sum total of Henry’s first military adventure in Prussia. Even though the Teutonic Knights, themselves, embarked on winter expeditions, Henry chose not to get involved. Instead he rented a house in Königsberg, where he lived at his ease, in royal style, ordering huge quantities of beef, pork, chicken, pastries, sweets and beer. He went through a vast number of candles and entertained with minstrels and feasting. He also went hunting with falcons, and turned his back on more military adventures. His men, by the way, were supplied with eight pints of beer a day for the entire campaign.76 The second trip was even more of a fiasco. Arriving in Danzig, Henry and his companions found their services no longer required. Henry managed to get £400 towards his expenses out of the Grandmaster of the Teutonic Order, and then decided that instead of more military experience he’d try being a pilgrim instead. And so he set off for Jerusalem. His father, John of Gaunt, was perhaps alarmed 73 See J. N. L. Myers, ‘The Campaign of Radcot Bridge in December 1387’, English Historical Review 42 (1927), pp. 20–33; and A. Goodman, The Loyal Conspiracy (Coral Gables, FL, 1971), pp. 129–30. 74 D. Biggs, Three Armies in Britain: The Irish Campaign of Richard II and the usurpation of Henry IV, 1397–1399 (Leiden, 2006), p. 9. 75 F. R. H. DuBoulay, ‘Henry of Derby’s Expeditions to Prussia, 1390–1 and 1392’, in The Reign of Richard II, ed. F. R. H. DuBoulay and C. Barron (London, 1971), pp. 164–5. 76 DuBoulay, ‘Henry of Derby’s Expeditions’, pp. 169–72; W. Urban, The Samogitian Crusade (Chicago, 1989; 2nd edn, 2006), pp. 198–201.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 67

07/04/2014 00:03

Terry Jones

68

at this sudden change of plan, because he once again dispatched Sir Thomas Erpingham ‘to join Henry as he had in 1390, probably to look after the duke of Lancaster’s heir on this new adventure’. 77 Henry seems to have been incapable of controlling his retinue, and fights were constantly breaking out, in one of which the bastard son of the lord of Galloway was killed. During the second Reyse, the German chroniclers blame Henry for not keeping his men in order, when one of them killed a local Prussian.78 As for Henry’s political importance, it is safe to say that, apart from his involvement with the Appellants in 1387, he had none. He seems to have avoided politics for the first three decades of his life. Biggs writes, ‘of all the great noblemen active in the last decade of Richard II’s reign, Henry of Lancaster is alone in failing to occupy a single government office of responsibility.’ 79 Henry’s adventures abroad were funded by a lavish father. The cost of the first Reyse was £4,438 8s 3½d, a fantastic sum in those days, of which Henry supplied only £950 1s 3d. The second Reyse cost even more: £4,915 5s 0¾d. And don’t imagine the money was spent exclusively on arms and equipment; Henry was used to a life of luxury and he spent lavishly on food, wine, beer, and personal comfort, no matter where he might find himself. F. R. H. DuBoulay writes: His wardrobe accounts constantly betray in Henry a taste for luxurious equipment and ‘subtelties’ no less than that for which Richard II is famous. In contrast with his personal spending his almsdeeds were derisory. … His private apartments, richly furnished in the most un-promising circumstances, were the scenes of gambling … He appears throughout as a man of physical competence and small sensibility.80 Why should Gower have changed his allegiance from Richard to this political non-entity  –  the playboy son of one of the most powerful men in the kingdom, a lover of luxury, fine food and wine, addicted to gambling and jousting, an impulsive, headstrong young man, with little military experience, who did not always think things through?81 It simply doesn’t make sense that the ‘moral’ John Gower should have fixed his hope for the future of the kingdom on such a person  –  especially in 1392–3, when Henry was absent from it for long periods. In fact he spent ‘longer abroad on crusade and pilgrimage than any other noble of Richard’s court’82   –  behaviour which Gower, himself, had condemned in his Mirour de l’Omme: O knight, who goest far-off Into strange lands and seeks only Praise in arms, know this: 77 Biggs, Three Armies in Britain, p. 13. 78 DuBoulay, ‘Henry of Derby’s Expeditions’, pp. 167, 171. 79 Biggs, Three Armies in Britain, p. 14. 80 DuBoulay, ‘Henry of Derby’s Expeditions’, pp. 171–2. 81 Biggs, Three Armies in Britain, p. 11. 82 Goodman, The Loyal Conspiracy, p. 155.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 68

07/04/2014 00:03

When Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis?

69

If your country and your neighbour Are at war themselves, all the honour Is in vain, when you flee from Your country and estrange yourself. For he who abandons his duties And does not wish to fufill his obligation But rather fulfils his own desires Has no right to be honoured …83 What’s more, earlier in the same poem, Gower specifically castigates knights who go to Prussia to exercise their calling: O knight, I speak to you, who labour to prove yourself in Prussia and Tartary. I do not know the cause for which you go, but I shall describe three causes to you, two of which are not worth a sorb-apple: the first is (so to speak) pride in one’s prowess  –  ‘I will go in order to win praise’. Or also, ‘It is for my beloved, so that I may have her affection’. 84 The third cause, Gower describes, is the service of God. I cannot imagine that the man Jan Hus lauded for ‘laying hands on the Church’s wealth, for hanging rebellious monks and bringing an Archbishop to the block’ was especially devout. He rather seems to have been a man who ‘put self-interest first, whenever it conflicted with the claims of religion’. 85 It doesn’t seem to me that John Gower, a few years after he wrote these lines, if he meant anything by them, would have seen Henry of Derby as a future custodian of the realm.

Black Propaganda However, things changed in 1399. When Henry seized the throne and murdered his cousin, it was a crime of the utmost treachery. He had already betrayed the terms of his exile by meeting up with ex-Archbishop Thomas Arundel, for which the penalty was death, and he was courting double death by returning before the term of his exile was up.86 We also know that there was much opposition to Henry. The Lancastrian propaganda machine would have us believe that an all-conquering

83 John Gower, Mirour de l’Omme, lines 24061–72, my own trans. to modern English, with thanks to Brian Jeffery for assistance. 84 John Gower, Mirour de l’Omme, lines 23893–905, trans. W. B. Wilson (East Lansing, MI, 1992), pp. 312–13. 85 Wylie, History of England under Henry The Fourth, vol. 4, p. 146. 86 ‘… that the said Duke of Hereford should not in any way come into the company of the said Thomas Duke of Norfolk nor of Thomas Arundel, and that he should not send nor cause to be sent, nor receive nor cause to be received, either message or any other communication, nor should he mix in any manner with either of them; and this under the penalty above [death].’ Rotuli Parliamentorum, vol. 3, p. 383.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 69

07/04/2014 00:03

Terry Jones

70

Henry was welcomed with open arms by all Richard’s subjects, who were glad to be rescued from such a beastly tyrant, but Gower lets the cat out of the bag  –  rather comically  –  by writing in his diatribe against Richard (the Cronica Tripertita): ‘Nevertheless, there were a great many then hostile to Henry; they tried to resist, but could not. They often spoke out and threatened him behind his back, but they did not dare when they looked upon his face.’ 87 We can see, from the number of rebellions against it, that the new regime provoked a lot of opposition, and we know for a fact that Henry and Arundel were anxious to rewrite history  –  not surprisingly in view of the treason that, between them, they had perpetrated. Henry called in the chronicles on the excuse that he needed to verify his claim to the throne, but of course to make sure they conformed to the new Lancastrian party line. And as one of the chroniclers noted, Letters were also sent out to all the abbeys and major churches of the kingdom instructing the heads of these religious houses to make available for examination all of their chronicles which touched upon the state and governance of the kingdom of England. … These letters were sent in the name King Richard, and under his privy seal …88 The early fifteenth-century Scottish chronicler Walter Bower (1385–1449) gives a confused and inaccurate account of this, but  –  in showing how the rumours had reached Scotland  –  probably gives a good idea of what a lot of people must have thought about the calling in of the chronicles: When this Henry of Lancaster duke of Hereford and earl of Derby took on himself the crown of the kingdom de facto, he sent to the abbot of Glastonbury for [copies of] acts of parliament and a chronicle which stated that the daughters of Roger Mortimer ought to succeed; and because he refused with excuses, the king [threatened him and] took possession of his temporality until he got hold of the chronicle; he then burned it and ordered new ones to be made in favour of himself.89 From this we can infer that it was common knowledge at the time that Henry was rewriting the chronicles and consequently history. And we can see the effect all this had in scriptoria up and down the country. In the margins of a manuscript of Walsingham’s Cronica Maiora (British Library, Royal MS 13.E.ix) a nervous scribe has written warnings such as ‘cave quia offendiculum’ alongside certain erasures. Disparaging references to John of Gaunt throughout the Historia Anglicana were erased  –  presumably because of ‘the dread which the monks of St Albans had of falling under the displeasure of the new Lancastrian king.’ 90 At Dieulacres 87 Gower, Tripartite Chronicle, III, in Major Latin Works, trans. Stockton, p. 317. 88 Thomas Walsingham, Annales Ricardi Secundi, trans. in Chronicles of the Revolution, ed. Given-Wilson, pp. 124–5. 89 W. Bower, Scotichronicon, 9 vols. (Aberdeen, 1989–98), ed. D. E. R. Watt, vol. 5, pp. 8, 21. 90 Chronicon Angliae auctore monacho quodam Sancti Albani, ed. E. M. Thompson, Rolls Series 23 (London, 1874).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 70

07/04/2014 00:03

When Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis?

71

Abbey, in Staffordshire, a new scribe took over the Dieulacres Chronicle after the usurpation, and tut-tutted at things the previous scribe had written about ‘the ill-treatment and consequent death of the “noble”, “injured” and “perjured” King Richard in Pontefract castle, and the rewards and punishments handed out by the new king … the chronicler comments on Henry’s restoration of Thomas Arundel as Archbishop of Canterbury: “and so Herod and Pilate became friends”.’ 91 At Kirkstall Abbey, near Leeds, the chronicler simply did a Vicar of Bray, and switched sides.92 Everywhere we see signs of nervous scribes conforming to the new political correctness. Two and a half folios, for example, have been cut out of Letter-Book H of the City of London records covering the period of the usurpation.93 Clearly the Londoners had not been giving Henry the whole-hearted support that the Lancastrians later claimed. Even the Rolls of Parliament were tampered with. The so-called ‘Record and Process of the Deposition of Richard II’ is based on the central lie that Richard gave up the crown willingly. It was then enrolled in the parliamentary roll as the official record of events, and disseminated around the kingdom in different forms. Sometimes key passages were transcribed in pamphlets, which were then distributed to the chroniclers for inclusion in their chronicles.94 Douglas Biggs has suggested to me that even the 1397 Parliament Rolls of the ‘Revenge Parliament’ are a Lancastrian forgery, since ‘verbatim copies of the roll (down to the word) were distributed at least to noble houses throughout the country …’ a unique instance of the Parliamentry Rolls being copied and distributed to anyone. And why should they have gone to such trouble if they hadn’t faked the record?’95 If Henry and Thomas Arundel were intimidating the chroniclers in their abbeys, and compelling them to turn Richard into a monster and to whitewash the new regime, it seems reasonable to assume that they would also have put pressure on other writers to commemorate the Lancastrian version of events  –  or perhaps they commissioned works that would peddle the new political orthodoxy. This is exactly what we find in what David Carlson has named ‘the 1399 summer poems’: O deus in celis, On King Richard’s Ministers, Richard the Redeless and John 91 Dieulacres Abbey Chronicle, chapter 9, as summarized on the website (10 May 2011), http://dieulacresabbey.blogspot.com/2011/05/chapter-nine-chronicle-of-dieulacres.html. 92 Chronicles of the Revolution, ed. Given-Wilson, pp. 8–9. 93 Calendar of Letter-books of the City of London; Letter Book H, ed. R. R. Sharpe (London, 1907), from British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report. aspx?compid=33455: ‘The interval of precisely two years that elapsed between the adjournment of Parliament and the day on which Richard signed the document which deprived him of his crown (29 September 1399) was one of eventful interest, although there is little to be gathered from the Letter-Book Some of the folios towards the end of the volume have been left blank, some have been torn out bodily, some mutilated … no formal record of the passing of the crown from Richard to Henry is to be found in the Letter-Book.’ 94 See Carlson, ‘English Poetry, July–October 1399, and Lancastrian Crime’. 95 Douglas Biggs in an email. I am grateful to him for letting me quote it.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 71

07/04/2014 00:03

Terry Jones

72

Gower’s Cronica Tripertita. All these poems purport to have been written in the summer of 1399, before Richard’s deposition, and yet they are clearly written after the usurpation. The first three call upon Henry to invade and violently overthrow the king, and they all violently attack Richard’s reign. In other words, they are fakes, designed to make it look as if people were dissatisfied with Richard’s rule. Each employs allegorical allusions to refer to some of the participants, a conceit not found elsewhere in the contemporary literature (unless Chaucer’s lost Book of the Leoun used such a device). All the ‘1399 poems’ also put extraordinary focus on exonerating Henry for the murders of Scrope, Bussy, Green and Bagot (who were scarcely the most famous of Richard’s ministers) and for acting like a king, in ordering their executions, while claiming he did not want to be king. Some of the poems are in English and some in Latin, and, according to Carlson, they seem to have been aimed at different audiences: O deus in celis seems to be aimed at clerics, On King Richard’s Ministers at popular audiences, Richard the Redeless at the audience of Piers Plowman and Gower’s Cronica Tripertita for the permanent record.96 As Carlson points out, one or two similarities might be coincidence, but more suggests that there was some concerted effort behind these productions, and I would not be at all surprised if that co-ordination came not from Henry himself, but from Thomas Arundel. It is also clear that Henry (presumably on the advice of Arundel) wanted to attract writers of calibre to Henry’s court. We know he tried to get Christine de Pisan to join his court by using her son as bait. Christine’s son had been living with Sir John Montagu, the Earl of Salisbury, and when Montagu was conveniently beheaded by a mob at Cirencester, after the January ‘rebellion’, Henry seems to have kidnapped the boy. He then invited Christine de Pisan to come to his court to join her son. Christine describes the situation thus: That woman (Fortune) … brought calamity down upon the said King Richard of England, as is well known. The good count [Montagu] remained loyal to his rightful lord and was therefore beheaded  –  which was an act of grave injustice. Thus my son’s initial worldly good fortune was cut short, and since he was young and in a foreign land beset with such turmoil, he had good reason to be alarmed. What followed? King Henry, who had seized power and who still holds the throne, saw some of the many books and works I had sent for the count’s pleasure, became aware of the situation, and took my son into his household, providing for him generously. Then he charged two of his kings of arms, Lancaster and Falcon, to invite me to come to England, promising a generous recompense. Under the circumstances, and as the prospect did not tempt me in the least, I pretended to acquiesce in order to obtain my son’s return. To get straight to the point, after strenuous manœuvres on my part and the loss of some of my manuscripts, my son received permission to come home so that he could accompany me on a

96 Carlson, ‘English Poetry, July–October 1399, and Lancastrian Crime’, pp. 377, 383–4.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 72

07/04/2014 00:03

When Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis?

73

journey I have yet to make. Thus I rejected an opportunity for both of us, because I cannot believe that a traitor can come to a good end.97 Clearly Henry and Arundel were desperate to attract poets to the English court, where, in return for ‘a generous recompense’, they could be persuaded to record for history the Lancastrian version. The fact that Chaucer failed to do this, I and others have argued elsewhere, may have proved his undoing.98 Gower does not seem to have had any such compunctions, and the period after the usurpation is the most productive of his life.99 Perhaps he was richly rewarded for his services, or perhaps he was just intimidated  –  fearing what may have happened to Chaucer might happen to him. Whatever the reason, we know he fell into line with the requirements of the new regime by pretending that Book II of the Cronica Tripertita was written in September 1397, and that he went back through his Vox Clamantis backdating vituperative criticisms of Richard as if they had been made in the 1380s.100 Why should not the same be true of the Confessio Amantis and the rededication to Henry of Lancaster? At least we can say that Huntington Ellesmere 26 A.17 cannot have been presented to Richard or John of Gaunt, and is most likely to have been presented to either Henry IV or his son, or both, after the usurpation. There is

97 Christine de Pisan, Vision, fol. 6v, in Marie-Josèphe Pinet, Christine de Pisan, 1364–1430 (Paris, 1927), pp. 50–1. My version based on the translation by C. M. Reno (from ex-Phillipps MS 128) in The Writings of Christine de Pizan, ed. C. C. Willard (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 18–19; and on Christine de Pizan, Christine’s Vision, trans. G. K. McLeod (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 120–1. 98 Jones et al., Who Murdered Chaucer? 99 Nigel Saul writes, ‘It seems likely that a terminus ante quem for the revisions which Gower himself made to the texts in person is found in the onset of his blindness in Henry IV’s first year. … Once his eyesight had gone he could have exercised only limited personal control over revisions to the texts. This is a point generally overlooked by those who see him driven to extensive re-writes in the wake of the Lancastrian usurpation in 1399.’ Saul, ‘John Gower, Prophet or Turncoat?’, p. 90. All I can say is that I think Saul is taking Gower’s blindness too literally. When you look at his prolific post-usurpation output it seems clear that his ‘blindness’ is more of a literary trope or else that his ‘blindness’ did not hinder him from working. As Joel Fredell says, the ‘manuscript evidence argues that Gower’s career was rejuvenated, if not recreated, after the accession of Henry IV when Henry needed a court poet far more than Richard II ever did.’ Fredell, ‘The Gower Manuscripts’, p. 232. 100 ‘In the twenty-first blood-filled year, during the month of September, savagery held sway by the sword. As I listened in sadness I entered in to the writing of this poem.’ Cronica Tripertita, II, lines 340–2. In the first version of the Vox Clamantis Gower takes the side of the Appellants echoing their insistence that Richard is still a boy and it is his advisers who are at fault: ‘The boy is free of blame, but those who have instrumented this boyish reign shall not endure without a fall.’ In the second version, written after the usurpation, Gower echoes Thomas Arundel’s speech at the start of Henry’s first Parliament: ‘The king, an undisciplined boy, neglects the moral behaviour which a man might grow up from a boy  … Sin springs up on every side of the boy, and he, who is quite easily led, takes to every evil.’ Gower, Vox Clamantis, lines 555–6, 570, in Major Latin Works, trans. Stockton, p. 232.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 73

07/04/2014 00:03

74

Terry Jones

no evidence to support the proposition that it was presented to Henry in the early 1390s. It seems most likely to me that there were only ever two ‘recensions’ of the poem: the original, dedicated to Richard II, and the revised version, made at the bidding of the new regime. MS Fairfax 3 must have been the original ‘third’ recension version, since, Macaulay tells us, all other ‘third’ recension’ manuscripts are copied from it. And since we know that it was originally a ‘first’ recension copy of the poem, that was altered after the usurpation, it seems reasonable to conclude that the ‘first’ recension endured until Henry stole the throne from Richard. We certainly have no evidence that any changes were made before Henry seized the throne. There is, furthermore, no evidence that John Gower became disenchanted with Richard II before he was removed from office and murdered, and all the harsh criticism of Richard dates from after the usurpation  –  even when it has been backdated to make it look as if it were contemporary with Richard’s reign, in line with the Lancastrian policy of faking the historical record. Gower is  –  to speak plainly  –  not a trustworthy witness.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 74

07/04/2014 00:03

R. F. Yeager

Le Songe Vert, BL Add. MS 34114 (the Spalding Manuscript), Bibliothèque de la ville de Clermont, MS 249 and John Gower •••

M

ore than half a century ago Ethel Seaton speculated that Le Songe Vert, a little-known poem in French, ‘with all its pretty circumstances, its charmingly maternal Venus, its mystic lily, its modulations from black into the key of green’, deserved a wider and more receptive readership than just the two disdainful Frenchmen who alone, until Seaton herself, had noted the poem at all  –  especially since, in Seaton’s view, the unnamed poet was probably John Gower.1 Despite her high opinion of the poem’s merits, however, Seaton’s clarion seems to have thudded on deaf ears, and to have remained there. No one to my knowledge  –  not writing in English, at any rate  –  has heeded her call to read and appreciate Le Songe Vert, let alone think seriously about a date and an author. Working through a potentially important text in two relatively obscure but significant manuscripts seems a challenge that my esteemed friend Professor Takamiya might take up. I therefore offer what follows, with all humble respect, in his honour. Le Songe Vert is a dream-vision of approximately 1,822 lines, in octosyllabic couplets.2 The ‘pretty circumstances’ noted by Seaton are many, and intricately interworked; but in essence the outline is as follows. There has been a plague from which a great number of people  –  including the narrator’s beloved  –  have died, and the narrator consequently wears black, a colour convenient to his mood as well. Seeking solace at Easter, he follows a river into an orchard where, overcome with grief, he faints. In his swoon he meets Venus, attended by two knights (Désir and Bon Espoir) and two ladies (Loiauté and Plaisance). Venus argues that it is time to take a new love, one she has selected for him and describes in detail. This lady seems familiar to him, and he protests, out of devotion to his dead beloved, but also because he believes this new lady would never love him. He faints again. Venus

1 E. Seaton, ‘Le Songe Vert: Its Occasion of Writing and its Author’, Medium Ævum 19 (1950), 1–16. The Frenchmen are Paul Meyer (‘Manuscrit de Spalding’, Romania 5 (1876), 61–3), who describes the Songe Vert as ‘Médiocrement versé dans la literature du XIVe siècle’ (p. 61), and Leopold Constans, who edited it (‘Le Songe Vert’, Romania 32 (1904), 490–539), finding in it ‘certains passages qui dénotent un esprit ingénieux et observateur’ despite ‘les longueuers et la faiblesse du style’ (p. 490). 2 There appear to be missing portions of both known manuscripts; see below.

75

ME Texts in Transition.indb 75

07/04/2014 00:03

76

R. F. Yeager

rouses him, Désir borrows a conserve called ‘Restorant’ from Merci and gives him five portions, which rouses him further. Venus shows him a vision of a/the beautiful lady, and while he stands amazed, he is stripped of his black clothes and dressed in green robes edged in blue, with a blue silk girdle and a hood stitched in golden hair. He swears fealty to Love. Venus then materializes a lily as tall as a lance, which she says stands for his lady, and shall be his sign. She and her court promise to return later in the year, and vanish in a cloud. He examines the lily, climbing a tree to get a better view. There he notices a large, ugly thistle growing beside it. Attempting to pull it up, he falls out of the tree and wakes. He goes home pensively, where all his people rejoice at his new clothes. He orders black robes be brought, but his entire wardrobe is now green. His hall fills with flowers and garlands. He realizes something miraculous is happening to him, and  –  awake this time  –  swears loyalty to Love. Deciding to tell all in a letter to his sister, he begins writing the poem. This bare sketch hardly does justice to the level of narrative detail in Le Songe Vert, which indeed has its merits and clearly shares habitat not only with the Book of the Duchess, as Seaton mentions, but also with Pearl and the better half of dreamvisions generally.3 Discovering who wrote it, and when, is thus a worthy quest, for the author was a poet of discrimination, wit and graceful talent who deserves to be known. Certainly Gower had the skills for it  –  as does Froissart, Seaton’s alternative suspect  –  but if it were Gower it would be especially interesting. As much as portions of Le Songe Vert share features with the Confessio Amantis, and with the Cinkante Balades, much more is substantially unlike anything else in his œuvre and would carry Gower into hitherto-unexplored territory, should it prove to be his. Let us begin with the date of composition. Paul Meyer, taking the reference to a devastating plague year as a clue, guessed about 1350.4 Ethel Seaton argues for 1394–5, because she reads literally Venus’ words Mes douz filz, jo te ferai Roi sur toutz les mieuz assenez Car tu seras li mieuz amez …

(lines 588–90)

[‘My sweet son, I will make you King over all the very best things So that yours will be the best of loves …’]5 as indicating the protagonist’s royalty, and because she assumes, without so stating, that any royal referent must be English. Thus she concludes that the narrator stands in for Richard II on the verge of remarriage, following the death of Queen Anne in 1394, of plague.6 The bulk of her subsequent endeavor is to establish this as the 3 Possible connections between the Book of the Duchess and Le Songe Vert are traced by J. B. Severs, ‘The Sources of the “Book of the Duchess”’, Mediaeval Studies 25 (1963), 355–62. 4 Meyer, ‘Manuscrit Spalding’, p. 61: ‘il a dû être compose peu après la peste de 1348’. 5 My translation. 6 Seaton, ‘Songe Vert’, pp. 3–4.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 76

07/04/2014 00:03

Le Songe Vert, BL Add. 34114, Clermont 249 and John Gower

77

occasion for the poem, and then to find poets connected to Richard who might have written it, in French, under those circumstances. Hence she arrives at Froissart and Gower. To give Seaton her due, she makes a good fist of it; but on balance her argument seems a case of special pleading grown from, first, her controlling assumption, that ‘like many dream poems [Le Songe Vert] is quite obviously a poème d’occasion, and of a courtly occasion’ (and an English occasion at that), coupled with, second, an unlikely translation of the French.7 True it is, as she notes, the lily that the narrator receives, une fille des lis, a noble flour [qui] tout passe, may signify his new love’s French origin; and true too, as far as it goes, that in the lifetime of the evident owner of the Spalding MS (British Library, Add. MS 34114) ‘there was only one king, bereaved and deeply grieving, but later marrying a French princess … and that was Richard II.’ 8 Yet in the lines whence all this triggers, Venus uses roi metaphorically: she tells the narrator that she will make him a king over the best of everything, not that he is king actually: ferai is a future form. Better evidence may be found in the manuscripts. There are two known copies of Le Songe Vert. Bibliothèque de la ville de Clermont, MS 249, an early to mid-fifteenth century product, was for many years in the keeping of the Cathédrale de Notre Dame de l’Assomption in Clermont-Ferrand, in Auvergne, but is now part of the holdings of the Bibliothèque de Patremoine in Clermont-Ferrand. The other is now London, British Library, Add. MS 34114, previously identified as the ‘Spalding MS’. It is the earlier, firmly datable c. 1370–1406. BL Add. MS 34114 is a sizeable codex, 36 × 26 cm, of extremely light, fine-grained vellum, and generously laid out as a single, unified project. Borders on pages where poems begin are elaborately decorated in polychrome and gold leaf. The text, in double columns with forty-six lines per column throughout, regularly has a 6 cm margin at the bottom, 3 cm at the top, 5–7 cm outer, and 3 cm to the modern binding. Most pages have multiple capitals in blue and red (e.g. fols. 165r and 165v have seven such bi-coloured capitals each), some forming part of a decorative border; the first letter of each new poem is enlarged and decorated in azure, beige and white, with liberal application of gold leaf. There are no pictorial illuminations, although fol. 164 has a small, polychrome dragon worked into the lower border.9 At various intervals, apparently wherever the scribe suspected the arrival of additional text, parts of columns are left blank.10 BL Add. MS 34114 now contains five items, all in French. The first four are: an unique version of the Chanson d’Antioche, with 19,000 lines, in Alexandrines (fols. 2–105); the Roman d’Éneas, 10,000 lines, in octosyllabic couplets (fols. 106–164); the Roman de Thèbes, 11,000 lines, in octosyllabic couplets (fols. 164–226);

7 Ibid., p. 3. 8 Ibid., p. 3. 9 There is also a line sketch of a tiny beast in the same red ink as the capitals, in the right margin of fol. 64r. 10 E.g. fols. 155v, 158r, 158v, 167v, 175v, 178v.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 77

07/04/2014 00:03

78

R. F. Yeager

Le Songe Vert, 1822 + lines, in octosyllabic couplets (fols. 227–236). These four poems form a clear and purposefully designed unit. They are in one hand (or perhaps two), and numbered Roman I–IV, the numerals placed at folio centre of each page.11 To assist in this as well, the format calls for two-word running heads on each page, one on each side of the numeral column; for Le Songe Vert, this distribution is ‘Sounge/Songe’ to the left, and ‘Vert’ to the right of the centrally dividing column.12 There are also tiny titles just below the ornamental borders on pages where poems begin. The fifth item, comprising fols. 236–237, is a 170-line segment of the Ordène de Chevalerie by Hue de Tabarie. A number of folia are fragmentary or illegible, the manuscript having suffered some water damage and apparently loss of leaves at its end. The hand of the Ordène scribe is different (although it appears to be contemporary with the hand[s] of the other four poems), and he declined to follow the format with regard to the numbering practice, assigning the Ordène no item number. BL Add. MS 34114 is thus a luxe book intended for an important patron, whose identity in this case is clear: he was Henry le Despenser (1341–1406), the so-called ‘Fighting Bishop’ of Norwich. We know this because the bishop’s arms appear twice: the larger, at the beginning of the Roman d’Éneas on fol. 106r, where it measures 6 × 6.8 cm, the smaller, measuring 4 × 5 cm, at the beginning of the Roman de Thèbes, on fol. 164r. The tiny gold-leaf mitres on an azure border around the Despenser arms (quarterly, argent and gules, a fret or in the second and third quarters, a bend sable from first to fourth quarter)13 both serve to identify Bishop Henry and also help date the manuscript: Henry was consecrated Bishop of Norwich in 1370, a date which corresponds to the decorative style of the manuscript and of its two hands. Dating a manuscript, however, provides only a terminus ad quem for the texts it contains. BL Add. MS 34114 is a case in point: the Roman d’Éneas and the Roman de Thèbes both are twelfth-century works; the Chanson d’Antioche and the Ordène de Chevalerie are probably early thirteenth.14 But based on its style, and certainly its plague reference, Le Songe Vert seems likely to have been composed roughly contemporaneously with BL Add. MS 34114 itself  –  that is, in the latter half of the fourteenth century. Its presence alongside these much older works is thus anomalous on two interesting counts  –  its later date, and its seeming lack of commonality with the rest of the contents of BL Add. MS 34114. As an amorous

11 R. J. Dean remarks otherwise about the Songe Vert: ‘The scribe is not the same as the Roman de Thebes [sic]’, without further elaboration; see Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts, ed. R. J. Dean with the collaboration of M. B. M. Boulton, Anglo-Norman Text Society o.s. 3 (London, 1999), p. 139. 12 For the Antioche, this pair is ‘Geof ’ and ‘Boil’, indicating Godfrey of Bouillon, its hero; for the Éneas, it is ‘Eneas’ on both sides. 13 B. Burke, The General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, Comprising a Registry of Armorial Bearings from the Earliest to the Present Time (London, 1884), p. 281. 14 The Ordène describes how Hue de Tabarie earned his freedom by instructing Saladin (d. 1193) in the proper practice of chivalry. It is usually dated c. 1220–5; for discussion see R. Barber, The Knight and Chivalry, rev. edn (Woodbridge, 1996).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 78

07/04/2014 00:03

Le Songe Vert, BL Add. 34114, Clermont 249 and John Gower

79

dream-vision, Le Songe Vert has little about it either martial or chivalric. Yet there can be no question that the compiler thought it belonged alongside these quite different works. The unified program of the first four poems, with their coherent page design, consistent Roman numbering, and single scribal hand testify to an operative plan. Indeed, if one were casting about for afterthoughts, the Ordène would seem a likelier candidate than Le Songe Vert. Clearly, the explanation of the assorted contents must lie in the bespoke nature of BL Add. MS 34114, and in the tastes of the bishop for whom it was prepared. Occam’s Razor dictates that Henry le Despenser must have liked Le Songe Vert enough to want a copy of his own, and to have seen no inconsistency if it shared space with a chanson de geste, two antique chivalric romances, and a course-book on how to behave as a knight. This in itself is rather interesting. Viewed superficially, the standard biography of Bishop Henry scarcely suggests him as a reading man  –  quite the opposite, in fact.15 The fifth son of Edward le Despenser, who died in combat at age thirty-two during the siege of Vannes, Henry was only a cleric in the best manner of youngest sons. His path in the Church was cleared initially in order to secure him an income. Family influence made him canon of Llandaff at eleven years old, in 1353. In 1354 he became canon of Salisbury Cathedral as well; in 1360 he added the rectorship of Bosworth, and a year later we find him at Oxford University, pursuing civil, rather than canon, law  –  the preferred course of study for many intending a career in ecclesiastical governance.16 Ordained in 1362, he advanced to Archdeacon of Llandaff in 1364, and then to Bishop of Norwich in 1370, promoted by Pope Urban V, for whom Henry had fought during the siege of Milan in 1369.17 The easy assumption would be that Urban sought a strong right arm in his conflict with Clement VII. If so, Urban had reason to believe he had made a good choice. Like their father, Henry’s four brothers were bred to the sword, as Henry must have been also, growing up among them. Eldest brother Edward (1335–75), 1st Baron le Despenser, by reputation was one of the best knights in England. In 1369 Henry joined him in Italy, campaigning against the Visconti of Milan. Brother Hugh may have been with them; in any case, he died in arms at Padua in 1374. Brother Thomas fell fighting in France in 1381, and fourth brother Gilbert, about whose death in 1382 little is known, seems to have been a soldier too. There was also a sister, Joan, who, as daughters did in such families, took the veil and died a nun

15 Dictionary of National Biography, ed. L. Stephen, 63 vols. (London, 1888), vol. 14, pp. 410–12. 16 Such study may have been part of a plan for advancing his career in the Church: C. J. Godfrey has noted of civil law that ‘it was above all legal qualification which opened the door to ecclesiastical promotion’; see C. J. Godfrey, ‘Pluralists in the Province of Canterbury in 1366’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History (1960), 23–40 (p. 33). 17 For a somewhat differing chronology, see R. Allington-Smith, Henry Despenser the Fighting Bishop of Norwich: A New View of an Extraordinary Medieval Prelate (Dereham, 2003), p. 7, who traces his career thus: 1354, canonry of Salisbury; 1361, rectory of Bosworth; 1362, ordination and subdeaconry of Worcester; 1364, canonry at Lincoln, rectory of Elsworth, archdeaconry at Llandaff; 1366, canonry with prebend at Llandaff.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 79

07/04/2014 00:03

80

R. F. Yeager

at Shaftesbury Abbey in 1384.18 Henry outlived them all, surviving until 1406, aged sixty-five. Such a pedigree leaves small doubt that Henry deserved his ‘Fighting Bishop’ moniker. Walsingham’s vivid description of his hand-to-hand combat with the rebels at North Walsham in 138119 burnishes that image, and even our knowledge that he led the disastrous Flanders crusade in 1383, which resulted in his impeachment in parliament,20 takes nothing away from his reputation as a man happy in the saddle. Little on the surface of Henry’s macho career, however, suggests a bibliophile, and no one has to my knowledge proposed it. Indeed, his public image as established by the chronicler Thomas Walsingham, who described him as ‘vir nec literis nec discretion preditus, juvenis effrenis et insolens’ (‘a man neither lettered nor gifted with discretion, an unbridled youth and insolent’), has been quite the opposite.21 Yet BL Add. MS 34114 was undoubtedly the bishop’s, and if at first glance his march up the rungs of the Church from the age of eleven seems only too typically the career of a youngest son of martial nobility turned Caesarian cleric of the kind Chaucer so profoundly despised, nonetheless, as K. B. MacFarlane has remarked, ‘it can hardly be argued that as a class noblemen found anything incompatible in the possession of books as well as armour; both were treasured … and those who could read had pastures at hand for browsing.’ 22 There is some precedent (albeit a generation later) for warrior bibliophiles among Englishmen of Henry Despenser’s class. Sir John Fastolf is notable in this regard, as is of course his patron and likely role model, John, Duke of Bedford.23 And in Bishop Henry’s case, we have perhaps a notable indication of his capacities in the time he spent at Oxford studying civil law; such studies potentially present another side.24 18 Ibid., pp. 1–5. 19 Thomas Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ed. T. H. Riley, Rolls Series 28, 2 vols. (London, 1863–4), vol. 2, p. 189. 20 On which see especially N. Housley, ‘The Bishop of Norwich’s Crusade, May 1383’, History Today 23 (1983), 15–20; and further M. Aston, ‘The Impeachment of Bishop Despenser’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 38 (1965), 131–2. 21 See Chronicon Angliæ, ab anno domini 1328 usque ad annum 1388 / auctore monacho quodam Sancti Albani, ed. E. M. Thompson (London, 1874), p. 258 (quote); and further The Chronica maiora of Thomas Walsingham, 1376–1422, trans. D. Preest with J. Clark (Woodbridge, 2005). 22 See K. B. MacFarlane, ‘The Education of Nobility in Later Medieval England’, in his Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973), 228–47. 23 On Fastolf ’s books, see J. Hughes, ‘Stephen Scrope and the Circle of Sir John Fastolf: Moral and Intellectual Outlooks’, in Medieval Knighthood IV: Papers from the Fifth Strawberry Hill Conference, 1990, ed. C. Harper-Bill and R. Harvey (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 109–46; on Bedford’s books, see especially J. Stratford, The Bedford Inventories: The Worldly Goods of John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France (1389–1435), Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London 49 (London, 1993), section 5, ‘Bedford as Patron and Collector’, pp. 105–26. 24 An intriguing remark  –  without source  –  is added by H. B. Workman, John Wyclif: A Study of the English Medieval Church, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1926), vol. 1, p. 69, that during the period of Despenser’s parliamentary censure 1383–90, he busied himself ‘crenellating his

ME Texts in Transition.indb 80

07/04/2014 00:03

Le Songe Vert, BL Add. 34114, Clermont 249 and John Gower

81

But the odds are greatest, of course, that Henry le Despenser was the reader. BL Add. MS 34114 is the only literary volume we have remaining among three known manuscripts that unquestionably belonged to him, the library at Norwich Cathedral (a Benedictine house as well) having been thoroughly ransacked at the Dissolution.25 The manuscript is thus all we have from which to guess at what the bishop would have taken away from his experience either as a reader of, or a listener to, poetry.26 It is thus all the more intriguing that the contents of Bishop Henry’s book are what they are. Striking at once is that apparently odd-man-out quality of Le Songe Vert among such otherwise martial works in BL Add. MS 34114, as previously noted. Interesting as well are ways that the Chanson d’Antioche, Roman de Thèbes and the Roman d’Éneas are alike. None of them is light-weight fare, as chansons de geste and romances go, and they warrant comment briefly. Two points deserve attention here: first, the length of these works, and second, what might be called, for want of a better term, their character. Length is important because all three are long indeed, covering 19,000, 11,000 and 10,000 lines, respectively. A significant commitment of time and attention is required to read them, and this implies a measure of interest on the part of either readers or listeners. By ‘character’ I mean both their contents and the socio-cultural contextualization of their authors and subjects  –  the latter pair in particular. As two of the three originary romans d’antiquité, the Roman de Thèbes and the Roman d’Éneas were based on the work of the auctores, Statius and Virgil, and although we know how far short of their Latin sources these romances fall, it is less obvious how clear that would have been to most of their fourteenth-century readers. For Henry le Despenser and his circle, the Roman de Thèbes and the Roman d’Éneas carried cultural clout. At the very least, they were considered epic history, as also, in a sense, was the Chanson d’Antioche. Godfrey of Bouillon was of course an historical personage, albeit elevated to epic stature for the fourteenth century as one of the Nine Worthies, and the Antioch campaign in which he took part was actual, as well  –  if hardly in the manner described. The dual character of such poetry in medieval culture  –  that is, as literature and as history  –  thus offered the reader/listener bishop two different avenues for reception. He might have experienced them aesthetically, as poeticized fictions, or alternatively sought to know from them what happened in the past. Judging from manor houses, hunting lollards, quarrelling with the chapter of his cathedral and with the burghers of Lynn, and collecting versions of metrical prophecies’ (italics mine). Possibly Workman had in mind London, British Library, MS Cotton Claudius E.viii; see further n. 25 below. 25 See in particular N. P. Tanner, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich, 1370–1532 (Toronto, 1984). 26 I emphasize the uniqueness  –  as far as I am aware  –  of BL Add. MS 34114 as evidence of Henry le Despenser’s literary reading. The British Library also owns a Flores Historiarum (part of the contents of MS Cotton Claudius E.viii), and a copy of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica (MS Arundel 74), both with the bishop’s distinctive heraldic devices worked throughout. Interestingly, MS Cotton Claudius E.viii opens with three prophecies: ‘Catulus lintheus’, ‘Lilium regnans’, and ‘The Holy Oil of St Thomas’.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 81

07/04/2014 00:03

82

R. F. Yeager

the contents of the two other known manuscripts bearing the Henry le Despenser’s arms, the bishop had an interest in history. If this interest prompted the choice of contents for BL Add. MS 34114, then the inclusion of the Ordène de Chevalerie makes good sense  –  but it renders Le Songe Vert glaringly anomalous all the more. On the other hand, absorbing the Roman de Thèbes, the Roman d’Éneas and the Chanson d’Antioche as literature causes the Ordène to stand out  –  perhaps not so glaringly, as its physical presence in the manuscript implies an afterthought, at least  –  but, far more importantly, it also suggests a level of similarity that might answer the big question, i.e. what prompted the bishop or his compiler to group them and Le Songe Vert together? This level of similarity becomes clearer if we configure the ‘character’ of the Roman de Thèbes, the Roman d’Éneas and the Chanson d’Antioche somewhat differently, as sources modeling not only exemplary chivalric behaviour, but also as works in the vernacular that, in the words of Barbara Nolan, ‘pose urgent, practical questions about the place of sexual love in a highly structured, politically ambitious aristocracy’. 27 Many medieval readers, both in England and on the Continent well into the fifteenth century, looked to literature both for pleasure and for instruction in ways to act.28 Collectively, the five items in BL Add. MS 34114 suggest that Bishop Henry should be included in this number. Quite plausibly, such a man of action as Henry’s known biography presents would want his models drawn from ‘real’,

27 B. Nolan, Chaucer and the Tradition of the ‘Roman Antique’ (Cambridge, 1992), p. 75. 28 On medieval reading for pleasure, G. Olson, Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 1982), is still be best resource. For French evidence, see variously E. Faral, Recherces sur les sources latines des contes et romains courtois du Moyen Age (Paris, 1913; repr. 1983); O. Jodogne, ‘Le Caractère des œuvres “antiques” dans la littérature française du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle’, in L’Humanisme medieval dans les littératures romanes du XIIe au XIVe siècle (Paris, 1964), pp. 55–104; Daniel Poirion, ‘De l‘‘Enéide” à l’“Eneas”: mythologie et moralisation’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 19 (1976), 213–29; J. Frappier and G. Raynaud de Lage, ‘Les Romains antiques’, in Le Romain jusqu’à la fin du XIIIe siècle, ed. J. Frappier and R. R. Grimm (vol. 1 of Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mitttelalters, ed. H. R. Jauss and E. Kohler (Heidelberg, 1978)), pp. 145–82; R. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, ‘Old French Narrative Genres: Towards the Definition of the Roman Antique’ , Romance Philology 34 (1980–1), 143–59; L. Patterson, ‘Virgil and the Historical Consciousness of the Twelfth Century: the Roman d’Eneas and Erec et Enide’, in Negotiating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature (Madison, WI, 1987). For Spanish, see J. N. H. Lawrance, ‘On Fifteenth-Century Spanish Humanism’, in Medieval and Renaissance Studies in Honour of Robert Brian Tate, ed. I. Michael and R. A. Cardwell (Oxford, 1986), pp. 63–79; J. D. R. Velasco, El debate sobre la caballería en el siglo XV: La tratadística caballeresca castellana en su marco europeo (Valladolid 1996), pp. 17–25, 62–77, and further his ‘L’Influence du modèle chevaleresque français sur la chevalerie castillane au XVe siècle’, in Problèmes interculturels en Europe (XVe–XVIIe siècles): mœurs, manières, comportements, gestuelle, codes et modèles, ed. E. Baumgartner, A. C. Fiorato and A. Redondo (Paris, 1997) and ‘La caballería cortés ante la caballería romana’, in Letteratura cavalleresca tra Italia e Spagna, ed. J. Gómez-Montero and B. König (Salamanca, 2004), pp. 507–24; and further F. Gómez Redondo, Historia de la prosa medieval castellana, vol. 3: Los origins del humanisme: El marco cultural de Enrique III y Juan II (Madrid, 2002), esp. pp. 719–31, 1093–1198.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 82

07/04/2014 00:03

Le Songe Vert, BL Add. 34114, Clermont 249 and John Gower

83

‘historical’ life: the founder of Rome, the heroes who fought at Thebes, Godfrey of Bouillon, the reportage of conversations of Hue de Tabarie and Saladin. But as Nolan suggests, the behaviours of these chivalric figures were scoured equally for models of softer comportment, for lessons in courtoisie.29 Viewed from this perspective, instead of ‘after-thoughts’, the Ordène and the Songe Vert become unifying keys to the collection. Different  –  albeit entirely complimentary  –  these two poems help round out the work of the romans d’antiquité. Ultimately, of course, this line of thought attenuates to speculation. Taking the works of BL Add. MS 34114 as unified by an intent to body forth how knighthood acts, across the spectrum of public and private, presents a salient, aspirational vision for the armorial class to which Bishop Henry belonged. Ethel Seaton’s argument in favour of Gower’s authorship of Le Songe Vert is perhaps useful here. Certainly she has done her homework. Her many points linking Le Songe Vert with poems of Gower’s range across almost all of his major titles, taking into account similarities of theme and detail, prosody and dialect; she finds other, less easily classifiable hints as well. Most require suspended disbelief to swallow: the failure of the aging lover of the Confessio Amantis to acquire Venus’ blessing and his lady’s affection, for example, according to Seaton should remind one of Venus’ aggressive engineering in Le Songe Vert of the young lover’s acceptance of the new beloved she has selected for him because ‘the method [in the Confessio] is simply that of Le Songe Vert in reverse and in slow motion’ and because both lovers, having swooned, require special medicine from one of Venus’ companions for revival  –  an ointment in the first, five ‘morsels’ of an unidentified substance in the second.30 Venus and her court vanish in both poems, Seaton notes. She points out that Gower ‘uses green as the sign of readiness for re-marriage’ in the Mirour de l’Omme (albeit, one is forced to comment, the wearer in the Mirour is a woman); that both Gower in most of his œuvre and the poet of Le Songe Vert ‘fuse love virtue and religious virtue’ (as do quite a few other poets of the period, including Geoffrey Chaucer).31 And, although Seaton recognizes that Gower is not known to have composed octosyllabic couplets in French, she underscores that he has written thousands in English, and that those of the Mirour and Le Songe Vert have very regular, octosyllabic lines.32 She quotes Constans’ description of the dialect of Le Songe Vert as that ‘of the Ile de France or of Picardy’, and calls Gower’s French ‘notoriously pure, true “French of Paris”, with very little Anglo-Norman admixture’; and she asserts that the poets of both show ‘disregard for correlatives  … excessive use of licences [sic] such as “si tres”, “plus tres” … and of tags such as “certes”, “en toz cas”, “sanz plus, etc.”.’ 33 Finally, she notes that the letters of Le Songe 29 The late medieval interest in learning ‘termes of talking noble … luf-talkyng’ is captured extremely well by the poet of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, lines 908–27 (quotes at lines 917, 927). 30 Seaton, ‘Songe Vert’ , p. 10. 31 Ibid., p. 11. 32 Ibid., pp. 12–14. 33 Ibid., p. 15.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 83

07/04/2014 00:03

84

R. F. Yeager

Vert can be rearranged to form ‘the letters of Gouver (the French form) or Goverus (the Latin form found in documents)’  –  although she doesn’t specify which documents; and that ‘Bale’s list of Gower’s works … contains the unidentified title, De compunctione cordis, Lib. I [which] if the literal and secular sense of stinging or pricking, hence of grief, is taken, then it is curious how nearly it represents and sums up the opening lines of Le Songe Vert.’ 34 A great deal of this, however imaginative (e.g. the endings of the Confessio and Le Songe Vert as reversed images) or unprovable (Bale’s missing book) or simply irrelevant (indeed, the letters of ‘Le Songe Vert’ can be rearranged to spell ‘Gouver’ or ‘Gouverus’, but even in Latin documents known to have come from his hand ‘Gower’ is all he ever wrote), does nevertheless call attention to a plane of similarity between Le Songe Vert and the Roman d’Éneas in particular.35 The latter preceded Chrètien in its interest in how love developed in, and affected, the gentle heart. The monologues and interior debates of Lavine upon seeing Éneas, and of Éneas with himself as his love grows for her, are frequently cited as an originary turning-point of romance away from martial action toward the focus on fine amor and psychological interiority that distinguishes the latter form.36 Thus by drawing attention to Gower as a poet interested in love, Seaton has perhaps hit on something important. She quite rightly mentions not only the Confessio Amantis but also the Cinkante Balades and the Traitiè pour les amantz marietz in her analysis, as works where love is scrutinized inside and out  –  and to this list we might add as well two intense, shorter poems in Latin, Est amor (‘Love is’) and Ecce patet tensus (‘Lo, the taut bow’) on the same subject.37 The complexities of love did interest Gower, and occupied him often, especially later in life. It is, I think, along this plane of connection precisely that Le Songe Vert found its way into BL Add. MS 34114, alongside Antioche, Thébes and Éneas. Not that a dozen, or a hundred, other poems couldn’t have fulfilled its role there just as well. Yet what Le Songe Vert does, crucially, is inject that which otherwise would be represented but lightly in Bishop Henry’s manuscript: an amorous/psychological dimension necessary to round out what, by the fourteenth century, had become the ‘full chivalric Monty’. That Le Songe Vert is only 1,822 lines long, and seems dwarfed by tens of thousands occupied with incidents martial perhaps reflects proportionality:

34 Ibid., p. 15. 35 For the spelling ‘Gower’ in Latin works known to be his, see for examples the colophons ‘Quia unusquisque’ and the letter to Archbishop Arundel prefacing Oxford, All Souls College, MS 98. 36 Roman d’Éneas, lines 8083–133; for discussion see R. M. Jones, The Theme of Love in the Romans d’Antiquité (London, 1972); Nolan, Chaucer and the Tradition of the ‘Roman Antique’, esp. pp. 92–5; E. Vinaver, The Rise of Romance (Oxford, 1971), pp. 23–4; and further S. Crane, Insular Romance: Politics, Faith and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature (Berkeley, CA, 1986), esp. pp. 165–7, and n. 166. Crane describes eventual ironic treatment of the trope in England, e.g. in Ipomedon. 37 On these two poems, see I. N. Yeager, ‘Did Gower Love his Wife? And What Does it Have to Do with the Poetry?’”, Poetica [Japan] 73 (2010), 67–86.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 84

07/04/2014 00:03

Le Songe Vert, BL Add. 34114, Clermont 249 and John Gower

85

the Fighting Bishop’s far greater taste for military affairs than for those of the heart. Were that case verifiable, it would scarcely be surprising. Is Le Songe Vert Gower’s work, then? One can’t really think so, based on BL Add. MS 34114 alone. Most of Seaton’s claims for his authorship aren’t convincing, and even she wavers between him and Froissart, concluding ‘The balance of probability seems to weigh nearly even, if anything slightly in favour, of Gower as the author.’38 Salient obstacles are ones she breezes past, or overlooks entirely. Language differences are wider than she credits, for example: Gower’s dialect is Anglo-Norman still, albeit strongly influenced by Central French; yet it is far too idiosyncratic to be ‘notoriously pure, true “French of Paris”’. For reasons of rhyme he often modifies, or ignores, the declension forms, while the Songe Vert author doesn’t, with very few exceptions. And the latter also distinguishes ‘ie’ from ‘e’ which isn’t possible in late Anglo-Norman, diphthongs having reduced early.39 Gower customarily kept nasals ‘an’ and ‘en’ from rhyming, which is not the case in the Songe Vert  –  to cite but three examples.40 A second issue is the style: in over 90,000 lines of verse in three languages, Gower but rarely resorts to allegory, and then only with moral or political personae, never with figures originating in the Roman de la Rose, such as Désir, Bon Espoir, etc., in Le Songe Vert. Another difficulty is probably the date which, as noted above, Constans marks for Le Songe Vert at around 1350+, taking the line about ‘l’annee … maudite’ as referring to the Great Plague of 1348. Placing Le Songe Vert in the 1390s, as Seaton does, in order to take advantage of similarities she found with the Confessio Amantis, written, as she believed, about then, seems linguistically anachronistic, especially if the work were by an Englishman.41 And finally there is whatever the second copy of Le Songe Vert can tell us, in Clermont-Ferrand.42 Bibl. de Clermont MS 249 measures 28.5 × 21.5 cm. Its cover is rough parchment without decoration; its remaining eighty-six leaves (there has been damage and loss both front and back) are paper, of French manufacture, with a variety of watermarks which help to locate the manuscript’s production geographically and to confirm that it dates from the mid- to late fifteenth century.43 38 Seaton, ‘Le Songe Vert’, p. 16. 39 Anglo-Norman Literature, ed. Dean, p. 138, comments that Le Songe Vert ‘is not clearly Anglo-Norman’. 40 On Gower’s French prosody, see G. C. Macaulay’s introduction to his edition, Complete Works of John Gower, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1899), vol. 1, pp. xvi–xxxii, and also B. Merrilees, ‘A Note on Gower’s French’, in John Gower: The French Balades, ed. and trans. R. F. Yeager (Kalamazoo, MI, 2011), pp. 175–8. 41 But Gower must have been working on the Confessio somewhat earlier; a draft of the Ricardian version having likely travelled with Gaunt’s daughters to Spain in 1386; see R. F. Yeager, ‘Gower’s Lancastrian Affinity: The Iberian Connection’, Viator 35 (2004), 483–515. 42 I am grateful to Marie-Thérèse Verdié, Bibliothécaire, Responsable de la Bibliothèque du Patrimoine, and Marc-Aurèle Hendrickx, also of the library, for their generous assistance in making the manuscript available for my viewing. 43 A full discussion of the manuscript, including these watermarks and what the paper has to tell us about provenance and ownership, is in preparation.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 85

07/04/2014 00:03

86

R. F. Yeager

Bibl. de Clermont MS 249 is thus of a different order entirely from BL Add. MS 34114: it is as plainly, even haphazardly, turned out as Bishop Henry’s book is richly conceived and elegantly executed. Indeed, Bibl. de Clermont MS 249 would seem to be a serendipitous miscellany of favourite pieces, accretively collected over time for family reading, and recorded by two, perhaps three hands. The contents are fifty-two quite diverse items, the majority ballades (many by Deschamps) on assorted subjects, but also including (by way of example) the Épistre d’Othea of Christine de Pizan, a portion of the supplication of Charles d’Orléans to Charles VI, asking justice for his assassinated father, Louis d’Orléans (with affixed date of ‘14 1411’), proverbs of various kinds and groupings, the Bréviare des Nobles and ‘Le lay de pays’ of Alain Chartier (fols. 10r–15r), and Le Songe Vert, which occupies fols. 50v–83r. The presence of Chartier’s work suggests a terminus a quo for Bibl. de Clermont MS 249, which cannot be much earlier than 1424–6.44 That it appears relatively early in the manuscript testifies to the serendipitous growth of the collection. Other clues exist that narrow the chronology of production further, and also identify likely provenance. On fol. 37v appears ‘cest pour honneur de vous guiot de montclar’, ‘monclar’ is written in what seems to be an autograph in the margin of fol. 82v, and another seeming autograph, ‘Jehanna de Monclar’, occurs on fol. 40v. While several seigniorial families Mon[t]clar flourished in the fifteenth century, those best suited to have been owners of Bibl. de Clermont MS 249 were the lords of Montclar Anglars, not far from Mauriac, and also of Chambers, Montpentier, Montbrun, Longevergne, Fournols and Trémolière, in what is now the département of Cantal, in the Haute-Auvergne, in south-central France. The seat of this Mon[t]clar branch is thus approximately 120 km from Clermont-Ferrand, within the diocese of Clermont, and indeed there was a strong connection between the cathedral there and the family: in 1391 Henri de la Tour, Bishop of Clermont, appointed Bernard de Monclar (d. 1396) bailiff of the temporality of Clermont Auvergne, with proxy authority to receive on episcopal behalf the oaths and homages of feudatories. Significantly, Bernard de Monclar’s heir was Guy I de Mon[t]clar (d. 1439), whose two children were Guillaume (d. 1479) and a daughter, Jeanne, who married in 1449 (d. ?). It seems likely hers is the autograph on fol. 40v. ‘Gui[n]ot’, moreover, is a common diminutive of ‘Guy’ and also of ‘Guillaume’. Watermarks on the paper include ‘Tête de bœuf ’, ‘Couronne’ and large ‘Main’, appearing in runs. All three taken together point to an origin in the mid-fifteenth century  –  a date compatible with the various hands and signatures.45 On balance, while either Mon[t]clar, père 44 Chartier composed the Bréviare des Nobles and ‘Le lay de pays’ between 1424 and 1426; see E. Cayley, Debate and Dialogue: Alain Chartier in his Cultural Context (Oxford, 2006), esp. appendix B, np, with reference to Bibl. de Clermont MS 249. 45 See C. M. Briquet, Les Filigranes: Dictionnaire historique des marques du papier des leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en 1600: A facsimile of the 1907 edition with supplementary material contributed by a number of scholars, ed. A. Stevenson, The New Briquet, Jubilee edition, 4 vols. (Geneva, 1907). ‘Tête de bœuf ’ (Briquet 14229–49, French, possibly Champagne), mid-fifteenth-century to 1480s. ‘Couronne’, cf. Briquet 4621 (1390s–1430s,

ME Texts in Transition.indb 86

07/04/2014 00:03

Le Songe Vert, BL Add. 34114, Clermont 249 and John Gower

87

ou fils, might be the manuscript’s first owner, that it was Guillaume, son and brother, seems the more likely. To find the only two extant copies of Le Songe Vert in such widely disparate places and milieux makes the probability of Gower’s authorship, already shaky, appear shakier still. The path by which a poem of his might have been copied into a miscellany of a geographically isolated family like the Monclars is difficult to project.46 Further complicating matters is the fact that the French of the Bibl. de Clermont MS 249 copy displays Occitan variations characteristic of the Cantal, thus placing it at significant linguistic distance from Central French and Norman French forms found in BL Add. MS 34114. Evidently one manuscript or the other underwent significant dialectal adjustment, for these two versions to have their present shape. On balance the informally transcribed Monclar copy seems the more likely candidate to evince locally variant language  –  and Bibl. de Clermont MS 249 is a later product than BL Add. MS 34114. Nor do we have an answer to precisely how, if Gower is its poet, Le Songe Vert made its way to the Continent, let alone to the Cantal. Lacking even this, at last it seems wiser to speculate that Bishop Despenser, whose travels to France and the Low Countries are firmly attested, brought it home with him for subsequent inclusion in BL Add. MS 34114, than that the poem is one of Gower’s that travelled the other way.

also French, ‘aucun doute sur sa nationalité champenoise’); ‘Main’, cf. Briquet 11108–32 (produced in the ‘midi du France’ through the Piémont/Piedmont, i.e. French-Italian borders, from the early fifteenth century through about 1470). 46 Even today, the Canal is the least populated department in France.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 87

07/04/2014 00:03

Phillipa Hardman

Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 33: Thoughts on Reading a Work in Progress •••

B

odleian Library, MS Ashmole 33, a late-fourteenth-century paper manuscript containing the single, unique text Sir Fyrumbras,1 offers an exceptionally interesting insight into the processes, both intellectual and material, involved in the production of a Middle English poem. Remarkably, the manuscript is accompanied by its original parchment wrappers, on which is preserved a draft version of over 400 lines of the text.2 It has been very fully described by Stephen Shepherd in an illustrated article and his later website.3 Both draft and manuscript book exhibit scribal corrections, which in some passages are very frequent and sometimes repeatedly address the same line. Shepherd’s work on the corrections, and on the physical construction of the manuscript and its parchment wrappers, makes clear the potential of this unusual survival for an understanding of the translator’s activity as he sought to construct an English poem from his French source, the chanson de geste Fierabras. However, Shepherd also signals the difficulty involved in trying to interpret the evidence of draft and manuscript, with their layers of revisions, as a coherent process leading to a final, perfected version. He warns that ‘even the “fair” copy may at best preserve a process of translation in medias res’ (p. 109). It is the Research for this paper was supported by Arts and Humanities Research Council funding for the collaborative research project ‘Charlemagne in England: The Matter of France in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature’ (www.ahrc.ac.uk). Versions of the paper were read at the Early Book Society Conference, York, 2011, and the Oxford Medieval English Research Seminar, May 2012; I am grateful to participants for helpful comments. 1 This spelling of the Saracen king’s name is not a mistake. Every mention of him in this text names him Fyrumbras, not Ferumbras as in the title of the standard edition: The English Charlemagne Romances, part 1: Sir Ferumbras, ed. S. J. Herrtage, EETS e.s. 34 (London, 1879). 2 The parchment wrappers were restored to a condition permitting flat display in the exhibition ‘The Romance of the Middle Ages’, Bodleian Library, November 2011–May 2012. See N. Perkins and A. Wiggins, The Romance of the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2012), fig. 24, pp. 64–7. 3 S. H. A. Shepherd, ‘The Ashmole Sir Ferumbras: Translation in Holograph’, in The Medieval Translator, ed. R. Ellis (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 103–21; ‘Uninscribed Meaning: VRML Applications in Electronic Editions of Medieval Texts’, at http://myweb.lmu.edu/sshepherd/vrml33.htm (accessed 30 June 2012).

88

ME Texts in Transition.indb 88

07/04/2014 00:03

Bodleian Ashmole 33

89

implications and consequences of this thought, in terms both of the status of this unique Middle English manuscript text and, more speculatively, of our attitude to imperfect or problematic manuscript copies of other medieval texts, that I want to explore a little here. The established text of the poem known as Sir Ferumbras is that of the 1879 edition for the Early English Text Society; all my references are to this edition. The editor, Sidney Herrtage, made an admirable job of producing a coherent and readable text; but occasionally, in the process of selecting appropriate readings, he excluded others, not necessarily on consistent grounds, so that the EETS text to some extent represents a yet further ‘revision’ of the poem. It seems to me that Herrtage’s solutions to the editorial problems he faced may be instructive in thinking about the state of other ‘imperfect’ copies of medieval texts. Ashmole 33 offers a very rare opportunity to see the ‘foul paper’ rather than the ‘fair copy’ state of a Middle English text, and comparing it with Herrtage’s edited version perhaps allows one to imagine the kind of strategies that a medieval scribe might have had to adopt to produce a readable copy from a similarly problematic exemplar. The section of the text approximately from line 240 to line 820, which corresponds to the extended passages and fragments of text on the parchment wrappers, offers an obvious starting point. The description in the catalogue of Ashmolean manuscripts (quoted Herrtage, p. xv) juxtaposes two lines of what are called ‘the author’s original corrected draught’ with corresponding lines of the ‘copy’ in the manuscript (lines 258–9); both are partly rewritten over erasure. ‘Draft’: As Charles stod by chance at conseil with his feris Whiche þat wern of france his o3ene do3eperes … ‘Copy’: As Charlys was in his greuance · stondyng among his feren And counsailede with þe grete of fraunce · and with ys doþþeperen …

There are substantial differences in both content and form: the so-called ‘copy’ adds further information about Charles’s disposition and about the status of his counsellors, and converts the verse form from alexandrines with internal rhymes to rhymed septenaries, or ballad metre. Indeed, for the manuscript as a whole, the word ‘corrected’ is actually not helpful as it implies a ‘correct’ prior or final version of the text, which supersedes scribal errors; whereas what is going on in Ashmole 33 (apart from a few corrections of obvious mistakes or omissions) is better described as free alteration. It is true that both draft and copy have evidently been altered, but the so-called ‘copy’ is not in fact a fair copy of the draft, even before any further alterations. It gives a text that ranges between a close parallel of the draft but with variations in spelling and minor word changes, to a looser parallel, with changed rhymes, altered word order, and differences in vocabulary. If the copy is an improved version of the draft, then an intermediate stage in the process is missing: either in some lost second draft, or in the brain of the translator-poet. However, there is fragmentary evidence of an additional draft for a few lines in this section of the poem, for as well as the continuous four columns of text written on the verso

ME Texts in Transition.indb 89

07/04/2014 00:03

90

Phillipa Hardman

of the inner parchment wrapper, the scribe squeezed as many lines as possible into the margins on the recto side, around the original Latin document (dated 1377) on the reused sheet; and some of these lines duplicate those on the verso. So, in the most legible of these instances, we have three versions of a three-line passage (lines 749–51): a partial one in the draft on the verso of the wrapper, another in the margin of its recto side, and a complete one in the manuscript ‘copy’. 4 Verso draft: He stod als so stif for al as h Of herte was he hol & sound & {Bott} knelede him \doun/ on þe grond & Recto draft: stod stif so deþþe wt alle & as he Of herte was F[yrumbras] boþe hol & sond & plenyde him no þyng \Ac/ ful him doun knelyng on þe grond & þankede heuene kyng ‘Fair copy’: & ȝut stod he strong & stif wt alle · & ne batedede noȝt is mod Of herte was he hol & sound · & pleynede him \þe ȝute/ no þyng Ac sone he knelede oppon þe grond · & þankede heuene kyng

749 750 751

It is not easy to make sense of the changes; though this passage comes at a point in the story that might well have challenged the writer to produce a really memorable narrative scene, for it represents the climax of the crucial single combat between the Saracen hero Fyrumbras and Oliver, the Christian champion, and it marks the precise moment of the wounded Saracen king’s conversion. The French source had mentioned the Saracen’s heroic lack of complaint, and the English poet has added three new details: his sound heart, his kneeling down, and his giving thanks to God, that are present in all three versions; but it is hard to see any programme of improvement between the versions, at least as they survive. Shepherd argues that changes between draft and fair copy are ‘best accounted cases of improved scansion’ (p. 107). In this case, improved scansion might account for changes to line 751; but in line 750 it appears the scribe belatedly added two words (‘þe ȝute’) that destroyed the previously regular line. There are many other examples that seem to suggest a similar lack of concern for good scansion in the ‘fair copy’ version; and as here, ‘draft’ lines often provide sharper narrative. In the recto draft, for instance, the contrast between Fyrumbras’s upright stance, despite his terrible wound, and his then falling to his knees in thanksgiving, makes a more dramatic impact than the version in the manuscript book (though this may be an anachronistic aesthetic preference). The margins of the manuscript pages contain further evidence of additional drafts. In the case of lines 344–7, for example, besides the ‘draft’ and the much 4 In all transcriptions from the manuscript, denotes damaged and illegible material; {...} marks text written over erasure; \.../ indicates inserted material; text represents material deleted whether by crossing out or by underscoring.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 90

07/04/2014 00:03

Bodleian Ashmole 33

91

altered ‘copy’, there is another couplet in the lower margin, and although it has been crossed through, its intervention in the development of the text implies a radically different version of this passage. Draft version: Oliuer torneþ him þanne  wiþ an hardi chere Toward þat heþene manne  he rideþ a softe amblere Til he cam þer {þat he was} him þoȝte ech stap was þre, At þe laste he fyndeþ Fyrumbras liggyng vnder a tre. ‘Fair copy’: Dvc Oliuer him rideþ out of þat plas · in a softe amblere & wan he cam [þo] þer F· was · til him he caste his chere ne made he non oþer pas · til þey come \wern met/ yfere +\ and wanne he \cam þer/ as he was · þyderward he caste ys ..ere chere / & fyndeþ þer sir Fyrumbras · liggyng on þe erþe there. Marginal version: Duk O· priked into þe feld þer þe Saresyn lay, Wel y-armed wt sper & sheld his harneys was ful gay

The alterations in the ‘copy’ seem designed, as elsewhere in the poem, to produce a new, four-line rhyme scheme, but at a considerable cost to the sense and vigour of the verse: the new version has lost the all pace of the original and its indication of Oliver’s eagerness for a confrontation with his heathen adversary. There was evidently still room for improvement, so was this marginal version a belated (and ultimately rejected) idea for changing the whole passage? Two more lines in the lower margin of the same folio offer a revised version of another couplet (lines 384–5): Draft version: Arys vp & anon do on þyn helm & lep oppon þy stede & rap redy ray þe wel & elles y make þe blede. ‘Fair copy’: Arys vp {raply &} þyn helm {do on} · & aray þe on þy stede & grayþe þe to fiȝte wiþ me anon · or elles y make þe blede. Marginal version: Do on þyn helm oppon þyn hed · & lep oppon þy stede If þou mi3te proue þe wordes þat þou hast sed · let se hit now in dede.

The marginal revision reverts to the ‘draft’ for the first line, but completes the couplet with a new and more powerful line, that acts as a fitting conclusion to Oliver’s speech of defiance, in response to Fyrumbras’s boastful account of himself, and picks up Oliver’s explicit reference to the Saracen’s ‘grete bobbaunce’ in the previous couplet, which is itself an addition to the French source. What is the status of this revision? Unlike the previous example, it is not crossed out, so is it an alternative, or even a replacement version? This level of undecidability, which

ME Texts in Transition.indb 91

07/04/2014 00:03

92

Phillipa Hardman

is replicated throughout the manuscript, poses difficulties for any scribe or editor attempting to produce a single coherent version of the text; but it offers the reader an extraordinary opportunity in medieval literature to explore what practitioners of genetic criticism celebrate as the richness to be found in what they call the ‘avant-texte’  –  the accumulation of the writer’s notes, preparatory sketches and drafts which constitutes the material for the genetic critic’s analysis of the writing process.5 In this case, of course, the interplay of drafts, insertions, erasures and other alterations constitutes not only the avant-texte but all we have to represent the ‘final’ text as well. However, genetic criticism’s stress on the destabilizing of the final text by the avant-texte speaks directly to the situation of the Ashmole Sir Fyrumbras. For much of the manuscript, where there is no surviving draft version, there is no problem for the editor in establishing the text  –  many folios contain no alterations beyond straightforward insertions of missing or additional words; elsewhere, on the other hand, alterations are wholesale: some original text has been entirely erased and the lines rewritten.6 The scribe also used other methods of signalling change: crossing out and rewriting words or phrases above the line or in the margin; marking text for deletion by underscoring; adding new text in the margins; transposing lines, couplets, or longer passages. Again, for most of the time it seems clear what the accepted text should read, and the presence of the rejected readings, where still legible, gives us a rare example of a medieval text as work in progress. For example, the scribe habitually uses the convention of labelling material for transposition with the letters ‘a’ and ‘b’ to indicate the correct order. On fol. 28, two lines in the text are labelled ‘b’ and two in the lower margin ‘a’; however, the ‘b’ lines are crossed out, so the editor of course reads the marginal ‘a’ lines as the correct substitute (lines 2114–15), instead of printing the ‘a’ lines followed by the ‘b’ lines, as elsewhere. Wan þat F[lorippe] þat swete þyng · so y-comforted was A dore sche openeþ & let hem in · into a pryue plas. Þan was Florippe on hure bour · murgher þan sche was, þe barouns sche ladeþ wyþ honour · into a pryue plas.

}a }b

But maybe there is valuable evidence here of two stages in the ‘correction’: first, all four lines were to be included in the ‘a’-‘b’ order  –  or some version of the ‘a’ lines, which are corrected over erasure  –  a little repetitive to modern ears, perhaps, but echoing the epic style of the French source, as we find elsewhere in the Ashmole text; then, the scribe decided to alter the ‘a’ lines, possibly reusing the rhymes from the original ‘b’ lines, and to delete the ‘b’ lines. Some choices are more problematic. On fols. 50v–51r two sets of three lines are

5 Genetic Criticism: Texts and Avant-textes, ed. D. Ferrer, J. Deppman and M. Groden (Philadelphia, 2004). 6 The process of erasure, apparently by scraping or blotting the ink from the paper, has often resulted in holes in the paper and blurry, almost illegible letters.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 92

07/04/2014 00:03

Bodleian Ashmole 33

93

marked for transposition (lines 3843–5), though the scribe mistakenly labelled both ‘b’ instead of ‘a’ and ‘b’. 7 Original text, as followed in EETS With potential revisions as marked (….)& how a Messager haþ hym slayn (3839) (….)& how a Messager haþ hym slayn þat wende oute now to \wendeþ to fecche/ Charlemayn, þat wendeþ to fecche Charlemayn,   If he may pasye there,   If he may pasye there, + & ys ysent by þus glotouns (3841) + To socoury þys glotouns on my tour Charlis to fecche & his barouns, þat habeþ ydon me deshonour   To schende ous alle here.   & ous to schende here. b \For/ If he þe Messager leteþ pace, (3843) [a] Tharfor say him þat he be war Charlis wol me of londe chace, And lete noman pacye thar,   & brynge ous alle \ful/ lowe.   Bote if he be knowe. b Tharfor say him þat he be war (3845) b \For/ If he þe Messager \thar pase may/ And lete noman pacye thar, Charlis \schal come on ous sum day/,   Bote if he be knowe.   & brynge ous alle \ful/ lowe.

If the lines are transposed, as shown in the lower half of the transcription above, the rearrangement would certainly make the sequence of the Emir’s argument a little clearer, especially with the inserted word ‘\For/’ at the start of line 3843.8 There is also alternative text inserted above line 3843, which is here substituted in my suggested revised reading, although the original is not deleted. A more substantial change is indicated in the previous three lines (lines 3841–2). Replacement text is written in the lower margin, and is marked with a cross, with a corresponding cross in the outer margin beside line 3841 to show where it belongs. Again, the effect of the change can be seen in the upper half of the transcript. Most interestingly, it looks as if this shows the writer in the process of making a series of connected revisions to his text. Having altered the previous couplet, the reference to fetching Charlemagne in line 3841 was now redundant, so it seems he tried out a number of possible revisions in the lower margins, and crossed them all out except the chosen one that he marked for substitution. However, the original line is not marked for deletion, so it remains a matter of doubt whether either of the two alternative readings can be considered the ‘final text’; the EETS edition preserves the original line. Of course, it cannot be assumed that change is always in the same direction: on

7 The line numbering in the EETS edition follows the decision to set out each tail-rhyme unit as one long line (the four-stress rhyming couplet) and one short line (the tail line). The manuscript uses what Rhiannon Purdie terms ‘graphic tail-rhyme’ layout: R. Purdie, Anglicising Romance: Tail-Rhyme and Genre in Medieval English Literature (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 66–74. 8 Siobhain Bly Calkin recently discussed a number of similar small insertions in this tailrhyme section of the text, arguing that the reviser intended either to improve the clarity of the narration or to regularize the scansion: ‘Revision and the Literary Aesthetics of One Middle English Romance’, a paper delivered at the International Medieval Congress, Kalamazoo, May 2011.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 93

07/04/2014 00:03

94

Phillipa Hardman

occasion the writer did revert to the original version of an altered line, as can be seen in line 4593: Ac þer þay turnde & \þe Sara3ins/ \þey tornde [&]/ ȝaf hym fyght.

A similarly indeterminate case occurs on fol. 57, where a couplet in the lower margin offers a different version of lines describing the river that Charlemagne will have to cross: + Of brede ys he a gret bo3e-schot A grete boȝe drawt of brede ys he ysse & thre spere-schaftes dep ech grot (4313) & of thre spereshaftes of dupnesse

The clumsiness of the last phrase in the original version perhaps betrays the difficulty of completing this couplet satisfactorily: alterations in the marginal lines show that in the revision (if that is what it is), the writer had already considered other rhymewords: ‘… ys he | & of dupnesse spere-schaftes thre (?)’. The uncertainty over the status of the alternative lines here, as in the previous example, comes from the fact that neither version is marked for deletion, and while a cross is placed beside the couplet in the text, there is no visible second cross to link the marginal lines to this site. In this case, the EETS edition ignores the marginal lines altogether. Other evidence of the margins being used for trial revisions is plentiful; some, like these, are left visible, some are apparently erased, but traces still remain. However, bearing in mind the inexact relation of the draft version on the parchment wrapper to the corresponding lines in the so-called fair copy, it is possible that some of these marginal trial lines represent first drafts of the text, not revisions. This may be the case with the example just considered in line 4313. Despite the clumsiness of the ‘original’ version, it produces a set of four rhyming lines (line 4311: flagot; bot), which seems to have been a desirable outcome for this writer. Interlinear alterations, as has already been shown, present the same difficulty in determining whether their status is that of rejected trials or adopted revisions. Fol. 57 provides another good example (lines 4308–10): Original text as followed in EETS A Citee ys set þerbye Mantrible þe Citee ys ycalled Wyþ marbre fyn ys he walled & abatayled wt toures hye.

Interlinear revised version A Citee byȝonde þer stonde Mantrible þe Citee ys ycalled nas neuere Cyte strengre walled ymad wt mannis hondes.

These questions about the status of alternative versions of phrases and lines are a major issue on fol. 64, where two passages (lines 4839–44, 4851–4) have been very extensively rewritten. The EETS editor made a selection of some original and some revised readings to produce a text that rhymes satisfactorily; but it does not always make good sense. Looking again at the manuscript, however, it is obvious that the scribe has bracketed the alternative sets of rhyme words in his interlinear rewritings, though he has not consistently marked the original lines for deletion. As a result, there seem to be two competing versions. In the following transcription, roman = original text; italics = alterations; underlining and crossing = deletions; bold = EETS text.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 94

07/04/2014 00:03

Bodleian Ashmole 33

95

       þe citee   toun Now haþ Char · ^ ytake þat Citee ]   erst were yn þe toun \& sleyn echon/ & dryuen out alle boþ whit & blake ]þat ^ noble was & feer Wyþ þe hilpe of ys baronee ]   þanne reste he þer } To dawes ^ soiourned he & two ny3te ] } & to refresshie his baroun   to riȝte in his maner } ]after ys owe maner þe Citee ^ for to araye & dyȝte ] þan Charlys het to hys route } Alle þay habbeþ þarynne aslawe ] } & þe pylage to hem take þe citee to pyle all aboute } ]þat þay moȝte \of/ take þat lyued on þe heþene lawe ]

(There are no alterations in the intervening lines 4845–50, describing the Emir’s vast treasure.) To alle men he delde In to þe leste Al þay hadde ynow plentee ] he lefte noȝt a knaue To euery man after hys degree ]On þe toun and there Of the tresour þat founden hee ]     þan as þay wente þat tour & þanne þay soȝte þe toun aboute ] (?unfinished revision ‘...caue’?) þay        þar ]þar þe childrene were And founde þe Caue ^ wt oute doute ]

Can either the original or the revised version be preferred to the synthetic EETS text here? Does the original version retain authority as an at least syntactically coherent text with a full set of rhymes? Or do the revisions have authority as giving an ‘improved’ version of the text, even though it seems to be unfinished in the last tail-rhyme line? The revised version introduces a few new narrative details, such as Charlemagne’s concern to refresh his barons and his order to pillage the city, and it avoids the more obvious redundancies that the EETS edition preserves  –  or even creates. It also shows particularly clearly an ongoing process of revision, in the sequence of related choices documented in the manuscript, insofar as one can infer a sequential order in the changes. But the overwhelming effect of trying to follow the EETS editor’s tracks on this folio is the recognition that there is no superficially stable text here to be destabilized by the alternatives present in either an avant-texte or an après-texte  –  the Ashmole manuscript as we have it records an inherently unstable accumulation of alternative and potential states of the text. All these changes on fol. 64 are written between the lines of text. In the lower margin the remains of fourteen lines of text are too indistinct to be sure whether they represent rejected trial drafts or further revisions, but whatever they are, they appear to have been erased. Elsewhere, however, substantial passages of additional text are legible in the margins, and have not been marked for deletion. In some cases they have been marked for insertion into the text. The scribe used a varied

ME Texts in Transition.indb 95

07/04/2014 00:03

96

Phillipa Hardman

system of conventional signs for marking insertions. The simplest is the placing of a cross (variously a plain X, an upright cross, or a more elaborate, inked-in design) in the margin by the material to be inserted and another beside the place where it is meant to go.9 Sometimes the scribe used a pointing hand to indicate the placing of the addition, and occasionally, a Latin instruction. The clearest is on the last folio, where partially legible marginal lines are linked to a hand whose finger points frustratingly towards the missing final leaves with the words ‘ponatur in loco isto’; but another, much fainter instruction appears at a particularly problematic instance. On fol. 65r the scribe left three lines of text in what can only be called a very messy state, with so many interlinear alterations and crossings out that the EETS editor and his transcriber must be congratulated on deciphering a coherent reading.10 In the margin alongside is a cross with four dots, and the words ‘vide ad supra’. This perhaps indicates that the now cropped and illegible lines in the upper margin once provided a fair copy of the messy lines: a practice the scribe uses in similar cases elsewhere. A very clear system can be seen on fols. 32v–33r, where eight lines written in the lower margins are marked for insertion in the text above. They are written across the two folios of the opening, and to make sure the reader gets them in the right order each line is lettered at the beginning, from ‘a’ to ‘h’. It is a tribute to the scribe’s professionalism that the lines are silently included at the correct place in the EETS edition, without even a footnote to signal the fact. However, it is a significant fact, because the inserted lines represent an addition to the French source, and they are placed after a passage of four lines that have been rewritten over very heavy erasure. The original erased lines would have corresponded to the extent of the French text at this point, so it seems that the rewriting plus the insertion represents a case of the poet’s returning to his translation and adding new material. The added lines expand upon the dramatic moment when Guy of Burgundy and the other peers come to the rescue of the Saracen princess Floripas: they kill the thief who was trying to rape her, and throw his body into the sea. No new incident is added, but the additional lines act to heighten the drama and emphasize the role of all the peers, especially Roland, who is not named at this point in the French source, but is here given a brief but forceful speech: ‘“ þes is”, quaþ Ro[land], “þe deuel ilych · delyuery we ous of þe schrewe”’ (line 2462). On fols. 71v–72r, however, additional material in the lower margin is marked with a less clear scribal system, and this time the EETS editor decided to relegate the lines to the footnotes. Certainly, placed as they are in the printed edition in relation to the original text, the lines make no sense. However, as Stephen Shepherd notes in his doctoral thesis, the manuscript reveals a careful system of insertion marks and lines drawn by the scribe to connect passages of text that belong together;

9 Other signs include an X in a circle, an upright cross with four dots, an X with two dots, and an asterisk. 10 Herrtage records his thanks to Mr George Parker of the Bodleian Library for ‘deciphering the MS’ (p. xxvii).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 96

07/04/2014 00:03

Bodleian Ashmole 33

97

and following the instructions produces a coherent pattern of additions.11 The text here is setting the scene for the climactic battle between Charlemagne’s army and the forces of Balan, Emir of Babylon and Spain. The English poem has already extended the French source by adding an account of long conversations between Balan and his brother the king of Persia, in which they agree their objectives in the coming battle: that Charlemagne be slain and his army defeated, and that Balan’s son Fyrumbras and his daughter Floripas, who have defected to the Christian side, be hanged and burned respectively. The scene then switches to Charlemagne’s camp, where he briefly vows revenge for Balan’s mistreatment of his messenger and plans his battle formation, before the next scene-change, back to Balan’s camp for another boastful speech. However, just before this last scene-change, a scribal mark in the margin refers the reader to the same mark in the lower margin on the left, where new lines extend the narrative of Charlemagne’s preparations with a strongly worded speech of encouragement to his men. þat host of Saraȝyns þan he beheld Alþo3 þay beo mo þan we yn numbre þar þo felde þe grete by spradde þe large feld, Hure false fayth schal hem encombre    iij myle yn lengþe & brede.    & ek hir false dede. Al aloud said he þen: þay haue þe wrong & we þe riȝt, ‘Her ys gret puple of heþene men, We schulleþ sle alle hem yn fyȝt,    god of heuene ous spede.    Haue ȝe none drede.

The scribe ran out of space at the foot of fol. 71v, so he continued in the lower margin of fol. 72r, signalling the run-on of sense with a connecting line drawn across the two folios: Go we þerfor to þam affront þan Char · þat host haþ ynome & fi3te we with þo heþene hond & esyly rydeþ at o trome,    & maugre habben þat spare.’    & aȝen þe Sarsyns … ‘Amen’ saide þay euerechon, Wt þat hert was vp anon    & fayn þay wel be þare.

Even this was not enough space, because half the margin was already occupied with a different passage for insertion elsewhere, so the scribe apparently turned the leaf to finish the new material for the Charlemagne scene at the top of fol. 72v. Unfortunately these lines are now cropped, rubbed and almost illegible. The rest of the passage, though, is perfectly clear and makes a significant contribution to the Ashmole version of the Fierabras tradition. It shows Charlemagne in a very positive light, fulfilling the traditional role of the commander encouraging his troops, despite their being heavily outnumbered, and inspiring their enthusiastic response. It completes the symmetry of the narration, balancing the earlier insertion of Balan’s speech with his brother; and in a wider context, it also balances

11 S. H. Shepherd, ‘Four Middle English Charlemagne Romances’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1988).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 97

07/04/2014 00:03

98

Phillipa Hardman

Balan’s previous discussion with his counsellor Sortybrant when they first heard of Charles’ approach with his army, and Sortybrant advised: ‘þay habbeþ þe wrong & we þe riȝt; To-morwe we schulle wyþ hym fiȝt, | & discomfytye hymen echone’ (lines 5241–2). But while Sortybrant’s assurance was based simply on the Saracens’ superior numbers (lines 5239–40), the echo of these lines in Charlemagne’s speech represents the opposition of the two sides in a particularly stark contrast of true and false, right and wrong, that recalls Roland’s famous claim in La Chanson de Roland: ‘Pagans are wrong and Christians are right’;12 it implies that the Saracens will be disadvantaged in battle by their defective faith and their transgressive actions, while the Christians will triumph, despite being outnumbered, on account of their righteousness. These lines should surely be rescued from the margins of the manuscript and installed in their right place in the body of the text: even with the loss of its last few lines, and some uncertainty about exactly how the narrative sequence of speeches and preparations for battle on both sides would fit together, the passage constitutes an unusually straightforward addition to the evolving text and makes an appreciable difference to our understanding of the poem. The margins of fol. 72r are very congested. In the lower margin, to the left, there appear to be two stages of an attempt to rewrite a passage of three lines that occurs halfway down the page (lines 5467–70): both the place in the text and the marginal lines are marked with an X. Original text as followed in EETS Marginal revisions He drowe hem þan wt ys host afforn X þay ensemblede þanne togadre anon X þan Bruyllant brak him out afforn þe Sarsyns blewe hure hornes ecchon \&/ To clypy host he blew an horn    to batail or þay paste.   \&/ þay þan þay come an haste. & þanne \Ac/ byfore alle priked\e/ out Bruyllant For prude & for to make auaunt,    Wel a stones caste.

The Emir has just charged his brother to lead his host against Charlemagne, and it looks as if the reviser started by reinforcing this connection, but then rewrote the line again to include his name, Bruyllant, and make clear that he is in the limelight as the boastful Saracen spokesman, his position reinforced by the incremental reiteration in the next lines, where the scribe has carefully deleted the word ‘out’ to remove awkward redundancy. Although the original lines have not been marked for deletion, a case could be made for reading the marked, revised marginal lines in preference; but again, the dominant impression is one of unstable textual potential. Yet a third set of additional lines (with an X in a circle) is visible, but not very legible, in the top margin, apparently connected to other lines written vertically in the right-hand margin, where the mark appears again. Unfortunately, little of this material can now be read, but enough remains to indicate that it represents a

12 ‘Paien unt tort e chrestiens unt dreit’: La Chanson de Roland, ed. F. Whitehead, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1946), line 1015.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 98

07/04/2014 00:03

Bodleian Ashmole 33

99

further challenge to be added at the end of Bruyllant’s boastful speech, after the last line on fol. 72r: & if þou wilt nykke þat nay Com out þe self y þe pray  ]....................

þanne kepe þe neuere … Bote ic bere body ...  ]...................

At this point it would again complete the symmetry of the narrative, so that the individual Saracen, riding out in front of his army, challenges Charlemagne to ride out in response, to meet him in single combat. While this is more or less implied in the French source text as originally translated by the Ashmole poet, the additional material, as is the case throughout this section, explicitly highlights the focus on named individual heroes representing the two opposed sides in the conflict. Given this coherent pattern of change, one could argue for including these lines, despite their fragmentary state, within any idea of what constitutes the text of the Ashmole Sir Fyrumbras. It would never be possible to read a full and final text of this poem, as besides the many uncertainties surrounding the revisions outlined here, folios are missing at the beginning and end of the manuscript, thus leaving no indication of how the English poet would have negotiated the introductory and closing passages that in the chanson de geste relate the story of Fierabras to the cult of the Passion relics at St Denis. As shown, evidence from the margins of the manuscript and between the lines of the text points towards an unending scribal process of interaction with and enrichment of the poem; and it seems there is much to be gained from continuing this process as readers. By reading the work in progress as an opportunity to entertain parallel, even multiple possible readings, readers can not only enlarge their understanding of this Middle English poem’s unique reworking of its French source, but also get an extraordinary insight into the sort of accumulative processes that may lie behind the ‘final text’ of other, apparently stable texts. Of course, an editor is traditionally expected to produce a single, coherently readable text, and Herrtage has done an admirable job in this difficult case. But it is an instructive exercise to imagine what a medieval scribe might have produced from the same exemplar, and indeed to wonder how typical this revised draft manuscript might be of the exemplars that scribes were working from when making copies of texts like Sir Fyrumbras. There is an interesting parallel in Barry Windeatt’s suggestions about the state of Chaucer’s authorial copy (or copies) of Troilus. Explaining the absence of certain passages in some manuscript groupings, he argues: ‘Chaucer’s composition of the poem was in practice a series of layers  –  perhaps physical layers  –  of writing’, reflecting ‘a diverse creative process of translating, modifying, and versifying into English the Fil[ostrato] stanzas, and of inserting and overlaying other passages of borrowed and invented materials’, some of which ‘perhaps existed originally in the form of a physical addition to the draft’; and as a result, as Windeatt notes, ‘Chaucer’s working draft may well have been confusing’ to scribes at such points.13 Of course, both Sir Fyrumbras and Troilus 13 Troilus and Criseyde, ed. B. A. Windeatt (London, 1984), pp. 36, 38–9.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 99

07/04/2014 00:03

100

Phillipa Hardman

offer substantial evidence of the copying processes either in the form of multiple authorial revisions or in a rich scribal tradition, whereas for many Middle English romances, and certainly for all the rest of the Charlemagne romances, there exists just a single textual copy. However, the experience of reading Ashmole 33 as a work in progress alongside the edited text of Sir Ferumbras may lead one to wonder whether it is possible to discern traces of a lost, possibly still unperfected exemplar behind the apparent imperfections of many another popular romance. In some cases where imperfections in the text have been attributed by editors and critics to scribal corruption or to plain authorial incompetence, might it be worth considering that they could have been copied from exemplars that resembled Ashmole 33 in presenting complicated textual variants and/or incomplete schemes of revision? As test cases, I turn briefly now to two other texts included in the Arts and Humanities Research Council ‘Charlemagne in England’ project: the Middle English Song of Roland (British Library, MS Lansdowne 388) and the Fillingham Firumbras (British Library, Add. MS 37492)  –  both fragmentary but also considered to be heavily corrupt. The unique copy of the Song of Roland, besides being incomplete at both beginning and end, appears to have other textual imperfections. The poem is composed in approximately four-stress, loosely rhyming couplets with frequent but unsystematic alliteration, but this description does not account for all its irregularities. There are frequent cases of unpaired rhymes, many of which the EETS editor marks as missing lines, and the state of the verse is assumed to be corrupt.14 W. R. J. Barron states conclusively: ‘both alliteration and rhyme have obviously suffered in transmission’. 15 However, an alternative hypothesis might be that the manuscript (which is neatly written and shows little sign of any kind of corrections) could perhaps represent a ‘fair’ copy of an earlier draft that preserved legible evidence of various stages of ‘avant-texte’, or was perhaps itself a work still in progress. Drawing on the experience of reading Ashmole 33, some evidence to support such a hypothesis can be seen here in a few passages that, for example, seem to preserve alternative versions of the same lines, or appear to be unfinished. One ‘couplet’ looks like an unresolved decision about alliteration and rhyme: it follows a couplet describing the circulation of the wine among Charlemagne’s men at supper  –  wine þat gwynylon to toun brought, euyll hym betid, It swymyd in ther hedis and mad hem to nap.

(lines 69–70)

Keeping the rhyme-word of the first line, ‘betid’, which alliterates with the ‘t’ of ‘to toun’, means that the second line would need to be revised to provide a rhyme: while the second rhyme-word, ‘nap’, suggests the ghostly presence of a matching 14 The English Charlemagne Romances, part 2: The Sege off Melayne, The Romance of Duke Rowland and Sir Otuell of Spayne, with a Fragment of The Song of Roland, ed. S. J. Herrtage, EETS e.s. 35 (London, 1880), pp. xxii–xxv. 15 Barron, English Medieval Romance (London, 1987), p. 91.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 100

07/04/2014 00:03

Bodleian Ashmole 33

101

rhyme, ‘behap’ instead of ‘betid’. Could it be that the exemplar actually contained this word, but as a faint interlinear or marginal addition, like some of the inserted words in Ashmole 33, which the copyist perhaps overlooked? A longer passage with irregular couplet rhyme words and repetitive content looks like a case of the scribe’s having copied more than intended: he [Roland] drawithe out his swerd and swappithe hym about he hewithe doun hethyn men full many helmes and hedes he hewithe of stout ther ys no man alyf may sothly […?] that euer eny man sley so many many one he fellid to his foot as he went the soudan son margaris he gaue a dent and olyuer he smot then verament. (lines 747–54)

The EETS editor assumed that the scribe had copied the second and third lines in the wrong order here, so in the edition the lines are rearranged to produce a couplet followed by two triplets: he drawithe out his swerd and swappithe hym about helmes and hedes he hewithe of stout. he hewithe doun hethyn men full many ther ys no man alyf may [say] sothly that euer eny man sley so many .........

This is by no means an impossible solution, though there is no scribal sign in the manuscript to indicate the need for transposition; and the versification would be unusual  –  there is only one other instance of a triplet in the whole text (lines 680–2), and that is also at a site of possible scribal confusion. If the exemplar bore any resemblance to Ashmole 33, however, the copyist might have been dealing with a passage in which alternative versions of several lines were still legible and a final choice might not have been made; the eight lines could have represented just three potential couplets. A final example from this manuscript looks like a transcript of a more seriously unfinished passage: as element and erthe togedur shuld flintis bothe wind water fyere and wod

                \ek/

So doilfulle dyn drof in the valis Might no man þer her that grisly voce

(lines 831–4)

It comes at a point where the Middle English poem is combining two battles in the French chanson de geste into one, together with an elaborated version of the account of the portents that occurred in France at the same time. Immediately after these lines the battle is described; then the darkness at noon, terrifying noises

ME Texts in Transition.indb 101

07/04/2014 00:03

Phillipa Hardman

102

and bursting asunder of trees in France. It is hard to avoid the impression that the problematic lines in question are not really part of the narrative where they are copied, but are perhaps accidentally preserved trial lines for the later passage. The phrase ‘doilfulle dyn’ seems to have been reused in the line ‘the erthe dynned doillfully’ (line 850), and the fear of the ‘grisly’ noise recurs in the couplet: ‘ther was no man but he hid his hed, | And thought not but to dy in þat sted’ (lines 855–6). The other test case, the Fillingham Firumbras, is also in couplets, with occasional unpaired rhymes that the EETS editor marks as missing lines.16 Indeed, expecting the Middle English poem to be a faithful translation of the French source, she explains the condition of the text by a hypothesis: ‘a jongleur’s MS, … torn in places, faded and thumb-marked in others, fell into the hands of a 15th-century antiquary’ who copied it ‘with the aim of preserving the legible portions of the text’, but ignored illegible pages (p. xxiv). This is, of course, not impossible; but the editor perhaps rather overestimates the amount of damage. Like the Song of Roland, Firumbras abbreviates its French source by omitting the characteristic repetitions and whole episodes that do not contribute directly to the major narrative thread. This does result in some abrupt changes of scene, but the pithy narration and lively speeches usually maintain continuity without too much difficulty. In one case, however, the climactic episode in which Charlemagne takes the Bridge of Mautryble, the work of adaptation seems to have been left unfinished: the individual scenes are vividly realized, but the narration does not always identify the ‘he’ who performs the actions; and at the very end of the episode the couplets are disrupted by three lines that untypically repeat the closure motif of fourteen lines earlier: Charlys hathe wonne Mavtryble with maystrie And slayn the porter and the gate y-take. Fycoun and Amyet ganne hij to quake.

(lines 1382–4)

The earlier lines read: Now hath charlys with strength & with maystrye y-wonne þe brygge of mautryble with vyctorye.

(lines 1368–9)

In light of the experience of reading Ashmole 33, with its elaborate systems for transferring new or replacement lines from margins to text, but which the editor did not always follow, I wonder if this too might be a case of a copyist’s missing the original scribe’s signal that the later lines were to be combined with the earlier ones to produce a revised and expanded conclusion, ending on a note of triumphant irony, as the giant gate-keeper Fycoun and his giant wife Amyet, far from trembling, had threatened Charles aggressively, but were nonetheless both killed by the heroic king.

16 Firumbras and Otuel and Roland, ed. M. I. O’Sullivan, EETS o.s. 198 (London, 1935), p. xxiii.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 102

07/04/2014 00:03

Bodleian Ashmole 33

103

There is not scope in this paper to explore any further instances of possible work in progress lurking behind the apparently imperfect manuscript versions of supposedly ‘final texts’ of Middle English romances, but it may be that the cases looked at here will at least have sown some productive seeds of doubt.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 103

07/04/2014 00:03

John C. Hirsh

The Rawlinson Lyrics: Context, Memory and Performance •••

I

n 1984 Bernard Quaritch, Ltd of London published catalogue No. 1036, offering for sale 134 leaves and fragments of leaves abstracted from medieval manuscripts, entitled Bookhands of the Middle Ages, and carrying as a subtitle on the first page, Medieval Manuscript Leaves Principally from a Collection Formed in the 19th Century. The catalogue proved to be the first of a series that was to have an important effect on the preservation of medieval manuscript leaves and fragments, though it did so at least in part by assigning prices to each of the 134 items that at the time seemed really very high  –  though in most cases they have not seemed so since.1 The fact that many of the items came from the collection formed by the Oxford antiquary Philip Bliss (1786–1857), having been acquired by him from local binders, according to Sir Frederic Madden, ‘for the price of a pot of beer’, no doubt helped to allay objections from those medievalists who object to commerce in such manuscript leaves for fear that their sale will encourage the breakup of medieval

1 For a description of the trade in manuscript leaves before the Quaritch catalogues see C. de Hamel, ‘Selling Manuscript Fragments in the 1960’s’, in Interpreting and Collecting Fragments of Medieval Books, ed. L. L. Brownrigg and M. M. Smith, Proceedings of the Seminar in the History of the Book to 1500, Oxford, 1998 (Los Altos Hills, CA, 2000), pp. 47–55. The argument continues as to whether the Quaritch catalogues, and the high prices they realized, preserved leaves and fragments which had suddenly acquired a higher value, or caused more manuscripts to be broken up so as to realize higher profits  –  or both. When the detached leaves are illuminated, however, their owners are rarely apologetic. See, for example, B. H. Breslauer, ‘The Genesis of a Collection’, in The Bernard H. Breslauer Collection of Manuscript Illuminations, ed. W. M. Voelkle and R. S. Wieck (New York, 1992), pp. 9–11.   Throughout I shall attach the numbers assigned both in the New Index of Middle English Verse (NIMEV), ed. A. S. G. Edwards and J. Boffey (London, 2005) and in the online and in process Digital Index of Middle English Verse (DIMEV), followed by the twelve numbers which make up the collection assigned by J. A. Burrow in ‘Poems without Contexts: The Rawlinson Lyrics’, first published in Essays in Criticism 29 (1979), pp. 6–32, and reprinted in Burrow’s Essays on Medieval Literature (Oxford, 1984), pp. 1–26; texts printed on pp. 23–6. It is from the 1984 reprint that I quote throughout. I am most grateful to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, for permission to examine and to quote from MS Rawlinson D.913, fol. 1 and 1v.

104

ME Texts in Transition.indb 104

07/04/2014 00:03

The Rawlinson Lyrics:

105

manuscripts for profit.2 In any event, the catalogue was a watershed, and brought not only higher prices, but also greater attention and interest to what proved to be a burgeoning market. Perhaps the most intriguing item in the catalogue was one that appeared at the very end of a section called ‘Medieval Schooling and Intellectual History’, no. 108, and was described thus: aristotle. Small fragment of text from the second book of the Poetics in which Aristotle argues that the tendency to laughter is a force for the good which can have an instructive value; in Greek, on a charta lintea (or cloth-parchment) of Silos or Burgos manufacture, written in brown ink, in an archaistic square minuscule by an Arabic or Spanish scribe; approx. 55 × 116mm., one outer edge coated with a yellowish pigment, perhaps a size or similar strengthening agent, other edges charred and now very fragile; preserved within a bifolium from a 14th-century monk’s personal notebook of miscellenea containing abecedarian sentences, several quotations from Albertus Magnus, and a curious 6 ll. verse warning or anathema beginning, ‘Pagina … /Quam si quis tanget, morietur morte suprema/ …’. 185 × 136 mm. Spain, mid 12th century/Germany, mid-14th century. $950.3 2 The catalogue records the facts stated above in its Introduction and also notes that ‘Bliss was one of the first collectors to recognize the historical and cultural importance of this discarded legacy on the Middle Ages. … Almost every fragment in the Bliss collection represents a medieval book that survived intact in England (whatever its country of origin) until c. 1520–70 when it was ‘dumped’ and taken to pieces for use by a binder’ (p. 1). The reference to the ‘pot of beer’ was Sir Frederic Madden’s, inscribed in his diary on 15 May 1825 and cited from there in N. R. Ker, Fragments of Medieval Manuscripts used as Pastedowns in Oxford Bindings with a Summary of Oxford Binding, c. 1515–1620, Oxford Bibliographical Society, Publications, Third Series 4 (Oxford, 1954, repr. 2004 for 2000), p. xvi n. 3, which further treats the binding practices involving medieval manuscript leaves Oxford and Cambridge binders employed in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, pp. vii–xvii. The citation from Madden’s diary was first published in Oxford Bibliographical Society Proceedings & Papers 3 (1933), p. 188. 3 So much effort was expended on the putative fragment in the catalogue that it seems ungrateful not to quote the two paragraphs of further description that followed: One of a handful of membre disiecta from a Piedmont monastic library destroyed by fire in the winter of 1327. Shortly thereafter the surviving fragments reached Melk where they were apparently seen and identified by Mabillon in the late seventeenth century. See Abbé Vallet, Le Manuscrit de Dom Adsom de Melk, traduit en français d’après l’edition de Dom J. Mabillon (Paris, Aux Presses de l’Abbaye de la Source, 1842) and Umberto Eco’s introduction to the recent English edition, trans. William Weaver (London, Secker & Warburg, 1983).   The only evidence of recent provenance is an accompanying letter from a Buenos Aires antiquarian bookseller or librarian in the early 1970s discussing the rarity of the Castilian version of a treatise by Milo Temesvar, and referring his correspondent to Silas Haslam’s History of a Land Called Uqbar and A General History of Labyrinths. Untypically, Quaritch catalogue No. 1036 was priced in dollars.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 105

07/04/2014 00:03

106

John C. Hirsh

The item, of course, was a scholarly and literary leg-pull (the price alone, rather too low for such an item from Quaritch, might have revealed as much), though I understand that a few of Quaritch’s clients failed to recognize the reference either to a novel of Umberto Eco, recently translated as The Name of the Rose, or, in the editors’ commentary (cited below), other references to the contemporary Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. The result was that so that they proceeded to order the item, causing the authors of the entry, who shall be nameless, to inscribe witty and diplomatic letters back, not (to their credit) simply reporting the item as sold, but rather revealing the allusions to which the really quite harmless hoax referred. I begin with this narrative both to insist upon the intrinsic and not purely academic interest of medieval manuscript leaves in general, and also to honour and to acknowledge the person and the library of our illustrious dedicaté. Professor Takamiya’s own collection contains many interesting and important leaves and fragments, including an early Carolingian bifolium of St Jerome, a fragment of a fifteenth-century English Robin Hood ballad, and a collection of largely English manuscript leaves and fragments originally belonging to Philip Bliss and subsequently to the extraordinary collector Sir Thomas Phillipps.4 Like all books, medieval manuscripts have been known to perish, but the preservation of even a fragment of what they once were can inform the student  –  and of course not all manuscript leaves were derived from codices. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D.913 (formerly MS Rawlinson misc.1262, then MS Rawlinson 1370) is a composite, bound together in the second half of the nineteenth century at the Bodleian Library, and containing a random collection of otherwise loose leaves, unconnected gatherings, bifolia and fragments. The first of these is the leaf that will concern me here, written in the first half of the fourteenth century, bound in to the Rawlinson manuscript as fol. 1, and, as the most important editor of the Rawlinson leaf has convincingly argued, almost

4 On Professor Takamiya see in particular, The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya, ed. T. Matsuda, R. A. Lomenthan and J. Scahill (Cambridge, 2004), in particular the ‘Editors’ Preface’, pp. xiii–xvi, and I. Takahashi with R. Nakano, ‘A Bibliography of Toshiyuki Takamiya’, pp. 497–504. Certain of Professor Takamiya’s fragments are examined in this festschrift, published to honour him on his sixtieth birthday. A handlist of the Western manuscripts in this remarkable library has now been published by its owner: T. Takamiya, ‘A Handlist of Western Medieval Manuscripts in the Takamiya Collection’, in The Medieval Book: Glosses from Friends and Colleagues of Christopher de Hamel, ed. J. H. Marrow, R. A. Linenthal and W. Noel (Houten, 2010), pp. 421–40. The three fragments cited in the text are nos. 58, 51 and 45 in the catalogue, and each of these has been published. See R. McKitterick, ‘Takamiya MS 58 and the Transmission of Jerome’s Letter Ep. 106 in the Early Middle Ages’, in The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector, pp. 3–18, and, on Takamiya MS 45, C. de Hamel, ‘Phillipps Fragments in Tokyo’, pp. 19–44 in the same place. For the Robin Hood ballad see J. C. Holt and T. Takamiya, ‘A New Version of “A Rhyme of Robin Hood”’, English Manuscript Studies, 1100–1700 1 (1989), 213–21.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 106

07/04/2014 00:03

The Rawlinson Lyrics:

107

certainly cut down from a larger sheet of parchment of uncertain size and use.5 It is not quite accurate to refer to the Rawlinson leaf, reduced from a larger leaf though it is, as a fragment. In its present state it conforms to none of Linne Mooney’s criteria for a true medieval manuscript fragment, and I shall argue here that it is misleading to refer to it as such, since it is quite complete in itself.6 In addition, it has no connection to any other part of the Rawlinson manuscript, and its texts, important as some of them are, are not replicated elsewhere in the canon of English literature. The Rawlinson leaf now measures 27.2 × 9.2 cm, and, what has not been generally noticed, gives unmistakable evidence of having been folded and refolded in the course of its history, so that it is not an unsupportable conjecture to believe that it was at some point kept in a bag or even in a pocket. In some ways the question this extraordinary little manuscript leaf poses is less ‘What does it say?’ than ‘What exactly is it?’  –  though an answer to one question will inform the other. In any case, one of its chief attributes is its portability, though it also gives every indication of being very much a personal possession, written for, and probably by, one person, for his or her own use, and the choice of texts suggests that that use would involve performance. Although I am somewhat reluctant to employ the loaded word ‘minstrel’, the leaf contains all the hallmarks of a manuscript inscribed to be of use to a performer, of whatever station or class.7 The danger of course is that the word ‘minstrel’ may be taken to imply a degree of inappropriate professionalism in what could as well be an example of private manuscript production, and one intended for largely amateur performances.8 Still, its usefulness to a performer of whatever 5 Burrow reports that this is also the opinion of Malcolm Parks, and implies his own agreement, p. 2. I am indebted throughout to Burrow’s seminal article, the first really to engage many of the problems the Rawlinson leaf poses, even when I have not shared all of its conclusions. Among its advantages, it contains the first complete edition of this notoriously difficult to read leaf yet produced, and articulates reasonable responses to many of the problems it poses, some of which yet remain. Earlier, four of the poems had been printed together in Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries, ed. R. H. Robbins, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1955), nos. 15–18, pp. 11–13, corresponding to Burrow, nos. 7, 1, 10 and 8. Certain of Robbins’ readings were called into question by Burrow, who has, however, modernized certain of his own. 6 L. R. Mooney, ‘Fragments of Middle English Verse: An Overview and Some Speculations about their Survival’, in Brownrigg and Smith, Interpreting and Collecting, pp. 137–150. In summary, Mooney lists fragments as ‘cut or torn leaves … deliberately put to other uses’, ‘single leaves or bifolia that have apparently been cut out or loosened from their binding’, and ‘mutilated leaves that have been separated from their original books’ (pp. 139–40). The Rawlinson leaf is none of these. 7 Others have been less reluctant to do so. W. Heuser designated the texts as constituting minstrel’s notes only, and largely incomplete, which in one sense they are: ‘Fragmente von unbekannten Spielmannsliedern des 14. Jahrhunderts aus MS. Rawl. D.913’, Anglia 18 (1907), 173–9 (p. 173). Recent practice has been to treat such texts as are examined as lyrics, albeit, in the case of ‘Maiden in the mor’ and ‘Icham of irlande’ as possibly connected to dance. 8 The word ‘minstrel’ still carries connotations of E. K. Chambers’ now ancient description: ‘To tramp long miles in wind and rain, to stand wet to the skin and hungry and footsore,

ME Texts in Transition.indb 107

07/04/2014 00:03

108

John C. Hirsh

status is evident. Besides its portability, it also displays inscription so hasty and abbreviated as quite possibly to have been intended for the writer’s eyes only, songs intended for performance, and so appears to be nothing so much as the used and useful possession of its evidently bilingual owner. The fact that two of the texts are in French is no bar to the designation I am proposing, particularly in fourteenthcentury Britain.9 Apart from the two French texts, the leaf preserves ten in Middle English, four of them, which I shall print below, of particular literary interest. But it is interesting, too, that all the lyrics are secular, so that taken together the Rawlinson leaf presents one of the most important collections of secular lyrics to have come down from the first half of the fourteenth century, and one of the earliest English examples.10 In examining the leaf I am going to consider the Rawlinson texts as Burrow did, following the order the leaf preserves, so beginning on fol. 1r, and then proceeding to the verso. But I think it is likely that this may not have been the order in which

making the slow bourgeois laugh while the heart was bitter within, such must have been the daily fate of many amongst the humbler minstrels at least. And at the end to die like a dog in a ditch, under the ban of the church and with the prospect of eternal damnation before the soul.’ Nor would Chambers’ resolutely native minstrels have been likely to include French songs in their repertoire: ‘The native English gleemen were eclipsed at court by the Taillefers and Raheres of the invading hosts. But they still held the road side by side with their rivals, shorn of their dignities, and winning a precarious livelihood from the shrunken purses of those of their own blood and tongue.’ E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1903, repr. 1925), vol. 1, pp. 48, 75–6. But there were alternatives. The putative social degradation of the English minstrel in the fifteenth century is addressed in M. Chesnutt, ‘Minstrel Reciters and the Enigma of the Middle English Romance’, Culture & History 2 (1987), 48–67, though even now the subject has not been fully explored, and more examinations of local records, like that of C. E. C. Burch, Minstrels and Players in Southampton, 1428–1635, Southampton Papers 7 (Southampton, 1969), would probably yield interesting results: see in particular appendices 1–4, pp. 38–48. For a study of the minstrel in court, see n. 9 below. 9 On the courtly implications, see M. Vale: ‘The world of minstrels and other performers was … mobile and fluid in the Low Countries. Individual singers and players were often associated with particular princes, lords or towns, and were clearly retained by them, but this in no way prevented them from performing (and, no doubt, composing) at other courts. … The world of the performing arts in the courts of north-west Europe at this time was therefore never exclusively francophone. … Middle English only gained recognition and acceptance in court circles towards the latter part of the fourteenth century, a good century after Middle Dutch or Middle High German had been received and accepted at some continental European courts. French had to be learned, however, if entry into the international court milieu of the fourteenth century was to be achieved and sustained. This was a fact of cultural life which far outlived the later Middle Ages.’ M. Vale, The Princely Court: Medieval Courts and Culture in North-West Europe, 1270–1380 (Oxford, 2001), ‘A Francophone Culture’, pp. 282–94 (pp. 293–4). 10 Robbins points out how rare secular lyrics are in England when compared to religious, and notes that secular lyrics became ‘more popular’ only ‘towards the end of the fifteenth century’. A collection of secular lyrics, even one intended for performance, is thus highly unusual, and that this is so speaks further to the private use to which it was put. Secular Lyrics, ed. Robbins, pp. xvii–xxi (p. xvii).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 108

07/04/2014 00:03

The Rawlinson Lyrics:

109

the items themselves were written. In fact, what is now the verso is closely written and abbreviated, with the narrowest of margins on the right-hand side (narrow on both sides toward the bottom of the leaf), so that, in its present form, there simply is not room enough to hold the leaf stable while writing upon its verso. It is probable, then, that the leaf was reduced to its present size only after the items on the verso had been inscribed. The items on the recto, however, are less cramped; indeed, they occupy less than a quarter of the available space, and margins on both sides of the recto have been preserved carefully. It seems clear, then, that the items on the verso were written first, and before the leaf had been cut down to its present size. The recto texts followed afterwards, being inscribed on the now reduced leaf. Apart from the first lyric, these recto items are fragmentary, but taken together I believe that they may just indicate an order of presentation in performance, an order not present on what is now the verso. The first of the items contained on the recto is a lyric composed of two quatrains beginning: ‘Of euerykune tre’ (DIMEV 4162; NIMEV 2622; Burrow 1). Textually repetitive and evidently intended for performance, it simply and easily compares the singer’s future lover to the hawthorn tree, that ‘blowet suotes[t]’ (line 3). It is at once charming and graceful, and if the texts on the recto of the leaf were performed seriatim, as seems at least possible that it would have made a good introduction to a performance, if only by its light and easy tone, and its allusion to a projected, but not yet realized, lover. Of euerykune tre, of euerykune tre, þe haweþorn bloweth suotes[t]*,   [*sweetest] of euerykune tre. My lemmon sse ssal boe, my lemmon sse ssal boe, þe fairest of erth [k]inne, my lemmon sse ssal boe. Based in part upon the simplicity and grace of the first item, it seems possible to infer that both it, and the items following, were inscribed upon what was probably the ‘back’ of the already heavily inscribed and reduced leaf. Although it is difficult to proceed with confidence beyond this observation, the possibility remains that one way the scribe-performer may have begun a performance was to follow the newly inscribed recto items more or less in order. If so, then the recto items may give an idea as to how that performance both begun, and initially at least, how it proceeded. This conjecture is the more plausible if the first lyric is followed, as I suggest it is, by direct allusions to a further three otherwise unrecorded texts, two allusions consisting of one line, and one of two. The first two are what at first appear to be one-line compositions, ‘þe godemon on as wee’ (Burrow 2, who reads ‘weye’), and ‘Ichave a mantel ymaket of cloth’ (Burrow 3), but the lines could as easily allude to now-lost lyrics, the first preserving the first line of its

ME Texts in Transition.indb 109

07/04/2014 00:03

110

John C. Hirsh

burden, the second the opening line of another composition. They are followed by a two-line item (Burrow 4) which equally seems to record a lyric’s opening lines, otherwise unknown: ‘Ne sey neuer such a man an Iordan was went he / to gogeshale panyles’. If these lines allude to compositions well known to the scribeperformer of the Rawlinson leaf, it is reasonable to consider that s/he would begin the performance with songs with which s/he was familiar. It is thus no surprise that s/he has not troubled to write them out, but cited only enough to jog his or her memory. On the verso of the leaf, however, the first two lyrics are written in French (Burrow 5 and 6), and like the other lyrics preserved on the verso, appear to follow no apparent order, though taken together they give evidence of a diverse performance, and indicate something at least both of the scribe himself, and perhaps also something of the nature of the audience. The first of these Burrow identified as a ‘chanson de mal mariée’, the complaint of a married woman to her lover, a genre rarely found in England before the fifteenth century, though he also notes that this version is a ‘chanson à danser’, and as such intended for performance, a characteristic it shares, I believe, with all of the items inscribed on this leaf. It is characteristic it thus shares with the French poem immediately following, which also may imply dance and certainly implies performance.11 Both French poems, in a word, support the thesis that the Rawlinson lyrics were inscribed for, and possibly by, a practising performer. These French lyrics are followed by one of the Rawlinson leaf ’s most familiar English compositions, ‘Ich am of Irlaunde’ (DIMEV 1649; NIMEV 1008; Burrow 7), almost certainly itself a fragment, quite possibly a carol, with a three-line burden followed by a stanza. But whether a carol or not, its repetition and metre suggest that it may have been attached to a dance, and it is not the only composition in the group of which such a connection seems possible. In the second line of the lyric, after the burden, it is likely that there is an omission between for and of, but in any case it is most unlikely that the poem as we have it is complete, though interestingly it is carefully separated from the lyrics before and after, and so seems to manifest a kind of formal completeness as it appears on the Rawlinson leaf. Still, the text cries out for other stanzas too, ones, to be sure, that might have been well known to whomever it was that inscribed the not quite three lines that make up the lyric in the manuscript, thus expanded: Icham of Irlande Ant of the holy lande of irlande gode sire pray ich ȝe for … of sainte charite come ant daunce wyt me in irlaunde. 11 Burrow, ‘Poems without Contexts’, pp. 8, 12–13.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 110

07/04/2014 00:03

The Rawlinson Lyrics:

111

Although the verso items follow no discernible order, one other piece of evidence suggests, if only by contrast, the performative character of the Rawlinson leaf.12 Fols 10v–11 in British Library, MS Sloane 2593, a collection of Middle English lyrics that, like the Rawlinson leaf, uniquely preserves some of the very best Middle English lyrics to have come down to us. The lyrical texts preserved on fols. 10v–11 differ greatly in subject, tone and voice, but still preserve a uniform literary excellence.13 For instance, one of the most powerful religious lyrics to come down to us, ‘I syng of a mayden’ (DIMEV 2281; NIMEV 1367), is followed by one of the most bawdy, ‘I haue a gentil cok’ (DIMEV 2167; NIMEV 1299), both on fol. 10v. The facing folio preserves an only slightly less dramatic contrast, with the witty and joyous, ‘Adam lay i-bowndyn’ (DIMEV 215; NIMEV 117) followed by the gentle allusive, ‘I haue a yong suster’ (DIMEV 2174; NIMEV 1303); the contrasts may or may not have been intended. One other aspect of these folios is also of interest in relation to the Rawlinson leaf. Whoever wrote them was also concerned to save space on his folio, and to fill up as much of each page as he could. He therefore wrote the lyrics in long lines, so that each written line preserves two lines of text. This practice had the effect of making the lines less easy to read, but it allowed the writer to inscribe as much text as possible onto the available space. Compare now both of these practices with what appears on the Rawlinson leaf. Both collections preserve high quality lyrics, both juxtapose lyrics of very different content, and both fit as much on the page as possible. But although the Rawlinson scribe, like the Sloane scribe, was intent on saving space, s/he resorted to abbreviation rather than to long lines, in order to do so, writing down only what was necessary for a performer to recall in order to begin. Certain texts s/ he wrote at greater length, but even some these are abbreviated, quite possibly because they too were at least in part, also well known. It is evident that s/he was not inscribing a text for him or herself, or indeed for anyone else, to read at leisure. The Rawlinson leaf is thus pre-eminently a personal document, written for and probably by one performer, and one not written to preserve lyric texts, as Sloane and other collections emphatically do. The contrast between these two manuscripts could hardly be greater, and the evident implication for the Rawlinson leaf seems to be that it was primarily intended to help activate what was in effect a rote memory. The fact that it does so is important. The kind of memory indicated here is one attached to song and to verbal, not visual, recollection, and that is so clearly 12 For example Cambridge, Trinity College, MS 323; Cambridge University Library, MSS Dd.5.64 and Ff.1.6; Oxford, Balliol College, MS 354; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS poet e.1 (Summary Catalogue 29734); London, British Library, Add. MS 46919, MS Harley 682, MS Harley 978 and MS Sloane 2593; and London, Lambeth Palace MS 78, among others. None of these interesting, and, to the anthologist very useful, collections, exhibit the personal and performance properties that I have been arguing are at the heart of the Rawlinson leaf. 13 I have printed a photograph of this opening from BL MS Sloane 2593 as fig. 2 in my Medieval Lyric: Middle English Lyrics, Ballads and Carols (Oxford, 2005), p. 39. Medieval Lyric prints Burrow nos. 8, 7 and 10 as nos. 20 (pp. 73–6), 22 (p. 79), and 38 (p. 117).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 111

07/04/2014 00:03

112

John C. Hirsh

separate from the longer and more elaborate systems of memory and recollection familiar to scholastics. ‘The “art of memory” is actually the “art of recollection”’, Mary Carruthers has remarked, and though recollection of a song with music and rhyme differs from that of a prose text, the degree of both literacy and memory suggested by a bilingual document like this one implies a writer  –  and as I have been suggesting an owner  –  who was educated, and probably not ignorant of the more elaborate kinds of memorial reconstruction that were the property of medieval churchmen.14 Even the texts on the Rawlinson leaf that are more fully written out are partially abbreviated. For example, the single most important lyric on the Rawlinson leaf, ‘Maiden in the mor’ (DIMEV 3328; NIMEV 2037.5; Burrow 8) is, apart from those recorded only by a single line or two, the most heavily abbreviated in the group, and though the abbreviations are easily extended, their presence is alone is revealing. Observing manuscript line division and supplying only such abbreviations as are indicated, the text in the manuscript reads thus: Maiden in the mor lay in the mor lay seuenyst fulle seuenist fulle Maiden in the mor lay in the mor lay seuristes fulle ant a daye Welle was hire mete wat was hire mete þe primerole ant the þe pri mrole ant the Welle was hire mete wat was hire mete the primerole an the violet Welle wat was hire dryng þe chelde water of the welle springe Welle was hir bour wat was hire bour þe rede rose an te lilie flour Edited, with lines extended in the second and third stanzas, the lyric reads thus: Maiden in the mor lay, in the mor lay, seuenyst fulle, seuenist fulle, Maiden in the mor lay, in the mor lay, 14 M. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2008), quote from p. 23. Carruthers notes that her study is cast as ‘praxis rather than as doxis’ (p. 15), but what concerns me here is closer to what Carruthers identifies as rote than to memoria proper. Yet even here there is an element of conscious association implied. As Carruthers notes, ‘one finds or hunts out the sorted memoryimpressions by using other things associated with it either through a logical connection or through habit (consuetudo), the sort of associations taught by the various artes memorativa. Rote repetition, since it is not “found out” by any heuristic scheme, is not considered recollection or true memory (memoria)’ (p. 23). Greater liturgical projects relied on strategies of memory of the kind Carruthers has identified. See A. M. Busse Berger, Medieval Music and the Art of Memory (Berkeley, CA, 2005), esp. chap. 2, ‘Tonaries: A Tool for Memorizing Chant’, pp. 47–84, and further acknowledgment of Carruthers’ contribution seratim, but esp. pp. 3–4, 93–4, 159.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 112

07/04/2014 00:03

The Rawlinson Lyrics:

113

seuenistes fulle ant a daye. Welle was hire mete. Wat was hire mete? þe primrole ant the, þe primrole ant the, Welle was hire mete. wat was hire mete? the primerole an te violet. Welle [was hire dryng,] wat was hire dryng? þe chelde water of the, [the chelde water of the,] [welle was hire dryng,] [wat was hire dryng?] [the chelde water] of the] welle-spring. Welle was hire bour, wat was hire bour? the rede rose an te, [the red rose an te,] [welle was hire bour,] [wat was hire bour?] [the red rose] [an te] lilie flour. Having set the pattern in the first stanza, the writer depends upon the reader to supply the missing text in the second and third; and as with ‘Icham of Irlande’, this lyric may also have had associations with dance.15 I stress the secular quality of the Rawlinson version, however, because what little is known of the history of this lyric suggests that it may have had a variety of uses, and possibly a variety of versions, too. Richard L. Green believed that he had discovered that the poem was sung in an Irish church, and considered that the practice had been condemned by the Franciscan composer of hymns Richard Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory 1317–60, who had composed a devout Latin alternative, interesting because of its implied witness to the lyric’s evident popularity. And indeed, one of Ledrede’s hymns, ‘Peperit virgo’, has the English line ‘Mayde yn the moore lay’ written above it in the margin, almost certainly to signal its melody, not to pose a devout Latin alternative. One other interest of this and other English

15 The association with dance was first noted in P. Dronke, The Medieval Lyric, 2nd edn (London, 1978), pp. 195–6.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 113

07/04/2014 00:03

114

John C. Hirsh

lines noted in Ledrede’s collection may be in their suggestion that the distinction between sacred and secular was less absolute than sometimes appears, and that, changes having been made, a secular song could appear in religious dress. Greene’s discussion of Ledrede’s manuscript was followed in 1974 by Siegfried Wenzel’s discovery of a sermon from about 1360 in a Worcester Cathedral Library manuscript, concerning the food persons ate in the golden age. ‘And what was their drink’, he further asked? ‘The answer appears in a certain song … “the mayde by the wode lay”.’ A note in the margin reads, ‘the cold water of the well spryng’. Both these studies, however, gain in interest when read against Joseph Harris’ interpretation of the poem as a version of a Magdalene lyric, the ‘maiden’ here standing for the penitent Mary Magdalene herself.16 Harris’ allegorical reading is rather more learned than might be expected of either an Irish congregation or a Worcestershire cleric, but it is a further indication that, thanks perhaps to the poem’s other-worldly resonances, Christian echoes may lurk in the secular lines, at least for such as will hear them. Wenzel’s ‘Maid by the wode lay’ seems to indicate that there were other versions of the lyric in circulation, and it is probably worth remembering not only how many lyrics have been lost, but how few variants we have of songs that have survived, even songs that were undoubtedly altered in transmission. Thus the inclusion of the poem in a collection of texts like the ones preserved in Rawlinson comes as no surprise. The high degree of abbreviation demonstrates that the rondel form was well known to the performer and scribe, and that what he needed was a reminder of the repetitive wording of the lyric. Four poems follow ‘Maiden in the mor’ and conclude the selection, but even though the next three are ironic love poems, they proceed in no particular order. The first of these, ‘Wer ther outher in this toun’ (DIMEV 6222; NIMEV 3898; Burrow 9), is obscure by any standard. Burrow constructs the narrative situation to imply that a ‘lover is apparently trying to find drink for a woman who has been assaulted by another man.’ 17 But it is not impossible that the assailant was the speaker himself, and that the threat that follows  –  the speaker insists that he will be revenged even if the attacker should be the son of the King of Normandy  –  may simply be hyperbole, albeit with a specific, possibly comic, and now lost, allusion encoded. But it is also possible that there may be a hint that yet another man has now become the beloved’s new lover. The connections between and among some of the lines in this lyric are tenuous, and the meaning of the song is by no means certain. Changes having been made, the same is true for the third lyric to follow ‘Maiden’, the very different ‘Al gold Jonet is thin her’ (DIMEV 327; NIMEV 179; Burrow 11). This lyric 16 The three studies I discuss here include R. L. Greene, ‘“ The Maid of the Moor” in the Red Book of Ossory’, Speculum 27 (1952), 504–6; S. Wenzel, ‘The Moor Maiden  –  A Contemporary View’, Speculum 49 (1974), 69–74, and J. Harris, ‘“Maiden in the Mor” and the Medieval Magdalene Tradition’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 1 (1971), 59–87. E. Colledge edited The Latin Poetry of Richard Ledrede, O.F.M., Bishop of Ossory, 1317–1360, Studies and Texts 30 (Toronto, 1974), including ‘Peperit virgo’, pp. 26–30, rightly, I believe, disputing Greene’s reading. 17 Burrow, ‘Poems without Contexts’, p. 10.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 114

07/04/2014 00:03

The Rawlinson Lyrics:

115

also reads like a plea of a lover to be loved: the lover loves Jonet for her golden hair, and professes himself to be her only (true) lover. The unconflicted tone in this lyric seems to echo that of the first poem in the collection. Between these last two poems, Burrow 9 and 11, is the justly infamous ‘Alnist by the rose’ (DIMEV 351; NIMEV 194; Burrow 10), in which a witty but cynical speaker boasts of having made love to a woman whom he seems not to love: Al nist by þe rose rose al nist bi the rose ich lay darst ich noust þe rose stele ant ȝit ich bar þe flour awey Otherwise: Al nist by þe rose, Rose, al nist by the rose Ich lay darst Ich noust þe rose stele, ant ȝit Ich bar þe flour awey The last poem in the group (Burrow 12) is a drinking song, which, except for its verbal repetition and its possible connection to dance, is difficult to recover from the manuscript; Burrow’s incomplete version which needs further study. It seems to have been written out at length, with what degree of abbreviation seems to me uncertain, so providing an appropriately ambiguous conclusion to the collection. Yet for all of its lapses, omissions and imperfections, the Rawlinson leaf is unmistakably complete in itself, preserving texts, cues and mnemonic lines calculated to assist an artist in performance. Cut down from a larger parchment sheet, irregularly folded and then creased, it is an important piece of English literary history, both for its witness to several unique and certain excellent Middle English lyrics, and for the evidence it offers as to how these, and no doubt other lyrics, were performed. At the beginning of this little exploration I referred to a jeux d’esprit of two thenyoung Quaritch booksellers which relied, as I have throughout this study, on a conjunction of context and memory to sustain their performance. I indicated this text, of course, partly to honour Professor Takamiya and his quite extraordinary library  –  the amusing and well-intended hoax alluded to the sort of medieval manuscript leaf that one would not be entirely surprised to find, if only it enjoyed the property of existence, in his possession  –  and partly to illustrate one of the ways in which, absent context, memory can mislead as easily as reveal. To be sure, the presence of fictional leaf 108 in Quaritch catalogue 1036 is far distant from what has been my main concern here, the origin, use and literary implications of the manuscript leaf that preserves the Rawlinson lyrics, but as collectors of such things know, manuscript leaves have their own attractions, and challenge and invite the student to imagine, reconstruct and articulate the vanished past of which they were once a part.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 115

07/04/2014 00:03

Gareth Griffith & Ad Putter

Linguistic Boundaries in Multilingual Miscellanies: The Case of Middle English Romance •••

A

lthough it has now become a commonplace to say that late medieval    England was a multilingual culture, the extent to which this multilingualism penetrated different cultural fields and practices is harder to determine. We have been working in collaboration with scholars in London, Utrecht and Vienna as part of a research project, The Dynamics of the Medieval Manuscript, funded by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area), which is examining miscellany manuscripts from France, Germany, the Low Countries and England.1 At the University of Bristol we have focused on manuscripts containing romances in English. (From now on we shall simply refer to these as ‘romance manuscripts’: the label is a convenient shorthand and is not intended to characterize the general contents of any manuscript thus designated.). The rationale behind our focus is that almost all Middle English romances have come down to us in manuscript miscellanies. Manuscript anthologies consisting exclusively of romances do exist, as witness British Library, MS Egerton 2862 (c. 1400) and Bodleian Library, MS Douce 261 (dated 1564), but they are rare and atypical. Romance manuscripts, then, are miscellaneous in content. In this regard, at least, they are not unusual. As Ralph Hanna and others have emphasized, miscellaneity is really the norm rather than the exception in British medieval book production.2 And since many insular miscellanies contain texts in more than one language, multilingualism can be a crucial aspect of their miscellaneity. Indeed, reading recent work on trilingual manuscripts from medieval England, one might easily come away with the impression that multilingualism was all-pervasive.3 1 For further details about the project and its activities, see http://dynamicsofthemedievalmanuscript.eu/. 2 R. Hanna, ‘Miscellaneity and Vernacularity: Conditions of Literary Production in Late Medieval England’, in The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany, ed. S. G. Nichols and S. Wenzel (Ann Arbor, MI, 1997), pp. 37–53. 3 See for example J. Scahill, ‘Trilingualism in Early Middle English Miscellanies: Languages and Literature’, Yearbook of English Studies 33 (2003), 18–32; A. Hunt, ‘Insular Trilingual Compilations’, in Codices miscellanearum: Brussels Van Hulthem Colloquium 1999, ed. R. Jansen-Sieben and H. Van Dijk, Archives et Bibliothèques de Belgique numéro special 60 (Brussels, 1999), pp. 51–70; T. Turville-Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature and National Identity, 1290–1340 (Oxford, 1996), chap. 6 (pp. 181–216).

116

ME Texts in Transition.indb 116

07/04/2014 00:03

Linguistic Boundaries in Multilingual Miscellanies

117

Understandably, scholars have been drawn to those manuscripts which are most outstandingly and intriguingly multilingual. In the context of Middle English romance that manuscript is of course British Library, MS Harley 2253, which has occupied ‘a privileged space amongst both literary historians and connoisseurs of literature’,4 and includes the romance of King Horn amongst its diverse contents. Its bravura display of multilingualism might lead us to assume that scribes and readers of Middle English romances were happy to switch languages in a romance context, for here is a manuscript which, in Thorlac Turville-Petre’s words, epitomizes ‘not three cultures [English, French and Latin] but one culture in three voices.’5 The case for cultural trilingualism could not be better put but, of course, there never is just one culture, and the point that needs to be emphasized is that manuscripts with three voices were more hospitable to some genres of texts than to others. Whereas medieval English courtly lyrics, for example, mixed quite happily with French and Latin poems in the same codex,6 the Middle English romances did not on the whole travel in multilingual miscellanies. Certainly, it is not at all unusual to find texts written in Latin as well as in English in such miscellanies, but it is much rarer for texts in French to be present. To put it another way, the French language operates as an interesting variable in manuscript compilation, and particular text types in English are much more likely to occur alongside Frenchlanguage texts than others. In what follows, we would like to present brief details and analysis of those manuscripts which do contain French texts of whatever kind, and also to reflect on what these data can tell us about the contexts in which English romances were encountered in the Middle Ages, and about the changing relationships between each of the three main languages in late-medieval England, especially the relationship between French and English. The definition of ‘romance’ is notoriously problematic, and any formulation of what is and is not included under that generic heading is to some extent arbitrary. For pragmatic reasons, we have chosen to use as a starting point Gisela GuddatFigge’s descriptive catalogue of surviving manuscripts, published in 1976.7 Her definition of ‘romance’ includes courtly, historical and religious pieces, but not texts or extracts from longer works by poets who are usually considered in terms of their own canon, such as Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate. This leaves her with a corpus of eighty-five Middle English romances, contained in ninety-nine manuscripts, some of which survive only as fragments, or in one or two cases, in catalogue descriptions. As will become clear, the manuscript context of the texts in question only serves to further destabilize a definition of romance. 4 R. Corrie, ‘Harley 2253, Digby 86, and the Circulation of Literature in Pre-Chaucerian England’, in Studies in the Harley Manuscript: The Scribes, Contents and Social Contexts of British Library MS Harley 2253, ed. S. Fein (Kalamazoo, MI, 2000), pp. 427–43 (p. 437). 5 Turville-Petre, England the Nation, p. 181. 6 J. Boffey discusses many examples in her Manuscripts of English Courtly Love Lyrics (Cambridge, 1985). 7 G. Guddat-Figge, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Middle English Romances (Munich, 1976).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 117

07/04/2014 00:03

118

Gareth Griffith & Ad Putter

From the total corpus of ninety-nine, a group of twenty-eight romance manuscripts can be identified as multilingual (we discount manuscripts with the odd rubric in French or Latin). Some, such as Harley 2253, from the second quarter of the fourteenth century, seem thoroughly trilingual, with multiple texts in each of the three languages, and in this case three bilingual texts (one each in French/ English prose, French/Latin prose and French/Latin verse) and a trilingual poem.8 Others are almost exclusively monolingual, but include one or two brief texts that use other languages alongside the dominant one. Thus British Library, Add. MS 22283 (the Simeon MS), which contains Robert of Sicily and The King of Tars, is in English throughout, except for a trilingual text of Cato’s Distichs and some trilingual proverbs. This is a priori evidence to suggest that, in the contexts where Middle English romances were being read, the use of languages other than English was not a uniform phenomenon; the manuscripts reflect different textual situations, each calling for the use of French and/or Latin for different reasons. Indeed, it is our strong impression that, where romance manuscripts contain more than one language, there are usually special reasons for the presence of Franch-language items: romance miscellanies are not typical and should not be seen as the local manifestation of wider linguistic trends. Second, it should be noted that the relative ‘popularity’ of languages other than English in these manuscripts differs. Latin appears alongside English fairly regularly: it is found in no fewer than twenty-six of the ninety-nine romance manuscripts.9 French is much rarer, occurring in only seven of them. In two of these seven manuscripts  –  the Simeon MS mentioned above and the closely related Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. a.1 (the Vernon MS), both from late fourteenth century  –  it is present only in two or three texts that are themselves multilingual (in the Vernon MS there is additionally a rubric in French on fol. 105r).10 But the nature of these trilingual texts is revealing: they are a set of proverbs (the French proverbs known as the Proverbes de bon enseignement, attributed to Nicholas Bozon,11 the English ones as the Proverbes of diverse 8 For itemized lists of contents see Facsimile of British Museum MS. Harley 2253, intro. N. R. Ker, EETS o.s. 255 (London, 1965), and S. Fein, ‘Index of Items in MS Harley 2253’, in Studies in the Harley Manuscript, ed. S. Fein, pp. 481–4. 9 These are: Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Brogyntyn MS ii.1 (olim MS Porkington 10); Cambridge, Caius College, MS 107; Cambridge, Trinity College, MS 0.2.13/IV; Cambridge University Library, MS Mm.V.14; Dublin, Trinity College, MS 213; Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates 19.3.1; Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 91; London, British Library, Add. MSS 10036, 22283, Add. MS 31042, MSS Cotton Caligula A.ii, Vespasian E.xvi, Vitellius D.iii, MSS Harley 1701, 2252, 2253; London, College of Arms, MS Arundel 22; London, Lambeth Palace, MS 306; Longleat House, MSS 55, 257; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 61; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 126, MS Eng. poet. a.1, MS Greaves 60, MS Rawlinson C.86; San Marino, CA, Huntingdon Library, MS HM 128. 10 We are grateful to Wendy Scase for drawing this rubric to our attention. 11 See R. Dean with M. Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts, Anglo-Norman Text Society, Occasional Publications 3 (London, 1999), no. 252.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 118

07/04/2014 00:03

Linguistic Boundaries in Multilingual Miscellanies

119

profetes)12 and the Distichs of Cato (with French translation by Everart),13 both of which were popular school texts. Until the middle of the fourteenth century it had been the traditional practice in English schools to use French (and not English) as the language with which to construe Latin;14 this no doubt explains why in a number of other manuscript versions of the Proverbes de bon enseignement and Everart’s Distichs we encounter French alongside Latin. The Vernon and Simeon versions, however, are unique in also supplying English translations of the French glosses.15 The reason for this is presumably that the French translation was beginning to be less of a help. This theory is borne out by the fact that, in the Vernon MS,16 there are paraphs drawn in the margins (on fol. 309v onwards) to direct the reader’s attention immediately to the English versions of the text, which come after the Latin and French. The reader seems to be directed to read the short sentences in English first, and to proceed thence to understanding the Latin and French versions. In other words, these trilingual school texts suggest, not that French was easily read and understood, but rather the contrary. They mark a transitional phase of a linguistic history in which English superseded French as the vernacular language of English schools. Another point raised by the Vernon and Simeon manuscripts is the ease with which the two romances they include (King of Tars and Robert of Sicily) blend in with other exemplary and didactic tales found in these manuscripts. There is clearly something arbitrary about Guddat-Figge’s classification of King of Tars and Robert of Sicily as ‘romances’ when there are other texts (most notably Joseph of Arimathie, only in Vernon) which could equally well be considered as such.17 12 Significantly, it is under the English title (in full: Proverbes of diverse profetes and of poetes and other seyntes) that the poem appears in the original table of contents of the Vernon MS. The poem was edited by F. J. Furnivall, in The Minor Poems of the Vernon Manuscript, ed. C. Horstmann and F. J. Furnivall, 2 vols., EETS o.s. 98, 107 (London, 1892, 1901), vol. 2, pp. 553–609. 13 Dean, Anglo-Norman Literature, no. 255. 14 John Trevisa (writing in 1385) said the traditional practice began to change after the Black Death, when English rather than French took over as the language in which Latin was construed: see E. Rickert, Chaucer’s World (New York, 1948), pp. 114, 119. Not everyone believes Trevisa, but what he says is confirmed by William Langland, who (writing at the same time as did Trevisa) complains about a new generation of clerks who cannot construe ‘but [except] in Latyn or Englissh’: The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition of the B-Text, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt (London, 1995), 15.375. 15 This point was made by A. I. Doyle in the Introduction of The Vernon Manuscript: A Facsimile Edition of Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. Poet. a.1 (Cambridge, 1987), p. 15. Doyle also noticed that the English translations of the Proverbes were added sometime after the French and Latin text had been copied. The scribe left space for these translations but not all the translations were subsequently supplied. 16 The manuscript is accessible in the facsimile edition by Doyle, and now also in the digital facsimile edition by A Facsimile Edition of the Vernon Manuscript, ed. W. Scase, Bodleian Digital Texts 3 (Oxford, 2012). 17 A. S. G. Edwards sensibly includes Joseph of Arimathie in ‘The Context of the Vernon Romances’, in Studies in the Vernon Manuscript, ed. D. Pearsall (Cambridge, 1990),

ME Texts in Transition.indb 119

07/04/2014 00:03

120

Gareth Griffith & Ad Putter

The third general phenomenon that we have noted in romance manuscripts relates to the changing popularity over time of each language as a ‘companion’ for Middle English romance. The dating of our manuscripts does not always allow for great accuracy, but using the approximate dates in Guddat-Figge’s catalogue it is possible to trace broad language-related trends in their production, and to relate these to wider trends in manuscript history. Most of the surviving romance manuscripts  –  seventy-one out of ninety-nine  –  were produced in the fifteenth century; a much smaller number (seventeen) date from the fourteenth century, and the thirteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries contributed three, seven and one manuscript respectively. The overall shape of the history of romance manuscript production seems clear: it begins late in the thirteenth century, grows slowly through the fourteenth, increases dramatically in the fifteenth, and then tails off sharply after 1600. There is a very similar pattern to the production of romance manuscripts that contain texts in Latin: nearly 70 per cent are from the fifteenth century, and roughly 20 per cent from the fourteenth century. Yet the picture is noticeably different for those manuscripts which include texts in French, or partly in French. The majority of these (four out of seven) are from the fourteenth century, flanked by one late thirteenth-century and two fifteenth-century manuscripts. The implications of these data are that French-English romance miscellanies declined in proportion as the production of romance manuscripts increased. Between the extremes of Harley 2253 and the minimally multilingual codices Vernon and Simeon, other manuscripts occupy the ‘middle ground’ of the English/ French corpus. One of these, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius D.iii, is amongst the earliest surviving romance manuscripts from England, but our knowledge of it is limited since it was badly damaged in a fire at Ashburnham House, Westminster in 1731. All that remains is a set of fragments from twenty-six leaves of the manuscript, and a description of the contents from a catalogue of the library made in 1696.18 This is enough, however, to tell us that it once contained texts in French, English and Latin, including not only the surviving romance of Floris and Blancheflour in English, but also a lost copy of Amis and Amiloun in Anglo-Norman. As GuddatFigge observes, the inclusion of romances in both languages makes Cotton Vitellius D.iii unique amongst surviving manuscripts (excluding the special case of Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264, where the two romances are intended to be read as one text, as we shall discuss below). Arguably this shows that the taste for romances in both languages was more common in the thirteenth century, but we doubt it, for it is significant that this phenomenon is not repeated in any other manuscript, even from this period. Cambridge University Library, MS Gg.IV.27, which is of a similar or only slightly later date than Cotton Vitellius D.iii, also contains a copy of Floris pp. 159–70, and notes the family resemblance between these ‘romances’ to other pious tales and historical legends in Simeon and Vernon. 18 T. Smith, Catalogus manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Cottoniae (Oxford, 1696), pp. 90–4. For a modern editino see C. G. C. Tite, Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library, 1696 (Cambridge, 1984).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 120

07/04/2014 00:03

Linguistic Boundaries in Multilingual Miscellanies

121

and Blancheflour in English, but neither of the other two texts in that manuscript is in French.19 The surviving evidence for mixed French and English romance miscellanies is thus very slim.20 In one instance in our corpus, there is an extremely intimate relationship between English and French texts. Bodley 264 consists of two parts, the first from 1344, and a second bound together with it, probably very early in the fifteenth century. It is a spectacularly beautiful manuscript, with many manuscript illuminations, and it was evidently a de luxe product for a very wealthy, probably aristocratic owner. (It came into the hands of Richard Woodville, Lord Rivers, in 1466.)21 The original part contained simply a copy of the French Roman d’Alexandre, produced in Tournai, but a very early fifteenth-century scribe wrongly thought that the French version of this romance lacked an important episode, the exchange of letters between Alexander and Dindimus. To compensate for this perceived omission he copied out an English alliterative version of the exchange, and it was duly added to the earlier part, complete with a marginal note (fol. 67r) added to the French text, instructing the reader to turn to the English poem at the ‘ende of this bok’,22 and then to return to the French so that the whole story can be read in the intended order. (At some later stage the Voyages of Marco Polo, here entitled Livres du graunt Caam, was added after Alexander and Dindimus, with the result that the English romance is no longer at the ‘ende of this boke’.) In fact it is clear from other copies of this French romance that it never contained the episode which the later scribe believed to have been omitted. What we have in this case, therefore, is a bilingual French/English romance manuscript that came about by complete error: the Middle English alliterative romance of Alexander and Dindimus was interpolated into the French prose Romans d’Alexandre by a scribe who mistakenly thought the French text contained a lacuna. Since the manuscript is obviously a professional production from London,23 this case shows that commercial London 19 The texts are Horn (the Middle English King Horn) and Assumpcion de nostre dame, which, despite is French title, is in fact a Middle English poem (item 2163 in the New Index of Middle English Verse, compiled by J. Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards (London, 2005). 20 The surviving leaves of Cotton Vitellius D.iii contain biblical and parabiblical verse tales in French; the English Floris and Blancheflour; and a Latin prose commentary on Macrobius. The verse tales (‘Fragments d’une ancienne histoire de Marie et de Jésus en laisses monorimes’, ed. P. Meyer, Romania 16 (1887), 248–52) are erroneously described as a prose text by Guddat-Figge. The Latin item was probably bound in with the English and French items at a later stage. See E. Watkins, ‘The Romances of British Library, Cotton Vitellius D.III’, in Medieval Manuscript Miscellanies: Composition, Authorship, Use, ed. L. Doložavolá and K. Rivers (Krems, 2013), pp. 256–69. 21 See further M. Cruse, Illuminating the ‘Roman d’Alexandre’: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264: The Manuscript as Monument (Cambridge, 2011). 22 The citation is taken from the digital reproduction of Bodley 264 at http://image.ox.ac.uk/show?collection=bodleian&manuscript=msbodl264. 23 K. Scott localizes the romance there on the basis of the style of the illuminations: Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390–1490, 2 vols. (London, 1996), vol. 2, pp. 68–73. The localization is confirmed by the dialect of the scribe (which is different from the West Midland dialect of Alexander and Dindimus: see A. Putter, M. Stokes and J. Jefferson, Studies in the Metre

ME Texts in Transition.indb 121

07/04/2014 00:03

122

Gareth Griffith & Ad Putter

book producers had English romances as well as French ones as part of their stock; but obviously it is only the exceptional circumstances in which the scribe found himself, faced with a gap that he thought needed mending, that explain why in this case French and English romances were placed within a single manuscript. Two more romance manuscripts containing French are extremely miscellaneous. British Library, MS Harley 4733 is the latest of the romance manuscripts containing French, and has been dated to c. 1460. The miscellany opens with Benedict Burgh’s versions of the Cato’s Distichs (attributed to Benedict Burgh in the rubric), followed by the Proverbes of diverse profetes. The bulk of the paper manuscript is taken up with the romance (or should we call it ‘historical legend’?) of Titus and Vespasian,24 but the fly-leaf is a parchment bifolium which contains (on fol. 128) a fragment of a twelfth-century French Brut.25 No other French matter is found in the manuscript. If that tells us anything about the uses of French for leisure reading, it is something negative: by 1460, when Harley 4733 was put together, its makers did not consider an old manuscript of a French Brut worth keeping; the best use they could make of it was to tear out its leaves and recycle them for the binding of newer books in English. Our last case to be discussed is Longleat House MS 55, also known as the Red Book of Bath. It has usually been associated with Bath Cathedral Priory, but the manuscript almost certainly belonged to a civic body.26 Copied in Bath somewhere between 1412 and 1428, it contains thirty-six texts, most official and public in nature. Twenty-five of these texts are Latin prose works, generally concerned with legal and/or historical matters.27 A letter of Charles of France from 1417 and a statute of Richard II confirmed in 1410 are the two texts in the manuscript written wholly in French. There is a Statute of Coroners written in French and Latin prose and a form of words for use with commissaries’ officials, which is written in French, English and Latin, presumably for maximum transparency and utility. Similar of Alliterative Verse, Medium Ævum Monographs n.s. 25 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 11, 230–1) and the ownership note in the manuscript which tells us Lord Rivers purchased the manuscript in London. 24 Again we are dealing with a work that is on the fringes of the romance genre: it tells the story of the siege of Jerusalem, and is based ultimately on Josephus’ eye-witness account of this siege. 25 Guddat-Figge describes it as ‘13th century’ but see P. Damian-Grint, ‘A 12th-Century Anglo-Norman Brut Fragment (MS BL Harley 2733, f. 128)’, in Anglo-Norman Anniversary Essays, ed. I. Short, Anglo-Norman Text Society Occasional Publications 2 (London, 1993), pp. 87–104. 26 A fuller study of the manuscript by G. Griffith is in preparation. 27 They include: treatises on bell-ringing, war, beer, bread, the prerogatives of a king, the presentation of the pillory at Bath, land measurement and justifications for war; an astrological table; a calendar; a table of weights and measures; a copy of Magna Carta; a forest charter of King Henry V; a letter from Henry V to the King of France (dated 13 August 1417); a royal genealogical table; a list of nobles who took part in the Norman conquest; a genealogy of Christ; extracts from the gospels; forms of words for a legal oath and a pledge of homage; list of terms for Common Pleas; some chronological notes; and a short Brut chronicle.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 122

07/04/2014 00:03

Linguistic Boundaries in Multilingual Miscellanies

123

motives must be presumed to lie behind the bilingual, English–Latin nature of a form of abjuration also in this manuscript. There are a further six items wholly in English: a versification of the Ten Commandments; a verse on the days of the week; an illustrated human figure, annotated with information about blood-letting; an oath of civic fidelity; a versified life of St Catherine; and a short account of the life of King Arthur, interpolated in the Latin chronicle. The public nature of this manuscript (underlined by the presence of a cavity in the upper binding in which apparatus for weighing gold were once stored) means that we should be thinking not of one individual but a diverse community of officials as its users, each of whom may have needed only certain parts of it for particular functions. Nevertheless, the use of languages in Longleat 55 is consistent and presents us with a clear linguistic hierarchy and set of attitudes to each language. Latin was without doubt the matrix language of the manuscript. French was used for some official documents, with English being used for formal purposes in aural contexts, alongside Latin and/or French. French was used where official texts had either originated solely in that language, or needed to be available in French as well as other languages so as to be usable in all circumstances. The English texts (which show some signs of having been abbreviated by the scribe) were probably not composed in that language for inclusion in Longleat 55, and since they were not for formal or legal use, there was no reason to translate or gloss them, as they were already perfectly intelligible. The one exception to this is the final oath of allegiance, but this is specifically worded in reference to the mayor of Bath, so that its purely local use may have made translation into official languages other than English unnecessary. The single romance in this manuscript, known simply as Arthur, is something of a curiosity.28 It appears only here, and may have been inserted into the chronicle to fill a perceived gap in the Latin history, much as happened in Bodley 264. It follows the usual arc of Arthurian history in a highly compressed form (it is only 642 lines long). Guddat-Figge considered it a romance, but its positioning here makes it clear that the compiler viewed it as history. This is clear also from the way it appears in the original table of contents, where it is listed not as a separate item, but merely mentioned as part of the description of the Latin chronicle: ‘Item Brutus abbreuiatus. cum gestis arthuri parua libro in Rythmo in eodem’ (‘Item: an abbreviated Brut-chronicle, with the exploits of Arthur in a little book in verse in the same [thing]’). Within Longleat 55 its natural companion might be considered the Life of St Catherine, the only other narrative in English in this manuscript, and also in verse. In presenting a survey such as this, we have had to omit some detail for the sake of the larger picture. Nevertheless, one of the things we hope to have shown 28 A new edition of the poem has recently appeared: see M. Pots and E. Kooper, ‘Arthur: A New Critical Edition of the Fifteenth-Century Middle English Verse Chronicle’, The Medieval Chronicle 7 (2011), 239–66. According to E. Kooper and J. Marvin, Arthur is probably based on the Anglo-Norman Prose Brut: ‘A Source for the Middle English Poem Arthur’, Arthuriana 22 (2012), 25–45.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 123

07/04/2014 00:03

124

Gareth Griffith & Ad Putter

is that English romances and French texts did not usually circulate together. The fame and prominence of a manuscript like Harley 2253, which does mix these texts freely and for no special reasons, may have given the impression that French and English texts mixed readily within the bindings of a manuscript book. But for Middle English romances Harley is an untypical case. True, other English/French romance miscellanies exist but the circumstances behind these are highly specific: scribal misapprehension in the case of Bodley 264; the wish to make Latin/French school texts accessible in English in the case of Simeon and Vernon; or the use of a discarded leaf of an old Anglo-Norman Brut manuscript as a fly-leaf in Harley 4733. Moreover, several of the romances we find alongside French matter are at the periphery of the genre. The Vernon romances are pious tales; Titus and Vespasian in Harley 4733 is a historical legend; and it is clear from Longleat 55, where Arthur is interpolated into a Latin Brut, that what we call ‘romance’ was once history. This is of course not to say that the audiences of the Middle English romances had no use for French when they were not reading for fun. In particular domains (for instance, law and letter writing), French remained important, at least for the privileged literate classes. Rather we would suggest that our sense of linguistic competence and preferences in the period needs to be more nuanced, taking account of situation, audience and (in the context of literature) genre. On the basis of the surviving manuscripts, it certainly seems the case that the Middle English romances  –  many of them translations from Anglo-Norman or Continental French originals  –  were not written to complement French matter but rather to take its place.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 124

07/04/2014 00:03

Eric Stanley

What Six Unalike Lyrics in MS Harley 2253 Have Alike in Manuscript Layout •••

T

he most celebrated early Middle English collection of lyrics is in London, British Library, MS Harley 2253. A recent bibliography by Susanna Fein shows how much has been written about these poems.1 A convenient edition is that by G. L. Brook (1968), whose view of what a lyric is made him exclude some longer poems and the political poems, all of which are available in the edition by K. Böddeker (1878); and the political poems are also in R. H. Robbins’ Historical Poems (1959).2 The manuscript has been compiled without thought of what genres of poem in length or subject matter should be included, or whether English or Anglo-Norman. In all just over forty poems may be considered English: short poems of various verse forms and metres. This paper is about the six short poems in this manuscript written in continuous lines as if prose, and I wonder why they are so written, a question to which I have found no truly convincing answer. The first in the manuscript, at fol. 63v, is Brook’s No. 5, given by him the title ‘The Lover’s Complaint’, NIMEV No. 4194, Wanley’s catalogue entry ‘30.3 Another Love-Song, written as Prose’; at fol. 66v, Brook’s No. 7, ‘The Fair Maid of Ribblesdale, NIMEV No. 2207, Wanley ‘34. An ingenious Description of the Authors Mistress; written as Prose’; at fol. 67r, Brook’s No. 9, ‘A wayle whyt ase whalles bon’, NIMEV No. 105, Wanley ‘36. Another [Love-Song] whose Author complains of his Mistresses Cruelty (written as Prose)’; at fol. 76r, Brook’s No. 18, ‘A Spring Song of the Passion’, NIMEV No. 3963, Wanley ‘53. A Ditty upon our Lords crucifixion; written as Prose’, the first stanza is fortuitously fitted into three manuscript lines leaving on him is al ylong to begin what is written continuously without regard to the poetic lineation, though that is well articulated by punctuation (also in British Library, Royal MS 2 F.viii); at fol. 76r, Brook’s No. 19, the macaronic ‘Dum Ludis Floribus’, NIMEV No. 694.5, 1 S. Fein, ‘The Lyrics in MS Harley 2253’, in A Manual of Writings in Middle English, 1050–1500, vol. 11, ed. P. G. Beidler (New Haven, CT, 2005), pp. 4168–4206, 4311–61. 2 The Harley Lyrics: The Middle English Lyrics of MS. Harley 2253, ed. G. L. Brook (Manchester, 1968); Altenglische Dichtungen des MS. Harl. 2253, ed. K. Böddeker (Berlin, 1878); Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries, ed. R. H. Robbins (New York, 1959). 3 H. Wanley et al., A Catalogue of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts … (London, 1759).

125

ME Texts in Transition.indb 125

07/04/2014 00:03

126

Eric Stanley

Wanley ‘55. A Song, partly Latin & partly French; as it seems, of an English man desiring the Fruition of his Parisian Mistress. ibid. [fol. 76] (still written as Prose)’; at fols. 114v–115r, Brook’s No. 30, ‘The Man in the Moon’, NIMEV No. 2066, Wanley ‘81. A Song upon the Man in the Moon, so still termed by the Vulgar: and represented as carrying a Bundle of Thorns on his Back; and also fitted with a Twy-byl’  –  no mention that it is written ‘as prose’. The layout of ‘A Spring Song of the Passion’ is of special interest, partly because there is a big hole in the leaf which I indicate here by the symbol ~. ¶ When ~~ y se blosmes springe / ant here foules song / a suete louelongynge / myn her ~~ te þourh out stong / al for a loue newe / þat is so suete & trewe þat gla ~~ dieþ al mi song / ich wot al myd iwisse / my ioie & eke my blisse / on him ~~ is al ylong / when y mi selue stonde  & wiþ myn eȝen seo / þur led fot   ~ ant honde  wiþ grete nayles þro / blody wes ys heued / on him nes nout bileued / þat wes of peynes freo / wel wel ohte myn herte / for his [When I see blossoms spring and hear bird-song, a sweet longing of love completely pierced me entirely for a new love that is so sweet and true that it fills all my singing with joy. I know wholly for certain that my joy and also my happiness is altogether dependent on him. || When I myself stand and see with my eyes (his) feet and hands pierced with three great nails, his head was bloody as is not at all (easily) credible for him who was generous to those who suffer pain, truly, truly my heart should for his (love smart and sigh and be sad).] In this opening, the first stanza and eight lines and two words of the second stanza, the distinction in use of virgule and punctus elevatus is not as regularly maintained as in some of the poems discussed by Solopova.4 In fact, Böddeker thinks what look like punctus elevati are also virgules in this poem written in durchgehenden Zeilen (‘in continuous lines’).5 Modern editors print the poem in ten-line stanzas, but more in line with the scribe (when not writing it out continuously as if prose), the stanzas in this poem should perhaps be set out thus: When y se blosmes springe / ant here foules song / a suete louelongynge / myn herte þourh out stong /    al for a loue newe /    þat is so suete & trewe      þat gladieþ al mi song /    ich wot al myd iwisse /    my ioie & eke my blisse /      on him is al ylong /

4 E. Solopova, ‘Layout, Punctuation, and Stanza Patterns in the English Verse’, in Studies in the Harley Manuscript, ed. S. Fein (Kalamazoo, MI, 2000), pp. 377–89. 5 Altenglische Dichtungen, ed. Böddeker, p. 197n.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 126

07/04/2014 00:03

Six Unalike Lyrics in Harley 2253

127

That would agree with the way Brook’s No. 22 ‘I syke when y singe’,6 is set out as verse in the manuscript (at fol. 80r, col. 1.); as Böddeker says, ‘Die Strophe ist genau übereinstimmend mit der von No. VII [“When y se blosmes springe”]’7 (‘the stanza form of this poem agrees entirely with that of “When y se blosmes springe”, thus its first stanza’): ¶ Isyke when ysinge for sorewe þat y se when y wiþ wypinge biholde vpon þe tre ant se ih’u þe suete is herte blod for lete for þe loue of me ys woundes waxen wete þei wepen stille & mete marie reweþ þe In a modern edition, with its word-spacing standardized, punctuation and capitalization added, the stanza should perhaps be set out thus: I syke when y singe for sorewe þat y se when y wiþ wypinge biholde vpon þe tre    ant se Ihesu þe suete    is herte blod forlete      for þe loue of me.    Ys woundes waxen wete,    þei wepen stille & mete:     Marie, reweþ þe!8 [I sigh as I sing because of the suffering that I see when I in my tears behold and see on the cross, oh sweet Jesu, losing his heart’s blood for love of me. His wounds have become wet, they weep unceasingly and fully: Mary, oh, feel the pity of it!] 6 NIMEV 1365, Wanley ‘62. Another [Ditty], upon our Saviors Crucifixion; concluding against mens swearing by his Cross’. 7 Altenglische Dichtungen, ed. Böddeker, p. 210. Böddeker goes on to say in his next sentence, ‘Ausserdem zeigt sich im Hinblick auf das Thema wie in Erwägung der einzelnen Gedanken und Schilderungen eine solche Uebereinstimmung zwischen beiden Liedern, dass wir nothwendig denselben Dichter für beide annehmen müssen.’ (‘Furthermore such a correspondence is shown in respect of the subject and in consideration of the several ideas and descriptions between the two songs that of necessity we must assume the same poet for both’). We may regard that conclusion as not unlikely, though not demonstrable; and, whether or not we accept Böddeker’s conclusion, we may think that even without this unity of authorship there is a strong case for setting out the two poems identically. 8 The version in Bodleian Library, MS Digby 2 (edited in English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century, ed. C. Brown (Oxford, 1932), pp. 122–4) has a different ending of the first stanza: ‘Marie, milde and seete, þu haf merci of me!’ (Mary, gentle and sweet, feel compassion for me!). In the Harley version the object of Mary’s compassion is not stated, it might embrace both her Son and the ‘I’ of the poem in his sorrow for Jesus.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 127

07/04/2014 00:03

128

Eric Stanley

These are examples of Harley Lyrics for which modern editors fail to take notice of manuscript pointing not consistently used by the scribe, or when not written in continuous lines as if prose, often with better punctuation. Solopova’s important paper will teach new editors how to do better. ‘Mon in þe mone’, at fols. 114v–115r, Brook’s No. 30, is in every way an amazing poem, the most sophisticated, that is, the most literary, in the manuscript. It is therefore amusing to read Böddeker’s tone-deaf assessment (Altenglische Dichtungen, p. 175): Der kunstlose Ausdruck und die naive Anschauung machen es unzweifelhaft, dass wir ein Spielmannslied vor uns haben. Auch finden wir Kontraktionen, die der gebildetere Dichter sich nicht gestattet (‘er’ für ‘euer’, ‘wher’ für ‘wheþer’, ‘del’ für ‘deuel’). [The artless expressiveness and the naive mental view leave us in no doubt that we are dealing with the song of a minstrel. Furthermore we find contractions which a better-educated poet would not have allowed himself: er for euer, wher for wheþer, del for deuel.]9 In Modern German some colloquial contractions, though unrelated to the educational attainment, might not have been used in writing by the better-educated sort until fairly recently, certainly not in printing academic works in Böddeker’s day, but there is no reason to think that such an educational class-distinction applies to Middle English contractions resulting in loss of intervocalic /n/, /ð/ or /v/, or to loss of vowels before vowels by elision or synalœphe, regardless of whether such loss is attributable to metrical exigence. Attributing artlessness and naivety to minstrelsy was doctrine, especially in German-speaking academic circles at the time of Böddeker, and defined and refined for early Middle English by Alois Brandl a generation or two later, though wandering minstrels are always hard to find.10 The way the scribe set out this poem in continuous lines as if prose is interesting. One might think of such a layout as the result of a need to save space. That cannot apply to fol. 115r, where there would have been plenty of space, if the lines shining 9 Böddeker’s footnotes (Altenglische Dichtungen, pp. 176–7) draw attention to two further contractions: oþe for on þe and þart for þou art. He may think that even the bettereducated sort might have allowed itself that descent into colloquialism in Middle English. Brook prints manuscript oþe as two words o þe, and therefore has no need to speak of a contraction. 10 A. Brandl, ‘Spielmannsverhältnisse in frühmittelenglischer Zeit’, Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 41 (1910), 873–92. Brandl mentions minstrel authorship on p. 888 (in connection with the Owl and the Nightingale  –  the Nightingale is to be understood as a representative of the minstrel class) for ‘Satire on the Consistory Courts (1307)’, fol. 70v (Historical Poems, ed. Robbins, no. 6; Altenglische Dichtungen, ed. Böddeker, pp. 109–12; NIMEV 2287; Wanley ‘40. A Song, I think, against the Lawyers’), and in no other of the Harley Lyrics. Brandl’s description of this political poem does not make it sound like the subject of a minstrel as I imagine him: das Zorngedicht eines verurteilten Liebessünders gegen diese Gerichtshöfe (‘the poem of a sinner convicted of a sexual offence raging against these [ecclesiastical] courts’).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 128

07/04/2014 00:03

Six Unalike Lyrics in Harley 2253

129

through (from the verso to the blank 70 mm of the recto) are a guide. The opening manuscript line of fol. 115r is highly decorated using much space to accommodate line 9 and the first six words of line 10, but no paraph marks it as the beginning of a poem. The layout shows that the scribe recognized stanzas and (though not regularly) verse lines.11 Since the scribe had the space and understood stanzaic units and verse lines it is puzzling that he did not set out the poem in stanzas and eight verse lines to the stanza. It is conceivable that because of the length of the line and the number of alliterative stresses, though alliteration is in many patterns, the scribe is following the ancient practice of writing in continuous lines as if prose. Another strongly alliterating poem is at fol. 106r, ‘God, þat al þis myhtes may’. 12 It is laid out as verse, with two verse lines as now understood forming one very long line with a punctus elevatus between the two lines. There is no alliterative connection between these two, until the last two lines of the poem (written as one line): that is:

In þy merci y me do  god þat al þis myhtes may/ In þy merci y me do, God, þat al þis myhtes may.

[In thy mercy I place myself, O God, who wields all these powers.] Lines 37–40 in that layout are, however, too long: bueþ tolde and vnbolde protrude into the margin: When we bueþ dempned after vr dede  a domesday when ryhtes bueþ tolde When we shule suen þy wounde blede  to speke þenne we bueþ vnbolde that is: When we bueþ dempned after vr dede a domesday when ryhtes bueþ tolde, when we shule suen þy wounde blede, to speke þenne we bueþ vnbolde. [When after our death we are judged on the Day of Judgment when a reckoning is given of righteous deeds, when we shall see thy wounds bleeding then we will be unbold to speak.] When the scribe was about to write ‘Mon in þe mone’ he may have recalled how just a few pages earlier he failed to assess correctly the space needed to fit in what in modern editions are lines 37–40, in his writing lines 19–20. He might not have wanted the page to look so unprofessional. And yet that is not likely, for elsewhere 11 At the beginning of each stanza there is a larger initial capital (for line 33 after ly/, the end of bayly with bay/ ending the preceding line). He uses slightly larger capitals at the beginning of verse lines within the stanza, but not consistently. 12 NIMEV 968; Harley Lyrics, ed. Brook, no. 29; Wanley ‘73. A Ditty to Jesus Christ; wherein the Poet bewaileth his proness to Sin, &c. ’.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 129

07/04/2014 00:03

Eric Stanley

130

that seems not to have worried him. Thus when he is dealing with the tail-rhyme pattern, for example at fol. 62v in Brook No. 2 ‘The Three Foes of Man’, NIMEV No. 2166, Wanley ‘27. A godly song, chiming upon the same Letter, as practised afterwards in other Poems’, and Wanley lays out the first stanza as the manuscript has it (except that the scribe was able to accommodate the whole line, whereas Wanley had to carry the last word of each line on to the next line): ¶ Middelerd formon wes mad / vnmihti aren is meste mede ⎫ þis hedy haþ on honde yhad / þat heuene hem is hest to hede Þah he ben derne ⎬ done  Icherde a blisse budel vs bad / þe dreri domes dai to drede of sunful sauhting sone be sad / þat derne doþ þis derne dede ⎭ þis wrakeful werkes vnder wede / in soule soteleþ sone. that is, in the usual edited layout: Middelerd for mon wes mad    vnmihti aren is meste mede; þis hedy haþ on honde yhad    þat heuene hem is hest to hede. Icherde a blisse budel vs bad    þe dreri domes dai to drede; of sunful sauhting sone be sad    þat derne doþ þis derne dede.      Þah he ben derne done,    þis wrakeful werkes vnder wede     in soule soteleþ sone. [The earth was made for man yet its greatest reward is slight; the Blessed One has brought it about that heaven is to be heeded by them13 most highly. I heard that a messenger of bliss commanded us to fear the cruel Day of Judgment; they will soon be sated of being at peace with sin who secretly commit these secret deeds. Though they are done in secret, these wicked fleshly deeds will soon become clearly revealed.] Another alliterating tail-rhyme poem is laid out similarly in the manuscript: at fols. 73v–74v ‘The Flemish Insurrection (1302)’;14 at fol. 128r Brook’s nos. 31 (described by Wanley as ‘A pious Ditty’) and 32, both beginning ‘Lutel wot hit any mon’, 15 and both with an abridged tail-rhyme in the margin because the preceding line is too long for the whole to go within the right-hand bounding line: 13 At line 4 hem (dative plural) appears to refer to mon (uninflected singular) in line 1, resulting in false concord. Cf. T. F. Mustanoja, A Middle English Syntax I, Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki 23 (Helsinki, 1960), pp. 219–21. 14 NIMEV 1894; so titled in Historical Poems, ed. Robbins, no. 3. Wanley ‘48. A Ballad against the French, whose Officers extorting too much from the Inhabitants of Bruges in Flanders, were murthered there … 15 NIMEV 1922/2 and 1921; Harley Lyrics, ed. Brook, no. 31, ‘The Way of Christ’s Love’ and no. 32, ‘The Way of Woman’s Love’; Wanley ‘92. A pious Ditty upon the Love of our Savior,

ME Texts in Transition.indb 130

07/04/2014 00:03

Six Unalike Lyrics in Harley 2253

131

First, the pious ditty: ant crien euer to ih’u crist þyn ore   } Euer & oo niht & day etc. [and ever cry to Jesus, ‘Christ, thy mercy!’ Ever and always, night and day, etc.] Secondly, the pious ditty lewdly turned, on the same page, which may remind us  –  though it will not convince reason, it may direct thought  –  of John Browning’s words ‘So true is that Proverbe: Where God hath His Church, the Divell hath his chappell’:16 Who17 is him þt loueþ þe loue þt he ne may ner ywynne  } Euer & oo &c/ [Woe to him who loves the love whom he can never win. Ever and always etc.]

in suffering the Death on the Cross for lost Mankind’ and ‘93. The same [as the preceding religious poem on the same page] lewdly turned to the Love of a Woman. 16 Browning, Concerning Publike Prayer (STC 3919, printed 1636), 19 = sig. D2. That it is a proverb is shown by Tilley’s Dictionary (G259, but he does not list Browning’s use). Carleton Brown’s conclusion (English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century, pp. 235–7, notes on the two poems) is unpersuasive in suggesting that the religious poems are adaptations of the secular poem. It persuaded Brook (Harley Lyrics, pp. 87–8) in his note on his no. 31, which repeats from Brown the parallels in Cambridge, Caius College, MS 512, fol. 260v, and London, British Library, MS Egerton 613, fol. 2v. The Caius poem is only five lines long (thus A Register of Middle English Religious & Didactic Verse, ed. C. Brown, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1916, 1920), vol. 2, p. 206): i.e. Brook’s lines 1+2 and 3+4 are treated in the manuscript as two long lines with caesural rhyming, leaves out the tail-rhymed last two lines of the stanza and goes on to the first two lines, laid out as a single line, of the second stanza. My reason for doubting Brown’s conclusion is that the rhymes of the religious Harley version are true (on -ounde, then -ohte), and so are the Caius rhymes, as far as the poem goes; whereas the Egerton version rhymes, first, bistodet / fondet, then longe / underfonge and then (like Brook no. 31) true þoute / broþte. Harley’s impious version rhymes stonde / fonde / longe / wronge then þohte / ofte. I am aware of the fact that the rhyme is a common licence, and that is an occasional licence; cf. E. G. Stanley, ‘Rhymes in English Medieval Verse: from Old English to Middle English’, in Medieval English Studies Presented to George Kane, ed. E. D. Kennedy, R. Waldron, and J. S. Wittig (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 19–54 (pp. 46–8). I cannot believe that Brown’s pious adapter of the impious poem is likely to have been able to convert licensed assonances into true rhymes. 17 Most editors emend MS Who to Wo, but Brown (English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century, pp. 163, 304) retains Who, and in his glossary he rightly gives for this line who in his entry wo, sb., ‘woe’. Cf.  Altenglische Dichtungen, ed. Böddeker, p. 13, ‘w entspricht hinsichtlich seines lautlichen Werthes wahrscheinlich dem “w” der heutigen englischen Sprache.  –  Desgleichen “wh”, für welches übrigens nicht selten einfaches “w” eintritt’ [‘w probably corresponds, as regards its phonetic value, to /w/ of the English language of today, the place of which, incidentally, is not infrequently taken by simple ]. For the development, see E. J. Dobson, English Pronunciation, 1500–1700, 2nd edn, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1968), p. 414, ‘loss of initial ’ (perhaps better described as voicing of / / > /w/ [pace Dobson]), occurred in southern and south-eastern dialects from the twelfth century onwards. For very early examples of > see Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS. E, ed.  S. Irvine (Cambridge, 2004), cxxxviii, 4; for /w/ is an inverted spelling. w

ME Texts in Transition.indb 131

07/04/2014 00:03

132

Eric Stanley

In King Horn18 lines 917–18 are written in the margin, and that perhaps signifies no more than that the scribe had omitted them, and then put them in where he found space, just a correction which he got in as best he could.19 Ker is not helpful on why the scribe set out some lyrics in continuous lines as if prose.20 In many ways, Solopova’s discussion of ‘Layout’, is a great advance, but she too does not really explain why in this manuscript six unalike lyrics came to be set out so unpoetically, at least to modern eyes. Ker attributes to the scribe a greater lack of system than might be assumed for a professional scribe: ‘When the scribe had drawn the vertical bounder to define his left-hand margin, his procedure with a verse text was probably ad hoc. ’ That does well for his decision whether to write the poem in one wide single column or in two narrower columns, and it is true that he usually writes prose in narrow columns, Anglo-Norman, Latin, or English. Very occasionally he writes Anglo-Norman verse continuously in narrow columns; thus the poem ‘Quant voy la revenue | d’yver’. 21 As set out by Wright, mainly in short rhyming lines, with an occasion short line that does not rhyme, as Ker says ‘a rhyme scheme which I find difficult and perhaps the scribe found it difficult too’. 22 Some of the short lines appear to be long lines with caesural rhyming on the same rhyme as at the end of the line, and if the poem had been set out in long lines with some lines lacking a caesural rhyme it might have been better, but even then it is difficult to determine how long each stanza is, and it seems that the poem, like Maximion,23 did not have stanzas of equal length. Saving space, fitting verse into columns, such considerations may have played a part. That is the most likely explanation of the scribal treatment of the 275 lines of Maximion. All the lines are short, and the stanzas are of varying length. The scribe fitted the poem into three columns (fols. 82r–83r) instead of the usual two columns for poems of short lines. That he was not very good at estimating how much space was needed is shown by the fact that he started a new page for the last stanza of six lines and then the two lines of the final prayer on a further line, making the six lines look like two very 18 King Horn, A Middle-English Romance, ed. J. Hall (Oxford, 1901), p. 52, col. 1. 19 Though not relevant to the present paper, this marginal entry, however, is of interest for the textual study of the poem. Hall does not comment on it in his edition of King Horn (other than noting that the lines are ‘On the inner margin MS.’). This part of the text in MS Harley 2253 differs greatly from the other two versions, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, and Cambridge University Library, MS Gg.iv.27(2). Hall (pp. xi–xii) draws attention to the differences, expansion in the Harley manuscript and loss of two lines in Gg.iv.27(2). G. H. McKnight explains how the marginal addition might have come about: ‘The line was first left out by the scribe, and then written in the margin of the MS.’ King Horn, Floriz and Blauncheflur, The Assumption of our Lady, ed. G. H. McKnight, EETS o.s. 14 (1901), p. 42. 20 Facsimile of British Museum MS. Harley 2253, ed. N. R. Ker, EETS o.s. 255 (1965), pp. xvii– xviii, ‘Disposition of the texts’. 21 Specimens of Lyric Poetry, Composed in England in the Reign of Edward the First, ed. T. Wright, Percy Society 4 (1842), pp. 13–18. 22 Facsimile of British Museum MS. Harley 2253, ed. Ker, p. xvii. 23 See Altenglische Dichtungen, ed. Böddeker, pp. 245–53.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 132

07/04/2014 00:03

Six Unalike Lyrics in Harley 2253

133

long lines, split up by virgules into three, and a final rhyming pair written on the last line: And so bueþ oþer mo / þat lyueden nou & þo / ne reccheþ of weole ne wo / Deþ is þt ymunne / Me seggeþ þt hit is sunne / god brynge vs out of þo / Amen par charite / ant so mote hit be / [And so many others there are who lived then and now without caring about wellbeing and sorrow. I bear in mind that that is death: it is said that it is sin. May God bring us out of that. Amen, for the love of God, and so may it be.] It must be difficult to estimate the space needed for a text of 275 lines, and other scribes do as badly; for example, the scribes of Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86 are severely criticized by the editors of the facsimile for not getting it right.24 It is not easy to explain plausibly why the scribe of Harley 2253 wrote six unalike English lyrics in continuous lines as if prose. Brook’s Nos 18 and 19 are not alliterative, but the page on which they are written has a hole, and that may have influenced the scribe. All the others are alliterative. That distribution is not significant, and we cannot say that alliterative verse rather than non-alliterative is written as if prose. I regret that I have not been able to explain why these six poems have been written in continuous lines as if prose. No wonder that neither Neil Ker nor now Elizabeth Solopova has been willing to give reasons. The attempt to find an explanation has brought to light some points of interest in these poems.

24 J. Tschann and M. B. Parkes, in their Facsimile of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86, EETS SS 16 (1996).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 133

07/04/2014 00:03

Susan Powell

Evidence for the Licensing of Books from Arundel to Cromwell •••

T

his paper, originally delivered at the Early Book Society conference in honour of Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya in York in 2011, arose out of the 2009 Oxford conference ‘After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England’. In preparing my own contribution,1 I spent some time looking at Arundel’s Constitutions in relation to the restrictions on the circulation of books and looking for evidence that these restrictions were enforced in the 120 years of their existence.2 There is ample evidence for their being enforced in relation to reading, and owning translations of, scripture, but very little evidence that they were enforced in terms of the actual approval, or licensing, of texts. It is the evidence for the licensing of books throughout the fifteenth and into the mid-sixteenth century which will be the focus of this essay.

The Context The Constitutions of Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury (1397, 1399–1414), were issued in the convocation of November 1407 and repeated in that of January 1409. They came to prominence more recently in 1995, when Nicholas Watson wrote his much discussed and disputed Speculum article on ‘Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England’.3 The sixth and seventh constitutions relate 1 S. Powell, ‘After Arundel but before Luther: The First Half-Century of Print’, in After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. V. Gillespie and K. Ghosh, Medieval Church Studies 21 (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 523–41. I am indebted to Fiona Somerset for her helpful comments after the delivery of both the Oxford and York papers. Subsequent to both, I have been further enlightened by the publication of her excellent account of ‘Censorship’, in The Production of Books in England, 1350–1500, ed. A. Gillespie and D. Wakelin (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 239–58. For a lifetime of outstanding work on Lollard texts, all scholars must be indebted to Anne Hudson’s many writings, in particular, her seminal The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1983). 2 For Arundel and the stages towards the Constitutions, see J. Catto, ‘Shaping the Mixed Life: Thomas Arundel’s Reformation’, in Image, Text and Church, 1380–1600: Essays for Margaret Aston, ed. L. Clark, M. Jurkowski and C. Richmond (Toronto, 2009), pp. 94–108. 3 N. Watson, ‘Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409’, Speculum

134

ME Texts in Transition.indb 134

07/04/2014 00:03

Evidence for the Licensing of Books

135

specifically to books: the sixth deals with the textbooks used in the Universities and the seventh with translations of scripture. The sixth (‘Quia insuper nova via’) describes how universities must deal with books of Wycliffe or since Wycliffe  –  they are to be examined and passed to the stationers to copy, check for consistency, and sell or pass on, with a master copy in the University chest.4 In this essay I deal with the seventh constitution, the only new addition to what Jeremy Catto has seen as no more than ‘republishing the prohibition of unlicensed preachers and the measures to control unorthodox opinion in Oxford which had been enacted in [the Blackfriars Council of] 1382’.5 The constitution (‘Ne quis texta S. scripturae transferat in linguam Anglicanum’) is as follows: Periculosa quoque res est, testante beato Jeronymo, textum sacrae scripturae de uno in aliud idioma transferre, eo quod in ipsis translationibus non de facili idem in omnibus sensus retinetur, prout idem beatus Jeronymus, etsi inspiratus fuisset, se in hoc saepius fatetur errasse; statuimus igitur et ordinamus, ut nemo deinceps aliquem textum sacrae scripturae auctoritate sua in linguam Anglicanam, vel aliam transferat, per viam libri, libelli, aut tractatus, nec legatur aliquis hujusmodi liber, libellus, aut tractatus jam noviter tempore dicti Johannis Wycliff, sive citra, compositus, aut inposterum componendus, in parte vel in toto, publice, vel occulte, sub majoris excommunicationis poena, quousque per loci dioecesanum, seu si res exegerit, per concilium provinciale ipsa translatio fuerit approbata: qui contra fecerit, ut fautor haeresis et erroris similiter puniatur.6 As translated in 1534, this reads: It is a very jeopardous thing (witnessing the same Saint Jerome) to translate the text of Holy Scripture from one tongue into another, because the same sense doth not lightly abide throughout in the translations, as the self same Saint Jerome (although he were inspired) knowledgeth himself therin oftentime to have erred. Therefore we must enact and ordain that none hereafter translate upon his own authority any manner text of Holy Scripture into the English tongue or any other tongue in manner of a work, book, or treatise. And that no such work, book, or treatise be read openly or privily, in part or in whole, which was made lately in the time of the said John Wycliffe, or since, or hereafter shall be made, under the pain of the great excommunication, until such time as that translation be approved by the

70 (1995), 822–64. For a volume devoted to critiques of the article, concluding with Watson’s response, see English Language Notes 44 (2006); for a recent evaluation by Watson, see ‘“A clerke schulde have it of kinde for to kepe counsell”’, in After Arundel, ed. Gillespie and Ghosh, pp. 563–89. 4 Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. D. Wilkins, 3 vols. (London, 1737), vol. 3, pp. 314–19 (p. 317). 5 Catto, ‘Shaping the Mixed Life’, p. 96. 6 Concilia, ed. Wilkins, vol. 3, p. 317.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 135

07/04/2014 00:03

136

Susan Powell

Diocesan of that place, or if the thing so require, by the Council Provincial. And he that doth contrary to this shall be likewise punished as the favourer of heresy and error.7 There are two strictures here: no translations of scripture are to be made in any format whatsoever, and nothing such is to be read which post-dates the period prior to Wycliffe. There is one exception  –  unless approval is obtained from the diocesan bishop or the Council of the Province (of Canterbury or York), and one punishment  –  excommunication. The focus in both the sixth and seventh constitutions is on John Wycliffe, and these are the only two constitutions (of thirteen) which specifically name the late Oxford academic and heretic (or hereticmaker). It is his books, and those inspired by his books, that are the target of the prohibitions. To avert their dissemination, no English translation of ‘any manner text of Holy Scripture’ from Wycliffe’s time or later can be written or read without permission. Arundel’s Constitutions were not the first response to Wycliffe. Since the Blackfriars Council of May 1382 there had been various attempts by the church to prevent the circulation of his and other heretical works. Possibly the earliest example of scrutiny of a text occurs as early as 1384. Anne Hudson has discussed the colophon prefixed to three manuscripts (out of a total of forty-five, one owned by Professor Takamiya) of the Speculum Vitae, a verse treatment of the Paternoster and other septenaries, loosely based on Frère Laurent’s Somme le roi.8 This colophon records that the text was scrutinized by the chancellor of the University of Cambridge in 1384 and approved.9 In itself it might be seen to be the earliest evidence for a licence to read and copy, pre-Arundel and just post-Blackfriars. However, the colophon is not in the earliest manuscript (c. 1375) but in three dating from the first quarter of the fifteenth century. Of itself this does not dismiss it as a fabrication, and Ralph Hanna has pointed out that two of these three manuscripts come from the Ely area, which might well support the statement that the text had been examined at Cambridge,10 but unfortunately, in the climate of suspicion 7 Lyndwood’s Provinciale: The Text of the Canons therein Contained, Reprinted from the Translation made in 1534, ed. J. V. Bullard and H. Chalmer Bell (London, 1929), pp. 122–3. The 1534 translation (the first) is that printed by Robert Redman as Constitutions prouincialles (STC 17113). 8 For the manuscripts, see Speculum Vitae: A Reading Edition, ed. R. Hanna, 2 vols., EETS o.s. 331–2 (2008), vol. 1, pp. xiv–lx. The three manuscripts in question are Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 446, Cambridge University Library Ii.1.36, and Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College 160/81. 9 Hudson, Premature Reformation, p. 416, citing H. E. Allen, ‘The Speculum Vitae: Addendum’, PMLA 32 (1917), 133–62 (the colophon is printed on p. 148). 10 Speculum Vitae, ed. Hanna, vol. 1, p. lxiii. For the evidence that a Glossed Gospels (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 425 (Summary Catalogue no. 2325)) was ‘examinatum per Hugonem D’, c. 1408, see A. I. Doyle, ‘A Survey of the Origins and Circulation of Theological Writings in English in the 14th, 15th, and early 16th Centuries with Special Consideration of the Part of the Clergy therein’, 2 vols. (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1954), vol. 2, n. 10.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 136

07/04/2014 00:03

Evidence for the Licensing of Books

137

created around Lollardy, one cannot take a writer’s word for such statements, as Margaret Aston, Anne Hudson and others have demonstrated.

Two Licences? The two regularly cited examples of licences occur soon after Arundel’s Constitutions in works of the elite orders of Carthusians and Bridgettines, who appear to have been quick to affirm their obedience to Arundel (and indeed unique in doing so). Nicholas Love, prior of the Carthusian house of Mount Grace in north Yorkshire, offered up for examination his Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ.11 This was an English translation and adaptation of what was then thought to be Bonaventure’s Meditationes Vitae Christi. It consists of daily meditations on the scriptural accounts of Christ’s life from his Incarnation to Pentecost, Monday through to Sunday.12 Its scriptural translations therefore place it within the purlieus of Arundel’s strictures ‘that none hereafter translate upon his own authority any manner text of Holy Scripture into the English tongue or any other tongue in manner of a work, book, or treatise’ unless it be approved by the bishop or archbishop. At some time between the Oxford synod of 1407 and the Lambeth Constitutions of 1409 (and more likely in the latter year), Love seems to have submitted the Mirror to Arundel for approval: Memorandum that around the year of our Lord 1410 the original copy of this book, that is to say, the Mirror of the Life of Christ in English, was presented at London by its compiler N to the most reverent father and master in Christ, Sir Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, to inspect and duly examine before it was freely communicated. Who after his inspection over some days, handing back that book to its (above-)mentioned author, in a statement made in his own voice commended and approved it himself, and, moreover, by his metropolitan authority as a matter of universal concern decreed and commanded that it should be communicated publicly to the edification of the faithful and the confutation of heretics or Lollards.13 Like the colophon to the Speculum Vitae, this Latin memo is not original to the text. It is lacking in the earliest copies of all versions, and, although it occurs in the most authoritative witness of The Mirror, A1 (Cambridge University Library, MS Add. 6578), the base-text for Sargent’s editions of the work, it is not integral 11 For details below see Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Critical Edition Based on Cambridge University Library Additional MSS 6578 and 6686, ed. M. G. Sargent (New York, 1992), esp. pp. xliv–vi, drawing on the acute observations of A. I. Doyle, ‘Reflections on Some Manuscripts of Nicholas Love’s Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ’, Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 14 (1983), 82–93 (p. 83). 12 For two editions, both using as base-text Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 6578, see Nicholas Love’s Mirror, ed. Sargent, and The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Full Critical Edition, ed. M. G. Sargent (Exeter, 2005). 13 My own translation; for the Latin text, see below.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 137

07/04/2014 00:03

138

Susan Powell

but was added later, probably in the 1420s;14 in some manuscripts it is at the end, but in others (like A1) it has greater prominence and is placed first.15 It is in this position that it appears, with only a few minor variants and with a woodcut of the Carthusian presenting the book to the archbishop, in de Worde’s printed edition of 1494: Memorandum quod circa annum domini millesimum quadringentesimum decimum, originalis copia huius libri scilicet Speculi Vite Christi in Anglicis, presentabatur Londoniis per compilatorem eiusdem N reuerendissimo in Christo patri & domino, domino Thome Arundell, Cantuarie archiepiscopo, ad inspiciendum & debite examinandum antequam fuerat libere communicata. Qui post inspeccionem eiusdem per dies aliquot, retradens ipsum librum memorato eiusdem auctori, proprie vocis oraculo ipsum in singulis commendauit & approbauit, necnon & auctoritate sua metropolitica vt pote catholicum puplice communicandum fore decreuit & mandauit ad fidelium edificacionem & hereticorum siue lollardorum confutacionem. (STC 3261, sig. a4r) Sadly, in a volume in honour of Professor Takamiya, none of the four Takamiya manuscripts of The Mirror contains the Memorandum.16 It is usual to consider the Memorandum a very prompt (perhaps pre-emptive) response to Arundel’s Constitutions, although in practice its presentation to Arundel might be sufficiently explained by the circumstances of 1409–10, when he became a member of the confraternity of Mount Grace (1409) and Mount Grace itself was incorporated formally into the Carthusian order (1410). It would appear to be less a reaction to Arundel than a timely coincidence.17 It is not a licence, but rather a record that the scriptural translations have been approved, and approved by no less a person than the archbishop who issued a constitution against scriptural translation. So valuable a record would of course be incorporated into other manuscripts, and from such a manuscript into the printed text. 14 See Nicholas Love’s Mirror, ed. Sargent, plate 1 (p. cxliv). 15 I am very grateful to Michael Sargent for his correspondence on this matter. At present twenty-one of the forty largely complete manuscripts have the Memorandum, at the head of the manuscript in the alpha form of the text (eleven manuscripts with it, seven without, three acephalous), and at the end of the text in the beta and gamma forms (five beta manuscripts with it, nine without, three atelous; five gamma manuscripts with it, four without, three atelous). 16 For the Takamiya manuscripts, see T. Takamiya, ‘A Handlist of Western Manuscripts in the Takamiya Collection’, in The Medieval Book: Glosses from Friends & Colleagues of Christopher de Hamel, ed. J. H. Marrow, R. A. Linenthal and W. Noel (Houten, 2010), pp. 421–40 (MSS 4, 8, 20, 63). 17 For a discussion of the Memorandum and of the important Takamiya MS 8, see M. G. Sargent, ‘The Holland-Takamiya Manuscript of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ’, in The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya, ed. T. Matsuda, R. A. Linenthal and J. Scahill (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 135–47 (pp. 137–9).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 138

07/04/2014 00:03

Evidence for the Licensing of Books

139

The other well-known example of a response to Arundel’s Constitutions, from the Bridgettine monastery at Syon in Middlesex, also affirms the legitimation of its scriptural translations. In 1409 Mount Grace was very new (founded in 1397) but Syon was non-existent (not founded until 1415). At some point, probably in the 1420s, not long after its foundation, someone, perhaps Thomas Fishbourne, the first confessor general (1420–8), wrote a comprehensive and detailed ‘Companion’ to the offices of the Bridgettine sisters, which he called ‘oure Ladyes myroure’.18 There is just one late-fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century manuscript, extant in two parts (Aberdeen University Library, MS 134, and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C 941).19 The author’s purpose was straightforward: ‘But forasmoche as many of you, though ye can synge and rede, yet ye can not se what the meanynge therof ys: therefore … I haue drawen youre legende and all youre seruyce into Englyshe’.20 The sisters’ offices were specific and unusual  –  the twenty-one lessons were dictated to St Bridget by an angel (the ‘Sermo angelicus’), while the rest of the office (the ‘Cantus sororum’) was fashioned by the saint’s mentor, Peter Olafsson.21 This Mirror provides a full commentary on the context and performance of the offices, but in addition it translates and explicates the Latin, which is mostly scriptural or patristic. The author echoes Arundel’s concern, as quoted above, that ‘[i]t is a very jeopardous thing … to translate the text of Holy Scripture from one tongue into another, because the same sense doth not lightly abide throughout in the translations’: Yt is not lyght for euery man to drawe eny longe thyng from latyn into oure Englyshe tongue. For there ys many wordes in Latyn that we haue no propre englysshe accordynge therto. And then suche wordes muste be turnyd as the sentence may beste be vnderstondyd. And therfore though I laboure to kepe bothe the wordes and the sentence in this boke as farre as oure languge wyll

18 The Myroure of Oure Ladye, ed. J. H. Blunt, EETS e.s. 19 (1873), p. 1. Blunt tentatively attributed the work to Thomas Gascoigne, Chancellor of Oxford University 1442–5 and friend of Syon. This, like the other early suggestion of Richard Whytforde, Syon brother and author, is discredited today, and opinion is divided between Fishbourne and the Syon deacon Clement Maydeston (d. September 1456). Ann Hutchison, who is re-editing the text and to whom I am grateful for much helpful advice, prefers a date soon after the enclosure of the order at Syon (21 April 1420) and so most likely Fishbourne. For an overview of the text, see A. Hutchison, ‘Devotional Reading in the Monastery and in the late Medieval Household’, in De Cella in Seculum: Religious and Secular Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England, ed. M. G. Sargent (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 215–27 (pp. 219–23). 19 Blunt’s edition is of the printed text (STC 17542, Fawkes, 1530), which is quoted here. 20 Myroure of Oure Ladye, ed. Blunt, p. 2. 21 The Bridgettine Breviary of Syon Abbey from the MS. with English Rubrics F.4.II at Magdalene College Cambridge, ed. A. J. Collins, Henry Bradshaw Society 96 (Worcester, 1969). Each day of the week was devoted to a different perspective of the Virgin (Sunday to Tuesday on the Trinity, angels, and Adam, all with foreknowledge of the incarnation; Wednesday to Saturday on her conception and birth, the incarnation, her sorrows especially at Christ’s passion, and her life from the passion to her assumption).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 139

07/04/2014 00:03

140

Susan Powell

well assente: yet some tyme I folowe the sentence and not the wordes as the mater asketh.22 To translate scripture into English transgressed Arundel’s seventh constitution, invoking the penalty of excommunication, as the compiler observes, making a point of affirming that he has received licence from the diocesan bishop. This affirmation, as in the case of The Mirror of the Blessed Life, remained in place when The Myroure of oure Ladye was printed in 1530 (STC 17542, Fawkes): And for as moche as yt is forboden vnder payne of cursynge, that no man shulde haue ne drawe eny texte of holy scrypture into Englysshe wythout lycense of the bysshop dyocesan, and in dyuerse places of youre seruyce [i.e. the sisters’ service] ar suche textes of holy scrypture, therfore I asked and haue lysence of oure bysshop to drawe suche thinges into Englysshe to your gostly comforte and profyt. so that bothe ourer consyence in the drawynge and youres in the hauynge. may be the more sewre and clere. …23 This is different from the Love memo  –  it is in English, it is integral to the text, it is written by the author himself, and it uses the specific word ‘licence’ (although perhaps as much in the sense ‘permission’ as in our modern understanding of a licence to publish, as Somerset has noted).24 It is also different in that it explains why permission has been asked of the bishop: so that both the author and reader may rest assured that they can read the numerous vernacular scriptural extracts without fear of transgressing Arundel’s Constitutions. Arundel is not mentioned here, as he is in the Love memorandum (for obvious reasons  –  that was presented to Arundel personally, whereas this has been submitted to the diocesan, as Arundel required), but it is clear that it is his seventh constitution which is referred to. Neither Mirror is a full translation of scripture, only of extracts. Arundel’s seventh constitution was directed principally against the Wycliffite Bible, but the phrase ‘aliquem textum sacrae scripturae’ (no one should translate any text of holy scripture)25 shows that any translation is forbidden. One might expect the Carthusians and Bridgettines, those orders closest to both Church and State, to comply promptly and to record their compliance. It has even been suggested that 22 This discussion continues at some length (Myroure of Oure Ladye, ed. Blunt, pp. 7–8). 23 Ibid., p. 71. The text in Aberdeen University Library MS 134 differs substantively only in the substitution of ‘holy wryte’ for the second occurrence of ‘holy scrypture’. 24 Somerset, ‘Censorship’, p. 249. The semantics of ‘licence’ will be relevant to the conclusions of this paper. OED cites its first recorded meaning as ‘liberty (to do something), leave, permission’ (OED 1a, 1362, Piers Plowman); the definition ‘a formal, usually a printed or written permission from a constituted authority to do something, e.g. to marry, to print or publish a book, to preach, to carry on some trade, etc.; a permit’ is not recorded until 1433 (2a, Rolls of Parliament). In relation to the present discussion, the following citation is relevant: ‘They must first get a Licence in writing before they may vse them [the Scriptures]’ (Authorised Version of the Bible, 1611). 25 My italics. This was first remarked on by A. Hudson, ‘Lollardy: The English Heresy?’, in Lollards and their Books, ed. Hudson (London, 2003), pp. 141–63 (pp. 148–9).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 140

07/04/2014 00:03

Evidence for the Licensing of Books

141

Love wrote to Arundel’s command, and Michael Sargent has demonstrated the additions made to the original work in order to promote the anti-Lollard agenda.26 Works older than Wycliffe’s time were of course excluded from restrictions, and falsifying the date was not unusual. It even occurs in the case of a Later Version Wycliffite Bible (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 2), where the date has been altered from 1408 to 1308 by the erasure of a fourth Roman numeral ‘c’ (100).27 Other ploys involved erasure of ascriptions of authorship and inscriptions of ownership.28

Licence to Read a Wycliffite Bible? When one considers the target of Arundel’s Constitutions, the Wycliffite Bible, one should perhaps not expect owners or copyists to offer them up for scrutiny (although perfectly orthodox churchmen and laymen owned copies which may or may not have been licensed).29 This partly explains why so many copies are extant  –  approximately 253  –  and also, of course, why it was never printed. However, one of the extant manuscripts of a Later Version New Testament (Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS Eng. 77) does contain evidence of licensing.30 A cancelled note on a flyleaf (fol. 267v) records that the owner’s mother had bought it after it had been ‘ouerseyne and redd’ by Doctors of Divinity Thomas Ebborall and William Ive.31 Since these were successive masters of Whittington College, London (1444– 64, 1464–70), whereas the manuscript is likely to be earlier, the purchase must have been at second hand.32 Both doctors would appear to be entirely orthodox, and indeed Eborall was Reginald Pecock’s opponent in his heresy trial. This would appear to make their approval of a Wycliffite New Testament strange, and Somerset suggests that they did not read the book (although it does say ‘ouerseyne and redde’, one need not perhaps take that, or even the note itself, at face-value). All Hallows, 26 Nicholas Watson (‘A clerke schulde have it of kinde’, pp. 852–3) is willing to entertain this suggestion of Jonathan Hughes. For the anti-Lollard additions, see Nicholas Love’s Mirror, ed. Sargent, pp. xliv–lviii. 27 Somerset, ‘Censorship’, p. 255, citing M. Dove, The First English Bible: The Text and Context of the Wycliffite Versions (Cambridge, 2007), p. 257. 28 A. Hudson, ‘The Survival of Wyclif ’s Works in England and Bohemia’, in her Studies in the Transmission of Wyclif ’s Writings (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 1–43 (item xvi; pp. 3–5). 29 One such is the abbot of St Albans, 1451–65, John Whethamstede: Hudson, Premature Reformation, p. 418. Others are Eborall and Ive (discussed below). 30 First noticed by M. Deansely, The Lollard Bible: and Other Medieval Biblical Versions (Cambridge, 1920), p. 336. For discussion, see R. Hanna, ‘English Biblical Texts before Lollardy and their Fate’, in Lollards and their Influence in Late Medieval England, ed. F. Somerset, J. C. Havens and D. G. Pitard (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 141–53 (pp. 150–1). See too Somerset, ‘Censorship’, pp. 249–50. 31 The note is transcribed, insofar as it is legible, by N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, vol. 3 (Oxford, 1983), p. 404. A facsimile appears in Somerset, ‘Censorship’, p. 256 fig. 11.1. 32 Ker dates the manuscript ‘s.xiv/xv’ and the note ‘s.xv/xvi1’.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 141

07/04/2014 00:03

142

Susan Powell

Honey Lane, where Eborall became rector after he left Whittington College, was a notorious centre for Lutheranism after 1520, but it seems unlikely in this case that it inclined to unorthodoxy already in the fifteenth century.33 What is more likely is that the clergy were more sympathetic than we might suppose towards an English Bible in the right hands (perhaps the anonymous son’s hands).34 This may be confirmed by a comment in The Myroure of oure Ladye, to which we may return. In his first prologue (of two) the author tells the sisters that he has only translated a few of the psalms: ‘for ye may haue them of Rycharde hampoules drawynge, and out of Englysshe bibles if ye haue lysence therto’.35 He has not translated them because the sisters can take them from Richard Rolle’s English Psalter (his commentaries on the 150 Psalms) or from English Bibles, if they have ‘licence’ (which here would seem to mean permission). Rolle died in 1349 and so his work was safe. Indeed, as Rosamund Allen has said, ‘For nearly two hundred years Rolle’s Psalter was the only authorized translation of the Bible into English; it did not need diocesan permission for its use.’ 36 It seems that the author of The Myroure, who knew the Syon sisters well, thought it so likely that they would have Rolle’s Psalter or the Wycliffite Bible that he saved himself the effort of translating the relevant psalms. There is no evidence that the sisters received permission (and certainly no licences as such), but some, at least, of them clearly did.

33 For Honey Lane, see S. Powell, ‘The Secular Clergy’, in Companion to the Early Printed Book in Britain, ed. V. Gillespie and S. Powell (Cambridge, 2014). On the London milieu in the fifteenth century, see S. Lindenbaum, ‘London after Arundel: Learned Rectors and the Strategies of Orthodox Reform’, in After Arundel, ed. Gillespie and Ghosh, pp. 187–208, and A. Hudson, ‘Wyclif Texts in Fifteenth-century London’, in Studies in the Transmission of Wyclif ’s Writings (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 1–18 (item xv). 34 It is Hanna who makes much of the role of ‘the Mother’, as he calls her (pp. 150–1). The text, insofar as it can be read, does not warrant this: she was the purchaser, but not necessarily the reader. Both Eborall and Ive themselves possessed copies of Wycliffe’s works: Hudson, ‘Wyclif Texts’, pp. 4, 8. Indeed, Hudson has demonstrated that ‘there is absolutely no sign that Arundel’s Constitutions removed his writings from the ordinary processes of circulation and bequest’ (p. 14), and that they were owned by the universities, monasteries, friaries, and even Syon Abbey (‘The Survival of Wyclif ’s Works’, pp. 8–19). On Syon, see V. Gillespie, ‘The Mole in the Vineyard: Wyclif at Syon in the Fifteenth Century’, in Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale: Essays in Honour of Anne Hudson, ed. H. Barr and A. M. Hutchison (Turnhout, 2005), pp. 131–62. 35 Myroure of Oure Ladye, ed. Blunt, p. 3. Only partially quoted, and not fully explicated, by Somerset (‘Censorship’, p. 249), who quotes from ‘a better text’ in H. Hargreaves, ‘The Mirror of Our Lady: Aberdeen University Library MS 134’, Aberdeen University Review 42.4 (no. 140) (autumn 1968), 267–80. Hargreaves interestingly suggests (pp. 277–80) that a passage not in the manuscript but in the printed edition indicates a more restrictive attitude to the use of the Myroure as an English service-book: comparison with the printed version suggests that the original text ‘is even more liberal in its attitude to the vernacular scriptures than has hitherto been realized’ (p. 280). 36 R. S. Allen, Richard Rolle: The English Writings (Mahwah, NJ, 1988), p. 66.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 142

07/04/2014 00:03

Evidence for the Licensing of Books

143

A Culture of Awareness of Arundel? If there is little extant evidence for the submission of scriptural translations for scrutiny or applications for permission to read them, there is more evidence for a general culture of awareness that a vernacular religious work of any sort might be subject to scrutiny and that a book containing ‘plures errores et hereses quamplures’ (many errors and copious heresies) would render its reader (and author, if known) open to examination.37 Indeed, a concern that books might be the vehicle for unorthodox opinion and that they should therefore be approved, that is, read and corrected by men of authority and learning (as required by Arundel’s sixth constitution), pervades late-medieval religious texts. Even Chaucer appears to refer ironically to the process in directing Troilus and Criseyde to ‘moral Gower’ and ‘philosophical Strode’ (V.1855–7) ‘to vouchen sauf, ther neede is, to correcte, / Of youre benignites and zeles goode’ (1858–9). One can also find this desire, or pretended desire, for orthodoxy in his ‘Retractions’ at the end of The Canterbury Tales, where he blames his errors on ‘defaute of myn unkonnynge, and nat to my wyl’. Ignorance and the desire for correction may be dismissed as modesty topoi, but they were very useful means of deflecting blame (in which Chaucer was a master). Even the Bridgettine author of The Myroure of oure Lady sees fit to use the topos, if such it is: But for that I knowe myn owne feoblenes, as well in connyng as in verteu, therefore I will neyther seke defaulte in other, ne maynteyne myne owne, but lowely I submyt me and all oure wrytynges and other werkes to the correccyon of oure mother Holy Chyrche and of the prelates and fathers therof, and all that are wyser and can fele better.38 Less florid examples occur in Caxton and de Worde editions, always in relation to translation into English. In his prologue to The Royal Book (STC 21429, 1485–6) Caxton notes that ‘alwaye what that is wryton is under correctyon of lerned men, humbly besechyng them to correcte and amende where as is ony defaute, and so doyng they shal doo a merytory dede’. 39 Similar phraseology is used in his Golden Legend (STC 24873–4, 20.11.1483): ‘Besechyng alle theym that shall see or here it redde to pardone me where I have erryd or made fawte, whyche yf ony be is of ygnoraunce and ageyn my wylle; and submytte it hooly of suche as can and may to 37 As in the case to which this quotation refers, the confiscation in 1430 of a copy of Dives and Pauper from Robert Berd, a chaplain of Bury St Edmunds: Hudson, Premature Reformation, pp. 417–18. 38 Myroure of Oure Ladye, ed. Blunt, p. 8. 39 N. F. Blake, Caxton’s Own Prose (London, 1973), no. 93(a), lines 62–5 (p. 135). Caxton’s prologues and epilogues/colophons are most conveniently read in Blake’s edition, although it should be noted that spelling is normalized and punctuation modernized. The datings of Paul Needham are followed for Caxton’s publications: The Printer & the Pardoner (Washington, 1986), appendix D. For details of British Library incunables mentioned in this paper, see Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century Now in the British Library, part 11: England, ed. L. Hellinga (’t Goy-Houten, 2007).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 143

07/04/2014 00:03

144

Susan Powell

correcte it, humbly bysechyng them so to doo. And in so doyng they shal deserve a synguler lawde and meryte’. 40 In another translation, the Doctrinal of Sapience (STC 21431, after 7.5.1489), the assurance is given that it was made ‘by grete counseyl and deliberacion and is approuved, as it is sayd in the table’. 41 The ‘unperfight’ translator from the French who speaks at the beginning and end of Wynkyn de Worde’s Treatise of Love (STC 24234, 1492–3) humbly beseeches ‘the lernyd reders wyth pacyens to correcte it where they fynde nede’ (sig. a1r).42 The ‘deuoute Student of the vnyuersytee of Cambrydge’ responsible for Wynkyn de Worde’s Medytac[i] ons of Saynt Bernarde (STC 1916, 9 March 1496, sig. e5v) is motivated by the concerns of a scholar and churchman. Inaccurate versions of his translation have been circulating in manuscript: ‘hastely after the translacion herof: before it was duely correcte & ordred: it was by deuoute persones transumpte & copied I wote not how ofte / ayenst my wyll’. Now, on 5 September 1495, he has submitted it to the printer ‘more dylygently corrected & ordred’ because of a concern for the dangers inherent in unauthorized texts: ‘for to auoyde & eschewe the Ieoperdy & hurte þat maye come by that þat was not duely corrected’ (sigs. a1v–2r). He then describes in detail the differences between the authorized and unauthorized versions so that the reader can detect the false versions.43 Commonly associated with such concerns for accuracy and requests for correction is a defence of the writer’s use of the vernacular for religious works. For the devout student of the Medytac[i]ons it is ‘for very fauour & charytable loue’ that he has translated the Latin into English for a lay audience (‘all suche persones as haue not vnderstondyng in lateyn’) (sig. e5v). Similarly, the translator from the French of the Treatise of Love has had it printed because he ‘thoughte it necessary to al deuoute peple to rede or to here it redde’ (sig. h6r). Caxton’s reason for translating the Somme le roi as The Royal Book is ‘that this sayd werk may prouffyte the redars, & that is the special cause that it is made fore’.44 In another translation, the Doctrinal of Sapience, it is made explicit that the anticipated readership consists of ‘symple prestes that vnderstonde not the scriptures’ who may through it help their ‘symple peple’: the emphasis on the simple extends to six references in all.45 This is the supreme, and perhaps only, justification for translation into English. It is as if translation per se has become tainted with the fear of heresy, and, just as Caxton stresses his duty of service to the simple in 1489, so did Nicholas Love in 40 Blake, Caxton’s Own Prose, no. 47(a), lines 56–61 (p. 90). 41 Ibid., no. 34(a), lines 5–6 (p. 77). 42 The datings of Lotte Hellinga are followed for de Worde’s incunables: ‘Establishing the Chronology of Wynkyn de Worde’s Early Work’, in Incunabula and their Readers: Printing, Selling and Using Books in the Fifteenth Century, ed. K. Jensen (London, 2003), pp. 13–30 (pp. 27–30). 43 Caxton’s concern for a correct text was not entirely limited to religious works: for his comments on the first and second editions of The Canterbury Tales, see Blake, Caxton’s Own Prose, no. 11, lines 31–60 (p. 62). 44 Ibid., no. 93(a), lines 67–9 (pp. 135–6). 45 Ibid., no. 34(a), lines 3, 4, 7, 14, 19, 37 (pp. 77–8).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 144

07/04/2014 00:03

Evidence for the Licensing of Books

145

1409, whose proheme also referred to this readership six times: ‘hem þat bene of symple vndirstondyng’ (twice), ‘symple creatures’, ‘symple soules’ (twice) and ‘a symple soule’. 46 The age of a work was, however, probably the best defence against criticism, as in the case of Rolle’s Psalter (which was genuinely pre-Wycliffe). The assertion that a book was old circumvented Arundel’s restrictions on books of Wycliffe’s era and later (as well as conveying authority), and Caxton seems to have found it convenient to mention this in his translations. In his epilogue to The Royal Book, he points out (twice) that it was originally made for Philip of France (in 1279, and so long before Wycliffe).47 In the colophon to the Doctrinal of Sapience (STC 21431, after 7.5.1489), the work is said to date from 1388 (dubiously before the time of Wycliffe) but with the pedigree of authorship (and foreign-ness) of Guy de Roye, archbishop of Sens (sig. L8v).48 In the post-Luther era, Lollard books not uncommonly surfaced in print with the assertion that they were pre-Wycliffe. That they had been printed abroad was another statement intended to shield the (English) printer from prosecution.49 The prayer and complaynt of the Ploweman vnto Christ: written nat longe after the yere of our Lorde M & thre hundred (STC 20036.5, Thomas Godfrey, 1532) may well have been Lollard in date, despite the assertion of its title and text,50 and was printed anonymously in London, perhaps in 1531 (the date of ‘To the reder’, sig. a3v), a year after its printing in Antwerp.51 Of thirty prohibited books named at a sermon preached at Paul’s Cross on 3 December 1531, most were by Tyndale and the like, but two dated back to the Lollard period, A proper dyaloge, bytwene a gentillman and an husbandman (STC 1462.3) and The examinacion of master William Thorpe preste accused of heresye … (STC 24045). Both were printed in Antwerp 1529–30 and were the forerunners of several Lollard works (long read secretly in manuscript) which were resurrected after 1520, such as The dore of holy scripture, attributed to Purvey (printed John Gough 1540, STC 25587.5), The Lanterne of Lyght (Redman ?1535, STC 15225) and Wyclyffes Wycket (printed perhaps by John Day 1546, STC 25590). In the case of A proper dyaloge, the age, and so authority, of the text is asserted vigorously, as is the fact that it is pre-Wycliffe:52 46 Nicholas Love’s Mirror, ed. Sargent, p. 10, lines 6, 14, 22–3, 23, 28, 36. 47 Blake, Caxton’s Own Prose, no. 93(b), lines 1–3, 20–1 (p. 136). 48 Not in Blake. It is not now attributed to Guy de Roye. 49 See M. Aston, ‘Lollardy and the Reformation: Survival or Revival?’, in M. Aston, Lollards and Reformers (London, 1984), pp. 219–42, and Hudson, Premature Reformation, pp. 483–94 (‘Heretical Books in the Early Sixteenth Century’) within the important chapter 10, ‘The Re-emergence of Reform’ (pp. 446–507). 50 ‘written nat longe after the yere of our lorde a M. and CCC.’ (sig. a3v). 51 STC assigns it to Thomas Godfrey, 1532. 52 I am grateful for the following quotation to Harriet Philips (University of Cambridge), who at the York conference spoke interestingly of the ‘act of recovery’ and ‘rhetoric of antiquity’ of these resurrected texts (‘“Hauynge no more left than a remenant”: Lollard Manuscripts in Print, 1529–31’).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 145

07/04/2014 00:03

146

Susan Powell [Husbondman] I can shewe you a worcke by and by Against that poynte makinge obiection Which of warantyse I dare be bolde That it is above an hundred yere olde As the englishe selfe dothe testyifye.  … [Gentillman] Is it so olde as thou doest here expresse Reprouynge their pompous lordlynes So is it than no newe found heresy. (STC 1462.3, B3v)

Arundel’s Failure? It may now be suggested that Arundel’s attempts to prevent the translation of scripture into English (and to prohibit the reading of Wycliffite texts in general) were unsuccessful in terms of encouraging a culture of seeking licence to read and write.53 Those authors who had only the best interests of a Christian audience at heart, or could feasibly profess as much, either secured permission or, more likely, asserted their pious intentions in their texts;54 likewise their pious readers. Those who were more polemical, political or heterodox worked underground. Only after Luther did the situation explode, and only after Arundel’s system had imploded. However, what did come out of Arundel’s seventh constitution was a climate of awareness. It may be that this is more evident in printed texts because of a greater awareness of Arundel’s Constitutions in the age of print. They were familiar to clergy through William Lyndwode’s Constitutions prouincialles, his 1433 digest of, and commentary on, the decrees enacted in the English provincial council under fourteen Archbishops of Canterbury.55 These were printed by Theodoric Rood 53 In terms of criminalizing the reading and dissemination of scriptural translation, they were successful. 54 Any discussion of the case of Reginald Pecock would be too lengthy here, but he is the outstanding example of the ‘success’ of Arundel’s Constitutions, in that he and his vernacular writings were suppressed, despite his subscribing to the seventh constitution (he considered the scriptures could be read in English but only ‘with licence of her gouernour the bischop’) and indeed being himself a bishop: Hudson, Premature Reformation, pp. 440–3 (p. 441). For Pecock, see W. Scase, ‘Pecock, Reginald (b. c. 1392, d. in or after 1459)’, ODNB (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/21749, accessed 15 Aug. 2012), and W. Scase, Reginald Pecock (Brookfield, VT, 1996). 55 Lyndwode, bishop of St David’s from 1442 to his death in 1446, compiled the work at the request of Henry Chichele, the successor to Arundel, whose role was ‘to shape and develop the distinctive features of English spirituality in the first half of the fifteenth century’: V. Gillespie, ‘Chichele’s Church: Vernacular Theology in England after Thomas Arundel’, in After Arundel, ed. Gillespie and Ghosh, pp. 3–42 (p. 13); see too p. 26.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 146

07/04/2014 00:03

Evidence for the Licensing of Books

147

in Oxford in 1483 (STC 17102), after which they went through several editions by different printers (STC 17102–12) and were translated into English and printed by Robert Redman in 1534 (STC 17113). Rood, who was from Cologne, printed only Latin, and his short-lived industry could not compete with the Latin trade from abroad, despite his partnership with the Oxford bookseller Thomas Hunt and their connections with Magdalen College School and the university.56 The relationship of his text to Continental editions is clear in the fact that all the English editions are octavos with only the text, whereas Rood’s folio edition, like the Continental folio editions STC 17107, 17109 and 17111, has both text and commentary.57 Lyndwode’s commentary on the seventh constitution is designed to remove any element of doubt in the minds of its readers as to what the constitution actually means. Since the constitution itself was carefully worded, Lyndwode reiterates rather than interprets. First, individual words and phrases are glossed to explain its general impetus and expand individual lexemes,58 after which further glosses provide fuller explanations of the intention behind the use of specific words and phrases (such as liber, libellus and textus). It is noted that noviter (of books ‘jam noviter tempore dicti Johannis Wycliff, sive citra, compositus’, i.e. made lately in the time of the said John Wycliffe, or since) indicates that ‘libros libellos vel tractatus in anglicis vel alio ydeomate prius translatos de textu scripture legere non est prohibitum’, i.e. it is not prohibited to read books, pamphlets or tracts previously translated from the text of scripture into English or another idiom. The reference to approval of a new translation being needed of the diocesan bishop (‘dioecesanum’) is glossed: ‘Non igitur potest hoc fieri per inferiorem nisi de ipsius mandato’, i.e. therefore this cannot be done by an inferior unless by his [the bishop’s] mandate.59 The reason for the translation needing approval is glossed against ‘Approbata’ (approved): because ‘frequenter accidit cum veris falsa & erronea admiscere’, i.e. it frequently happens that the false and erroneous are mixed with the true.60

Two Licences of the 1510s? If the fifteenth century appears to yield no evidence of a licence in the material sense, there are, however, two early-sixteenth-century texts which include material in a form close to what we would expect of a ‘licence’ today and which do seem to 56 For Rood, see British Museum Catalogue, vol. 11, pp. 236–44 (Constitutiones provinciales pp. 239–41). 57 See the STC entry for STC 17102. 58 For example, ‘Sacre Scripture: id est biblie que continet vetus & nouum testamentum’ (STC 17102, sig. L7b, col. 1). 59 This may raise doubts over the approval by Eborall and Ive discussed above. However, Eborall was commissioned to inspect other books for heresy (Hudson, ‘Wyclif Texts’, p. 4), and in the Privy Council cases of 1543 and later (see n. 107 below), inspection was carried out by Doctors of Divinity, e.g. Acts of the Privy Council of England: New Series [1542–1631], ed. J. R. Dasent et al., 46 vols. (London, 1890–1964), vol. 1, pp. 126, 128. 60 For these quotations, see STC 17102, sig. L7b, cols. 1–2.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 147

07/04/2014 00:03

148

Susan Powell

be the result of an application to the bishop or his deputy. They occur in colophons of works printed by Wynkyn de Worde, William Melton’s Sermo Exhortatorius (STC 17806, ?1510), approved by John Colet, Dean of St Paul’s, and Simon Appulby’s The Fruyte of Redempcion (STC 22557, 1514), approved by Richard Fitzjames, Bishop of London. The first has been discussed by John Gleason and the second by Arthur W. Reed.61 The full title of Melton’s work, Sermo Exhortatorius cancellarij Eborum hijs qui ad sacros ordines petunt promoueri (an exhortatory sermon of the chancellor of York to those who seek to be promoted to holy orders), is self-explanatory: it is a Latin sermon to ordinands delivered by William Melton, who was Chancellor of York from 1496 till his death in 1528. Melton warns against entering the priesthood under pressure and undertaking ordination lightly, and he highlights the playboy vices indulged in by ignorant and lazy priests (‘rudium et stolidorum clericorum’). The sermon ends on the recto of the eighth folio, and continues on the verso: ‘It seems perfectly useful that this sermon should be dispersed through the industry of the printing trade throughout the province [of York] in every grammar school’, particularly during the weeks before the period of ordination.62 Below this is the licence, if it is such, of John Colet, Dean of St Paul’s (indeed, it may be that the whole of this page can be attributed to Colet): ‘Hunc sermonem legi diligenter et lectum approbaui: et decreui imprimi posse sine periculo. Ioannes Colet’ (I have read this sermon diligently and I have approved it once read: and I have decreed that it can be printed without danger. John Colet). The wording is comparable to that of The Mirror of the Blessed Life: Colet has approved (approbaui) and decreed (decreui), as did Arundel (approbauit, decreuit). Moreover, Colet appears to refer to anti-Lollard precautions, perhaps even to Arundel’s seventh constitution, in saying that it can be printed sine periculo (without danger). Gleason assumes that Melton submitted this text to Colet who approved it in much the same way that Arundel might be assumed to have approved Nicholas Love’s Mirror, but queries why ‘a programme of censorship that clearly existed, however briefly, around 1510 has left, so far as is known, no other trace than in the colophon of Melton’s Sermo’. 63 However, although this looks and reads like a ‘proper’ licence, it may be that the circumstances of its addition to Melton’s text were more informal. Melton and Colet knew each other well, both had been in the same circles at Cambridge in the 1480s, Colet held prebends in York Minster where Melton was Chancellor, and Colet was passionately interested in both the reform of the clergy and 61 J. B. Gleason, ‘The Earliest Evidence for Ecclesiastical Censorship of Printed Books in England’, The Library, 6th series 4 (1982), 135–41; A. W. Reed, ‘The Regulation of the Book Trade before the Proclamation of 1538’, Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 15 (1920 for 1917–19), 157–84. 62 My translations throughout. ‘Perquam vtile perfecto videtur vt per industriam artis Impressorie sermo iste dispergatur per prouinciam in omni ludo litterario … legatur, inculcetur & quasi omni modo declaretur et disputetur per quindenam aut mensem ante tempora singula celebrandorum ordinum ab ecclesia’ (sig. A8v). 63 Gleason, ‘Earliest Evidence for Ecclesiastical Censorship’, p. 141.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 148

07/04/2014 00:03

Evidence for the Licensing of Books

149

education.64 The date of the Sermo is perhaps 1510;65 if so, it coincided with the final stages of Colet’s founding of St Paul’s School and anticipated his notorious anticlerical sermon delivered to convocation on 6 February 1512.66 The combination of friendship, York connections, and interest in clerical reform and education is sufficient, therefore, to explain Colet’s approbation at the end of the Sermo. It is not, anyway, a sermon which required approval in the terms of Arundel’s Constitutions, since it is in Latin and involves no scripture nor scriptural translation. Nor was Colet the diocesan bishop to whom Melton would have applied for licence, even if his work had been subject to it. Colet may, however, have acted for his bishop, Richard FitzJames, in his campaign against Lollardy, including matters of censorship.67 The latter was notoriously fierce in his pursuit of heresy in London,68 and it is he who provides the second ‘licence’ as the colophon to Simon Appulby’s Fruyte of Redempcion.69 The Fruyte would appear to be just the sort of work which required licence: it is not dissimilar to The Mirror of the Blessed Life (but much shorter), both in language (English), format, and its use of scriptural translation. It consists of thirty-one chapters which take the reader, with visual aids in the form of woodcuts, through the medium of ‘prayers and full deuoute contemplacyons’, from Christ’s Circumcision to his Ascension, ending at Pentecost. The ‘licence’ is recorded in English at the end of the text: Here endeth the treatyse called the fruyte of redempcyon whiche deuoute treatyse I Rycharde vnworthy bysshop of London haue studyously radde & ouerseen and the same approue as moche as in me is to be radde of the true seruauntes of swete Ihesu to theyr grete consolacyon and ghostly conforte and to the merytes of the deuoute fader compounder of the same.70

64 For Melton, see R. Rex, ‘Melton, William (d. 1528)’, ODNB (http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/18539, accessed 15 Aug. 2012); for his circle at Cambridge, see R. Rex, The Theology of John Fisher (Cambridge, 1991), esp. pp. 23–5. For Colet, see J. B. Trapp, ‘Colet, John (1467–1519)’, ODNB (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5898, accessed 15 Aug. 2012), and J. B. Gleason, John Colet (Berkeley, CA, 1989). Rex resolves Gleason’s uncertainty (‘Earliest Evidence for Ecclesiastical Censorship’, p. 140) as to whether Melton and Colet knew each other. 65 On the date, see Gleason, ‘Earliest Evidence for Ecclesiastical Censorship’, pp. 138–9. 66 Printed in Latin by Pynson, probably in 1512 (STC 5545), but not in English (STC 5550, Berthelet, 1530?) until Colet was taken up as a proto-Protestant, on which see Trapp, ‘Colet, John’, pp. 5, 13–14 . 67 Trapp, ‘Colet, John’, p. 4. 68 S. Thompson, ‘FitzJames, Richard (d. 1522)’, ODNB (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/9612, accessed 15 Aug. 2012). 69 For Appulby see M. C. Erler, ‘A London Anchorite, Simon Appulby: his Fruyte of redempcyon and its Milieu’, Viator 29 (1998), 227–39, on which is dependent J. P. D. Cooper, ‘Appulby, Simon (d. 1537)’, ODNB (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/25573, accessed 15 Aug. 2012). 70 STC 22557, sig. D4r.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 149

07/04/2014 00:03

150

Susan Powell

Simon Appulby was otherwise known as Simon the Anker, in that he was the last anchorite attached to the church of All Hallows, London Wall, from 1513 until his death in 1537. Lest we think of him as marginalized, it is plain that, like many other anchorites, he was the frequent recipient of visitors bearing gifts, in his case (presumably because of his central location) so many gifts that he could afford to spend a great deal on the aggrandisement of All Hallows, both in life and after death. He was therefore a respected and even prominent Londoner, whose church was located inside the northern perimeter of the city wall. Mary Erler has written on him and identified the exact source of his text, as well as the fact that about a quarter of it is Bridgettine material.71 Indeed, the Syon brother William Bonde also recommended the book in a separate publication.72 FitzJames’ endorsement has the ‘licence’ word approue (cf. Colet approbaui, Love approbauit), the work has been ‘studyously radde & ouerseen’ (cf. Colet legi diligenter, Love post inspeccionem), and it is commended to true servants of Christ ‘to theyr grete consolacyon and ghostly conforte’ (cf. Love ad fidelium edificacionem). However, the unmistakable modesty topos (‘vnworthy bysshop of London’) and his fulsome commendation of Simon (‘the deuoute fader compounder’) are inappropriate for a formal licence (which would be in Latin anyway) and more what one would today expect in dust-jacket or title-page promotions of a book. Since Colet and his bishop, FitzJames, are the only ones known to have written these endorsements at this time, one might take the matter further and consider the relationship between the two men. Colet (and Melton) were early Cambridge humanists committed to the reform of the Church through education; FitzJames (and Appulby) were arch-conservatives. The animosity of Colet and Fitzjames was recorded by Tyndale, who said that the bishop ‘wold haue made the old deane Colet of paules an heretyke for translatynge the Pater noster in englyshe had not the byshshope of canterbury holpe the deane’. 73 Colet certainly translated the Lord’s Prayer into English, and it is significant that it was not printed until 1532, a dozen years after Colet’s early death.74 However, the heresy case, according to Erasmus, 71 Erler, ‘A London Anchorite’, pp. 229–31. The source is a condensed version of the Meditationes de vita et beneficiis Jesu Christi, sive, Gratiarum actiones, as published in the Antidotarius Anime (1489). 72 Erler, ‘A London Anchorite’, p. 231, but not in the first (1526) edition of The Pilgrymage of Perfeccyon, as Erler states (n. 20 ‘STC 3277, fol. ccli’), but in de Worde’s 1531 edition (STC 3278, fol. ccli). The fact that Bonde refers to the work as ‘lately imprinted’ shows that he wrote the Pilgrymage soon after the Fruyte (1514), although it was not printed till later, presumably as part of what seems to have been an active campaign of publication to counter the Lutheran threat. On this campaign, see S. Powell, ‘Syon Abbey as a Centre for Text Production’, in Saint Birgitta, Syon and Vadstena: Papers from a Symposium in Stockholm 4–6 October 2007, ed. C. Gejrot, S. Risberg and M. Akestam, Konferenser 73 (Stockholm, 2010), pp. 50–67. 73 Quoted by A. Hope, ‘John Colet and his Reformation Reputation’, in Image, Text and Church, pp. 214–38 (p. 227), on which I am here dependent. 74 See STC 15992 for details of editions containing the work. The earliest (1532) is in a Latin primer printed in Paris (STC 15978). I have not traced the English publication of the

ME Texts in Transition.indb 150

07/04/2014 00:03

Evidence for the Licensing of Books

151

related to Colet’s sermons, for which he was reported to Archbishop Warham of Canterbury on three points of heresy, and in which FitzJames was said to be the instigator.75 One speculates whether FitzJames’ (deliberately informal?) support of an ultra-orthodox work such as the Fruyte might have been a reaction to Colet’s presumption in appending a formal, if not pompous, Latin approval to his friend’s Sermo (for which there was anyway no need of a licence).

Before Luther With Appulby’s Fruyte we have come full circle, back to The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. Both offer the devout but unLatined a spiritual journey through the life of Christ;76 both consist of prayers, meditations and illustrations;77 both contain translations from scripture; both proved popular with their target audience;78 both were associated with the elite religious orders  –  the Carthusians and the Bridgettines; both were used in an ‘episcopal initiative’; both have episcopal endorsement.79 A century after the appearance of The Mirror, the situation with regard to licensing works appears no different: approval may be given, a work may even be promoted by the Church, but no official licences are clearly in evidence. In each case there is a problem: in Love’s Mirror the ‘licence’ is a later Memorandum; in the Syon Myroure it is a comment in the text; in the Wycliffite New Testament it is again a later note (and of approval by two London rectors, not the diocesan bishop); in the Sermo it is formal but there is no need of a licence; in the Fruyte it is oddly informal. So, where are the licences? It would appear that it was a mistake to expect material evidence of an official licensing system. As in these cases, texts were sometimes submitted for approval to someone in authority, read or at least perused, and permission given, but perhaps (as with the Syon sisters) merely endorsed by word of mouth or in a written form which has not survived.80 Other texts were same date cited by Hope from Tyndale (p. 228). Only the Latin version of his sermon to Convocation was printed during Colet’s lifetime. 75 Discussed in Hope, ‘John Colet’, pp. 221–9. Trapp (‘Colet, John’, p. 5) notes Colet’s comment in a letter to Erasmus (October 1514) that he was having problems with his bishop. It may well be that the bishop who, according to Colet, criticized its humanist curriculum was FitzJames (ibid., p. 8, who does not suggest this). 76 Appulby ‘hath compyled this mater in englysshe for your ghostly conforte that vnderstande no latyn’ (sig. D4r). 77 On the illustrations, see Erler, ‘A London Anchorite’, p. 229, n. 9. (Caxton’s first edition of the Mirror uses twenty-five woodcuts.) 78 The Fruyte went through five editions (STC 22557–9, 22559.5, 22560). 79 Erler also links the two works (‘A London Anchorite’, pp. 228–9). The quotation is hers (p. 228). For support for her suggestion of an episcopal initiative, see Powell, ‘After Arundel’, pp. 537–8. 80 Gleason compares the known licensing of plays in the Elizabethan period with the fact that only one single licence is found printed at the end of a play (‘Earliest Evidence for Ecclesiastical Censorship’, p. 141). The companies did, however, preserve the licences,

ME Texts in Transition.indb 151

07/04/2014 00:03

152

Susan Powell

not submitted for approval, and concealment of their author was possible at a time when most texts were anonymous.81 As has already been suggested, authors, printers and readers were anyway probably cautious about what they might write, print or read in a climate of awareness of heresy. Fiona Somerset has written on ‘self-censorship’, and I myself have pointed out the narrow orthodoxy of printed religious works even before the Lutheran threat, particularly the fact that only one vernacular sermon collection, the Festial, was printed, again and again, before the Reformation.82 This collection contains only one sermon based on the Gospel of the day (and another on the Epistle), and scriptural translation is otherwise reduced to single verses (usually without their Latin original).83 Sermons would naturally contain scriptural material. There is, I believe, no evidence of permission being sought, or given, for a sermon or sermon collection, whether through self-censorship or tacit/informal/formal regulation (as may have been the case for the Festial). However, material outside the sermon category exists which contains scriptural translation without evidence of permission. A comparable text to Love’s, also by a Carthusian (who was aware of Love’s Mirror), is the Speculum Devotorum, which provides meditation and explication on each of the thirty-three years of Christ’s life.84 It contains 130 scriptural translations, some lengthy and only twenty preceded by the original whereas Anne Hudson has found no entry at all in any bishop’s register about such permissions (Premature Reformation, p. 444). 81 Somerset (‘Censorship’, p. 253) suggests this, but thinks it ‘difficult to provide firm evidence for this motivation’. That it was a genuine concern of the Church is, however, clear from the injunction of the Syon brother Richard Whytforde in his Werke for Housholders: ‘rede nat those bokes that go forth without named auctours. For (doubtles) many of them that seme very deuout and good werkes: ben full of heresyes’ (sig. x4r) (second item in STC 25414, 1537). Whytforde also warns his readers that a publisher might substitute a heretical work for an orthodox one: in a collection of his own works one has been omitted and ‘in stede of my werke, is an other heretyke or heretycall werke set in place / and the whole boke solde for my werke’ (sig. x3v). 82 Somerset, ‘Censorship’, pp. 250–1. At p. 257 she refers to my own argument that ‘the list of English books printed has the appearance of being carefully constrained’. The conference paper to which she refers (n. 91) is now published (Powell, ‘After Arundel’). 83 I have suggested that the Gospel and Epistle sermons are not original to Mirk’s intentions and that an original collection of such sermons may have been suppressed after Arundel: John Mirk’s Festial, ed. S. Powell, 2 vols., EETS o.s. 334–5 (Oxford, 2009, 2011), vol. 1, pp. xxix–xxx. For the Gospel translation, see sermon 54/18–29. For scriptural translations in sermons and the suggestion of a relaxation of Arundel’s strictures for preachable material, see H. Spencer, English Preaching in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford, 1993), pp. 174–7. 84 It has been edited by P. J. Patterson, ‘Myrror to Devout People’ (unpubl. PhD thesis, University of Notre Dame IN, 2006), available online at http://etd.nd.edu/ETD-db/ theses/available/etd-11262006–175450/unrestricted/PattersonPJ112006.pdf (accessed 5 Sept. 2012). For a discussion of the text, see V. Gillespie, ‘The Haunted Text: Reflections in The Mirrour to Deuote Peple’, in The Text in the Community: Essays on Medieval Works, Manuscripts, Authors and Readers, ed. J. Mann and M. Nolan (Notre Dame, IN, 2006), pp. 129–72.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 152

07/04/2014 00:03

Evidence for the Licensing of Books

153

Latin.85 There is no evidence that it was approved. In one extant manuscript (c. 1470) it is addressed by the author (a Carthusian of Sheen?) to a single female reader (a Bridgettine sister of Syon?); in another (c. 1430) it has been adapted for a female lay reader. On the available evidence the circulation was narrow, and the text may not have been felt to require permission. Only these two manuscripts survive, and it was never printed. However, as we have seen, the absence of permission is no evidence one way or another. Permission may have been sought and given, or (unlikely) not given, or not sought. My own opinion would tend to the first hypothesis.

After Luther Arundel’s Constitutions remained in place until 1529. (Indeed, they were invoked for the burning of Tyndale’s New Testament in 1526.)86 For nearly two decades (since the late 1510s), the diocese of London had tried to handle the problems arising from the explosion of Lutheran material reaching England.87 Tackling Luther had been enjoined on the Catholic world by Pope Leo X’s Bull (‘Exsurge, Domine’) of July 1520, which required the local bishop to burn, in the presence of both clergy and people, any of Luther’s books printed in any language whatsoever: ‘Indeed immediately after the publication of this letter these works, wherever they may be, shall be sought out carefully by the ordinaries [diocesan bishops] and others mentioned above [ecclesiastics and regulars], and under each and every one of the above penalties [excommunication] shall be burned publicly and solemnly in the presence of the clerics and people.’88 The suppression of heresy had always been the province of the Church; only those convicted were passed for punishment to the secular arm. The Church responded promptly to the Pope’s demand for the burning of heretical books  –  where they were found, they were burnt at Paul’s Cross and their authors and readers forced to recant or be burnt themselves. However, the prevention of the printing and import of heresy was much more difficult. Arundel’s Constitutions had been designed for an age when heresy had first to be copied laboriously by hand, books were expensive to obtain and limited to 85 Patterson, ‘Myrror to Devout People’, p. 39. 86 L. Hellinga and J. B. Trapp, ‘Introduction’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. 3: 1400–1557, ed. L. Hellinga and J. B. Trapp (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 1–30 (p. 26). 87 The problem of printed heresy had surfaced early on the Continent: for an overview of Continental attempts at censorship from 1479 to 1515, see Gleason, ‘Earliest Evidence for Ecclesiastical Censorship’, pp. 135–9. In 1515 a decree of the Fifth Lateran Council under Leo X required all printed books to be approved by ‘the bishops or competent persons appointed by them’: Somerset, ‘Censorship’, p. 257, quoting H. J. Schroeder, Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Text, Translation and Commentary (St Louis, MO, 1937), pp. 504–5. 88 For the English translation (which I have slightly emended), see http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo10/110exdom.htm; for the Latin text, see http://www.efg-hohenstaufenstr.de/downloads/texte/exsurge_domine.html (both accessed 5 Sept. 2012).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 153

07/04/2014 00:03

154

Susan Powell

the few, and heretical books could not appear from abroad (as did Tyndale’s New Testament in 1526) by the shipload, and moreover in English.89 Arundel’s seventh constitution had required that no one should read any work containing scriptural translation ‘until such time as that translation be approved by the Diocesan of that place, or if the thing so require, by the Council Provincial’. When one reads in Reed of the attempts of the Bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, to bring the printers to order between 1524 and 1527, one becomes very aware of how hard it was to obtain compliance from the printers and regulate what they were doing in the age of print, when books were numerous and rapidly disseminated, and it was in the interest of printers, merchants, ‘heretics’ and many of the general public that they should be disseminated. Printers were summoned, ordered not to publish without the bishop’s permission, and then resummoned when it was found that they had transgressed the order. The books in question were brought before Tunstall or his deputies and either prohibited or permitted.90 The process was, however, long and faulty, and in 1529 Arundel’s Constitutions and the amateur attempts of the diocese of London to censor books were replaced by the articles of ‘A proclamation for resysting and withstandyng of most damynable heresyes sowen within this realme, by the disciples of Luther and other heretykes peruerters of Christes relygion’ (STC 7772).91 Published by Pynson just before his death that year and overseen by Wolsey just before his own fall from power, it specifically listed fifteen prohibited books and ‘effectively transferred the power of censorship from the ecclesiastical courts to the Privy Council’.92 This was, from the viewpoint of the censor, an advance: the Church had been trying to impose censorship since the time of Arundel and had proved ineffectual. When the problem escalated in the 1520s, there was too much confusion, and too much time wasted, in checking books for heresy.93 The shifting of responsibility to the secular arm and a clear list of heretical books would speed and improve the process.94 89 For the smuggling of heretical books after 1520, see A. Hope, ‘On the Smuggling of Prohibited Books from Antwerp to England in the 1520s and 1530s’, in Tyndale’s Testament, ed. P. Arblaster, G. Juhász and G. Latré (Turnhout, 2002), pp. 35–8. 90 See Powell, ‘After Arundel’, pp. 539–40. 91 No complete copy survives (see n. 95 below). For the text emended from Concilia, ed. Wilkins, see Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. P. L. Hughes and J. F. Larkin, 3 vols. (New Haven, CT, 1964–9), vol. 1, pp. 181–6 (no. 122). 92 P. Neville-Singleton, ‘Press, Politics and Religion’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. 3, pp. 576–607 (p. 586). 93 As J. Catto has observed, ‘[H]ow Arundel could have made his decrees effective by ecclesiastical authority alone is not at all clear’: ‘Shaping the Mixed Life’, p. 97. 94 For the stages by which the king gained control of the press for propaganda purposes, see, amongst others, G. R. Elton, Policy and Police (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 218–21, 255–9; F. S. Siebert, Freedom of the Press in England, 1476–1776: The Rise and Decline of Government Control (Urbana, IL, 1965), pp. 42–56, P. Neville-Singleton, ‘Press, Politics and Religion’, pp. 586–9; R. Deazley, ‘Commentary on Henrician Proclamation 1538’, in Primary Sources on Copyright (1450–1900), ed. L. Bently and M. Kretschmer (2008), available online at

ME Texts in Transition.indb 154

07/04/2014 00:03

Evidence for the Licensing of Books

155

The Proclamation refers back to Arundel obliquely in its reminders that King Henry VIII’s ‘most noble progenytours / kynges of this his sayd realme / hath before this tyme /made and // enacted / many deuout lawes / statutes and ordynaunces / for the mayntenaunce & defence of the sayd faith / agayne // the malycious and wicked sectes of Heretykes and Lollardes’ and that these earlier laws ‘haue ben sene & exa- // myned’ by the King and his Council ‘by long & delyberate aduyse: for thextirpacion / suppressyng & withstandyng of the said heresies … and by them in euery parte / thought good & necessary to be put in execution’.95 Like Arundel’s Constitutions, they deal with both preaching and teaching (Arundel’s Articles 1–5, 8, 9) and the reading and writing of books (Articles 6,7), but there are inevitably differences. The threat of Wycliffe had been replaced by that of Luther and Tyndale, the target audience had broadened, the focus had extended beyond scriptural translation, and, most importantly, it was now an age of print. The majority of Arundel’s Articles had been directed at the schools and universities (5, 6, 8, 9, 11–13), whereas by 1529 the problem had spread from an elite to the public at large. The rise of print, and the concomitant increase in literacy, now presented a major problem of censorship which could only be eradicated by the banning of ‘certayne hereticall and blaspemous bokes / lately made and priuely sent in to this realme / by the disci- // ples / fautours / and adherentes of the sayd Marthyn Luther & other Heretikes’, which had been ‘compyled / printed and written / as well in the Englysshe tong / as in latyn & other langages / replete with most venomous Heresyes / blasphemies & sclaunders intollerable / to // the clene eares of any good Christen man’. No one was to preach, teach, compile or write, in whatever context, in any way contrary to the teachings of the Church, nor was preaching allowed without the bishop’s licence. No one was to support anyone who did so, including anyone who ‘makethe / writeth or publissheth any such boke’. Moreover, it was required that ‘all and euery person & // persons hauyng any bokes or wrytynges / of any suche erronyous doctrine & opinyon’ should deliver them to the bishop or ordinary of the diocese within fifteen days or suffer the penalties laid down. Thereafter followed a list of banned books. The only extant copy is imperfect, but a long list of prohibited books was printed in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (STC 11222, 1563), appended to a short list of books banned by the bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, in 1526.96 www.copyrighthistory.org (accessed 5 Sept. 2012 at http://copy.law.cam.ac.uk/cam/tools/ request/showRecord?id=commentary_uk_1538). For additional lists in 1530, see Siebert, Freedom of the Press, pp. 45–6. 95 STC 7772, sheet 1. The only extant copy is that of the Society of Antiquaries which consists of only the first of two leaves. 96 Foxe, Actes and monuments of these latter and perillous dayes, touching matters of the church (STC 11222, John Day, 1563). See Foxe, The Unabridged Acts and Monuments Online, 1563 edn, vol. 3, pp. 501–4 (HRI Online Publications, Sheffield, 2011) (http://www.johnfoxe.org, accessed accessed 29 July 2012). For a composite text (STC 7772 and Concilia, ed. Wilkins), see Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. Hughes and Larkin, vol. 1, pp. 181–6 (no. 122).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 155

07/04/2014 00:03

156

Susan Powell

Thereafter, and under Cromwell from 1530 until his own fall in 1540, the king’s hold on heretics, and on the printers who disseminated their writings, became stronger. In 1535 ‘A Proclamation concerninge heresie’ (STC 7785), printed by Berthelet, required heretical foreigners to leave the country within twelve days on pain of death. In 1538 (16 November) a Proclamation known by its first words as ‘The kynges most royall maiestie being enfourmed …’ (STC 7790), specifically addressed printers and merchants in its first three articles, which forbade the import of any books in English, the printing of books without licence, with annotations, and without the translator’s name, and the printing of English books of scripture without a licence. Full details of the licence were to be given: ‘no persone or persons in this realme, shall from hensforth print any boke in the englishe tonge, onles vpon examination made by some of his gracis priuie counsayle, or other suche as his highnes shall appoynte, they shall haue lycence so to do, and yet so hauynge, not to put these wordes Cum priuilegio regali, without addyng ad imprimendum solum, and that the hole copie, or els at the least theffect of his licence and priuilege be therwith printed, and playnely declared and expressed in the Englyshe tonge vnderneth them’ (sheet 1 of 3).97 Here we have a licence which is both permission (‘they shall haue lycence so to do’) and material evidence (‘the hole copie … of his licence and priuilege be therwith printed’). From at least 1518 Cum privilegio regali had been used on title pages,98 and it had come to be taken as a sign of royal approval. As early as 1530 Thomas Nix, Bishop of Norwich, had complained that he found it difficult to suppress books with this imprint: ‘For divers saith openly in my diocese that the King’s Grace would that they should have the said erroneous books and so maintaineth themselves of the King.’ 99 The specificity of Henry VIII’s 1538 Proclamation was therefore deliberate  –  the final draft was emended by the king himself. In an important move, it relieved the bishop of having to check and licence books to be printed, and it passed this task to the state. However, once the book had been examined, the phrase Cum privilegio regali [with royal privilege] had to be followed by the statement that this royal privilege amounted only to a licence to print (ad imprimendum solum) [for printing only], not an endorsement of the content. Moreover, the printer had to print the licence, or the gist of the licence, after the Cum privilegio.100 A typical example may be seen in The dictionary of syr Thomas Eliot (STC 7659), published by Berthelet in the same year. The title page bears the place and the name of the printer with the words Cum priuilegio ad imprimendum solum [with royal privilege 97 Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. Hughes and Larkin, vol. 1, pp. 227–8 (no. 155 for 1535), 270–6 (no. 186 for 1538). For a 1530 licensing system which applied only to religious books, see Siebert, Freedom of the Press, pp. 45–6. 98 Siebert, Freedom of the Press, p. 35 (within a discussion of privilege and monopoly, pp. 34–8). 99 Quoted by J. B. Trapp, ‘Literacy, Books and Readers’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. 3, pp. 31–43 (p. 38). 100 For a full discussion, see Reed, ‘Regulation of the Book Trade’, pp. 173–84. See too NevilleSingleton, ‘Press, Politics and Religion’, pp. 592–4.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 156

07/04/2014 00:03

Evidence for the Licensing of Books

157

for printing only] and the verso has ‘The copie of the kynges graciovs privilege’ granting Berthelet copyright for the following six years. By the following year (1539), Berthelet’s publication Of the wood called guiaiacum (STC 14026.5) has the Cum … solum but not the details of the licence, as is the case with Erasmus’ Proverbes or adagies (STC 10437, 1538) and his Enchiridion militis Christiani (STC 10482, 1541), printed by Richard Bankes and John Byddell. Such was the waywardness of printers, admittedly in wayward times. By November 1538, therefore, texts had to be licensed, but the licence did not endorse the text but merely gave it limited copyright. This was because many books were issued under a general privilege without examination.101 More fancifully, one wonders whether it was in part Cromwell’s recognition of the fact that the king’s mind might change on any matter, and what was given copyright might be considered unfit for publication at a future date. Indeed, only two months earlier, the reading of scripture in English had become a requirement, rather than a crime, and Cromwell had issued Injunctions ordering the clergy to set up the Great Bible (STC 2068) in their churches where it could be read by parishioners.102 When this eventually appeared, in April 1539, it used the Cum … solum phrase,103 but appeared with a magnificent title-page showing the king distributing bibles. It had copyright and also permission, but no licence of endorsement. Within four years the king had had second thoughts, and ‘An Acte for thadvauncement of true Religion and for thabbolisshment of the contrarie’, amongst other prohibitions, excluded the lower classes from private or public reading of the Bible: ‘no woomen nor artificers prentises journeymen serving men of the degrees of yeomen or undre, husbandemen nor laborers’.104 Once again, as with the Syon sisters and the anonymous owner of the Rylands manuscript, it seems that the danger of a book depended on whose hands it was in.105 By this time Cromwell was dead, executed in 1540, but his legacy continued. Arundel’s threat for non-compliance had been excommunication; the Act of 1543 specified material and physical penalties. Printers, booksellers, translators and distributors were examined and could be sent to prison.106 They had to post bonds to be forfeited for disobedience; release involved naming the merchants who had

101 Siebert, Freedom of the Press, p. 37. 102 Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. S. Brewer et al., 22 vols. in 38 (London, 1864–1932), vol. 2, p. 281. 103 Earlier Bibles, tacitly allowed by the king, had used the phrase ‘Set forth wyth the Kynges moost gracious lycence’, e.g. ‘Matthew’s Bible’ of 1536 (STC 2066) and Coverdale’s translation of 1537 (STC 2067). See Siebert, Freedom of the Press, pp. 47–8. 104 The Statutes of the Realm Printed by Command of his Majesty King George the Third …, 9 vols. in 10 (London, 1810–28), vol. 3, pp. 894–7 (p. 896). 105 The Act forbade public reading but permitted reading by nobles and gentlemen to their households and private reading by merchants and noble or gentle women: ibid., pp. 895–6. 106 Already in the 1530s there had been executions of booksellers: Siebert, Freedom of the Press, p. 45.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 157

07/04/2014 00:03

158

Susan Powell

supplied them with ‘any Englisshe bokes of ill matter’.107 The licensing system was more effective than it had been, and licences (in the sense of ‘a formal, usually a printed or written permission …’)108 were visible as they had not been, but only as evidence of copyright. The censors had come to recognize since the 1520s that, as far as licensing went, Arundel’s Constitutions, and indeed the Church itself, were not fit for purpose. Largely thanks to Cromwell and the king, a licensing system was now in place much more akin to what we would understand today, but there was still no material evidence available to the reader of a book to reassure her/him that it was safe to read. Whatever the measures, they could not in the end stop heresy (and after the king’s death the cannon levelled at heretics swivelled dangerously from one target to another for some years, anyway),109 but the 1538 Proclamation had at least ‘established a precedent for the pre-publication licensing of all books, a concept that would inform governmental attitudes to the press, in one guise or another, for the next 150 years’. 110

107 Quoted in a detailed discussion by Siebert, Freedom of the Press, pp. 49–51 (p. 50). See Acts of the Privy Council, vol. 1, pp. 115–26. 108 See n. 24 above. 109 For licensing under Edward VI, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I, see Siebert, Freedom of the Press, pp. 51–63. 110 Deazley, ‘Commentary on Henrician Proclamation 1538’, p. 4.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 158

07/04/2014 00:03

Michael G. Sargent

Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts: Walter Hilton, Nicholas Love and the Arundel and Holland Connections •••

I

n July 1370, at about seventeen years of age, Thomas Arundel, the second son of Thomas FitzAlan, the Earl of Arundel, began his ecclesiastical career with the award of the archdeaconry of Taunton, a royal presentation granted during the vacancy of the see of Bath and Wells following the translation of John Barnet to the see of Ely.1 Two years later, in March 1372, he is recorded as also holding canonries and prebends at Chichester, Hereford and Shaftesbury Abbey, the free chapel in Exeter Castle, and a canonry with expectation of a prebend at York; in May of that year he was called upon to settle a dispute concerning the election of proctors in Oxford. By the summer of 1373 Arundel was in residence at Oriel College. ‘The most obvious mark which the young Thomas Arundel left upon Oxford’, as Margaret Aston notes, ‘was an architectural one. He enjoyed the distinction, unusual among undergraduates in any period, of endowing [his college] with a chapel.’ 2 In August 1373 his university career ended with his election, by papal dispensation, as Bishop of Ely (although it was more than two years before he took up residency in the diocese, and he was not enthroned until 20 April 1376).3 Arundel thus eclipsed Henry Wakefield, the royal candidate for the see, who was instead elected to the see of Worcester two years later.4 Walter Hilton, who was probably about ten years older than Arundel, is first recorded at Ely as ‘Walterum de Hilton, clericum Lincolniensis diocesis, Bacallarium in legibus apud vos’ in a papal mandate dated 28 January 1371 (when 1 Biographical data on Arundel derive largely from M. Aston, Thomas Arundel: A Study of Church Life in the Reign of Richard II (Oxford, 1967). 2 Ibid., p. 12. 3 Arundel was apparently ordained deacon and priest, and consecrated bishop (as the papal letters of the previous August had sanctioned) on 9 April 1374 at Archbishop Whittlesey’s residence at Otford in Kent. See ibid., pp. 16, 22. 4 Arundel officiated at Wakefield’s consecration as bishop, which took place at the bishop of Ely’s residence of Hatfield on 28 October, 1375. See ibid., p. 21. Aston further notes (p. 14) that according to K. B. McFarlane, Wakefield’s election frustrated the ecclesiastical ambitions of John Wyclif; McFarlane, John Wycliffe and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity (London, 1952), pp. 67–8.

159

ME Texts in Transition.indb 159

07/04/2014 00:03

160

Michael G. Sargent

he would have been approximately twenty-eight years old), petitioning for the reservation of the canonry and prebend of Abergwili, in Carmarthen; the Ely Consistory Court Register records him again in 1375, again as a bachelor in laws.5 If, like many clerics of his age, ‘Walter de Hilton’ took his last name from the place of his birth, he may well have come from the Huntingdonshire village of Hilton (the only place of that name in the diocese of Lincoln),6 approximately 15 miles northwest of Cambridge, to which university he would have proceeded. It is possible that he eventually completed the course of studies in canon law, but if so, he probably did not proceed to regency: two (possibly related) manuscript colophons describe him as ‘decretorum inceptor’ and ‘comensour of decrees.’ Hilton appears to have maintained some contact with Cambridge into the early 1380s: his ‘Eight Chapters of Perfection’ is said by its manuscript colophon to be a translation of a work of Lluis de Font, an Aragonese Franciscan sent by his order to read the Sentences there in 1383. Thomas Fishlake, who translated Hilton’s Scale of Perfection into Latin, is recorded as a bachelor in Theology in the Cambridge Carmelite convent c. 1375, and was appointed by Bishop Arundel to preach at the Ely diocesan synod on 25 May 1377. Master John Pole, for whom the particularly authoritative manuscript of Fishlake’s version of the Scale in York Minster, Dean and Chapter Library, MS xvi.K.5 (MS Y) was made, was another Cambridge Carmelite, recorded there in Bishop Arundel’s register as a doctor in theology in 1376. (His admission, along with five other Carmelites and six Austin friars, to preach and hear confessions in the diocese, dated 7 February 1376, at the bishop’s manor at Fen Ditton, is the first document to record Arundel’s actual presence in the see of Ely.) Pole was elected prior of the Cambridge convent in 1381, and eventually died in the convent in Coventry.7 By 1386, however, as his letter to Adam Horsley De Utilitate et prerogativis religionis shows, Hilton had given up the blandishments of his worldly career and unsuccessfully tried his vocation as a hermit. By this time, he had probably written the first (although not the second) book of The Scale of Perfection, as well as his English letter Of Mixed Life, for a secular lord who felt himself drawn to the life of contemplation, but could not leave off his responsibilities to family, tenants and servants, and his Latin letter De Imagine peccati, both of which have major verbal and thematic overlaps with Scale I. The composition of Scale II probably followed some time later. Hilton died on the vigil of the Feast of the Annunciation (i.e. on 24 March) 1395/6, as an Augustinian canon at Thurgarton Priory in

5 Vatican Archives, Reg. Avenion. 179, fol. 532v (transcript provided by Benedict Hackett). See J. P. H. Clark, ‘Walter Hilton in Defense of the Religious Life and of the Veneration of Images’, Downside Review 103 (1995), 1–25 (cf. n. 8); A. B. Emden, Biographical Dictionary of the University of Cambridge to A.D. 1500 (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 305–6. 6 Assuming, of course, that he was incardinate in the diocese of his birth. 7 For Font, Fishlake and Pole, see Emden, Biographical Dictionary, pp. 236, 231, 456, respectively; Aston, Thomas Arundel, pp. 74 n. 3, 75.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 160

07/04/2014 00:03

Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts

161

Nottinghamshire:8 it is not known when he left Cambridge and Ely, or when he entered religion. In 1388 Thomas Arundel was elected Archbishop of York, and in September 1396 promoted to the see of Canterbury; he was removed by King Richard II in 1397 (illegitimately translated to the see of St Andrew’s in Scotland), and exiled to the Continent; Arundel returned to England with Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, who would become King Henry IV at the end of 1399, and continued as Archbishop of Canterbury until his death on 19 February 1414. There is no evidence to support Jonathan Hughes’ suggestion that Walter Hilton ‘may have been related to Thomas Hilton, a canon of Lincoln who later became a member of Richard Scrope’s household at York’, nor any great probability in Hughes’ often-repeated contention that Hilton was a member of a close circle of northern clerical administrators who accompanied Arundel from Ely to York.9 My personal impression is that the real target of the disdain for the worldly profession of ecclesiastical legal administration that Hilton shows particularly in his letter Ad Quemdam seculo renunciare volentem was the consistory court at Ely: They believe that if you despise the world and dismiss both the study and practice of the law from your mind, cast off honours, degrees and benefices, and choose poverty and humility for Christ’s sake, that you are infatuated and insane. For they would say to you what some used to say to me, wretch that I am: ‘With your knowledge and intelligence, how well you would do in court cases and lawsuits and such!’ They do not know how much of the poison of pride and avarice, of flattery and intrigue, lies in these things  –  a poison that intoxicates virtually all who bind themselves willingly and with feeling to the tumult of court cases and worldly dealings. You already know what I am talking about here, so do not be taken in by them. Their judgement is blind in this, so do not agree with them. For the wise man says [and here Hilton paraphrases Proverbs 1:10–16]: My son, if sinners shall entice thee, saying ‘Come with us and let us go to the Roman Curia; all kinds of precious

8 See J. Russell-Smith, ‘Walter Hilton and a Tract in Defense of the Veneration of Images’, Dominican Studies 7 (1954), 180–214. The majority of manuscripts giving the date of Hilton’s death refer to it as ‘anno domini mo ccc.lxxxx.v. in vigilia annunciacionis’ (ibid., p. 205); the London Carthusian manuscript Cambridge University Library Ee.iv.30 concurs with this: ‘anno domini millesimo ccco nonagesimo quinto, decimo kalendas Aprilis, circa solis occasum’ (pp. 208–9). James Grenehalgh of Sheen Charterhouse errs in altering ‘Annunciationis’ to ‘Assumptionis’ in his notes to Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.15.18 (James No. 54) and Philadelphia, Rosenbach Library, H 491; see M. G. Sargent, James Grenehalgh as Textual Critic, Analecta Cartusiana 85 (Salzburg, 1985), pp. 138–9, 210–12. 9 J. Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge, 1988), pp. 179–80; see also pp. 183, 209–12, 217, 228, 270 for discussion of, and references to, Hilton as a member of a circle of northern clerical administrators. It should be noted that in Hughes’ usage, ‘northern’ apparently refers to anything beyond Ely.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 161

07/04/2014 00:03

162

Michael G. Sargent

wealth shall we gain  –  that is, we will get rich benefices’  –  consent not to them, for their feet run to evil  –  that is, to the evil of crime and punishment.10 Hilton may not, in fact, have known Arundel at all well in Ely: the two documents that place Hilton in Ely consistory court both pre-date Arundel’s entry into his diocese, and we do not know how long Hilton may have retained his connection there, although part, at least, of the early circulation of the Scale of Perfection was from the Cambridge–Ely area. The first book of Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, which was probably written by the mid-1380s at the latest, is commonly accepted to have been written for an anchoress shortly after her enclosure; it apparently circulated quite widely before the second book of the Scale was written and began to circulate with it. Of the forty-one originally complete medieval manuscripts of the English text, twenty-one (including the four earliest) originally comprised Scale I only;11 Scale II was added by other hands to two manuscripts originally comprising Scale I alone;12 eighteen originally comprised both books;13 two have Scale II

10 ‘Credunt enim, si tu mundum contempneres, et penitus dimitteres exercicium sciencie legalis in speculo et in practico, honores, gradus et beneficia respueres, et paupertatem atque humilitatem eligeres pro Christo, quod tu esses infatuatus et insanus. Dicerent enim tibi sicut et michi misero aliqui dicere solebant, “O quantis prodesse poteris per scienciam tuamn et per concilium tuum in causis et in litibus et in ceteris consimilibus!” Ignorantes quomodo latet in eisdem venenum superbie ac auaricie, adulacionis et fallacie, quo intoxicantur pene omnes qui voluntarie et ex affectu se mancipant causarum tumultibus et mundane conuersacioni. Expertus es enim in parte ista que profero et ideo non capieris ab illis. Cecum est eorum iudicium in hac parte et ideo noli assentire eis, quia precepit Sapiens sic: Fili mi, si te lactauerint peccatores, dicentes, “Veni nobiscum et eamus ad curiam Romanam, omnem preciosam substanciam reperiemus, id est, pinguia beneficia optinebimus,” ne acquiescas eis quia pedes eorum ad malum currunt [Proverbs 1:10, 13, 16], id est, malum culpe et pene.’ From Hilton’s Epistola ad quemdam seculo reninciari volentem, in Walter Hilton’s Latin Writings, ed. J. P. H. Clark and C. Taylor, Analecta Cartusiana 124 (Salzburg, 2000), vol. 2, p. 262, lines 263–77. 11 MSS Cambridge, St John’s College G.35 (James 202: J), Trinity College O.7.47 (James 1375: T₂) and University Library Dd.v.55 (D), Ff.v.40 (F) and Add. 6686 (C); Oxford, Bodleian Library, Eng. poet. A.1 (Vernon: V), Bodley 592 (B3) and Rawlinson C.285 (R), and University College 28 (U); London, British Library, Harley 1022 (H3), 1035 (H4) and 6579 (H), Lansdowne 362 (Ln), and Add. 22283 (Simeon: S); Liverpool, University Library Rylands F.4.10 (Ry); Longleat House 298 (Lt); Stonyhurst College A.vi.24 (St); Worcester Cathedral Chapter Library F.172 (Wo); National Library of Scotland 6126 (N); and Huntington Library HM 112 (Hu). 12 MSS H and R. 13 MSS Cambridge, Corpus Christi College R.5 (James 268: Cc), Trinity College B.15.18 (James 354: T) and University Library Ee.iv.30 (E); Oxford, All Souls’ College 25 (As) and Bodleian Library, Bodley 100 (B), and Laud misc. 602 (Ld); London, British Library, Harley 2387 (H5) and 6573 (H7), and Add. 11748 (A); Lambeth Palace 472 (L); Inner Temple, Petyt 524 (P); Westminster School 4 (Ws); Chatsworth [s.n.] (Ch); Brussels, Bibliothèque royale 2544–5 (Br); Columbia University Library, Plimpton 257 (Pl); University of Pennsylvania Library codex 218 (olim Stonor: Sr); Huntington Library HM 266 (Hu2); and Tokyo, Prof. T. Takamiya (olim Luttrell Wynne: Lw).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 162

07/04/2014 00:03

Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts

163

alone;14 and in one an English Scale I is followed by a Latin Scale II, written in the same hand;15 the incunable prints all have both books, as does the sixteenthcentury manuscript copied from one of them.16 Editorial work on the text of Scale I by Rosemary Birts [Dorward] and A. J. Bliss has demonstrated that the pattern of omission or inclusion of a variety of ‘expansions’ to the text reinforces this pattern. Dorward and Bliss disagreed in their treatment of the expansions, but agreed that there was also one form of the text that did not originally comprise the expansions.17 The sixteen manuscripts of the unexpanded text share some 120 unique variants throughout the text, and probably did not originally comprise either the ‘Holy Name’ passage at the end of Scale I, chapter 44, or the comparable ‘Charity’ passage at the end of chapter 70.18 But only four of these sixteen manuscripts originally comprised both books; in another two of these, MSS H and R (as has been noted above), Scale II has been added by later hands.19 The unexpanded manuscripts of Scale I also conform to the ‘geographical criterion’ of textual criticism: that the earliest form of a text tends to occur at the furthest bounds of the area of circulation. Although Scale I was probably written in the Cambridge/Ely area, the two earliest manuscripts in which it occurs, the Vernon and Simeon manuscripts (MSS V and S), were probably written in the west Midlands late in the last quarter of the fourteenth century.20 In fact, the presence of Scale I in section IV of Vernon (and the comparable section of Simeon), grouped together with Hilton’s Mixed Life and the expositions of Qui habitat and Bonum est, demonstrates, as Ian Doyle noted nearly forty years ago,21 the assiduity of the 14 MSS Cambridge, Magdalene College, F.4.17 (M) and London, British Library, Harley 2397 (H6). 15 London, British Library, MS Harley 330 (H2). 16 The Scale was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1494 (W), 1419, 1425 and 1433, and by Julian Notary in 1507 (STC 14042–5); MS Br was copied from one of the prints subsequent to that of Notary. 17 See M. G. Sargent, ‘Editing Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection: The Case for a Rhizomorphic Historical Edition’, in Probable Truth: Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the Twenty-First Century, ed. V. Gillespie and A. Hudson (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 509–34. Dorward described the expansions as taking two primary forms, together with a third, mixed group of manuscripts in which they were conflated; Bliss, employing strict recension, described the manuscripts with the varying patterns of expansion as descendants of four separate hype-archetypes. 18 MSS R, D, F, H3, B and Ld lack both passages, as did H originally (both were added on separate sheets later tipped in); V, S and Pl have the ‘Holy Name’, but lack the ‘Charity’ passage; T2, Lt, Ry, Ws, Ln and U have both. 19 MSS Ws, B, Ld and Pl have both books, plus H and R. 20 A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, ed. A. McIntosh, M. L. Samuels and M. Benskin (Aberdeen, 1986) [henceforth LALME], LP 7630, localizes the scribal dialect of MS V to northern Worcestershire: grid 389 270. 21 A. I. Doyle, ‘The Shaping of the Vernon and Simeon Manuscripts’, in Chaucer and Middle English Studies in Honour of Rossell Hope Robbins, ed. B. Rowland (London, 1974), pp. 328–41; repr. in revised form in Studies in the Vernon Manuscript, ed. D. Pearsall (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 1–13. See also two other studies in the latter volume: N. F. Blake,

ME Texts in Transition.indb 163

07/04/2014 00:03

164

Michael G. Sargent

scribe-compiler of these manuscripts in collecting the most current examples of the literature of the spirituality of reformation of soul  –  as does, to a lesser extent, the presence of a copy of the Prickynge of Love (attributed to Hilton in some other copies), of the A-Text of Piers Plowman, the Mirror of St Edmund, the Abbey and the Charter of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost or, more distantly, of the collection of English works of Richard Rolle (the Commandment, the Form of Living and Ego Dormio). A third member of this affiliational group of texts of the unexpanded Scale I is Columbia University, Plimpton Library, MS 257 (MS Pl), written in the latter half of the fifteenth century. In none of these three manuscripts does the Scale bear a title or authorial ascription; all three are addressed to the writer’s ‘Ghostly brother or sister in Jesus Christ’; and all three comprise the ‘Holy Name’ passage, but not the ‘Charity’ passage. Further, the close textual affiliation of Vernon and Simeon in all of the texts that are included in both,22 and of Vernon, Simeon and Plimpton in both Scale I and the Mixed Life shows their probable descent from a common exemplar, although the scribe/compiler(s) of the Plimpton manuscript,23 writing nearly a century later, knew to include Scale II. Two other early manuscripts of the Scale, written at the end of the fourteenth century or the turn of the fifteenth, originally comprised only Scale I. The text of Scale I in the first of these, British Library, MS Harley 6579 (MS H), originally bore no title or authorial ascription, and is addressed to the writer’s ‘Ghostly sister’; a later annotator has added the heading, ‘This tretys is called scala perfectionis.’ The Harley text did not originally comprise either the ‘Holy Name’ or the ‘Charity’ passage, but both passages, as well as a large number of minor expansions throughout the text and several separate sets of chapter numbers and titles have been added by

‘Vernon Manuscript: Contents and Organization’ (pp. 45–59) and S. S. Hussey, ‘Implications of Choice and Arrangement of Texts in Part 4’ (pp. 51–74); and R. Hanna, The English Manuscripts of Richard Rolle: A Descriptive Catalogue (Exeter, 2010), nos. 40, 85, 103. 22 Simeon breaks off midway through A Talking of the Love of God, and contains none of the works that follow in Vernon, including the ‘Roule of Reclous’ (a recension of the Ancrene Wisse) and Piers Plowman. According to Kari Sajavaara, the Simeon manuscript, although some of its omissions are the result of later damage, may never have contained these particular texts. On the other hand, Simeon does add the Book of Vices and Virtues and other materials that it has in common with Oxford, University College, MS 97. See Doyle, ‘The Shaping of the Vernon and Simeon Manuscripts’, and A. I. Doyle, ‘University College, Oxford, MS 97 and its Relationship to the Simeon Manuscript (British Library Add. 22283)’, in So meny people longages and tonges: Philological Essays in Scots and Mediaeval English Presented to Angus McIntosh, ed. M. Benskin and M. L. Samuels (Edinburgh, 1981), pp. 265–82; K. Sajavaara, ‘The Relationship of the Vernon and Simeon Manuscripts’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 68 (1967), 428–39. 23 The Plimpton manuscript, which was separated at some point in its post-medieval history and coincidentally reunited in a pair of unrelated acquisitions by Columbia University Library (Plimpton MS 257 of the Scale and MS 271 of Mixed Life), was written by a pair of scribes. The first copied the first twenty-one gatherings of MS 257; the second copied the last three gatherings of that manuscript and all of MS 271. See A. J. Bliss, ‘Two Hilton Manuscripts in Columbia University Library’, Medium Ævum 38 (1969), 157–63.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 164

07/04/2014 00:03

Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts

165

different hands. Scale II was added in yet another hand, and annotated like Scale I. The Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (LALME) localizes the hands of the scribes of both books of the Scale to Ely or extreme southern Lincolnshire.24 The second Scale manuscript copied at the end of the fourteenth century that did not originally contain Scale II is Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C.285 (MS R),25 which comprises four separate booklets, written in three different hands. The first booklet comprises Scale Ι, with no title or authorial ascription, and addressed to the writer’s ‘Ghostly sister’, in four gatherings, the last of which is a bifolium on the third side of which that text ends, followed by a set of adventitious extracts from the Prick of Conscience, Bonaventura, and Richard Rolle’s Commandment and Form of Living; the second booklet, written in a second hand, comprises in two gatherings a complete copy of the Form of Living and a variety of extracts, including three from Scale I; the third booklet, of one gathering, comprises a Meditation on the Passion26 in the same hand as the preceding booklet, followed by the Epistle of St John the Hermit27 and a series of anecdotes from the Verba Seniorum,28 written in the hand of booklet 1. The scribal dialectal profiles of the two hands occurring in these three booklets can be localized to north-west Yorkshire.29 The fourth booklet, of five gatherings, written in a hand of the early fifteenth century, comprises a copy of Scale II, the dialectal origin of which is probably to be placed on the Ely/Norfolk border. Two early fifteenth-century manuscripts of Scale I are closely affiliated to MS R.30 The first of these, Cambridge University Library, MS Dd.v.55 (MS D), was written in a hand dialectally identifiable as of north-west Yorkshire; it comprises the Scale in ten gatherings, with no title or authorial ascription, and addressed to the writer’s ‘Ghostly sister’, followed by two gatherings comprising Rolle’s Commandment, followed by the short tract Of Proper Will (which is possibly to be attributed to Hilton), Hilton’s Angels’ Song, a Treatise on Deadly Sin (IPMEP 149), the same extract from the Prick of Conscience that occurs in MS R, and a set of sententiae from Bonaventura, from Rolle’s Commandment and Emendatio Vitae, and others. LALME characterizes the linguistic profile of the hand of this manuscript as of north-west Yorkshire.31 The second, Cambridge University Library, MS Ff.v.40 (MS F), is made up of three booklets written in separate hands in the second quarter of the fifteenth century: the first comprises Hilton’s Mixed Life 24 LALME, vol. 1, p. 113. The scribal dialect of the final three folios of Scale II (fols. 141–143) is different, and is localized to Northamptonshire (LP 753: Grid 501/288). 25 See Hanna, English Manuscripts of Richard Rolle, no. 94 (pp. 174–6), superseding ‘The Middle English Vitae Patrum Collection’, Mediæval Studies 49 (1987), 411–42. 26 R. E. Lewis, N. F. Blake and A. S. G. Edwards, Index of Printed Middle English Prose (New York, 1985) [henceforth IPMEP], 480, 502. 27 IPMEP 274. 28 IPMEP 546. 29 LALME 22, unmapped. 30 See Hanna, English Manuscripts of Richard Rolle, nos. 12 and 15 (pp. 24–5, 28–30). 31 LALME, vol. 1, p. 66.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 165

07/04/2014 00:03

166

Michael G. Sargent

and an English version of Rolle’s Emendatio Vitae, with the loss of two gatherings preceding; the second comprises approximately the first two-thirds of the text of Scale I; the third comprises the remainder of Scale I. The text of the Scale bears no title or authorial ascription, and is addressed to the writer’s ‘Ghostly sister’; it is followed by the same material with which it is followed in MS D. The scribal dialectal profile for all three scribes is localizable to Norfolk, just north-west of Norwich (LALME LP 4663: Grid 618/315). The identity of contents in MS D with the second and third booklets of MS F, as well as their close textual affiliation in all of the works that they contain, suggests that they were made from a single exemplar, with later loss of the first gatherings in MS D. Ralph Hanna has further speculated that these two manuscripts derive directly from MS R, from which ‘a single-quire booklet following [MS R’s] booklet 1 has been lost’. 32 Alternatively, it is possible that MS R, or some intermediate manuscript parallel to it or descendent from it, was one of a small number of exemplars drawn upon for MSS D and F. If MS R was the source of MSS D and F, then their intermediate exemplar would probably have been copied before the addition of the fourth booklet of MS R (that comprising Scale II), since it is hardly to be imagined that it would have been omitted if it had been available. Two other manuscripts localizable to the West Riding of Yorkshire also comprise copies of Scale Ι closely affiliated textually to these three. The first of these, British Library, MS Harley 1022 (MS H3), comprises what Ralph Hanna describes as ‘four originally separate (although linked) books’, all written at the end of the fourteenth century or the beginning of the fifteenth.33 The first of these (which Hanna terms ‘Manuscript 1’) is a Latin theological notebook of three gatherings. Hanna’s ‘Manuscript 2’, written in a second hand, comprises three booklets: the first of these comprises an acephalous copy of Scale I in three gatherings, opening (after an atelous table of chapters) in chapter 8; the second, the Form of Living in one gathering; the third, Rolle’s Oleum effusum, The Rule of Life of Our Lady (IPMEP 22) and Gartrygge’s catechism (IPMEP 71) in what was apparently originally two gatherings, in the same hand as the first booklet. Hanna’s ‘Manuscript 3’ comprises a single gathering that includes the Middle English Twelve Patriarchs (Benjamin Minor)34 and three short additional texts. ‘Manuscript 4’ comprises a Latin tract on the Pater noster, in two gatherings. The dialectal profiles of the hands of the first three constituent manuscripts of MS H3 are both localizable to the West Riding of Yorkshire: that of ‘Manuscript 2’ (which includes the Scale) to the northwest, near Keighley, on the border with Lancashire (LALME LP 4: 404/443); that of ‘Manuscript 3’ (plus the verso side of the first folio of ‘Manuscript 1’) more south-centrally, approximately 10 km north-west of Wakefield (LALME LP 115: 428/412). 32 Hanna, English Manuscripts of Richard Rolle, p. 176. 33 Ibid., no. 48. 34 ‘A Tretyse of þe Stodye of Wysdome þat men Clepen Beniamyn’, in Deonise Hid Diuinite and Other Treatises on Contemplative Prayer Related to The Cloud of Unknowing, ed. P. Hodgson, EETS o.s. 231 (1955), pp. 12–46.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 166

07/04/2014 00:03

Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts

167

The fifth of this textually affiliated group of manuscripts comprising Scale I, Oxford, University College, MS 28 (MS U), dates from the end of the fifteenth or the beginning of the sixteenth century. It comprises three sections, written in two different hands. The first section comprises Scale I, bearing the title ‘Tractatus Magistri Walteri de arte bene vivendi’, and addressed to the writer’s ‘Ghostly sister’, and a collection of sermons on the elements of the faith and the sacraments; the second contains an acephalous tract on the seven deadly sins. The scribal dialectal profile of the first section is localizable approximately 5 km west of Harrowgate, in the southern part of the West Riding of Yorkshire (LALME LP 358: 422/452). This affiliational group of manuscripts offers the only tangible connection between Walter Hilton and the city, the county, or the episcopal see of York. All originally lacked Scale II, although all had other contents, besides Scale I; all but the latest of them are without title or authorial ascription; none have either the ‘Holy Name’ or the ‘Charity’ passage, or any other form of textual expansions. It is possible that their hype-archetype came north with some member of the clerical circle who accompanied Archbishop Arundel on his translation from Ely in 1388, although it is interesting that the centre of dissemination of this manuscript group seems to have lain in the West Riding, and not in the city itself, which suggests that they may have had some other centre of dissemination. The Carmelite Cambridge Master John Pole’s copy of his confrère Fishlake’s Latin translation of the Scale, on the other hand, although its provenance may be traced to the Cambridge Carmelite convent,35 and Pole may eventually have taken it with him to the convent in Coventry,36 where he died, has found its home in the library of York Minster. Another affiliational group of manuscripts of Scale I attested from the early fifteenth century comprises three manuscripts from the south-east Midlands. None of the three comprise Scale II; they do have both the ‘Holy Name’ and ‘Charity’ passages; and they are reported by Dorward and Bliss to contain some of the variants that occur in one of the expanded forms of the text of Scale I. In the earliest of these three manuscripts, Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.7.47 (MS T2), dating from the early fifteenth century, the text of Scale I, which has no title or author ascription and is addressed to the writer’s ‘Ghostly sister’, is followed by two short treatises of spiritual direction. The first of these, which opens with the text ‘Audi, filia’, is specifically addressed to a woman religious;37 the second, ‘A Little Short Treatise of the direction of man’s life’, addresses itself to men and women both.38 The ‘Short Treatise’ is written in a hand that varies somewhat from that of the other 35 See N. R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, 2nd edn (London, 1964), p. 24. 36 Ibid., p. 55, records a thirteenth century manuscript of Peter Comestor belonging to Pole, now Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, MS Hamilton 503. 37 See P. S. Jolliffe, A Check-List of Middle English Prose Writings of Spiritual Guidance (Toronto, 1974), item H.26. 38 See ibid., item K.4. This text also occurs in Cambridge University Library, MS Ff.vi.33, an anthology of English writings of spiritual guidance made by William Darker of Sheen Charterhouse, probably for the nuns of Syon Abbey.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 167

07/04/2014 00:03

168

Michael G. Sargent

contents of the manuscript, but the scribal dialectal profile of the whole manuscript is localizable to south-eastern Nottinghamshire, near Staunton in the Vale, on the border with Lincolnshire and Leicestershire (LALME LP 183: 481/344). The second of the south-east Midlands manuscripts, Longleat House, MS 298 (MS Lt), was written in the first quarter of the fifteenth century; it contains Scale I alone, without title or author ascription, addressed to the writer’s ‘Ghostly sister’. The scribal dialectal profile is localizable to east-central Nottinghamshire, near Staythorpe, just east of Southwell (LALME LP 247: 475/354). It should be noted that both these manuscripts are localizable to within less than 10 miles of Thurgarton Priory. These manuscripts are also remarkably similar in format: both are of parchment, measuring approx. 18 × 12 cm, written twenty-nine lines per page (although the hands are not the same size: the text of Scale in MS T2 occupies seventy-three folios; that in MS Lt, sixty-five), with original vellum wrappers. The third manuscript of this group, Liverpool University Library, MS Rylands F.4.10 (MS Ry), lies further afield: LALME localizes its scribal dialect to the Soke of Peterborough; it is dated to the latter half of the fifteenth century. This manuscript comprises two booklets: the first, of seven gatherings, contains the Chastising of God’s Children,39 a tract ‘Praying is a gracious gift’ (IPMEP 548)40 and an atelous copy (missing the last folio) of the Cloud-corpus Epistle on Prayer;41 the second, of six gatherings, comprises an atelous copy of Scale I. The text of the Scale is without title or author ascription, and is addressed to the writer’s ‘Ghostly brother or sister’. The centre of dissemination of this form of the text seems to have been at or near Thurgarton Priory, and it is possible that they represent a later, partially expanded issue from Thurgarton of a text that originally circulated from Cambridge and Ely. One other closely affiliated pair of manuscripts of the unexpanded form of Scale I survive. The first of these, Westminster School, MS 4 (MS Ws), written in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, comprises both books. The incipit of Scale I reads, ‘Incipit liber qui dicitur scala perfeccionis’, and the explicit, ‘Explicit prima pars libri qui dicitur scala perfeccionis’, on the recto of the second-last folio of the sixth gathering (fol. 49r).42 This is followed immediately by an atelous table of chapters for Scale II (fols. 49v–50v  –  the last two folios of gathering ‘f ’); the next gathering opens with the incipit of Scale II, ‘Incipit secunda pars libri qui vocatur scala perfeccionis.’ The initials of the two books are decorated equally. The form of address of Scale I is anomalous, leaving a blank space after the word ‘Ghostly’ for the designation of the writer’s addressee. LALME localizes the scribal dialect of this manuscript to Ely.43 The other manuscript of this pair, British Library, MS Lansdowne 362 (MS Ln), was written in the first half of the fifteenth century; it

39 See The Chastising of God’s Children and The Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God, ed. J. Bazire and E. Colledge (Oxford, 1957). 40 Jolliffe, Check-List, item M.11. 41 ‘A Pistle of Preier’, in Deonise Hid Diuinite, pp. 48–59. 42 The majority of the gatherings of this manuscript are quires; this one is of ten. 43 LALME, vol. 1, p. xxx.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 168

07/04/2014 00:03

Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts

169

comprises only Scale I, with no authorial ascription at the beginning, and is addressed to the writer’s ‘Ghostly brother or sister’. The explicit, however, states, ‘Explicit prima pars libri qui dicitur Speculum contemplacionis. Walterus Hilton canonicus.’ It appears that the hype-archtype from which these two manuscripts descend (like the west Midland affiliational group of MSS V, S and Pl, and the later fifteenth-century Peterborough MS Ry) may have addressed the text to a ‘Ghostly brother or sister’, but that the scribe of the MS Ws was aware that this was an anomalous form of address; that it may have included an indication that this was only the first book of a longer work (although only the scribe responsible for MS Ws sought out and copied Scale II); and that it may have indicated some Latin form of the title of the work (although the two manuscripts disagree on what that title is). These two manuscripts also both have the ‘Holy Name’ and ‘Charity’ passages. Two other manuscripts of the unemended form of Scale I that share a number of textual similarities (including the fact that they lack both the ‘Holy Name’ and the ‘Charity’ passages) also comprise textually similar copies of Scale II.44 The text of the Scale in Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 100 (MS B), which was written early in the fifteenth century, has no authorial ascription, and is addressed to the writer’s ‘Ghostly sister’. The division of the two books of the Scale occurs in mid-gathering (the tenth of twenty-two quires); both books have illuminated initials. Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 602 (MS Ld), also from the beginning of the fifteenth century, bears a unique author ascription, at both the beginning and the end of Scale I: ‘Here begynneþ þe vii partie of þys boke maad of Rycharde Hampole heremyte to an ankeresse’ on fol. 1r, and ‘Here endiþ þe first partie of þe vii partie of þis booke maad of Richard Hampole heremite to an Ankeresse. And begynneþ þe secunde.’ The text is addressed to the writer’s ‘Ghostly sister’. The entire manuscript is written in a single hand, with the division of the two books of the Scale occuring in mid-gathering (the fourth of seven). Scale I has a two-line champed illuminated initial; that of Scale II although larger (four lines) is red and blue penwork. The scribal dialectal profile of the hand is localizable to northern Cambridgeshire, near Willingham on the border with Ely (LALME LP 672: 542/271), although the manuscript appears to have been at Syon Abbey by the late fifteenth century.45 The evidence of surviving manuscripts, then, shows the earliest form of the first book of Hilton’s Scale of Perfection  –  usually without a second book, usually without title or authorial ascription, addressed to the writer’s ‘Ghostly sister’ (although

44 The texts of Scale II in MSS B and Ld are of what I have designated the χ type, and share the characteristic that many dialectal or obsolescent words are replaced  –  although not with the same synonyms, even for the same lemma (e.g. ‘troth’ may be replaced with ‘belief ’ in one of these two manuscripts, but with ‘faith’ in the other; ‘trowen’ with ‘believe’). With the exception of variations of this type, however, the amount of textual agreement between these manuscripts is not remarkable. 45 As Ian Doyle has noted, preliminary fol. i is a fragment of a grant to Syon Abbey by Edward IV; the name of ‘Raynes’ and the motto ‘Ihesus est amor meus’ on fol. 74r also probably refer to Syon.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 169

07/04/2014 00:03

170

Michael G. Sargent

occasionally to his ‘Ghostly brother or sister’), as often as not without the ‘Holy Name’ and ‘Charity’ passages, and usually without any of the patterns of minor expansions to the text that mark later forms  –  throughout England, spreading not only from Cambridge and Ely, and later from Thurgarton Priory, where Hilton is known to have lived, but also (and earlier) from further centres of dissemination in the west Midlands and in northern and western Yorkshire. There is no concrete evidence that Walter Hilton came north with Archbishop Arundel on his promotion to the see of York. We do know that, rejecting a career in ecclesiastical administration, and presumably under the literary influence of Richard Rolle, he tried his vocation as a hermit, but we do not know where. There is a demonstrable textual relationship between one recension of the unexpanded text of Scale I and Yorkshire, and we may only speculate on the proximity of Thurgarton Priory to the archbishop’s residence at Southwell Minster. Nicholas Love, on the other hand, famously did meet with Archbishop Arundel, ‘around the year 1410’, according to the ‘Memorandum of Approbation’ attached to twenty-one of the surviving manuscripts of the Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. As I have pointed out elsewhere,46 Love’s submission of his work to the archbishop  –  a work that so neatly dovetailed into Arundel’s antiWycliffite programme  –  together with the grant of confraternity in Mount Grace Charterhouse recorded in the archbishop’s register on 15 January 1409/10, probably had  –  and was probably intended to have  –  the effect of transferring Mount Grace from Ricardian to Lancastrian patronage, and finally putting it on the sound financial basis that would allow the formal incorporation of the former ‘plantatio’ into the order at the General Chapter held at the Charterhouse of Strasbourg in May of that year, with the concomitant promotion of Nicholas Love from ‘rector’ to ‘prior’. This is not to say that Love was anything but an enthusiastic supporter of the archbishop’s defence of orthodoxy, but that in the complex political economy of the spirit, he had more than one motive  –  and that although we might not think of all his motives as particularly spiritual, both he and the archbishop certainly did. Here again, Jonathan Hughes has muddied the waters, suggesting that ‘the association that existed between Arundel and Nicholas Love in 1408 and 1411 may have originated during Arundel’s years at York’, that the Mirror was ‘begun in 1408’, and that ‘[d]iscussion between the two men … may have occurred in 1409 when Arundel joined the Mount Grace fraternity: Love’s completed work was dedicated to ‘some devout soules’, a description that would fit the lay fraternity of the house’47 (as well, of course, as many, many others). There is no evidence that the Mirror 46 Nicholas Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Full Critical Edition, based on Cambridge University Library Additional MSS 6578 and 6686, with Introduction, Notes and Glossary, ed. M. G. Sargent (Exeter, 2005), pp. 26–32; see also M. G. Sargent, ‘Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ and the Politics of Vernacular Translation in Late Medieval England’, in Lost in Translation?: The Medieval Translator/ Traduire au Moyen Age 12, ed. D. Renevey and C. Whitehead (Turnhout, 2009), pp. 205–21. 47 Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries, pp. 186, 230–1, 235, 289–91.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 170

07/04/2014 00:03

Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts

171

was begun in 1408, nor that Love and Arundel met either during the latter’s tenure as archbishop of York, nor in 1408 or 1411. There was no ‘lay fraternity of [Mount Grace Charterhouse]’. Nor is there any evidence that, as Hughes further contends, Love’s Mirror influenced, or was in any way intended to influence, the Corpus Christi plays of the city. These are all fantasies. We do not know what relationship there may have been between Nicholas Love and Archbishop Arundel, but we may be reasonably sure that they are not the ones that Jonathan Hughes has surmised. In fact, Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ seems not to have circulated from Mount Grace, or from any point in the north of England, nor, with the apparent exception of the α3 version of the text,48 among the Carthusians themselves, but primarily from the same London/Westminster centre of early fifteenth-century textual dissemination as the early manuscripts of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde, and Gower’s Confessio Amantis.49 The earliest form of the text, the β form that includes the ‘Middle English Meditations on the Passion’, may well have circulated at least in limited numbers among women readers such as Sibyl de Felton, abbess of Barking, and Joan Holland, the widow of the founder of Mount Grace. But the bulk of the circulation of Love’s Mirror, after Archbishop Arundel’s approval of the text, seems to have been the result of a conscious policy of publication that made use of the book-producing industry of the metropolis. Even the base-text of the critical edition of the Mirror, which bears the ex libris, ‘Iste liber est de domo Assumpcionis Beate Marie in Monte Gracie’, is written in a scribal dialect of the south-central Midlands, and the note at the foot of the page drawing attention to dialectally remarkable spellings (‘gude’ for ‘gode’; ‘hir’ for ‘heere’ in the plural) seems to indicate that it was being left with scribes (or readers) who expected a more ‘Westminster standard’ text. Only one relatively late copy, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 131, written by John Morton of York c. 1440, in a scribal dialect that has been localized by LALME near between Thorne and Fishlake in the south-eastern West Riding of Yorkshire (LP 473: 467/414), has a direct connection with the city or county of York.50 One thing that does seem certain is that Nicholas Love had a larger view of his role in public life than is appropriate for the prior of a semi-eremitic Carthusian house. Another evidence of this is to be found in the record of the extraordinary 48 Nicholas Love, The Mirror, ed. Sargent, pp. 113–15. 49 M. G. Sargent, ‘What do the Numbers Mean? A Textual Critic’s Observations on some Patterns of Middle English Manuscript Transmission’, in Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England, ed. M. Connolly and L. R. Mooney (York, 2008), pp. 205–44. See also K. Kerby-Fulton and S. Justice, ‘Scribe D and the Marketing of Ricardian Literature’, in The Medieval Professional Reader at Work: Evidence from Manuscripts of Chaucer, Langland, Kempe, and Gower, ed. K. Kerby-Fulton and M. Hilmo, ELS Monograph Series 85 (Victoria, BC, 2001), pp. 217–32. 50 Nicholas Love, The Mirror, ed. Sargent, Introduction, pp. 132–3; see also C. Meale, ‘“oft siþis with grete deuotion I þought what I miȝt do pleysyng to god”: The Early Ownership and Readership of Love’s Mirror, with Special Reference to its Female Audience’, in Nicholas Love at Waseda: Proceedings of the International Conference, 20–22 July, 1995, ed. S. Oguro, R. Beadle and M. G. Sargent (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 19–46 (cf. esp. p. 26).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 171

07/04/2014 00:03

172

Michael G. Sargent

chapter of the Benedictines called by King Henry V at Westminster in May 1421, at the instigation of the prior of Mount Grace Charterhouse, for the reformation of the discipline of the Black Monks in England. Because of a longstanding bibliographic error, this prior has been identified in the past as one Robert Layton, who seems to have followed Nicholas Love in office, but whose dates of tenure have never been clear. David M. Smith has identified the source of the error (there never was a prior of Mount Grace named Robert Layton) and demonstrated that Love remained in office until his death on 15 March 1423.51 As W. A. Pantin described the circumstances of the king’s convocation: In convoking the extra-ordinary meeting of the Black Monks at Westminster in May, 1421, King Henry V was acting upon certain complaints made to him about the laxity in the monasteries of the order. The complaints came, according to Walsingham, from certain ‘false brethren,’ and in particular, according to the Crowland Continuator, from the Carthusian Prior of Mount Grace, an ex-Benedictine, who certainly took part in the proceedings at Westminster.52 The primary work of the convocation, which is said to have included no fewer than sixty prelates and 300 monks, doctors and proctors, was done by a committee made up of three representatives of the king (Edmund Lacy, bishop of Exeter and former Master of University College; the king’s secretary  –  probably William Alnwyck; and Nicholas Love, the prior of Mount Grace) and six representatives of the order (John Fordham, prior of the cathedral church of Worcester and president of the convocation; John Whethamstede, prior of St Albans; Thomas Spofford, prior of St Mary’s in York (appointed shortly before to the see of Rochester, and translated to Hereford shortly thereafter); Richard Upton, prior of Crowland; John Wessyngton, prior of Durham; and Thomas Elmham, prior of Lenton. It should be noted that Fordham had represented the order at the Council of Constance, and that Spofford, while attending the Council, had served as one of the presidents of the Benedictine provincial reform chapter at Petershausen in Germany.53 A larger committee of twenty-four other monks was added during the process of negotiations. 51 See D. M. Smith, ‘The Phantom Prior of Mount Grace’, Monastic Research Bulletin 12 (2006), 46–9; The Heads of Religious Houses: England and Wales, vol. 3: 1377–1540, ed. D. M. Smith (Cambridge, 2008), p. 362. 52 Documents Illustrating the Activities of the General and Provincial Chapters of the English Black Monks, 1215–1540, vol. 2, ed. W. A. Pantin, Camden Society 3rd series 47 (London, 1933), pp. 98–134. The citation from the fifteenth-century chronicler Thomas Walsinham is referred to Historia Anglicana, ed. T. H. Riley, Rolls Series 28, 2 vols. (London, 1863–4), vol. 2, p. 337; that of the continuator of the Crowland Chronicle to Rerum Anglicarum Scriptorum Veterum, ed. Gale (Oxford, 1684), vol. 1, p. 513, Reyner, app. 3, 112. 53 On the Petershausen reform chapter, see J. Zeller, ‘Das Provinzialkapitel im Stifte Petershausen im Jahre 1417’, Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktinerordens, Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktinerordens und seiner Zweige 41 (1921–2), pp. 1–73. See also P. Becker, ‘Erstrebte und erreichte Ziele benediktinischer Reformen in Spätmittelalter’, in Reformbemühungen und

ME Texts in Transition.indb 172

07/04/2014 00:03

Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts

173

The king’s representatives stated the complaints against the laxity of the discipline of the English Benedictines (chosen, it is said, from among their many excesses and enormities) in thirteen articles, dealing with the absence of priors from their monasteries (i.e. the abuse of commendam); with excesses having to do with riding and equipage; with the accurate inventory of monastic possessions; with the disposal or alienation of the goods of the monasteries to persons either within or without; with the uniformity of the monastic habit and excessive fashions in the length of capes, hoods, and sleeves; with laxity in performance of the divine office in times of bloodletting; with irregular practices among monastic officials (including taking meals outside of the refectory) that allowed them to escape regular monastic practice regarding the amount of meat in the diet; with the strict observance of monastic fasts; with the substitution of a cash allowance for meals (which, it was specified, had been condemned by Pope Benedict XII); with the provision of private rooms for monks where they might meet with women (albeit their own mothers and sisters); with free egress and ingress between monasteries and the surrounding villages and towns (lest temptations arise against chastity); with the provision of papal supervision over the observance of the rule; and with monks sleeping in their underwear, and not properly, in full habit. All of these were among the abuses attacked by the various monastic reform movements, particularly in Italian- and German-speaking lands, in the early fifteenth century. The English Benedictines’ representatives countered with a stubborn, point-forpoint rebuttal, which survives in two variant forms, and finally with a reasonable, although much-weakened program of minor reforms issued under Whethamstede’s name, with the proviso that they were to be confirmed by the pope and ratified by the next provincial chapter, which did not take place until July 1423, nearly a year after the king’s death.54 The English Benedictines thus escaped the reforming discipline of King Henry V  –  partly as a result of which their descendants were to submit themselves instead to the rod of Henry VIII. If the continuator of the Crowland chronicle is correct, then Nicholas Love, the prior of Mount Grace Charterhouse who urged the duty of reforming of the Benedictine order on the king, and who represented the king in negotiations over those reforms, was himself a former Benedictine monk. This assertion has no little claim on our credence, given that the prior of Crowland was himself one of the six participants on the side of the order, and may be presumed to be the source of the information. This makes particularly interesting the existence of a manuscript of the Meditationes Vitae Christi, Ripon Cathedral Library, MS 6, the colophon of which states that it was written in Frieston, Lincolnshire (a conventual cell of Crowland) around the feast of the Annunciation, 1399 (altered to 1400), but which

Observanzbestrebungen im spätmittelalterlichen Ordenswesen, Berliner Historische Studien 14: Ordensstudien 6, ed. K. Elm (Berlin, 1989), pp. 23–34. 54 Pantin (in Documents, p. 100) notes that the list of articles issued by Wethamstede is not in fact recorded as being ratified in chapter, but that later documents may refer to them as having been ratified.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 173

07/04/2014 00:03

174

Michael G. Sargent

bears an ex libris at the foot of its first page, ‘Liber Montis Gracie’.55 It seems that the connection of the Ripon manuscript with Mount Grace was in itself evidence enough for Henry Wilson, Assistant Keeper in the Department of Manuscripts of the British Museum, to surmise in the late nineteenth century that this manuscript of the Latin text was the source of Nicholas Love’s translation;56 but the manuscript’s earlier connection with a cell of Crowland Abbey makes it more interesting still. In a recent Leeds University MA thesis Felicity Maxwell has described the manuscript, its provenance and its history. She also collated several passages of Love’s Mirror with the appropriate sections of the Stallings-Taney Corpus Christianorum edition of the Meditationes, the 1868 Peltier edition and the Ripon manuscript, with mixed results.57 A full exploration of the source of Nicholas Love’s Mirror will have to await a complete collation of the Latin text of the Meditationes.58 55 ‘Expliciunt meditaciones quas scripsit cardinalis Bonaventura de vita domini nostri Iesu Christi, scripte in Freston circa Festum Annunciacionis Beate Marie Virginis, Anno Domini [1399 erased] 14[00]. Deo gracias.’ See N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries vol. 4: Paisley–York (Oxford, 1983), p. 211; F. Maxwell, ‘An Investigation of the Ripon Cathedral Manuscript of the Meditationes Vitae Christi’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Leeds, 2008), from which I have drawn a number of the details in the discussion that follows. See also D. J. Falls, ‘Reading Prior to Translating: A Possible Latin Exemplar for Nicholas Love’s Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ’, Notes and Queries n.s. 57 (2010), 313–15, which first connects the possibility that the Ripon manuscript may have been Love’s source with the observation that he was a former Benedictine. 56 In a letter dated 22 November, 1882, which is kept with the manuscript (which is on longterm deposit in Leeds University Library, with the shelfmark Ripon Cathedral Library, MS 6); Wilson also delivered a paper on the subject of Love’s Mirror to a meeting of the recently founded Library Association on 4 May 1883. See A. I. Doyle, ‘The Study of Love’s Mirror: Retrospect and Prospect’, in Nicholas Love at Waseda, pp. 163–74 (cf. esp. p. 165). 57 F. Maxwell, ‘An Investigation of the Ripon Cathedral Manuscript of the Meditationes Vitae Christi’ (unpublished M.A. dissertation, University of Leeds, 2008). It should be noted that the Stallings-Taney edition, which represents an anomalous version of the text, definitely agrees with the text of the Latin as represented by Nicholas Love’s translation much less often than the other two. 58 The fullest survey of the manuscripts was done by the Franciscan scholar C. Fischer, ‘Die “Meditationes Vitae Christi”, ihre handschriftliche Ueberlieferung und die Verfasserfrage’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 25 (1932), 3–35, 175–209, 305–48, 449–83. Fischer was able to examine only a small number of the 217 manuscripts he lists (113 of the Latin text; 104 of various vernacular versions), but was able to categorize them (somewhat superficially) as comprising the ‘grosse’ or the ‘kleine’ text, or the extracted Meditationes de Passione Domini. The latter text seems particularly to survive in manuscripts of English provenance. Love’s source must have been a manuscript of the ‘grosse Text’, of which there are twenty-six surviving copies in English libraries, including that at Ripon, of which none seems to be of anything other than English provenance: MSS Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 256 (James 256), Emmanuel College 3.3.8 (James 241), Gonville and Caius College 332, Trinity College B.1.18, University Library Add. 574, 621, 1216, 1326, 1653 and 2038; Durham Cathedral Library B.III.28; Hereford Cathedral Library P.1.x; Lincoln Cathedral Library 91; London, British Library, Harley 217, Royal 7.A.i and 7.D.xvii; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 162 and 529, Rawlinson C.287 and A.398, Canon. misc. 257 and Laud misc. 496; and Oxford, Corpus Christi College 410, St John’s College 8.D and University College 18.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 174

07/04/2014 00:03

Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts

175

Maxwell also suggested an alternative route by which the Ripon Cathedral manuscript of the Meditationes Vitae Christi might have made its way from Frieston to Mount Grace, a route that I do not think precludes the possibility that Nicholas Love may have brought it with him: the way that she suggests is through the connections of the Holland family. As Michael Stansfield has shown,59 the first Thomas Holland, the grandfather of the founder of Mount Grace, rose steadily in rank and wealth through the second half of the fourteenth century, particularly through his clandestine teenage marriage to Joan, daughter of Edmund of Woodstock, who through a series of propitious deaths became heiress to the Earldom of Kent,60 and later wife and widow of Edward, the prince of Wales. Their eldest son, Thomas (the second), Earl of Kent, half-brother of King Richard II, married Alice, daughter of the Earl of Arundel (the sister of the later archbishop); it was their son Thomas (the third)  –  whom the king made Duke of Surrey in 1397  –  who founded Mount Grace. The original Holland lands were at Upholland in Lancashire; but they came later to have holdings across the country, including particularly, for the matter that concerns us here, the manors of Bourn and Deeping in Lincolnshire,61 which bordered on Crowland. Relations between the second Thomas Holland and Crowland Abbey were particularly contentious, but no troubles of this sort involved either the third Thomas Holland or his widow, Joan.62 As I have shown elsewhere,63 Thomas Holland founded Mount Grace Charter­ house at Ingleby in Yorkshire in 1397, shortly after being raised to the title of Duke of Surrey in reward for his loyalty to the king in suppressing the Lords Appellant of 1387. His cause was intimately bound up with that of the king: together with his uncle, John Holland, Duke of Exeter, he was with the king when he surrendered to the future King Henry IV at Conway (in fact, it was the Hollands who negotiated with Henry of Hereford  –  the future Henry IV  –  on the king’s behalf); together with his uncle, he attempted to raise a rebellion at New Year’s, 1400, and replace Richard on the throne; he was caught and beheaded at Cirencester; his body was interred there, and his head was hung on London Bridge. Thomas’ widow Joan recovered possession of his head by the following March, and his whole body was temporarily interred in Cirencester Abbey. 59 M. M. N. Stansfield, ‘The Holland Family, Dukes of Exeter, Earls of Kent and Huntington, 1352–1475’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Oxford University, 1987). 60 Her mother, Margaret, Countess of Kent, ignored this marriage and negotiated a public marriage to William Montagu, heir to the Earl of Salisbury, probably while Holland was on crusade in Prussia. The young couple eventually took their protest to the apostolic see, and had the second marriage annulled. 61 Bourne Abbey is the burial place of Thomas Holland (the second) and his son Edmund, earls of Kent. 62 Joan Holland was the daughter of Hugh Stafford, Earl of Stafford. 63 Nicholas Love, The Mirror, ed. Sargent, intro 26 – intro 30; M. G. Sargent, ‘The HollandTakamiya Manuscript of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ’, in The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya, ed. T. Matsuda, R. A. Linenthal and J. Scahill (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 135–47.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 175

07/04/2014 00:03

176

Michael G. Sargent

Thomas and Joan Holland had no children, and the fortunes of the family passed to his younger brother, Edmund, who became Earl of Kent in turn, and to his wife, Lucia, sister of Bernabò Visconti, Duke of Milan. Lucia appears to have taken an active interest in the fate of her brother-in-law, his widow and the Carthusian house that he had founded: the advowson of Mount Grace passed through her husband, Edmund Holland, to her in 1408, and she died seised of it in 1421. Joan did not vigorously pursue her right to the forfeited Holland estates, with the exception of Deeping and of Bourn, to which she retired. In July 1412, through the good offices of her sister-in-law, she was granted permission by the king to reinter her husband’s body at Mount Grace. I have said elsewhere that the king allowed Joan Holland to retire to Beaulieu in Hampshire in 1410;64 I was mistaken. In his study of the history of the Holland family, Michael Stansfield identified the Holland widow who retired to Beaulieu as Alice, Joan’s mother-in-law.65 Her husband (Thomas Holland the second) had been working at putting the affairs of Beaulieu in order at the time of his death in 1397, and it is appropriate that when her younger son, Edmund (the only surviving Holland male) achieved his majority in 1404, it would be to Beaulieu that, at the age of fifty or more, she should retire. Joan Holland gave up the majority of the lands and incomes to which she was entitled (including Deeping, a dower entitlement) to Edmund, her brother-in-law, and lived in retirement at the Holland estate at Bourn until her death on 1 October, 1438. It was at Bourn, not at Beaulieu, that she probably gave her copy of Nicholas Love’s Mirror to Alice Belacyse, daughter of John Belacyse of Newcastle, who was some thirty years her junior. The Holland-Takamiya manuscript of Nicholas Love’s Mirror (Takamiya MS 8) is an article de luxe, as is appropriate to what was probably a presentation copy made for the widow of the founder of Mount Grace. According to Kathleen Scott, its rich border decoration is in a London style of c. 1410;66 but it lacks the ‘Memorandum of Approbation’ that was added into copies made later in the first quarter of the fifteenth century. It is impossible to say whether Nicholas Love presented this copy of his work to Joan Holland, and  –  as Felicity Maxwell suggests  –  collected the Frieston manuscript of the Meditationes Vitae Christi from her in return, in the course of his travels, seeking to effect the reformation of the Christian Church in England in the early fifteenth century, or whether he presented it to her in July 1412, when her husband’s remains were finally interred in the chapel of Mount Grace, but the Holland family connection in fact links this manuscript to the Yorkshire soil.

64 Sargent, ‘Holland-Takamiya Manuscript’, pp. 135–47. See Meale, ‘“oft siþis with grete deuotion”’. 65 Stansfield, ‘The Holland Family’; see esp. pp. 151–61. 66 K. L. Scott, ‘The Illustration and Decoration of Manuscripts of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ’, in Nicholas Love at Waseda, pp. 61–86 (cf. esp. pp. 68, 71). According to Scott, the same hand is responsible for the border on fol. 7r of Oxford, Merton College, MS 193.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 176

07/04/2014 00:03

Mayumi Taguchi

The Choice and Arrangement of Texts in Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2125: A Tentative Narrative about its Material History •••

C

ambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2125 (hereafter P) is a late medieval devotional miscellany, comprising two parts, each originally a portion of a different manuscript. It includes a number of unique versions1 and unpublished texts as well as popular writings commonly found in similar late medieval devotional compilations. There are various signs of remodelling. We may consider that the second part, in paper, represents the original manuscript, the first quire of which was probably lost, and that consequently another leaf was added to supply the beginning part of the first text in the remaining volume; then a portion of another manuscript (parchment) was joined to precede it; later hands added more texts on the blank pages at the end and on flyleaves. Five hands are responsible for all the various stages of the manuscript’s construction, while the loss of some leaves suggests further modifications. The missing leaves have prompted studies associated with heresy hunting, specifically because of the manuscript’s immediate link with London, British Library, MS Harley 2398, a Lollard manuscript made in Gloucestershire.2 Dialectal features and writing on a strip of paper in the gutter of P point to a nearby provenance; more conclusively, two texts in P (‘On virtues and vices’ and ‘Easter Sermon’) were directly copied from the Harleian manuscript.3 The copies of Thomas Wimbledon’s

1 For the idiosyncrasy of the P versions, see, for example, J. C. Havens, ‘Instruction, Devotion, Meditation, Sermon: A Critical Edition of Selected English Religious Texts in Oxford, University College 97 with a Codicological Examination of Some Related Manuscripts’, 2 vols. (unpublished doctoral thesis, Oxford University, 1995), vol. 1, pp. 89–90. 2 This topic will be treated below in the section discussing omissions. 3 The Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, vol. 5: Manuscripts, Part i: Medieval, compiled by R. McKitterick and R. Beadle (Cambridge, 1992), pp. xxv, 61; A. I. Doyle, ‘A Survey of the Origins and Circulation of Theological Writings in English in the 14th, 15th, and Early 16th Centuries with Special Consideration of the Part of the Clergy Therein’, 2 vols. (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge, 1953), vol. 2, p. 129.

177

ME Texts in Transition.indb 177

07/04/2014 00:03

178

Mayumi Taguchi

sermon in both manuscripts are also closely related.4 On the other hand, P has also been treated as an orthodox codex. Discussing the importance of the ‘material form’ of Middle English devotional manuscripts, Jill C. Havens contrasts orthodox manuscripts, including P, and heterodox ones, including Harley 2398.5 Indeed, the choice and arrangement of the texts in P do not present any specifically Wycliffite or Lollard features. On the contrary, many of the texts are concerned with ideas and practices that Lollards were strongly against, such as the eucharist, indulgences and images in devotion to the Cross and Passion of Christ.6 However, Brian Cummings is also reasonable when saying that ‘Lollards, not bishops, spoke religion in English’ and ‘[b]ooks were understood to embody heresy’; he notes that some heterodox writings were purposefully inserted into apparently non-problematic volumes.7 This paper seeks to reconsider the choice and arrangement of texts in P and to construct a tentative narrative about how the manuscript changed its material form, possibly as a result of concerns about heresy hunting. For this purpose I shall first briefly describe the manuscript, then examine the original choice and arrangement of texts, and finally consider the role of the additional materials and the reasons for the omissions.

The Manuscript The manuscript has been repeatedly described, but the following discussion is based on the Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College Cambridge, vol. 5: Manuscripts, Part i: Medieval (hereafter Catalogue) unless stated otherwise.8 Some additional information will be found in the notes below. 4 I. K. Knight, Wimbledon’s Sermon: Redde rationem villicationis tue: A Middle English Sermon of the Fourteenth Century, Duquesne Studies, Philological Series 9 (Louvain, 1967), pp. 27–30. P version is collated in this edition. P forms a group together with Harley 2398 and Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.14.38. 5 J. C. Havens, ‘A Narrative of Faith: Middle English Devotional Anthologies and Religious Practice’, Journal of the Early Book Society 7 (2004), 67–84. Havens illustrates that Thomas Wimbledon’s sermon at St Paul’s Cross may be ‘read to new effect’ when it occurs in a Lollard manuscript, such as Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng.th.f.39 and Harley 2398, together with writings attacking the abuses of priesthood (p. 76). 6 See M. Aston, ‘Lollards and the Cross’, in Lollards and their Influence in Late Medieval England, ed. F. Somerset, J. C. Havens and D. G. Pitard (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 99–113. 7 B. Cummings, The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (Oxford, 2002), pp. 188, 19, 227. In the last instance, Cummings mentions Lollard and heterodox works in William Thynne’s editions of Chaucer. 8 Also see Bibliotheca Pepysiana: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Library of Samuel Pepys, ed. M. R. James, vol. 3: Medieval Manuscripts (London, 1923), pp. 72–9; Doyle, ‘Survey of the Origins and Circulation of Theological Writings’, vol. 1, pp. 167–8; vol. 2, pp. 128–9; The English Manuscripts of Richard Rolle: A Descriptive Catalogue, ed. R. Hanna, Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies (Exeter, 2010), pp. 8–12. Descriptions are also available on the web: V. O’Mara and S. Paul, ‘Middle English Sermons’, http://www.hull.ac.uk/middle_english_sermons/cam-magd-pepys-2125.php;

ME Texts in Transition.indb 178

07/04/2014 00:03

Choice and Arrangement of Texts in Magdalene Pepys 2125

179

The manuscript consists of 148 leaves: the flyleaves (fols. i–ii, 146) and fols. 1–38 are parchment; fols. 39–145 are paper. It now measures about 265 × 200 mm, with written space 245 × 155 mm in the parchment portion; 230 × 165 mm in the paper portion. However, the amount of the loss of the marginal writings suggests that originally it would have measured at least 25 mm longer at top, bottom and the outer edges. This is a size suitable for use on a lectern. The writing is mostly clear, though it varies in the paper part. Decoration is limited to red ink for titles (sometimes framed), initials (some large initials in the paper part were entered probably by the scribe himself and are naïve and unprofessionally done), occasional running heads, underlining for quotations, bracketing of rhymed verses and one large coloured Holy Monogram, although this last had apparently been followed by some arma Christi illustrations, of which only four bloody footprints remain. According to the Catalogue, the five hands that contributed may be described as follows: A: set anglicana bookhand; B: anglicana cursiva with some secretary features; C: anglicana bookhand with secretary features; D and E: secretary. Corrections are on and above the line, and in the margin, mostly by the scribes themselves, but some were entered by contemporary and later hands. Occasional marginal annotations (nota bene, vide bene, etc.; numerals and key-word(s) directions; biblical references, etc.) are both in Latin and English, and in two cases in the form of the index finger (fols. 116v, 141v, by different hands); Scribe C usually framed his annotations. Other hands are also detected in similar marginal writings.9 Pen trials and doodles are present, but not many. Each leaf in the paper part is strengthened by book-length strips of reused contemporary paper, on which various writings in English and Latin are visible. These features imply that this manuscript was made to be heavily used and actually served practical purposes at places equipped with a suitable bookstand. Probably due to the damage to the original folds, the present binding is deep and tight, which has made it very difficult to be certain about the collation and gatherings as well as watermarks, but signatures on the first half of each quire in the paper portion and catchwords contribute to the interpretation shown in Table 1.10 The dates given in this list are suggested by the characteristics of the hands, but since scripts from such a transitional period usually exhibit mixed features and it is difficult to be certain about their dates, we may be cautious particularly about R. Perry, ‘Project Resources/Manuscript Description, Geography of Orthodoxy’, http://www.qub.ac.uk/geographies-of-orthodoxy/resources/?section=manuscript&id=68. M. Taguchi, ‘The Pepysian Meditation on Christ’s Passion’, in ‘Diuerse Imaginaciouns of Cristes Life’: Devotional Culture in England, 1300–1550, ed. S. Kelly and R. Perry (Turnhout, forthcoming) also discusses this manuscript. 9 E.g. Scribe C usually contracts nota bene as noa b¯n with a bar, but there are other instances such as nota bee ; these may be considered as non-scribal. On fol. 136r an unidentifiable hand added a note in Latin with an unusual mark for annotation (a long stroke between two middle points): non intencione consecrandi. 10 The booklet description and collation of quire H follows English Manuscripts of Richard Rolle, ed. Hanna; the nomenclature of the quires is taken from Bibliotheca Pepysiana, ed. James.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 179

07/04/2014 00:03

Mayumi Taguchi

180

Table 1  Structure of MS Pepys 2125 Part

Material

1

parchment

Booklet Quire

Collation

Folios

Scribe

Date

I

12

1–12

A

s. XV1/2

II

12

13–24

III

14

25–38

1

39

B

s. XVmid

A

10–1 (wants 5)

40–48

C

B

18

49–66

s. XIVex –XVin

C

10

67–76

2

D

12

77–88

3

E

12

89–100

F

12

101–12

G

12–4 (wants 6, 8–10)

113–20

H

12–2 (wants 11–12)

121–30

I

16–1 (wants 16)

131–43r 143v–145

D

s. XVex

i–ii, 146

E

s. XVex

paper 2

paper

1

4 flyleaves parchment

earlier ones, specifically in relation to the Wycliffite issues of this manuscript. James writes for the volume, s. XV, not late; Doyle, mid s. XV.11 Punctuation also presents the usual mixed features. However, the two texts in the parchment portion exhibit very dissimilar punctuation, which implies that Scribe A worked carefully, faithfully reproducing the punctuation in his exemplars, and did not, or was not allowed to, make changes. Scribe A did not make many errors, either. Together with a sign that the parchment manuscript was marked for lection,12 these evidences suggest that the parchment portion originated in a monastic scriptorium where copying was carried out systematically. The rather hasty hand of Scribe B is found only on fol. 39. This is a later supply of the text that was lost at the beginning of the first text of the paper part. Scribe C is responsible for the entire original paper manuscript. The writing of Scribe C is varied in many respects; for instance, he wrote more rapidly and with 11 Bibliotheca Pepysiana, ed. James, p. 72; Doyle, ‘Survey of the Origins and Circulation of Theological Writings’, vol. 1, p. 168. 12 E. Colledge notes that the last six chapters were carefully corrected, probably for a lection, the beginning of which is indicated by ‘hic’ in the margin: The Chastising of God’s Children, and The Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God, ed. J. Bazire and E. Colledge (Oxford, 1957), p. 39.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 180

07/04/2014 00:03

Choice and Arrangement of Texts in Magdalene Pepys 2125

181

more flourish on some pages, which is noticeable particularly in the execution of the tails of h and y. At one point he apparently imitates the hand of his exemplar, Harley 2398.13 The scribe also tries variations more inclined to bookhand (e.g. for headings), which appear in darker ink. Some texts, apparently for space fillers, are inserted in a smaller script and look somewhat different from the main hand. Such freedom indicates a non-profit production: it is possible that Scribe C made the manuscript for his own use. The working conditions and procedure of this scribe seem to have been disrupted. quires D and E have two sets of numerals along with the signatures. More importantly, catchwords are found inside quires. Quire A (fols. 40–48), for example, carries catchwords on the verso of fols. 44–46, in which the text breaks between fol. 43 and fol. 44. In-quire catchwords are found on many other leaves. Hypothetically, this may be explained by the original manuscript having been badly damaged in the folds; therefore, those catchwords helped in reorganizing the manuscript at the time of rebinding. Probably the manuscript had not been properly cared for in the hands of its original owner, and the complicated evidence of signature and catchwords as well as the absence of some leaves would indicate the efforts of the later owner(s) to restore the best of it. Another thing to note is that fol. 40r is signed ‘a i’. Since this is the second leaf of the first text of the paper part, the original manuscript would have started with an unsigned quire (or one signed with a cross), which is now lost. The parchment portion was combined with the main paper portion together with the front and back flyleaves, possibly when fol. 39 was replaced, or after more additions were made at the end of the manuscript. Scribe D starts writing on the recto near the gutter and shows no sign of discomfort, neatly arranging the text, which was therefore most probably done before the present, extremely tight binding. If the parchment and the paper portions were joined after the addition of the text by Scribe D, we may suppose that it happened around the end of the fifteenth century.14 Not much later, Scribe E added some additional short texts on flyleaves.

The Original Manuscript: Paper Portion The thematic thread through the original paper manuscript is penitential, evoking feelings of guilt followed by thankfulness and trust in God’s love and mercy through meditating upon the Passion of Christ. These points are presented in the first text, ‘Dimitte me Domine …’ (fols. 39r–50v), as being of central importance, specifically for the religious life, and are reiterated separately and collectively through the manuscript, culminating at an Easter sermon, the last text by Scribe C (copied from Harley 2398). 13 Doyle, ‘Survey of the Origins and Circulation of Theological Writings’, vol. 2, p. 129. 14 The present binding retains the medieval wooden boards (fifteenth century, according to English Manuscripts of Richard Rolle, ed. Hanna, p. 12).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 181

07/04/2014 00:03

182

Mayumi Taguchi

‘Dimitte’ is a treatise structured like a sermon and has a lively style that is appropriate enough to be called a ‘sermon or discourse’, though perhaps it is too long for a single delivery.15 The theme is Job 10:20–2, which was well known in the ‘Lamentation of Job’ used in the Dirige. It addresses the necessity of penitence as a preparation for death and the importance of humility, meekness and, above all, charity, which is the root of all virtues. The merit of these virtues and the demerit of the opposite vices are illustrated through numerous exemplary narratives and references to the Church Fathers. It includes a section expressly addressed to a ‘brother’: ‘Thenke we þen, Y praye þe, goode broþer, whi we cam into religion, and for whas loue we forsooke þe wordle and þe delices of þe flessh and al wordly wurshep fro þe firste day þat we toke þe habit of religion …’ (826–8). This section was probably a later addition, because the idea of clerical duties is not a component idea of the theme of the treatise,16 which means that this text was probably adapted for use of the religious rather than the laity, although the latter possibility cannot be entirely ruled out, as devout lay people in that period aspired to a mixed life and often tried to imitate monastic spirituality. If religious, the original user of P did not have much Latin. Most of the texts are written in English; even the Lord’s Prayer and the Ave, which were recited while meditating upon the Passion, are translated into English. ‘Dimitte’ includes instances of both: ‘we say euery day in oure Pater Noster: Et dimitte nobis debita nostra, that is to sey, “Foryeffe vs oure dettes”’ (27–9) and ‘Aue Maria gracia plena etc., þat is, “Hayl Marie, ful of grace, our Lord is with þe”’ (125–6). Later, in a text on the Lord’s Prayer, the first phrase ‘Pater Noster qui es in celis’ is rendered verbatim as ‘þat is, fader oure þat art in heuene’ (fol. 119v), though this may not be an unusual version of its recitation.17 The treatise is followed by a unique translation of book 6, chapter 65 of the Revelations of St Bridget of Sweden, concerning the contemplative and the active life (fols. 51r–56v). The next text, also unique, is a confessional manual (fols. 56v–60v), which aims to show ‘a manere fourme or rewle how ȝe shulle make ȝour confession & shrift. after the comyn custome of holy churche. and to shewe ȝowe. the pryncipal vices. & the spices of hem’ (fol. 6v).18 It has a framed heading: ‘Here. bygynneth a fourme. of a general confession. wyth special synnes. ȝif a man fynde hym greuyd in eny of hem’. Havens argues that ‘editorial links between each text’ play an important role, ‘creating a narrative framework within which 15 The quotation is from the Catalogue of the Pepys Library, vol. 5, p. 54. For the edited text and the discussion of it, see M. Taguchi, ‘A Middle English Penitential Treatise on Job 10:20–22, Dimitte me, Domine …’, Mediaeval Studies 67 (2005), pp. 157–217. Quotations from this text will be referenced by line numbers directly after the text. 16 Taguchi, ‘Middle English Penitential Treatise’, p. 163. 17 On the next page, the same verse occurs in the proper word order: ‘Pater noster qui es in celis ¶ Oure fader þat art in heuenes’ (fol. 120r). 18 Its style and context present some similarities to those of The Cleansing of Man’s Soul, but, in fact, it is not an extract of the Cleansing. See W. Everett, ‘The Clensyng of Mannes Soule: An Introductory Study’, The Southern Quarterly 13 (1975), 265–79 (p. 265, n. 5).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 182

07/04/2014 00:03

Choice and Arrangement of Texts in Magdalene Pepys 2125

183

to read them’.19 Indeed, medieval manuscript texts are not always provided with apparatuses such as headings, rubrics or large initials to set out the beginning of a new text, chapter or section. Many of the texts in P have headings, distinguished from the main text by letter size, underlining or square enclosures in red ink, some of which were apparently supplied afterwards by the scribe himself, in the space left for them or in the margin. Such a practice indicates that the compiler was aiming at a user-friendly organized codex. The next verse text, the Mirror of Mankind (fols. 60v–65r), is again introduced by the heading in a frame: ‘Here bygynneþ materes of ȝouþe & of age. and of vertues & of vices wyþ her kyndely condicions’.20 The following, apparently uncommon, Latin prayer for receiving the Sacrament is written in a smaller script (fol. 65r), and therefore may be another filler.21 The next item, Thomas Wimbledon’s sermon at St Paul’s Cross (fols. 65v–73v), continues in the new quire, C. Wimbledon’s sermon reiterates the duties of the religious as well as the laity according to their given ‘estates’. After this sermon, an early history of and a short meditation on the rood tree are written in smaller scripts. The early history of the tree of the Cross (fols. 73v–76v) narrates the material link (rood tree) between original sin and the death of Jesus on the Cross.22 The next, a ‘Meditation on the Passion’ (fol. 76v), is an extract from the verse ‘Ihesu þat hast me dere y-bouȝt’, written out as prose.23 These are apparently space fillers at the end of the first gathering, or booklet, of the original manuscript. Each booklet starts with longer and more scholarly texts, which are then followed by shorter texts, extracts and prayers. The next quire, the only component of booklet 2, is signed d, but it is numbered by another set of roman numerals, which may indicate that it was made at an earlier stage of compilation; it may even have been intended to be the first quire. The first text of booklet 2, with the running head, ‘Of the mercy of God’ or ‘de

19 Havens, ‘Narrative of Faith’, p. 73. 20 It is a debate between personified virtues and vices, youth and age, good and bad angels, etc. In the version edited by F. J. Furnivall, Hymns to the Virgin & Christ, The Parliament of Devils, and Other Religious Poems, Chiefly from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lambeth MS. No. 853, EETS o.s. 24 (London, 1867), pp. 58–78, the poem consists of 656 lines, 82 octavo stanzas, rhyming abababab. In P each two lines are written as one. P lacks lines 185–92, 225–40 (a debate between Lechery and Chastity), and the last stanza in Furnivall’s, but includes additional six lines (written as three) after line 392 and three more stanzas after line 624. 21 A Latin prayer preparatory for Mass with the same incipit, ‘Summe sacerdos et vere pontifex’, survives in extensively prolific variations. The rest of the prayer in the P version, in fact, is completely different from that printed in A. Wilmart, Auteurs spirituels et textes dévots du moyen âge latin (Paris, 1932), pp. 101–25. 22 M. Taguchi, ‘The Legend of the Cross before Christ: Another Prose Treatment in English and Anglo-Norman’, Poetica 45 (1996), 15–61. Also see B. Murdoch, The Apocryphal Adam and Eve in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2009). 23 This version corresponds to Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century, ed. C. Brown, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1957), pp. 114–16, lines 1–54 (not 1–70, of the total 154 lines) (note, p. 274).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 183

07/04/2014 00:03

184

Mayumi Taguchi

misericordia dei’ (fols. 77r–80v), is a scholarly compilation of various authoritative texts including Henry Suso’s Horologium sapientiae.24 Next, ‘Of three workings in man’s soul’ (fols. 80v–82v), formerly attributed to Richard Rolle, describes and instructs meditation, or ‘thinking’, in the words of its author, step by step, as a middle-level devotional exercise between ‘thought’ and ‘contemplation’. 25 As material for meditations, ‘The rule of the life of Our Lady’ follows (fols. 82v–83v); this is a faithful translation of chapter 3 of the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes vitae Christi. The other major texts in this gathering are Richard Rolle’s Commandment (fols. 84r, 85v–88v) and The Form of Living (fols. 84r–85v). Shorter texts and verses to conclude the sequences or to fill spaces are admonitory or meditative. Richard Rolle is often referred to as the most popular late medieval author, a designation which may be interpreted to mean that he faithfully represented the popular religious sentiment of the time. One of the themes important to Rolle is love, which may be amplified through devout meditations on the life and Passion of Christ and specifically through devotions to the Holy Name. Immersion in Gospel meditations at the level of high contemplatives may not have been desirable for every devout Christian, but Rolle’s simplified version of mysticism would have appealed to a wider range of pious people. Usefully comparing with the author of the Meditationes vitae Christi (roughly contemporary with Rolle), Sarah McNamer makes special mention of Rolle as the key person who ‘authorized … a practice embedded in affective meditation as a genre as it developed in England among a broad array of readers  –  male as well as female, lay as well as religious: the practice of feeling like a woman’. 26 While quite a few texts in P were formerly attributed to Rolle (item 13 ‘Of three workings in man’s soul’, item 14 ‘The rule of the life of Our Lady’, item 23 The Charter of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost, items 32 and 33 excerpts from a translation of the Speculum ecclesie, item 38 (ii) ‘Prayer to the name of Jesus’, 24 This text, titled in the Catalogue of the Pepys Library as ‘Teachings of St Barnabas’, is attributed to St Bernard in Tokyo, Keio University Library, MS Hopton Hall, a largish codex of religious compilation, and in BL Add. MS 37049, the famous illustrated Carthusian miscellany. The text is arranged in significantly different orders in the three versions. The lengthiest version is Hopton Hall. If we divide this into fourteen sections and number them for convenience sake, P version will be represented as 11, 12, 13, 4–10, 14; Add. MS 37049, as A, 11, 13, 4, 2, 9, B, 5, 7, C (A–C are unique additions). 25 It expounds the three workings in man’s soul: thought, thinking, and contemplation. Thinking is the proper English, the author says, for the meditation is ‘non english but. a word feynyd lik to þe latyn’, which consists of ‘boþe prayer & þenkyng’. As subject matter for meditation, the author recommends the Passion of Christ, our own wretchedness, and the joys of the Virgin and the angels. It instructs us in how we should ‘imagine’, for example, the Virgin Mary in her chamber, sitting by a window, reading. The meditator should sit in some corner of the room, beholding her intently and carefully in his mind: Mary is absorbed in her book, inclining over it, reading it silently; she is pale from concentration, etc. For a higher contemplation, we are guided to imagine the meekness of the Virgin. 26 S. McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia, 2010), p. 119.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 184

07/04/2014 00:03

Choice and Arrangement of Texts in Magdalene Pepys 2125

185

item 39 ‘Meditatio bona’, item 47 ‘The mirror of sinners’, item 48 ‘Of three arrows on doomsday’), three major English writings by Rolle occur in P as six items (item 17 The Commandment [part], item 18 The Form of Living [first part], item 19 The Commandment, item 28 Ego dormio [part], item 31 The Form of Living [first part] and item 37 The Form of Living [second part]), which is appropriate to a codex beginning with a treatise extolling charity, both divine and human. Havens points out that Rolle’s Form of Living, placed together with texts on meditation, ‘provides context for the reader to understand where meditation fits within his or her daily religious life’.27 Indeed, the compiler of P shows tenacious interests in The Form of Living, making dual copies of the first part of it. Booklet 3 (quires E–H) begins with The Charter of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost (fols. 89r–96v), which occupies most of quire E (fols. 89–100); the remaining few pages contain ‘On conduct when hearing mass’ (fols. 97r–98v), prayers and short texts in Latin (fols. 98v–99r), and the first half of Ego dormio (fols. 99r–102r). Quire F (fols. 101–12) holds the latter part of this Ego dormio; two short texts (‘A rule of life’ and ‘On the seven bodily works of mercy, poverty and worldly goods’, fol. 102r–v);28 then, The Form of Living (fols. 102v–104r, 108r–116v) is intervened by excerpts from a common, eclectic translation of chapters 3–5 and 17 of the Speculum ecclesie (fols. 104r–107v);29 an ‘Anecdote concerning St Bernard’ (fol. 107v), a prayer to the four archangels (fol. 107v) and a four-line note on God’s grace (fol. 108r). Interestingly, there is a Latin passage at the end of the second copy of the first part of The Form of Living that directs the reader to the fifth folio thence (counting the folio that contains this writing) by giving the incipit of the second part. Apparently, this is an addition made after the scribe had started the second part. The direction is reversed at the beginning of the second part, ‘The precedent part … see before fol. 5’, in the space next to the heading, by the seventeenth-century owner of the manuscript, Richard Smith (1590–1675), who might have also underlined the Latin direction above, which looks finer than others; Smith also added marginal indexes at the end of the second part and to the following ‘Prayer taught by St Ursula to a hermit of Warwick’ (item 38(i), fol. 116v). In quire G (fols. 113–20), after the second part of The Form of Living, the prayer above is followed by another prayer, the first part of the ‘Prayer to the name of Jesus’ (fol. 116v). According to Hope Emily Allen, this prayer was often attached to Rolle and St Bernard, two champions of the devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus and continued to be well liked through the later Middle Ages, and also in the Post-Reformation period, occurring in numerous manuscript and printed books of hours, both in Latin and English; it was set to

27 Havens, ‘Narrative of Faith’, p. 75. 28 The latter is printed in A. G. Lundy, ‘Heresy-Hunting and Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2125, ff. 40r–143r’, Manuscripta 41 (1997), 88–109 (pp. 105–6). 29 Compared with the Thornton and Vernon versions printed by C. Horstmann (Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole, an English Father of the Church, and his Followers, 2 vols., Library of Early English Writers 1–2 [London, 1895–6], I, 219–61), additions to the P translation are minor, while quite a few passages are summarized or omitted.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 185

07/04/2014 00:03

186

Mayumi Taguchi

music at least once.30 Then follow the popular ‘Meditatio bona’ (fol. 117r–v),31 a sequence in devotion to the Virgin, the Holy Name (including a large Christogram ihs in red)32 and Christ’s arms with heavy indulgences.33 Notably, several leaves are missing from this quire: one after fol. 117 and three after fol. 118. After this break begins, with the heading added by a contemporary hand, an independent version of the prose exposition of the Lord’s Prayer (fols. 119r–123v), which continues into quire H (fols. 121–30).34 The top corner of fol. 122 is lost, and a considerable amount of the text is gone, but this loss is not treated as an intentional omission in this essay. Quire H consists of a few shorter texts mainly dealing with virtues and vices and the obvious consequence of sinful life, of which ‘On virtues and vices’ (fols. 125v–126r) is copied from Harley 2398. In Harley 2398 this text is followed by an Easter sermon, which occurs in P in the next booklet (fols. 139r–143r, the last text

30 H. E. Allen, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, Hermit of Hampole, and Materials for his Biography (New York, 1927), pp. 314–17. 31 P version has a unique addition after Horstmann, Yorkshire Writers, vol. 2, p. 443, lines 6–7, ‘þenk þus & seye with þi mouth’, which is printed in Havens, ‘Instruction, Devotion, Meditation, Sermon’, vol. 2, pp. 379–80. 32 In this sequence, ‘Oremus. Deus cui omne cor …’ is a version of the Collect for Purity in the Sarum Use, part of the preparatory prayers before Mass. A translation appears in The Cloud of Unknowing. The translation by Thomas Cranmer (1549) has come down to the present-day Anglican prayer book; the inscription written as a frame for ihs is Philippians 2:10–11 (Philippians 2:5–11 is said during the Epistle on Palm Sunday), which is the beginning of the Office of the Mass of the Holy Name. The votive mass of the Holy Name of Jesus was ‘introduced to England in the mid-fourteenth century, but was not widely disseminated until after 1450’, when it ‘was celebrated on Fridays in parish and cathedral churches across England’: R. Lutton, Lollardy and Orthodox Religion in Pre-Reformation England: Reconstructing Piety, Studies in History New Series (London, 2006), pp. 69–80 (pp. 69, 73). 33 The writing on fol. 118v is divided by six paraphs at the head of the line: the first two indicate an indulgence (3,000 years: 1,000 years for venial sins and 2,000 years for mortal sins, ascribed to Pope John) and a version of a well-known indulgenced prayer, ‘Anima christi sanctifica me. corpus christi salua me …’; the next three are another set of an indulgence (for 6070 years), an antiphon in honour of the arma Christi ‘Cruci corone spinee: Clauisque dire lancee …’, often found in a devotional compilation (according to F. Lewis, the hymn was started to accompany the arma Christi at an early stage: ‘Rewarding Devotion: Indulgences and the Promotion of Images’, in The Church and the Arts, ed. D. Wood, Studies in Church History 28 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 179–94 (p. 190)) and the indulgenced prayer, ‘Concede quesumus omnipotens eterne deus …’; at the sixth paraph starts an instruction for devoutly saying the Ave every day while visualizing the Virgin at the death of her son; indulgence of 6,000 years ascribed to Pope Peter for devout visualizing of the arma Christi (imperfect owing to the loss of the following leaf). 34 It expounds the manner (e.g. in a private chamber) and the importance of saying the Lord’s Prayer, occasionally citing the prayer in Latin (Much of Latin marginal notes are lost at the edge): ‘Ihesu crist in a sermon þat he made. tauȝte his disciples & ous alle in hem. for to fle ypocresye. in oure prayer. and bad vs praye in certeyn manere … So in þe laste peticion we askeþ to be delyuered fro al yuel ffro euel of synne, of temptacion & of peyne perpetuel. and þerwiþ we askeþ. þat our fader graunte vs pes & sikernesse in blisse þat is endeles. amen, amen, amen.’

ME Texts in Transition.indb 186

07/04/2014 00:03

Choice and Arrangement of Texts in Magdalene Pepys 2125

187

written by Scribe C), after three intervening texts: ‘The mirror of sinners’ (fols. 126r–128v),35 translated from Speculum peccatoris; ‘Of three arrows on doomsday’ (fols. 128v–130v); and The Ghost of Guy (fols. 131r–139r). We shall see the contents of these booklets in more detail below in relation to the missing leaves in quire G. These findings may be summarized by contending that the paper portion was originally made for a single man of means and status (because the manuscript is large and thick), possibly for the scribe himself (because the scribe seems to have been trying to learn hands by copying texts, and also because he was not a blind copyist and read the texts while copying them as well as afterwards, which is clear from a number of corrections made immediately after deletions as well as interlineally and marginally; he also added notes and headings), who was not a scholar (because most of the texts are in English and treat basic Christian doctrines, rules and instructions) but was in some way connected to a religious house (because the manuscript includes texts openly addressed to a religious audience and also because many texts are related, both directly and indirectly, to multiple other manuscripts, which would happen in a situation affiliated to a large library, scriptorium or network). It is also presumed that the scribe worked on the manuscript over some time (because multiple copies of Rolle’s texts are included, and his script shows variation). Moreover, this paper portion was intended for a practical purpose (because this is not a de luxe copy and was organized in a userfriendly way); it also appears to have been read repeatedly or was not well kept, and consequently needed extensive repair.

Additions and their Relationship to the Main Manuscript The first major additions are in the parchment portion, which was added to the front of the original paper manuscript. This consists of only two longer texts, The Chastising of God’s Children (fols. 1r–28r) and a ‘Meditation on Christ’s Passion’ (fols. 28v–38v), an independent translation of the Passion section of the Meditationes vitae Christi.36 Another important addition is ‘Four requests of Our Lady to Jesus’ (fols. 144r–145r) by Scribe D. Additions to the manuscript are also found on flyleaves  –  front: Latin notes on the six ages of the world and the coming of Britons; back: Prognostics of Esdras (Erra pater) in verse.37 These texts by Scribe E may also have played their roles in relation to the combined manuscript, but these are not discussed in this paper. 35 The heading for this text ‘the myrour of synner[es]’ is added in the outer margin by the scribe himself. 36 The present author is preparing an edition of this text for the Middle English Texts series (Heidelberg) in collaboration with Yoko Iyeiri. Also see Taguchi, ‘Pepysian Meditation’, which discusses in detail why the present author considers that the translation was made from the Meditationes vitae Christi and not from the Meditationes de Passione Christi, a shorter version of the former, usually comprising the sections from the Last Supper to Christ’s descent to hell, which circulated independently, particularly in England. 37 For this text see Bibliotheca Pepysiana, ed. James, p. 79.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 187

07/04/2014 00:03

188

Mayumi Taguchi

The two texts in the parchment portion were both primarily written for nuns, but these versions seem to have been adapted for a male audience. In the Chastising, the address to a sister has been erased and changed to ‘friend’ twice in the Prologue.38 Although it is not as decisive as these changes, the additional pictures of St John in the ‘Meditation’ may also have been intended to appeal to a male audience.39 Both the Chastising and the Meditationes vitae Christi were immensely popular in religious houses. Two of the nine extant manuscripts of the Chastising belonged to the London and Sheen Charterhouses, while further evidence, such as borrowing records and wills, indicates that manuscript and printed copies were owned by the Hull Charterhouse, and Augustinian, Cistercian and Benedictine nunneries. Two printed copies survive from Syon.40 The popularity of the Meditationes vitae Christi in religious houses is evident, if only from the two vernacular translations from the Charterhouse: Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ and the anonymous Speculum devotorum. Importantly, both the Chastising and Love’s adaptation are explicitly addressed to those who are ‘tendre’ and ‘of symple vndirstondyng’ respectively, citing I Corinthians 1:2 that they need to be fed with milk instead of substantial food.41 Love refers to Corinthians in order to justify his translation, saying that Gospel meditations are effective means for the edification of such beginners, while the Chastising author does so in order to warn such ‘children’ about temptations that they might easily fall into, such as the mistake of over-rejoicing in experiencing pleasures in the body and the soul at the first contact with the sweetness of divine love through ‘inward biholdynge’. 42 Thus, we may see that the Chastising and the translation of the Meditationes vitae Christi in the parchment portion of this manuscript make appropriate augmentation to the main book. What, then, may be the significance of placing them at the front of the manuscript? Colledge summarizes the four major topics of the Chastising as follows: ‘(a) the recognition and combat of heresy, (b) the repression of “enthusiasm”, (c) the 38 Chastising of God’s Children, ed. Bazire and Colledge, p. 40. Colledge further notes that ‘and women’ of ‘men and women’ has been omitted ‘in several places’. Indeed, ‘or woman’ in ‘a man or woman’ is omitted once (p. 204, line 24) out of sixty instances of similar expressions, but I have not been able to identify any other omission of this kind. In one instance, on the contrary, ‘or woman’ is added to the usual ‘a man’ (p. 182, line 17). 39 In one instance, when the Virgin faints, St John supports her body with the help of the Magdalene; in addition, when the Virgin comes around, St John stands in the central position in the picture, apparently taking his place as her ‘son’, as Jesus called him from the Cross. These emphases are discussed in detail in Taguchi, ‘Pepysian Meditation’. 40 Chastising of God’s Children, ed. Bazire and Colledge, pp. 37–8. 41 Ibid., p. 104, lines 1–4; Nicholas Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Full Critical Edition Based on Cambridge University Library Additional MSS 6578 and 6686 with Introduction, Notes and Glossary, ed. M. G. Sargent, Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies (Exeter, 2005), p. 10, lines 6–7. 42 Love, Mirror, ed. Sargent, p. 10, lines 14–16; Chastising of God’s Children, ed. Bazire and Colledge, pp. 102–4.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 188

07/04/2014 00:03

Choice and Arrangement of Texts in Magdalene Pepys 2125

189

“discerning of spirits” and (d) the claims of the liturgy against private devotions’. 43 The first point may have worked to divert suspicion of heresy from this volume, if the inspection of a manuscript for heresy was carried out more carefully at the beginning of a codex. The treatise includes allusions to the Lollard recantation in 1382 and controversy about vernacular translations of the Scripture. Colledge observes that the author is evidently ‘aware’ of this issue and ‘he himself adopts an attitude of excessive caution and conservatism towards the problem of liturgical prayer by religious who have no Latin’.44 The second and the fourth points, in combination with the next ‘Meditation’, would assert that the Gospel meditations in the book would be used with especial care. Notably, the addition by Scribe D is also associable with the Meditationes vitae Christi. This is a dialogue between the Virgin and Jesus, well known in fifteenthcentury French mystery plays, particularly those by Arnoul Gréban and Jean Michel, as ‘Les quatre requêtes de Notre-Dame à Jésus’. When Jesus reveals his approaching death to his Mother, she makes four requests to him so that she should not have to see him die; Jesus explains why it is necessary for him to die such a painful death and for her to suffer it, and promises that her love will be rewarded later. The dialogue derives from the prose Passion narrative, allegedly translated in 1398 for Queen Isabella of Bavaria. The anonymous writer was inspired by chapter 72 of the Meditationes vitae Christi.45 Since the Sheen Carthusian William Darker made a copy of this text for the nuns of Syon,46 we may consider that this is a kind of text that was thought to be appropriate for nuns and therefore for other people of similar spiritual and intellectual levels. Together with the English translation of the Meditationes vitae Christi at the beginning, this text intensifies the thematic thread of the original P on devotions to the Virgin and Christ. If these additions also helped protect the book, we may consider that Passion meditations 43 Chastising of God’s Children, ed. Bazire and Colledge, p. 47. Also see R. Ellis and S. Fanous, ‘1349–1412: Texts’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism, ed. S. Fanous and V. Gillespie (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 133–61 (pp. 153–5). 44 Chastising of God’s Children, ed. Bazire and Colledge, p. 35. 45 This narrative is usually called the Passion Isabeau. The ‘Four Requests’ has recently been edited by E. Towl, using the other surviving copy made by William Darker (see n. 46 below) as the base text: ‘An Edition of Marian Devotional Texts Extant in English Manuscripts of the Fifteenth and Early-Sixteenth Centuries’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Otago, 2010), pp. 57–64, 311–18, 468–71; Towl does not identify the source or Queen Isabella. The Passion Isabeau has been edited by E. DuBruck, La Passion Isabeau: une edition du manuscript Fr. 966 de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris avec une introduction et des notes, American University Studies, Series 2, Romance Languages and Literature, vol. 141 (New York, 1990). This edition should be used together with its review by G. Hasenohr, Revue de Linguistique Romane 56 (1992), 312–20. See also É. Roy, Le Mystère de la Passion en France du XIVe au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1904), p. 254; J.-P. Bordier, ‘Les Quatre Requêtes de Notre-Dame’, in L’Économie du dialogue dans l’ancien théâtre européen, ed. J.-P. Bordier (Paris, 1999), pp. 187–210; L. R. Muir, The Biblical Drama of Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 127–8, 245–6. 46 Cambridge University Library, MS Ff.vi.33, fols. 33v–37r. Neither seems the other’s exemplar, but they are very similar.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 189

07/04/2014 00:03

190

Mayumi Taguchi

were considered safe in spite of the worries of the Church authorities about the neglect of liturgies and the spread of enthusiasm and private devotion. Indeed, the episcopal approbation of Love’s Mirror (around 1410) determined further propagation of Gospel meditations; devout royals and nobles contributed to their dissemination. King Henry V (1413–22), above all, is known for his enthusiastic devotion to the Virgin. He commissioned an Anglo-Norman translation of the Meditationes vitae Christi and instructed in his will that special Masses for devotion to the Virgin be offered regularly.47 The continuous increase of the popularity of Gospel meditations may be considered in relation to a shift of power towards the secular domain. Interestingly, the original volume of P includes a parable comparing God to the King of England (fol. 40r). Henry V also founded the Carthusian Charterhouse at Sheen and the Brigittine house at Syon in London; Paul Strohm observes that the king’s benefactions of Syon and Sheen ‘were central to the Lancastrian fusion of the secular and religious spheres’. 48 Patrick J. Horner illustrates how Henry V contributed to the merger of the power of the king and the church by suppressing the Lollards and how ecclesiastical officials had become dependent on the power of secular authority;49 Jeremy Catto underlines the rise of the king’s power over that of the church during his reign.50 On the other hand, the particularly close royal connection to Gloucester is well known; it continued to play an important role in national affairs from the later fourteenth through fifteenth centuries.51 More than a century later, the creation of the new bishopric of Gloucester saved the abbey, by that time elevated to the status of cathedral, and its associated monastic buildings from the worst of the Dissolution.52 We might consider the significance of the provenance of P in relation not only to the possible vivacity of the reformative movement in the region but also to the ongoing political manœuvring between the secular and religious authorities.

47 Jean Galopes’s Norman French translation of the Meditationes vitae Christi was presented to Henry V. Henry’s will ordered a daily Mass on the life of the Virgin between Sunday and Friday. See G. R. Keiser, ‘John Lydgate’s Magnificat: Magnifying Scribal Difficulties’, in Tributes to Kathleen L. Scott: English Medieval Manuscripts: Readers, Makers and Illuminators, ed. M. V. Hennessy (Turnhout, 2009), pp. 115–27 (p. 115). 48 P. Strohm, England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, 1399– 1422 (New Haven, CT, 1988), p. 238. 49 P. J. Horner, ‘“ The King Taught us the Lesson”: Benedictine Support for Henry V’s Suppression of the Lollards’, Mediaeval Studies 52 (1990), 190–220. 50 J. I. Catto, ‘Religious Change under Henry V’, in Henry V: The Practice of Kingship, ed. G. L. Harriss (Oxford, 1985), pp. 97–115. Also see Taguchi, ‘Pepysian Meditation’. 51 N. Herbert, Medieval Gloucester, 1066–1547: An Extract from The Victoria History of the County of Gloucester, vol. 4: The City of Gloucester (Oxford, 1988), p. 21. For instance, parliaments met there in 1378, 1406 and 1407; later, the city contributed to the downfall of the Lancastrians by refusing permission to Queen Margaret’s army to cross the Severn at Gloucester. 52 Herbert, Medieval Gloucester, p. 40.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 190

07/04/2014 00:03

Choice and Arrangement of Texts in Magdalene Pepys 2125

191

Omissions and their Relationship to the Main Manuscript The omissions may be discussed only hypothetically. The main part of P now lacks the leaves listed in Table 2. Table 2  Missing folios in MS Pepys 2125 Case Lost folios 1

an entire quire before fol. 40

2

fol. 39 (replaced)

3

one after fol. 43

4

one after fol. 117

Quire Content

}

X A G

}

? ‘Dimitte’ (unique) ‘Meditatio bona’

5

three after fol. 118

G

arma Christi

6

two after fol. 130

H

? After ‘Of three arrows’

7

one after fol. 145

I

? After ‘Four requests’ (added by Scribe D)

Case 1 is deduced from the fact that fol. 39, as mentioned above, does not belong to quire A. Cases 2 and 3 occur in the first text of the paper part; 4 and 5 in the same quire. Case 6 is hypothesized from the evidence that the first six leaves of this quire (now consisting of ten leaves) bear signatures ‘h i’ to ‘h vi’. Cases 6 and 7 are untraceable as they do not break a text. As frequently happens, the loss of folios occurs nearer to the beginning and the end of the original manuscript, and not in the middle. On the assumption that this material evidence of addition and subtraction reflects the way inspections of a book were usually carried out, we would next examine the remaining contextual evidence before and after these missing pages to see if they suggest any context that might excite suspicion of heretical ideas. Anita G. Lundy notes that Wyclif ‘de-emphasized the importance of attending Mass, receiving the sacraments, participating in pilgrimages, and venerating images’, labeling these practices, as well as confession, ‘forms of idolatry’.53 Indeed, going on pilgrimages is discussed in ‘Dimitte’ as inferior to weeping as a means of satisfaction for sins, but it is not specifically attacked. It is grouped together with other penitential practices and mortification of the flesh; the brothers (or sisters) who are not able or ready to perform such acts are, as it were, comforted with the idea that much simpler weeping is far better than all those bodily afflictions: Afforce we vs þen ofte to wepe for oure synnes, for we mowe nat longe dure in gret fastyng ne gret wakyng, ne suffre no gret trauail of our body, ne go none grete pilgremages as som men doþ to purge her synnes as sumtyme bi londe and sumtyme bi water, and suffreth gret disese, þere we beþ in gret ese. And sikerly Y comende better in good fey to be vnder obedience in quyet and 53 Lundy, ‘Heresy-hunting’, p. 91.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 191

07/04/2014 00:03

192

Mayumi Taguchi

silence, and praye, and wepe for our synnes þan to go abowte þe wordle by water and by londe. (lines 647–53) Weeping is better and pleases God more: tears ‘openeþ þe synne þat mouth shameþ to speke’ (lines 582–3), but confession itself is not condemned. Clerical corruption is also discussed in ‘Dimitte’: ‘alle þe false dyuynes and alle þe false clerkes þat so seyeth vnderstondeþ nat þe trouthe, bute on her ydel ryot by her seyng lediþ meny into heresye for þei ne haue nat wel ouerloked (‘examined carefully’) Holi Writ’ (lines 785–8). It is notable that the compiler reproaches negligence in Bible study. In another passage he laments the sin of pride found in many religious people: ‘Alas, alas, so meny of his disciples ben in holi churche in þese daies þat wul nat bowe hem by meknesse þat beþ luged to hym in peyne for he set his merke on hem and in her hertes, þe whuche merke is þis word, pride’ (lines 243–5). Later in this treatise the author emphasizes the importance of the virtue of charity specifically for people in religious vocation, saying that it is their ‘delyt and desir to serue to oþer on feet and hondes, nat recheles ne feynt’ (lines 834–5) and that religion started in this way; he then starts a rather lengthy criticism of some religious men who have become ‘more seculers, more dedeynous (‘disdainful’), more hawtein, more delicious, idel and vicious, ȝyuyng euel ensample to alle men, feble and tedious to trauaile, slugged and slepy to prayer and passyng in pride, in ire, in envye and in diuerse oþer vices þan euere þei were bifore’ (lines 842–5). The author goes on in the same manner, for twice as long, about the ‘wrecched religious’ (line 850), but then again returns to the matter of their own peril when they have fallen into the same error: ‘dampnacion [for errors of religious men] shal be hardere, in as myche as þei be bownde to gretter perfeccion’ (lines 854–5). It is particularly intriguing that, in one exemplary narrative (lines 194–212), Bishop St Oweyn is approached by Lucifer disguised as a beautiful young man and becomes enchanted by this personification. Oweyn strolls into a garden at night and, looking up at the moon and the stars and sighing heavily, says, ‘A Lord God, þer is gret beaute þere withynne, when þis is so fair withowte’ (lines 211–12). The saint tries to help the young man even after Lucifer reveals his identity. It seems that the author of ‘Dimitte’, while tolerating the attraction to a beautiful young man, makes use of this exemplum as a cautionary episode to show the danger of the devil’s snare behind such an improper attraction. While ‘Dimitte’ may possibly be regarded as having been influenced by Lollard ideas, the critical views of clerical corruptions are not directed to the outside world but rather inwardly, as if trying to correct and improve the audience’s religious house. Thomas Wimbledon’s similar rebuke, in fact, is much lengthier and harsher than that in ‘Dimitte’. Further, a brief, probably additional, reference to an incident that occurred at the Convent of Friars Minor at Oxford ‘nat longe ago’ (lines 743–5), as the Catalogue mentions,54 is noteworthy; it tells about a miraculous incident that 54 Catalogue of the Pepys Library, vol. 5, p. 54.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 192

07/04/2014 00:03

Choice and Arrangement of Texts in Magdalene Pepys 2125

193

happened to a ‘scoler’ who tried to make a confession but could not because of bitter weeping, and was immediately granted forgiveness. This episode suggests that the Pepys adaptor is not trying to confront the mendicant order. ‘Dimitte’ is a treatise structured in a manner similar to the so-called ‘modern’ or ‘scholastic’ sermon, systematically developing the theme in divisions and subdivisions. The first part treats sin, divine mercy and conditional virtue; the second, the merit of weeping; and the third, the duties of the religious. The first part may be further divided into subdivisions: sin as debt to God (fols. 39r–40r), chastity and humility (fols. 40r–43v), and commendation of the virtue of charity (fols. 44r–46r). At the break at fol. 43, a story about St Edmund, the Archbishop of Canterbury, going into the sea, is interrupted at the beginning. Since this text has not been found in any other manuscript, we do not know more than that the transition from meekness to charity must have occurred in the missing pages. The replacement of fol. 39, the first leaf of ‘Dimitte’, may also have occurred because of the presence of some heretical remark(s) in the original copy of this text or in the lost quire that had contained it. The word count of the added folio is similar to that of the next folio, but it is unknowable how many leaves the text of ‘Dimitte’ originally occupied, or why the quire was removed. Finally, we may note that ‘Dimitte’ refers to meditations upon the Passion of Christ as the ultimate step of weeping in devotion: ‘And þen þenk on þe bitter passion of our Lord Ihesu Crist, and on þi synnes. And sur be þu, if þu abidest wel and deuoutly in þi þenkynge, þu shalt haue gret plente of teeres’ (lines 668–70). The replacement of the first quire of the original paper codex with part of another (parchment) manuscript containing the Passion meditation may possibly be an attempt at thematic unity. Case 4, the removal of a leaf at the end of the ‘Meditatio bona’, has been discussed in relation to heresy hunting. Richard Beadle makes special mention in the Catalogue of an ‘apparently unique departure from the usual text of a wellknown meditation’, immediately before the torn leaf: ‘I thanke þe hertily. my lord iesu crist. for þou hast nat clepid me to þe rewle of seynt Benet. ne of seynt Austyn. ne of seynt Fraunceys. ne to no oþer rewle. ordenyd by mannes chesyng. but to þat souereyn and to þat holyest rewle. þe …’ He suggests the possibility that ‘the copyist (who may have been the adaptor) went on to give expression to or at least reproduce an unorthodox sentiment of some kind, possibly Lollard’. 55 Lundy has furthered this issue specifically with reference to the religious community of Gloucestershire.56 After John Aston’s preaching in 1383, which Lundy discusses, the historical records of Gloucestershire keep silent until they mention two instances of renunciation in 1448,57 but it would be unwise to assume that these represent all Lollardy in the county. The county’s royal connection does not necessarily rule out the coexistence of heterodoxy. The text may or may not have returned to the 55 Ibid., p. xxv. 56 Lundy, ‘Heresy-hunting’, pp. 96–8. 57 Herbert, Medieval Gloucester, p. 40.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 193

07/04/2014 00:03

194

Mayumi Taguchi

original meditation, but the rest of the ‘Meditatio bona’ in the printed version is of a length that would have filled approximately one other page, while at fol. 118, a new indulgenced text in devotion to the Virgin begins imperfectly. Examining the text preceding the passage quoted above, Lundy suggests that the interpolation may reflect ‘either Lollard beliefs or at least a strong dislike for the established church’ and highlights another departure from the usual text: ‘myn hermitage that is the kingdom of heuven’. She observes that the adaptor ‘refer[s] to his place as not being within the earthly church but in a higher order’. 58 The P version actually reads ‘myn heritage þat is þe kyngdom of heuene’, 59 yet, we may note that A. I. Doyle underlines the statement of Allen that ‘it is perhaps significant of the origin of this volume that prayers recommended by “John, hermit of Warwyk” follow’ The Form of Living.60 It is indeed tempting to imagine Scribe C as a hermit. As Rotha Mary Clay mentions, it is known that solitaries often contributed to the production of devotional books.61 Lundy also discusses the catechetical style of prose and some Lollard words favoured by the P copyist (Scribe C).62 If Wyclif wrote in the fashion of his time, then style would not be enough to justify his influence, while it is fair to say his use of that style enhanced its popularity. The fact that the Lollards had become a grave menace to the Church intimates their far-reaching influences. On the whole, it is extremely difficult to discuss unidentifiable omissions, partly because if they had been removed for fear of persecution, the excision should have been thorough and there should not remain any evidence. Case 5 occurs in close succession to case 4, among indulgenced prayers and hymns devoted to the Holy Name and arma Christi. These are regarded by James as a sequence, starting with the ‘Meditatio bona’ discussed above.63 The veneration of the Holy Name had central importance to Richard Rolle. Its cult, Susan Wabuda writes, ‘is a sign of the revitalized Christocentricism that was the hallmark of evangelical Catholic piety in the decades that preceded the reforms’. John Colet, for instance, ‘was an enthusiastic promoter of his personal devotion to the Name of Jesus’; and the Holy Monogram ‘had attained enormous popularity by the beginning of the sixteenth century’.64 Philippians 2:10–11, ‘in nomine Iesu omne genuflectatur …’, found at the bottom of fol. 118r in the letter string, was said at the beginning of the Jesus Mass. According to Robert Lutton, ‘These verses, found in 58 Lundy, ‘Heresy-hunting’, p. 99. 59 Havens collates the P version in her edition of the text in Oxford, University College, MS 97, and prints the P variant after fol. 116v, line 28, ‘How meny worthier’ as an appendix: ‘Instruction, Devotion, Meditation, Sermon’, vol. 2, pp. 379–80. 60 Allen, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, pp. 259–60; Doyle, ‘Survey of the Origins and Circulation of Theological Writings’, vol. 2, p. 129. 61 R. M. Clay, The Hermits and Anchorites of England (London, 1914), p. xvii. 62 Lundy, ‘Heresy-hunting’, pp. 100, 103–4. 63 Bibliotheca Pepysiana, ed. James, p. 77. 64 S. Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 147–77 (pp. 148, 147, 151).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 194

07/04/2014 00:03

Choice and Arrangement of Texts in Magdalene Pepys 2125

195

translation in early sixteenth-century primers containing the Jesus Mass, had the potential to inspire or reinforce indigenous orthodox but reformist ideas about Christ as sole intercessor.’ 65 On fol. 118v there starts a sequence in devotion to the arma Christi. In this group of indulgenced prayers, the elevation of the eucharist and the viewing of the arma Christi images are clearly instructed.66 Flora Lewis shows how indulgences were used by the Church to encourage piety and how its mechanism promoted the idea and the practice of saying indulgenced prayers while seeing images of venerable relics such as the Veronica and the arma Christi.67 The first prayer ‘Anima Christi sanctifica me …’ should be said ‘ad eleuacionem corporis Christi’; the second prayer ‘Cruci corone spinee …’ said ‘contra arma Ihesu Christi’ is indulgenced 6,070 years. This sequence shifts to ‘seeing’ the Virgin Mary in front of Jesus dying on the Cross, and the ensuing sequence gives an indulgence of 6,000 years for devoutly looking at the arma Christi that follows (‘hec arma Domini nostri Ihesu Christi subsequencia’); there is, therefore, a strong possibility that some more images of the arms other than the four footprints actually followed. After fol. 118, three leaves have been roughly torn away, as if somebody grabbed them and violently ripped them off with increasing force downward. As a result, only a large, rectangular portion of each folio remains. On the recto of the first stub, such words as ‘quatuor annos’, ‘xla’, ‘arma Domini’, ‘inspexerit’, ‘passionis’ and ‘diebus’ indicate more indulgences for viewing the arms. Ann Eljenholm Nichols has identified a text occurring after this on the missing leaves as the arma Christi poem ‘O Vernicle’; this is possibly its ‘first occurrence  … in a codex’.68 Nichols suggests the strong possibility of some images on the three missing folios, although in an arrangement that has not been identified in other surviving arma Christi illustrations. On the verso of the first remaining stub, there survive four bloody footprints, going away into the inner margin. Footprints usually accompany the Vestigia stanza, which occurs in P on the third stub. Since the Veronica poem proper would have started further down, and since below these footprints there remains the Latin ‘portans/ … -us. attritus’, it seems possible that there used to be another Vestigia poem in Latin here, or even some other text relating a bruised image of Christ. If yet unknown elsewhere, an arma Christi arrangement with footprints at the top of a page is possible; a devotional booklet on ivory in the Victoria and Albert Museum, for instance, simply depicts three bloodsprinkled footprints at the bottom of a page, below thirty pieces of silver.69 65 Lutton, Lollardy and Orthodox Religion, p. 73. 66 The arma Christi illustrations are usually accompanied by the instruction to ‘see’ them. See R. H. Robbins, ‘The “Arma Christi” Rolls’, Modern Language Review 34 (1939), 415–21. 67 Lewis, ‘Rewarding Devotion’, esp. p. 187. 68 A. E. Nichols, ‘Pepys Library MS 2125: The Arma Christi Stubs’, Journal of the Early Book Society 9 (2006), 117–24 (p. 118). See also A. E. Nichols, ‘“O Vernicle”: Illustrations of an Arma Christi Poem’, in Tributes to Kathleen L. Scott, ed. Hennessy, pp. 138–69. 69 No. 11-1872, made in Westphalia, c. 1330–50, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O92726/ devotional-booklet-devotional-booklet-unknown/.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 195

07/04/2014 00:03

196

Mayumi Taguchi

R. N. Swanson states that indulgences ‘provoked controversy and debate from their beginning, their status and role in the process of salvation remaining to some degree contentious right through to the Reformation’. 70 It was not until John Wyclif, however, that they became ‘a real point of contention’; the records of arguments with regard to the justifiability of indulgences between Lollards and the authority are ‘relatively prolific through to c. 1420’ and the ‘main controversy was over by c. 1420, but Lollard opposition to indulgences continued through the fifteenth century, surfacing occasionally in trial records’.71 This means that the original part of P, if it was actually copied around the close of the fourteenth century, was compiled at the time when indulgences were most hotly debated in England, and indulgenced images would have only avowed the manuscript’s non-Lollard nature before the Reformation. If it was done to protect the codex, therefore, the three folios after fol. 118 were more probably removed later. Conversely, someone might have wanted the images for his/her own veneration, but if that were so, one would expect the removing of the leaves to have been done more carefully. Case 6 occurs in quire H. This last quire of booklet 3 continues the thread of quire G, containing more devotional writings on the Pater Noster, faith, virtues and vices, and the Doom, but all in English. The last two texts, the ‘Mirror of sinners’, a simplified partial translation of the Speculum peccatoris, and ‘Of three arrows on doomsday’, occur together in many devotional anthologies, including Oxford, University College, MS 97, with which P also shares the ‘Meditatio bona’.72 It is interesting to imagine a similar kind of text as found in the Oxford manuscript, such as the ‘Meditation of St Anselm’, 73 in the lost leaves, but unfortunately, there is no clue enabling us to know. Also out of reach is case 7, which is found after addition 3 (fols. 144r–145r). The lower half of fol. 145 has also been cut away by scissors. From the above we may consider that some Lollard remarks may have been the cause of the removal of some folios at the time of rebinding, while the loss of the arma Christi pages could be more reasonably explained as the result of other kinds of concerns or interests. However, such inclusion of suspicious ideas as (may have been) found in this volume would more likely have been accidental rather than intentional. Havens discusses the co-existence of orthodox and heterodox texts in

70 R. N. Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise (Cambridge, 2007), p. 278. 71 Ibid., p. 282. 72 These three texts and the ‘Meditation of St Anselm’ occur together in many manuscripts. See Havens, ‘Instruction, Devotion, Meditation, Sermon’, vol. 1, pp. 80–98. 73 Havens has considered about such a possibility on the lost leaf after the ‘Meditatio bona’; she judges that a single leaf (missing after fol. 116) is not enough for both the remnant of the ‘Meditatio bona’ and the ‘Meditation of St Anselm’ and suggests another possibility that the subsequent text containing the Holy Monogram ‘may have been used as a substitute for the “Med. St Anselm”’ : ‘Instruction, Devotion, Meditation, Sermon’, vol. 1, pp. 89–90. Two leaves (after fol. 130) would have easily accommodated it.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 196

07/04/2014 00:03

Choice and Arrangement of Texts in Magdalene Pepys 2125

197

a single miscellany as a common phenomenon.74 In a working environment where a compiler was allowed to make a plan for the choice and arrangement of texts, he would have had access to a variety of texts, both orthodox and heterodox, in a library and in a single volume. Havens also points out the ‘collective desire’ of individual heretics ‘to gather up any and all vernacular materials that reinforced their fundamentalist agenda’ as well as ‘the benefit of their own book trade’.75 Some compilers, on the other hand, would not be able to easily distinguish heterodox from orthodox. Fiona Somerset underlines the view that ‘Wycliffite ideas are not isolated by their dangerous unsayability from everything else going on in England … but instead everywhere enmeshed with mainstream literary and cultural history’. 76 Living in the region and the period in which both reformative movements and the revitalizing of devotionalism as well as political manœuvring were active, it would not be surprising if the scribes, compilers, reader(s) and owner(s) of this manuscript accepted the co-existence of the orthodox and the reformative.

Conclusions We have seen how the original part of P is miscellaneous, but the choice and the arrangement of the texts still point to a certain unifying principle: basic texts for private devotion such as liturgical instructions, explications of basic Christian doctrines, and simplified mystical writings and meditations are chosen to be read according to, or at least in association with, the ideals of the religious. The thematic thread is the importance of penitence inspired by devotions to the Virgin and Christ. A particularly important aspect of the devotion is the use of the senses, specifically of ‘visualizing’ the painful details of the Passion, which are verbally, and probably pictorially, described, and paired with indulgences. The inclusion of longer and more scholarly texts and interrelationships with other devotional miscellanies imply the manuscript’s actual connection with a monastery or scriptorium. However, the fact that many of its writings present unique variants indicates that the original volume was in the hands of an individual and therefore was not available for use as an exemplar for further copying. Perhaps the codex was bequeathed to the connected religious house. Passed on to different hands, possibly repeatedly, such a book would not only have gained a new role but become subject to a range of misfortunes. The preservation efforts and signs of further use suggest that P remained at a religious house or houses for some time. Through the sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century, until it came into the hands of book collectors like Richard Smith and Samuel Pepys, the manuscript had survived the Dissolution, the Reformation and

74 Havens, ‘Narrative of Faith’, p. 72. 75 Ibid., p. 68. 76 F. Somerset, ‘Here, There, and Everywhere? Wycliffite Conceptions of the Eucharist and Chaucer’s “Other” Lollard Joke’, in Lollards and their Influence, pp. 127–38 (p. 138).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 197

07/04/2014 00:03

198

Mayumi Taguchi

Puritanism,77 during which time the libraries of monasteries, royal and noble families and some bibliophiles are said to have dispersed. Once dispersed, those books could have been owned by individuals for any number of reasons, although many book collectors actually read their books. Indeed, apart from the directional note, as mentioned above, at the beginning of the second part of The Form of Living, the hand of Richard Smith has been identified in the headings for item 1 The Chastising, item 9 Wimbledon’s sermon and item 23 The Charter of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost,78 and the same hand seems responsible for some other marginal notes, for instance, on fols. 65v and 72v. Whatever chance preserved this manuscript, MS Pepys 2125 represents a particularly interesting example of the diversity and individuality of late medieval devotional compilations; it also exemplifies an early instance of the reinforcement of devotions to the human Christ and the joys and sorrows of the Virgin, as well as the continuous reading or recitation of these devotions through many decades.

77 Before Pepys, P was owned by Richard Smith: Catalogue of the Pepys Library, vol. 5, pp. xxv, 61. 78 See the description of these items in the Catalogue of the Pepys Library.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 198

07/04/2014 00:03

Mary Morse

‘Thys moche more ys oure lady mary longe’: Takamiya MS 56 and the English Birth Girdle Tradition •••

T

akamiya MS 56, a long, narrow vellum roll (1,730 × 80 mm), features Middle English and Latin prayers accompanied by four Passion miniatures. The roll’s date and location indicators suggest production between 1435 and 1450.1 One rubric mentions the Benedictine abbey of Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, but the eleven surviving books from Tewkesbury provide inadequate support for assuming production in the abbey’s scriptorium.2 Both sides of the roll contain texts, with miniatures limited to the face. An inscription on the dorse matches the roll’s length of 5 feet 81⁄8 inches to the height of the Virgin Mary. The maker fastened an extra piece of vellum (now attached with tiny modern nails) to guarantee authenticity: ‘Thys moche more ys oure lady mary [longe]’. The roll’s purpose seems clear: ‘And a woma(n) that ys quyck wythe chylde [girde] hir wythe thys mesure and she shall be

I wish to thank Professor Takamiya for bringing the roll that is the subject of this study, Takamiya 56, to the 2010 Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, where we arranged digital photography, courtesy of the Waldo Library at Western Michigan University. I thank Sue Steuer, Head of Rare Books and Special Collections, and Paul Howell, Head of the Digitization Center, for the roll’s temporary storage and digitization. 1 T. Takamiya, ‘A Handlist of Western Medieval Manuscripts in the Takamiya Collection’, in The Medieval Book: Glosses from Friends & Colleagues of Christopher de Hamel, ed. J. H. Marrow, R. A. Linenthal and W. Noel (Houten, 2010), pp. 421–40 (p. 431). For a brief description of Takamiya 56, see T. Takamiya, ‘Gawain’s Green Girdle as a Medieval Talisman’, in Chaucer to Shakespeare: Essays in Honour of Shinsuke Ando, ed. R. Beadle and T. Takamiya (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 75–9 (p. 77). For Christopher de Hamel’s auction catalogue entry (Takamiya, ‘Gawain’s Green Girdle’, p. 77 n. 7), see Sotheby’s, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts and Miniatures (London, 24 June 1980), lot 73. Several of my assumptions are based on de Hamel’s description and dating. 2 Don Skemer speculates that some monks prepared textual amulets on ‘odd pieces left over from larger sheets of parchment used for copying books in the scriptorium’ but he does not think Takamiya 56 was such a monastic production (personal conversation). See D.  Skemer, Binding Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages (University Park, PA, 2006), p. 129. Also see Skemer’s own analysis of Takamiya 56 (pp. 259–60). On the eleven extant manuscripts and two printed books from Tewkesbury, see J. M. Luxford, ‘The Founders’ Book’, in Tewkesbury Abbey: History, Art and Architecture, ed. R. K. Morris and R. Shoesmith (Glasgow, 2003), pp. 53–64 (p. 53).

199

ME Texts in Transition.indb 199

07/04/2014 00:03

200

Mary Morse

safe fro(m) all man(er) of p(er)illis’.3 The dorse combination of the Virgin’s measure with childbirth protection offers conclusive evidence that Takamiya 56 is a birth girdle, a manuscript or printed roll containing texts and images that appropriated the presumed powers of metal or cloth girdle relics. Westminster Abbey and other English monasteries lent girdle relics of the Virgin and other saints to women from royal or noble families for protection in childbirth.4 Manuscript and printed birth girdles extended similar childbirth protection to women of all classes. Takamiya 56 reveals significant iconographic similarities to eight English manuscript and printed rolls likely used as birth girdles, most dated to 1475 or later, and shares some texts with them. The majority of the texts on the face of Takamiya 56 emphasize the humanity of Christ and the primacy of his wounds in eucharistic devotions. The three vernacular prayers include ‘The nomber of the droppys of blodde’ (DIMEV 5425) and two unique elevation verses.5 The Takamiya versions of two Latin prayers, ‘Ave domina sancta maria’ and ‘O nuda humanitas’, may mark their earliest English appearances. Its exact replication of the Virgin’s measure, its theological and apotropaic emphasis upon the Virgin, and its production during the first half of the fifteenth century establish Takamiya 56 as an early example for the birth girdle tradition in England.

The Virgin’s Girdle In the medieval religious milieu, the Virgin’s girdle potently symbolized Christ’s human incarnation and redemptive sacrifice. Edward the Confessor gave a girdle to Westminster Abbey shortly after its founding. The monks lent this relic to Henry III’s queen, Eleanor of Provence, and it likely was the girdle noted in Elizabeth of York’s December 1502 Privy Purse Expenses before her last confinement. Archaeological excavations in London and King’s Lynn have unearthed pilgrim badges bearing the girdle’s image.6 The girdle motif appears in the York Weavers’ mystery play, ‘The 3 The ‘longe’ is nearly illegible. A crease in the roll makes ‘girde’ a debatable reading, a point discussed later. 4 E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580 (New Haven, CT, 1992), pp. 384–5; N. Orme, Medieval Children (New Haven, CT, 2001), pp. 16–18; J. J. Gwara and M. Morse, ‘A Birth Girdle Printed by Wynkyn de Worde’, The Library 13.1 (Mar. 2012), 33–62 (pp. 37–9); M. Morse, ‘Alongside St Margaret: The Childbirth Cult of Saints Quiricus and Julitta in Late Medieval English Manuscripts’, in Manuscripts and Printed Books in 1350–1550: Packaging, Presentation and Consumption, ed. E. Cayley and S. Powell (Liverpool, 2013), pp. 187–206 (pp. 193–4). Skemer’s study of English and Continental birthing amulets in chapter 5 of Binding Words, ‘Textual Amulets for Women’ (pp. 235–78), provides a useful introduction to the use of birthing amulets, including birth girdles. 5 The elevation verses are analysed in M. Morse, ‘Two Unpublished English Elevation Prayers in Takamiya 56’, Journal of the Early Book Society 16 (2013), 269–77. Entry in DIMEV also forthcoming. 6 B. Harvey, ‘The Monks of Westminster and the Old Lady Chapel’, in Westminster Abbey: The Lady Chapel of Henry VII, ed. T. Tatton-Brown and R. Mortimer (Woodbridge, 2003),

ME Texts in Transition.indb 200

07/04/2014 00:03

Takamiya 56 and the English Birth Girdle Tradition

201

Appearance of Our Lady to Thomas’, though not in other extant Corpus Christi cycles. The fourteenth-century cleric John Mirk extols the girdle as proof of the Virgin’s welcome in heaven in a Festial Assumption sermon.7 Celebrated on 15 August, the Feast of the Assumption was considered the Virgin’s most important feast-day in England, and extant alabaster Assumption images throughout England indicate the girdle’s significance in popular piety.8 As simulators of the Virgin’s girdle relics, the English manuscript and printed birth girdles usually include prayers or rubrics assuring the intercession of the Virgin for women in labour. The inventories of the Dissolution and later injunctions against girdle relics and their manuscript imitators reveal their usage into the reign of Edward VI. As late as 1538 Bishop Nicholas Shaxton of Salisbury admonished midwives for using ‘girdles, purses, measures of our Lady, or other such superstitious things’ to aid women in childbirth.9 The other English birth girdles include a Middle English prayer and Latin orations invoking the martyred saints Quiricus, a three-year-old child, and his mother Julitta. The prayers to these Diocletian martyrs appear in London, Wellcome Historical Medical Library, MS 632; London, British Library, Add. MS 88929, MS Rot. Harl. 43.A.14 and MS Rot. Harl. T.11; New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS Glazier 39; New Haven, CT, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 410; Philadelphia, Redemptorist Archives of the Baltimore Province, olim Esopus; and STC 14547.5 (British Library, MS Harl. 5919), a printed roll from the workshop of Wynkyn de Worde. Only two, Wellcome 632 and olim Esopus, feature dorse texts.10 Surprisingly, pp. 5–32 (pp. 11–12); Gwara and Morse, ‘Birth Girdle Printed’, p. 35 n. 2; C. Rawcliffe, ‘Women, Childbirth and Religion in Later Medieval England’, in Women and Religion in Medieval England, ed. D. Wood (Oxford, 2003), pp. 91–117 (p. 107); B. Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London 7 (London, 1998; repr. 2010), p. 149; W. J. Dilling, ‘Girdles: Their Origin and Development, Particularly with Regard to their Use as Charms in Medicine, Marriage, and Midwifery’, Caledonian Medical Journal 9 (1912–14), 337–57, 403–25 (p. 421). 7 York Plays: The Plays Performed by the Crafts or Mysteries of York, on the Day of Corpus Christi in the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries, ed. L. T. Smith (London, 1885), pp. 480–91 (pp. 486 lines 166–9; p. 488 lines 247–52); John Mirk’s Festial: Edited from British Library Cotton Claudius A.II, ed. S. Powell, 2 vols., EETS o.s. 334 and 335 (Oxford, 2009, 2011), vol. 2, pp. 200–6 (p. 203 lines 132–41); Morse, ‘Alongside St Margaret’, pp. 193–4. 8 R. Marks, Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Stroud, 2004), pp. 148–9, 164, 251–2; Object of Devotion: Medieval Alabaster Carvings from the Victoria and Albert Museum, ed. P. Williamson (London, 2010; repr. 2011), pp. 142–3, 176–7. For other manuscript and church art featuring the girdle, see P. Hardman, ‘Gawain’s Practice of Piety in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Medium Ævum 68.2 (1999), 247–67 (p. 256, p. 266 n. 41). 9 Duffy, Stripping the Altars, pp. 384–5; Orme, Medieval Children, pp. 16–18; Three Chapters of Letters Relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries, ed. T. Wright, Camden Society Publications o.s. 26 (London, 1843), p. 59; Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, ed. W. H. Frere and W. M. Kennedy, 3 vols. (London, 1910), vol. 2, p. 59. 10 The intercessory role of Sts Quiricus and Julitta in all of the manuscript birth girdles listed above are discussed in Morse, ‘Alongside St Margaret’. On the printed birth girdle, see Gwara and Morse, ‘Birth Girdle Printed’. Also see C. F. Bühler, ‘Prayers and Charms in

ME Texts in Transition.indb 201

07/04/2014 00:03

202

Mary Morse

references to St Margaret and female saints that were popular English childbirth protectors in other devotional manuscripts, parish celebrations and church art rarely appear in the birth girdles. Wellcome 632 restricts St Anne, St Margaret, St Katherine, St Dorothy and St Barbara to names on a list, and Glazier 39 depicts St Margaret and St Katherine but without childbirth prayers.11 The ‘rounded gothic bookhand’ and the brown and red textual inks used on both sides of Takamiya 56 suggest the work of one scribe.12 On the face, the rubrics and prayers appear as prose blocks centred between the roll’s edges, but the birth girdle text on the dorse is written as one line centred between two dark brown borders evenly marked with blank circles. The brown inscription, with a few red-slashed capitals, runs the length of the roll, but staining makes its opening illegible. The inscription combines fragments of the Charlemagne charm, liturgical phrases, holy names, invocation of the Trinity, and the measurement verification. Many of its elements appear in other English birth girdles as parts of indulgences, prayers or lists. On Takamiya 56 the holy names and invocation of the Trinity are separated from each other and from the rest of the inscription with squared red tau crosses. In contrast to the longer prayers and rubrics on the face, short phrases with distinct punctuation characterize the dorse inscription, enabling a viewer to readily separate and repeat each sequence. When the face of the birth girdle was placed against a woman’s abdomen during labour, her birthing attendants would have found the dorse texts easy to read or decipher from the visual cues of the capital letters and crosses. The Takamiya 56 dorse inscription follows, with […] indicating editorial reconstructions or blanks due to illegibility, and (…) enclosing expansions of abbreviations:

Certain Middle English Scrolls’, Speculum 39.2 (Apr. 1964), 270–8; Skemer, Binding Words, pp. 162–3, 259–60, 262–7; J. Friedman, Northern English Books, Owners, and Makers in the Late Middle Ages (Syracuse, NY, 1995), pp. 167–70, 181, 197; Rawcliffe, ‘Women, Childbirth’, p. 108; C. Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society in Later Medieval England (London, 1999), pp. 96–8; E. L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood: Gender, Dynasty and Visual Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Manchester, 2008), pp. 62–3. BL Add. MS 88929 (formerly Ushaw College MS 29) and olim Esopus (formerly housed at Mt St Alphonsus Theological Seminary, Esopus, NY), have changed location and/or owners in the past five years. 11 On St Margaret’s childbirth cult in England, see K. L. French, The Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion after the Black Death (Philadelphia, 2008), p. 118; Rawcliffe ‘Women, Childbirth’, pp. 100–1, and Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society, pp. 179–80. A comprehensive overview of the Continental cult of St Margaret is offered in Skemer, Binding Words, pp. 239–50. St Dorothy appears as a childbirth intercessor in British Library, MS Arundel 168, fols. 6v–7r, and Cambridge University Library, MS Ll.5.18, fol. 28v; I thank Joni Henry for these references. On St Anne’s childbirth cult, see G. M. Gibson, ‘Saint Anne and the Religion of Childbed: Some East Anglian Texts and Talismans’, in Interpreting Cultural Symbols: St Anne in Late Medieval Society, ed. P. Sheingorn and K. Ashley (Athens, GA, 1990), pp. 95–110. Also see Duffy, Stripping the Altars, pp. 181–3. 12 De Hamel, Catalogue. I thank Don Skemer for his assistance in analysing the hand on both sides of the roll.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 202

07/04/2014 00:03

Takamiya 56 and the English Birth Girdle Tradition

203

[Const]antyne the nobyll and hytt was closyd yn golde and take to hym for these vertues. That ys to wete. That whate man or woman that berythe hytt apon wythe trewe faythe and deuoc(i)on in worshyppynge thys mesure euery daye wythe .iij. Pater noster .iij. A[v]e maria In the worshyppe of hym that thys mesure ys of. Ffor sothe th[a]t daye thid[er?] may go safe yn all man(er) of p(er)illis and tribulac(i)ons. And ther shall no desese greve the. And a woma(n) that ys quyck wythe chylde [girde] hyr wythe thys mesure and she shall be safe fro all man(er) of p(er)illis. † Iesus autem transiens per mediu(m) illor(um) ibat in pace. †Marcus †Matheus † Lucas † Iohannes † Iasper † Melchior + Balthasar † In nomine patris† et filii † (et) sp(irit)us sancti †Amen. Thys moche more ys oure lady mary [longe].13 The dorse inscription led Professor Takamiya to suspect that his amuletic prayer roll, the type that inspired Gawain’s green girdle, doubled as a birth girdle.14 The Wellcome 632 face prayer to SS Quiricus and Julitta entreats a travailing woman to place the image of the cross upon her womb to assure the protection of both mother and child: ‘… yf a woman travail [wyth?] chylde lay thys crosse on hyr wombe and she shall be safe delyuerd wythoute perell’. Similar wording appears in Glazier 39 and in BL Rot. Harl. 43.A.14. BL Add. MS 88929 instructs a woman to ‘ley this [cross] on her body’ with no mention of specific placement. Beinecke 410 offers a vague ‘yf a woman haue this crosse on hyr when she trauelith of chylde’, similar to the ‘yf a woman at her trauayle of chylde haue it on her’ in STC 14547.5 On the Wellcome 632 dorse, another childbirth protection linked to the Charlemagne charm specifies: ‘And yf a woman travell wyth chylde gyrdes thys mesure abowte hyr wombe and she shall be safe delyvyrd wythowte parelle’. The similar passage in Takamiya 56 reads: ‘And a woma(n) that ys quyck wythe chylde [girde] hyr wythe thys mesure and she shall be safe fro all man(er) of p(er)illis’.15 A crease in the roll makes it difficult to determine whether the word in Takamiya 56 is ‘girde’ rather than ‘garde’, but if the former, the instruction to ‘girde hyr wythe thys mesure’ implies that a woman not only could wrap the roll around her waist during labour but also could wear it during pregnancy with the ends folded or pinned beneath or even over her outer garments. Likewise, women may have worn borrowed girdle relics as actual belts.16

13 English transcriptions are mine, following the orthography and punctuation of Takamiya 56. 14 Takamiya, ‘Gawain’s Green Girdle’, p. 78; Hardman, ‘Gawain’s Practice of Piety’, pp. 257–9. 15 Italics are mine; English transcriptions are mine unless otherwise indicated. For Wellcome 632 dorse: S. A. J. Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library, vol. 1: MSS Written before 1650 A.D. (London, 1962), pp. 491–3 (p. 492); for Beinecke 410 and STC 14547.5: Gwara and Morse, ‘Birth Girdle Printed’, pp. 47, 60. 16 I thank Laura Hodges for discussing this possibility with me. Also see Rawcliffe, ‘Women, Childbirth’, p. 107.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 203

07/04/2014 00:03

204

Mary Morse

Invoking the Virgin’s Protection in Childbirth in Takamiya 56 Measures of Christ employing the cross, the three holy nails or the side wound commonly appear in English and Continental devotional manuscripts. The Takamiya measure of the Virgin has no exact counterpart, but ‘The Longitude of Men Folowyng’ in a 1465 collection of English chronicles confirms the Virgin’s height of 5 feet 8 inches and compares it to the heights of Christ, Moses, Alexander, Thomas of Canterbury and King Edward IV (Lambeth Palace, MS 306, fol. 203).17 A cryptic entry in the 1392–3 sacristy ledgers for Christ Church, Canterbury, notes an expense for painting a mensure beate marie virginis, perhaps a ‘pillar or shaft of some kind’ that supported an image of the Virgin.18 A fifteenth-century French ‘birthing kit’ includes a three-foot-long ribbon labeled as the measure of Our Lady of Montserrat, a reference to the statue of the same height revered as the Black Virgin of Catalonia. Similarly, a fourteenth-century Austrian manuscript from the monastery of St Florian in Linz instructs a pregnant woman to ‘measure a cord as long as the picture of St Sixtus and girdle the belly’. 19 As the texts in Takamiya 56 and Wellcome 632 demonstrate, the ‘measures of our Lady’ that Bishop Shaxton scorned must have included birth girdles. On Wellcome 632, an incomplete two-line inscription on the dorse, set off by large red crosses at each end, claims that ‘Thys parchement [?] ys oure lady seynt mary length/ by vertue of thys holy length oure savyor Jhesu criste and of hys dere/ mother oure lady seynte’. 20 Yet at nearly 11 feet (3,320 mm) long, Wellcome 632 almost doubles the Virgin’s length specified in the Takamiya birth girdle. By the turn of the sixteenth century, when Wellcome 632 was made, the Virgin’s measure may have morphed into a stock spiritual construct with little need for a physical match. Or, as we see in the discussion of other measures below, the ‘length’ in Wellcome 632 may not be intended as the literal height of the Virgin but as a reference to the measures of the side wound or the three holy nails that appear on the roll’s face. Takamiya 56 is the only birth girdle to assign a specific height to the Virgin  –  and to physically replicate that height. As a true ‘measure of our Lady’, the Takamiya 56 example persisted in public consciousness into the Reformation. As we see in Takamiya 56 and the other birth girdles, the Charlemagne charm

17 F. J. Furnivall, Political, Religious and Love Poems: from The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lambeth MS. No. 306, and Other Sources, 2nd edn, EETS o.s. 15 (London, 1903), p. 61. For dating, see L. R. Mooney, ‘Lydgate’s “Kings of England” and another Verse Chronicle of the Kings’, Viator 20 (1989), 255–89 (p. 259). 18 J. W. Legg, Inventories of Christchurch, Canterbury (Westminster, 1902), pp. 111–14. I thank Julian Luxford for this reference. Measurement of a pillar suggests a corollary to the famous relic of Christ’s measure in St John Lateran; see L. Gougaud, ‘La Prière dite de Charlemagne et les pièces apocryphes apparentées’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 20 (1924), 211–38 (p. 222). 19 The Spanish inscription reads, ‘medida de neustra s[eñ]ora de Montserrate’ (Skemer, Binding Words, p. 247); Dilling, ‘Girdles’, p. 419. 20 Moorat, Catalogue, p. 492. I correct Moorat’s transcription as recommended by Bühler, ‘Prayers and Charms’, p. 272 n. 19.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 204

07/04/2014 00:03

Takamiya 56 and the English Birth Girdle Tradition

205

serves as a stock item in measure prayers based on the heights of Christ, the Virgin, the cross, the nails or the side wound. Often regarded as an imitation of the Heavenly Letter that Christ delivered to King Abgar of Turkey, the medieval Charlemagne charm links to a heavenly letter that Pope Leo delivered to Charlemagne before a battle against the Saracens  –  or that the Virgin delivered to Leo. The charm promises a number of protections for those who carry it on their bodies, making it a fitting prayer for a roll that could be carried in a girdle-pouch or worn as a girdle.21 In BL Rot. Harl. T.11 an English prayer, positioned in the right margin alongside the wound image, claims that an angel brought the measure to Charlemagne, the noble emperor of Constantine, enclosed in a coffer of gold. In Takamiya 56, ‘[Const]antyne the nobyll’ seems to be the named recipient of the measure ‘closyd yn golde’. The change in recipient from Charlemagne, crowned emperor by Leo III, to Constantine, the first Christian emperor, might result from a scribe working from memory rather than copying from a source. The childbirth inscription on the dorse of Wellcome 632 names Leo as the recipient of the measure but the opening lines are so badly rubbed that we cannot be sure whether the measure ‘hys dere mother owre blessyd lady seynt marye whych was wryttyn in letters of gold and send ffrome hevyn by an anngell to the pope Leo …’ represents the wound, the nails, Christ’s length or the Virgin’s length.22 The fragment of the Charlemagne charm on the dorse of Takamiya 56 presents the measure as the primary object of devotion. Those who worship it will be protected from all types of dangers and deadly sins. The apotropaic protections on the rest of the Takamiya inscription extend to ‘whate man or woman that berythe hytt’. Similarly, most rubrics for the roll’s other prayers are directed toward a generic ‘whosoever’. Only the childbirth protection, with ‘she’ and ‘hyr’, specifies gender. Yet compared to other versions of the Charlemagne charm, where childbirth, even in the birth girdles, is just one peril among many in medieval life, the positioning of the inscription on Takamiya 56 singles out travailing women for special protection. As extra assurance for the travailing woman, and perhaps its only known use as an incantation associated specifically with childbirth, the scribe then inserts a short antiphon based on Luke 4:30: ‘Iesus autem transiens per mediu(m) illor(um) ibat in pace’ (‘[Jesus] passed straight through the crowd and walked [away in peace]’).23 Judging from several thirteenth-century antiphoners including the phrase in the liturgy for Monday vespers during the third week in Lent, ‘in pace’ represents a scribal addition.24 The symbolic import of Christ’s ability to protect himself against 21 For an overview of the Heavenly Letter and its amuletic contexts, including the Charlemagne prayer in England, see Skemer, Binding Words, pp. 96–105, esp. p. 102. Also see Gougaud, ‘La Prière dite de Charlemagne’; Duffy, Stripping the Altars, pp. 273–5; Gwara and Morse, ‘Birth Girdle Printed’, pp. 39–41. 22 Moorat, Catalogue, p. 492. 23 Translation from The New Jerusalem Bible (New York, 1985). 24 The chant appears in the antiphoners of the Benedictine monks of Worcester (Worcester Cathedral Music Library, MS F. 160 [olim 1247], fol. 099) and the Augustinian monks of St Giles Abbey in Barnwell (Cambridge University Library, MS Mm.ii.9, fol. 180); see

ME Texts in Transition.indb 205

07/04/2014 00:03

206

Mary Morse

those who would harm him transferred itself to ritualistic protection in battle, against thieves and against general dangers, as evidenced in its appearance in the Latin prayer roll (Utrecht, Catharijneconvent Museum, MS ABM h4a) owned by Henry Beauchamp (d. 1446), earl of Warwick and a patron of Tewkesbury Abbey.25 Even English kings adopted the antiphon in their coins and lineage rolls. Engraved upon the back of the gold noble Edward III issued after his naval victory over France at Sluys in 1340, the antiphon remained on gold nobles minted into the reign of Edward VI. A famous Yorkist roll tracing Edward IV’s descent back to Noah (Philadelphia, Free Library, MS Lewis 201E) features the antiphon in gold capital letters.26 In addition to three Pater Nosters, three Ave Marias and the invocation of the Trinity, the Takamiya inscription includes only the names of the four Evangelists and the three Magi, implying that these seven witnesses to the life of Christ and the Virgin possess the greatest ritual significance. All seven, with the Magi listed first, appear in STC 14547.5 in a plea for various protections excluding childbirth; a Latin prayer in BL Rot. Harl. T.11 lists the Evangelists at its end; and the names likely appear on the list of saints and archangels in Wellcome 632 but are illegible.27 The laity readily recalled the four Evangelists’ names through their inclusion in church liturgies, the celebrations of major feasts in parish churches, and mendicant sermons. The English printed Horae usually began with four key Gospel texts relating to the Word of God, the Annunciation, the Magi and the miraculous powers granted to the Apostles. Luke’s Annunciation, the most frequently imagined scene outside of the Crucifixion in religious art, sometimes was read as the last Gospel of the Mass.28 On Takamiya 56, a red slash marks the capital ‘L’ for ‘Lucas’, drawing special attention to Luke as the author of the Gospel text (Luke 1:26–38) that gave the faithful the ‘Ave Maria’ and the incarnation narrative. Such special recognition of Luke on a birth girdle does not seem coincidental. Cantus: A Database for Latin Ecclesiastical Chant, ID no. 003486, GB-WO-F.160 and GB-Cu-Mm.ii.9 (http://cantusdatabase.org). 25 Despite Henry’s patronal connection with Tewkesbury Abbey (Luxford, ‘Founder’s Book’, p. 60), the Beauchamp prayer roll does not share any other texts with Takamiya 56 and does not mention childbirth among its protections. See H. van der Velden, ‘A Prayer Roll of Henry Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick’, in Tributes in Honor of James H. Marrow: Studies in Painting and Illumination of the Late Middle Ages and Northern Renaissance, ed. J. F. Hamburger and A. S. Korteweg (Turnhout, 2006), pp. 521–49 (pp. 542, 547). Also see K. M. Rudy, ‘Kissing Images, Unfurling Rolls, Measuring Wounds, Sewing Badges and Carrying Talismans: Considering Some Harley Manuscripts through the Physical Rituals they Reveal’, British Library Journal, eBLJ (2011), article 5, 1–56 (pp. 36–41) (http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2011articles/article5.html). 26 Skemer, Binding Words, p. 90; D. C. Baker, ‘Gold Coins in Mediaeval English Literature’, Speculum 36.2 (Apr. 1961), 282–7 (pp. 284–6); Gwara and Morse, ‘Birth Girdle Printed’, p. 46 n. 39. On the Lewis roll, see L. Blanchard, Free Library of Philadelphia Rare Book Department, ‘Lewis 201E  –  The Edward IV Roll’, esp. part 3 (http://www.freelibrary.org/medieval/part3.htm). 27 Gwara and Morse, ‘Birth Girdle Printed’, p. 40; Skemer, Binding Words, p. 259. 28 Duffy, Stripping the Altars, pp. 214–16.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 206

07/04/2014 00:03

Takamiya 56 and the English Birth Girdle Tradition

207

Mentioned only in Matthew (2:1–17), the Magi possessed enormous popular appeal, particularly after the translation of their relics to Cologne in 1164. The laity recited their apocryphal names of Iasper (Casper or Jasper], Melchior and Balthasar as an aid against rabid dogs and epilepsy. Their names appeared in lists and prayers in devotional manuscripts, amulets and medieval leather girdle strap-ends. Medical codexes sometimes included charms invoking the Magi, perhaps because their owners regarded the Magi as learned doctors like themselves.29 Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, the extraordinarily popular early fifteenthcentury English retelling of the Meditationes Vitae Christi, asks readers to imagine the Magi meeting Mary and the Child for the first time ‘byfore þat simple house & maner of stable in þe which oure lord Jesus was born’. Most significantly, for the purposes of the Takamiya birth girdle, the Magi ask ‘of þe condiciones of him, in what maner he was conceyued & born’ and then, after hearing the Virgin’s answers and seeing the Child, open their coffers and offer him their treasures of gold, frankincense and myrrh. In a foreshadowing of Christ’s feet nailed to the cross, the kings reverently ‘kisseden his feet’ after making their offerings.30 These most precious of temporal gifts given to a Child born in a stable perhaps contributed to the legends of heavenly letters written in gold or divine measures encased in gold. The borders of Takamiya 56 could have been added as a fashionable afterthought that simulated real leather or rope girdle styles, but the evenly spaced circles of the design also could allude to the round host raised at the elevation.31 In the late fifteenth-century copy of the Founders’ Book (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. Glouc. d.2), Sybil, honoured with her husband Robert Fitzhamon as a twelfthcentury rebuilder of Tewkesbury, wears a short belt studded with metal circular mounts that look remarkably like the circles in the roll’s borders (fol. 13r). The border design also resembles the knotted rope of the Franciscan habit. At the end of the fifteenth century, Anne de Bretagne adopted the knotted girdle as her own device for her coat of arms, perhaps as a symbol of her responsibility for dynastic succession.32 If the blank circles were not intended as imitations of the metal 29 Duffy, Stripping the Altars, pp. 216–17; Skemer, Binding Words, pp. 62–3, 76–7 n. 1, 181, 242; Gwara and Morse, ‘Birth Girdle Printed’, pp. 39, 59, 61; G. Egan and F. Pritchard, Dress Accessories, c. 1150–c. 1450, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London 3 (London, 1991; repr. 2002), p. 46; L. T. Olsan, ‘Charms and Prayers in Medieval Medical Theory and Practice’, Social History of Medicine 16.3 (2003), 343–66 (pp. 360–2). 30 Nicholas Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, ed. M. G. Sargent (Exeter, 2005), pp. 1, 44–6. 31 M. Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 39–42. For examples in English manuscript miniatures, see p. 133 fig. 7, p. 295 fig. 17, p. 301 fig. 19. 32 Luxford (‘Founder’s Book’, pp. 54–5, pl. 55, 62, 64) notes that Sybil’s shorter belt, gabled hood, and slashed sleeves are representative of the early sixteenth-century, when the earliest extant copy of the Founder’s Book was made, but that the Tewkesbury monk-artist adapted costumes from founders’ statues he saw in the church. On Anne de Bretagne, see E. L’Estrange, ‘Penitence, Motherhood and Passion Devotion: Contextualizing Anne de Bretagne’s Prayer Book, Chicago, Newberry Library, 83’, in

ME Texts in Transition.indb 207

07/04/2014 00:03

208

Mary Morse

mounts on leather belts or as knots in the Franciscan girdle, they may have been intended for a later insertion of the Holy Monogram such as the ‘IHC’ on the host placed in the steeple of the Gothic church-frame in the first miniature in Beinecke 410.33 The ‘IHC’ and the ‘IHS’ inscribed within the side wound in miniatures in both Takamiya 56 and Wellcome 632, discussed below, signal meditation upon the Passion and Christ’s eucharistic sacrifice.34

Measures of Christ in Takamiya 56 One of the most common measures of Christ, based upon an image of the cross, could be multiplied fifteen times to equal Christ’s presumed height of 6 feet 3 inches; such a measure opens the prayer to SS Quiricus and Julitta in all of the English birth girdles except Takamiya 56.35 Several English birth girdles, including Takamiya 56, share images of the side wound and the three holy nails. Takamiya 56 opens with a Latin prayer beginning ‘Quesumus omnipotens deus’ [‘All-powerful God, we pray’] and ending ‘nunc et sempiternis gaudiis perfrui mereamur per crist(um) dominum’ [‘that now and forever we be worthy of fully experiencing joys through Christ our Lord’], but the majority of the lines are illegible due to staining at the roll’s top edge.36 Immediately below this conventional prayer, an eight-line English rubric leads the viewer toward contemplation of the image of another common measure in English birth girdles, the three holy nails. The red rubric encourages the roll’s users to envision Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross and to recite ‘v. pater noster .v. Aves and a crede’ before reading two more Latin prayers and viewing the nails. Both prayers are inked in brown with the exception of a two-line initial red ‘O’ in the second. The first, a simple four-line invocation to Christ and the cross, functions as an introduction to the next twelve-line prayer imploring users to venerate ‘His precious blood in the wounds’ [‘vulneribus … pretiosum eius sanguinem’] to escape ‘sudden and eternal death’ [‘mortem subitaneam et eternam’].

The Cultural and Political Legacy of Anne de Bretagne, ed. C. J. Brown (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 81–98 (p. 92). 33 B. A. Shailor, Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, 3 vols. (Binghamton, NY, 1977), vol. 1, pp. 308–11 (p. 309). 34 K. L. Scott, ‘The Illustration and Decoration of Nicholas Love’s Mirror’, in Nicholas Love at Waseda: Proceedings of the International Conference, 20–22 July 1995, ed. S. Ogura, R. Beadle and M. Sargent (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 61–86 (p. 67); R. Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1968), pp. 172–6; M. Morse, ‘Seeing and Hearing: Margery Kempe and the mise-en-page’, Studia Mystica 20 (1999), 15–42 (pp. 20–3). 35 Skemer, Binding Words, pp. 143, 151–2, 224, 262, 264; Bühler, ‘Prayers and Charms’, pp. 273–4, 276–7; Duffy, Stripping the Altars, pp. 274–5; Morse, ‘Alongside St Margaret’, p. 195; Gwara and Morse, ‘Birth Girdle Printed’, pp. 39, 50–1. 36 I thank Elaine Beretz for her expert assistance in preparing this and subsequent transcriptions and translations of the Latin texts in Takamiya 56.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 208

07/04/2014 00:03

Takamiya 56 and the English Birth Girdle Tradition

209

Unlike the prayer tied to the measure of the cross in the other birth girdles, the prayer accompanying the measure of the nails in Takamiya 56 requires no calculation because the nails are presented as a true-to-life measure. In comparison to the second miniature of an elevated cross (180 mm), the image of the nails seems disproportionately large, but the outsized depiction follows an established iconographic practice evident in Beinecke 410, Wellcome 632, Glazier 39, BL Add. MS 88929, and BL Rot. Harl. T.11. In Takamiya 56 and Glazier 39, the nails are a startling 7 inches (178 mm) long, while those in Beinecke 410 are a bit shorter (165 mm). Prayers or rubrics in several birth girdles claim that carrying and worshipping ‘the length of the nails’ will grant the bearer various gifts. The prayer in Glazier 39, based on the Charlemagne charm, insists that ‘Theis … veray trew length of the thre nailis’ is a length that Pope Innocent sent to Charlemagne; it then tells the devout man or woman to worship the nails daily with five Pater Nosters, five Aves and a Creed and to bear them upon him or her.37 Takamiya 56 offers the same recitations in its rubric; other variants of this measured prayer appear in BL Add. MS 88929 and BL Rot. Harl. T.11. This same prayer likely was written above the roughly drawn image of the three holy nails on Wellcome 632, but that portion of the roll is illegible. Even if the prayer to the nails does not accompany the image, as in Beinecke 410, the nails, along with the side wound and the cross, represent standard iconography in birth girdle illustration.38 The Takamiya miniature displays three diamond-tipped brown nails, the middle nail piercing a salmon-coloured heart with a small brown lozenge denoting the side wound, and a green sharply pointed crown of thorns twining about the shafts of the nails as a frame for the heart. We find similar iconography in Beinecke 410 and BL Add. MS 88929, although these miniatures are considerably more elegant and elaborate. Rather crude large-handled scourges with knotted whips slashed in red flank the nails on either side, a half- hearted attempt to include at least one other weapon of the arma Christi as a mnemonic aid for contemplation with the sacred image of the nails. Other arma Christi instruments, also characteristic iconography for English birth girdles, will be discussed as they occur in Takamiya 56. Immediately below the nails, an English rubric promises three thousand years’ indulgence to the user for praying the Latin prayer, ‘O nuda humanitas’. The brown-inked prayer begins with a red two-line initial ‘O’ and each subsequent ‘O’ is slashed with red. The only birth girdle witness is Beinecke 410, where the poem is the second of two prayers written beneath a Salvator Mundi image of the Christ-child on a red cushion. Two other English witnesses appear in a fifteenthcentury commonplace book (Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.2.53, fol. 70v) and the Shaftesbury Hours (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 2-1957, fol. 78r). The latter introduces the poem with the wounded heart attached to the hands and feet inserted within a three-line blue initial ‘O’; a similar image, accompanying 37 A transcription of the Glazier 39 prayer is provided in W. H. Legge, ‘A Decorated Mediaeval Roll of Prayers’, The Reliquary and Illustrated Archaeologist 10 (1904), 99–112 (p. 100). 38 Only BL Rot. Harl. 43.A.14 and STC 14547.5 omit images of the nails.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 209

07/04/2014 00:03

210

Mary Morse

a liturgical fragment of the Greek Trisagion (Adoration of the cross), appears in Glazier 39. Arranged to accentuate the ‘O’ beginning each sentence, Takamiya 56 presents the prayer in nine lines in contrast to five in Beinecke 410 and four in the other English manuscripts. The Beinecke roll omits the indulgence of three thousand years’ pardon in Takamiya 56 and the other English witnesses. Since the other witnesses were produced in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Takamiya 56 likely represents the earliest English appearance of ‘O nuda humanitas’. 39 The English verse-prayer known by its first line, ‘The nomber of the droppys of blodde’, also incorporates measurement as a devotional and apotropaic device. Attributed to the school of Richard Rolle, the verse has six other witnesses in English manuscripts, including Wellcome 632.40 The best-known version appears in British Library, Add. MS 37049 (fol. 24r), a Carthusian miscellany likely written in Yorkshire in 1460–70.41 According to various rubrics associated with mathematical calculations of the wounds or with The Fifteen Oes, Christ revealed the devotional practice to a female recluse, sometimes conflated with St Bridget of Sweden, telling her that fifteen Pater Nosters daily would equal the number of Christ’s wounds (365 × 15 = 5,475).42 In the first stanza of ‘If thou wilt worship singularly’ (DIMEV 2419) in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.21 (fols. 277vb–278va), the calculation multiplies to ‘An hundred Paternoster euery day/ Duryng þe space of xv yere’, thus equaling the 547,500 wounds specified in Takamiya 56, Wellcome 632, BL Add. MS 37049 and Robert Reynes’ commonplace book (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 407, fol. 10v). Since Takamiya 56 was produced at an earlier date than these 39 On the Beinecke 410 prayer and image, see Shailor, Catalogue, p. 310. On Trinity O.2.53, see M. R. James, The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1900), no. 1157. On Fitzwilliam 2-1957, see K. A. Rand, The Index of Middle English Prose, Handlist XVIII: Manuscripts in the Library of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge, 2006), no. A30, p. 64; and A. E. Nichols et al., An Index of Images in English Manuscripts from the Time of Chaucer to Henry VIII, c. 1380–c. 1509: Cambridge, Christ’s College, Clare College, Corpus Christi College, Emmanuel College, Gonville and Caius College and The Fitzwilliam Museum, vol. 1 (New York, 2000), item 173. Nichols dates the manuscript between 1504 and 1510. On the Glazier 39 image and text, see Skemer, Binding Words, p. 263; Friedman, Northern English Books, pp. 167–8. 40 F. M. M. Comper, The Life and Lyrics of Richard Rolle as Gathered from Contemporary Manuscripts (New York, 1928; repr. 1969), pp. 315, 318. 41 DIMEV 5425. On dating of BL Add. MS 37049, see K. L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390–1490, 2 vols. (London, 1996), vol. 2, p. 193. For complete transcriptions of ‘Þe nowmer of Ihesu Criste’s wowndes’ in BL Add. MS 37049 and another measure of the wounds (fol. 45v), but this time short of the extra 500 drops, in the second verse of ‘Thou Sinful Man’ (DIMEV 1771), see B. L. Doty, ‘An Edition of British Museum Manuscript Additional 37049: A Religious Miscellany’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Michigan State University, 1969), pp. 155–6, 284; for another version of the measure in ‘Thou Sinful Man’, see Woolf, English Religious Lyric, p. 204. 42 For a detailed explanation of the numbering variations, see The Common-place Book of Robert Reynes of Acle: An Edition of Tanner MS 407, ed. C. Louis (New York, 1999), pp. 152, 369–72. Also see Duffy, Stripping the Altars, pp. 254–5.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 210

07/04/2014 00:03

Takamiya 56 and the English Birth Girdle Tradition

211

other witnesses, the 547,500 number must have circulated earlier in England.43 Like the Wellcome scribe, the Takamiya scribe does not retain the poetic line-breaks of BL Add. MS 37049 or Tanner 407, but breaks according to the allotted marginal space: The nomber of the droppys/ of blodde of ihu all. I wyll re/ herce yn generall. Ffyve hun/ dred thowsande for to tell. / And vij and fourty mylle thowsande welle. Ffyve hun/ dred also grete and smale. / Here ys the nomber off/ them all.44 In Takamiya 56 the poem, the only prayer written in red, must be intended as a contemplative rubric for the image of the side wound which precedes it and for a subsequent Latin prayer beginning ‘Tibi laus tibi gloria tibi/ graciarum accio’ [‘Praise to you. Glory to you. Thanksgiving to you’]. This prayer alludes to ‘sanc/ tissism(is) guttis tuis sacra/tissismi sanguinis tui quas/ fudisti per natus pro nobis ne nobilis simo corpore tuo’ [‘your most holy drops of your most holy blood which you poured out for us through your most noble body’] in the circumcision, the bloody sweat, the flagellation, the crown of thorns, the wounded hands and ‘dulcissimo deifico corde’ [‘most sweet divine heart’]. The wound miniatures in Takamiya 56, where it is vertical, and in Wellcome 632, where it is horizontal, share a unique iconography in English images of the wound.45 In Takamiya 56, the diamond shape includes three parts: (1) a thin red textual border enclosing a Latin rubric describing the wound; (2) a thicker red-inked wound; and (3) an inner diamond inscribed with a red ‘IHS’ centred between two sets of stylized red drops. Christ’s detached hands and feet, displaying the nailholes and marked with pale red slashes, appear at each corner, as in Wellcome 632. The detached hands and feet appear elsewhere on birth girdles, but not specifically as frames for the side wound.46 The Wellcome image, with two compartments in the diamond, features an outer red border with ‘IHS’ inscribed within the inner compartment.47 Blood spurts from the wound, and the Latin inscription is placed 43 Robert Reynes, the assumed scribe and compiler, was alive in 1505; see Common-place Book of Robert Reynes, p. 7 n. 10, pp. 31–2. For dating of Trinity R.3.21 (c. 1471–1483), see Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, vol. 2, p. 337. 44 ‘And vij and fourty mylle thowsande welle’ in Takamiya 56 reads in Wellcome 632: ‘And xlv (mylle) thousande weell’; in BL Add. MS 37049: ‘And seuen and fowrty þowsands, withouten delay’; in Tanner 407: ‘And xlvii ml. weell’. See Common-place Book of Robert Reynes, p. 152; Doty, ‘An Edition of British Museum Manuscript Additional 37049’, p. 156. 45 For verification, I am grateful to Kathleen Scott for providing me with her list of side wound images in English manuscripts (personal correspondence). 46 In Beinecke 410, as a frame for the three nails, the detached hands and feet are marked with red at the tops as if they are amputations. In BL Add. MS 88929, similarly amputated and detached hands and feet frame the heart placed on the nails. 47 In the fifteenth century, ‘IHC’ and ‘IHS’ both appear in English devotional manuscripts as textual and iconographic motifs. In BL Add. MS 37049 ‘IHC’ appears five times (fols. 37r, 46r, 52v, 67r, 81r); see An Illustrated Yorkshire Carthusian Religious Miscellany: British Library London Additional 37049, ed. J. Hogg, Cartusiana 95 (Salzburg, 1981), pp. 51,

ME Texts in Transition.indb 211

07/04/2014 00:03

212

Mary Morse

beneath the wound image, but these are slight differences. The striking similarity of the wound image in these early and late birth girdles suggests that the Takamiya 56 wound motif may represent an early use of a pattern intended for birth girdle usage. From what can be determined from the rubbed wound image of Takamiya 56, the border text reads: ‘Hic vulnus lateris nostri redemptoris ex quo vulnere […] fluctus est in cruore […]. Hic plaga lateris larga et profunda multitudine omnia’ [‘Here is the wound in the side of our Redeemer. Out of this wound there is […] a gushing of blood […]. This large and deep gash in the side is all things to very many people’]. The Latin phrase in Wellcome 632, also rubbed, is illegible after ‘Ave vulnera lateris nostri’.48 Other birth girdle images of the wound present different motifs. In BL Add. MS 88929, the horizontal diamond-shaped wound is set into a fluffy blue cloud borne by angels. In BL Rot. Harl. T.11 the vertical diamond-shaped wound is inked in four shades of red ink and framed by drops of blood. Neither olim Esopus, Glazier 39, Beinecke 410, BL Rot. Harl. 43.A.14, nor STC 14547.5 feature the wound as a separate image.

The Hermit, the Archangel and the Virgin The most intriguing English rubric on the face of Takamiya 56 introduces a Latin prayer to the Virgin, ‘Ave domina sancta maria mater dei regina celi’, links the roll to Tewkesbury Abbey, and implies the roll was written after the sixth year of the reign of Henry VI (1434–5). The devout reader not only will receive 9,000 years’ indulgence but will see the Virgin before his death as many years as he has said the prayer. The Latin prayer replaces another ‘wrettyn yn letteris of golde’ that the devil stole from a Tewkesbury altar of the Virgin. Since no theft from either a Tewkesbury altar or the church is recorded in the extant monastic registers, the rubric mixes local legend and an assortment of indulgence promises to promote authority: Who so deuowtely say thys / prayer here folowynge shall / haue a xj. thowsande yeres/ of pardon and as many / tymys before hys dethe he / shall see oure gloryous and / blessed lady as he hathe / yeres vsyd thys sayde / prayers whyche was / brougth to an holy her / myte by Saynt My / chaell the archangell / wrettyn yn letteris of / golde as here folowythe / whyche prayer the fende / bare hytt awaye there / as hyt was yn a tabyll / byfore owre lady At / tewkesbery the vj yere / of the regne of kynge / henry the vj. 64, 77, 106, 127. In the only surviving copy of The Book of Margery Kempe, BL Add. MS 61823, also once owned by Carthusian monks, ‘IHC’ frequently appears as an insertion or notation; on 52v, for example, a red ‘IHC’ is inserted within the two-line red initial ‘O’, resembling an inscribed round host, to begin Margery’s description of her participation in a 1417 Corpus Christi procession; see The Book of Margery Kempe: The Text from the Unique MS. Owned by Colonel W. Butler-Bowden, ed. S. B. Meech and H. E. Allen, EETS o.s. 212 (London, 1940), pp. 107 n. 1, 309. 48 Moorat, Catalogue, p. 492. In two French manuscripts, the beginning of the inscription reads ‘Ave vulnus lateris nostri redemptoris …’; see V. Leroquais, Les Livres d’heures manuscrits de la Bibliothéque Nationale (Paris, 1927), pp. 77, 187, pl. LII.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 212

07/04/2014 00:03

Takamiya 56 and the English Birth Girdle Tradition

213

The scribe’s allusion to Tewkesbury, dedicated to the Virgin Mary at its founding in 715 and again in 1239, either adds monastic legitimacy or reflects an owner’s desire to ally himself or herself with Tewkesbury. According to the Founders’ Book, the abbey site was first inhabited by the hermit Theocus, no doubt a familiar character in local religious lore. In 1423 Isabel Despenser (d. 1439), one of the abbey’s major patrons, constructed the Warwick lady chapel in the abbey in memory of her first husband; in one of two miniatures depicting her in the Founders’ Book, Isabel prays before an image of the Virgin and Child (fol. 27r).49 The ‘tabyll by fore owre lady’ could refer to either the church’s high altar or an altar in Isabel’s lady chapel. Tewkesbury owned a number of relics with strong ties to the Virgin and her Son, including the bed where Christ was born, his cradle, and rocks from Mount Calvary and the tombs of Christ and the Virgin.50 The archangel St Michael, an imposing figure in the abbey’s fourteenth-century stained glass window illustrating the Last Judgment, not only was the devil’s chief angelic opponent but also the archangel assigned to transport the Virgin’s soul to heaven. Both feature in Mirk’s late fourteenth-century Festial. As the keeper of the Instruments of the Passion in the Festial, St Michael will bring the weapons of redemption to remind the souls of their debt to Christ at the Last Judgment: ‘… þe crosse of Criste, þe nayles, þe spere, þe croune of þorne, and alle other instrumentes of hys passion …’51 Devout users could find the major instruments in the four miniatures of Takamiya 56. In keeping with the popular belief in the efficacy of girdle relics and their birth girdle imitators, Michael assumes a protective role in Takamiya 56 that is unique in English birth girdles but with precedents in Byzantine childbirth amulets and earlier medieval legends.52 In the ‘Childbirth in the Sea’ Miracle of the Virgin that first appeared in the eleventh century, Michael was the childbirth intercessor but his primary role was later supplanted by the Virgin. A pregnant woman on pilgrimage to Mont Saint-Michel washes overboard and prays to St Michael and the Virgin for aid. In answer, the Virgin envelops the woman in her sleeve so that she can give birth without her clothes touching the water. When

49 R. K. Morris with M. Thurlby, ‘The Gothic Church: Architectural History’, in Tewkesbury Abbey: History, Art and Architecture, ed. R. K. Morris and R. Shoesmith (Glasgow, 2003), pp. 109–30 (p. 114); Luxford, ‘Founders’ Book’, p. 59; J. M. Luxford, ‘Secundem originale examinatum’, in Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England, ed. M. Connolly and L. R. Mooney (York, 2008), pp. 161–79 (pp. 164–6). 50 Luxford, ‘Founders’ Book’, pp. 58, 60. 51 S. Brown, ‘The Medieval Stained Glass’, in Tewkesbury Abbey: History, Art and Architecture, pp. 183–96 (p. 186 fig. 14.3); John Mirk’s Festial, ed. Powell, vol. 2, p. 202 lines 99–102, p. 232 lines 23–4; R. F. Johnson, Saint Michael the Archangel in Medieval English Legend (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 28, 82, 102. 52 I thank Genevra Kornbluth for alerting me to Michael’s Byzantine childbirth tradition. For two examples of the hematite stones engraved with St Michael’s image, see Kornbluth Photo Historical Archive (DO 57–68; Kelsey 2.6128, Bonner 336) (http://www.kornbluthphoto.com/Angels1.html).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 213

07/04/2014 00:03

214

Mary Morse

the waves subside the woman carries her newborn boy to worship at the church of Mont Saint-Michel.53 An indulgence of 9,000 years seems excessive, but later English and Continental manuscripts offer even more years of remission for reciting the same prayer in its common ‘Ave sanctissima maria’ variant. The most frequent rubric promises 11,000 years’ indulgence for saying the prayer before an image of ‘the Virgin in the Sun’. Books of hours and some of the prayer’s musical settings often add an attribution to the Franciscan Pope Sixtus IV (1471–84) for both the indulgence and the prayer’s composition.54 The presence of the prayer and the smaller indulgence in Takamiya 56 suggest that the prayer was known before 1471. The Latin rubric in the Prayer Book of Anne of Brittany (Chicago, Newberry Library, MS 83, fols. 45v–46), incorporates the prayer’s delivery to a hermit but without mention of either an altar or a place. Another Latin rubric in a late fifteenth-century Italian book of hours (British Library, Add. MS 10826, fol. 137v) borrows the motif of the letter written in gold and St Michael’s delivery to a hermit, but correlates the number of days (rather than years) the supplicant recites the prayer to the number of days (times) he or she will see the Virgin before dying. A post-1450 French book of hours (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson Liturgical e.13, fol. 84v), repeats the same rubric.55 Spanning fourteen lines, the Takamiya prayer reads: Ave domina sancta ma / ria mater dei re / gina celi porta para / disi domina mundi imp(er)a / trix inferni singula / ris et pura tu es vir / go tu concepisti jesu(m) / cristu(m) sine peccato. / Tu peperisti creato / rem redemptorem ac / saluatore(m) mu(n)di i(n) quo / non dubito libera me / ab omnibus malis et / ora p(ro) peccatis meis.56

53 I thank Laurel Broughton for allowing me access to her trial database of Miracles of the Virgin. The miracle is associated with Mont Saint-Michel at Tumba, Normandy, not Mount St Michael in Cornwall. English versions of the miracle occur in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 374 (fol. 37), and London, British Library, MS Royal 20 B.xiv (fol. 108b), MS Cotton Cleopatra C.x, bk. 1, mir. 3 (fol. 109), and Add. MS 17920 (fol. 3). Also see M. Rubin, Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (New Haven, CT, 2009), pp. 187–8; K. A. Smith, ‘Mary or Michael? Saint-switching, Gender, and Sanctity in a Medieval Miracle of Childbirth’, Church History 74 (2005), 758–83 (pp. 762–6). 54 R. N. Swanson covers the emergence of the ‘indulgenced prayer’ in manuscripts and print, with a focus upon the acceptance of the Sixtus IV indulgence to the Virgin in the Sun in Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise? (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 253–6; Duffy, Stripping the Altars, pp. 239, 243. Also see B. Blackburn, ‘The Virgin in the Sun: Music and Image for a Prayer Attributed to Sixtus IV’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 124 (1999), 157–95 (pp. 158–60). 55 Blackburn, ‘Virgin in the Sun’, p. 160 n. 6. I thank Christopher Farrell for examining BL Add. MS 10826 for me. 56 The prayer in the form above, but with the addition of ‘lux sempiterna’ between ‘domina mundi’ and ‘imperatrix inferni’, also appears in a northern English prayer roll produced in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS 486); see C. F. Bühler, ‘A Middle English Prayer Roll’, Modern Language Notes (Dec. 1937), 555–62 (pp. 555–6). None of its other texts appear in the birth girdles.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 214

07/04/2014 00:03

Takamiya 56 and the English Birth Girdle Tradition

215

[Hail, holy lady Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, Gate of Paradise, Lady of the World, Empress of Hell. You are unique and pure. A virgin, you conceived Jesus Christ without sin. You gave birth to the creator, the redeemer and the saviour of the world. Of this I have no doubt. Free me from all evils and pray for my sins.]

The Immaculate Conception and Other Franciscan Influences ‘Ave domina sancta maria’ offers easily memorized phrases that support the doctrine and feast of the Immaculate Conception, a contentious subject in medieval theological circles even before Sixtus instituted a liturgical office for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, followed by a papal bull in 1484. England’s long history of acceptance of the doctrine dates from the eleventh century, where the feast was first celebrated at Canterbury. Predictably, the feast was introduced in exchange for the Virgin’s assurance of survival at sea for Elsinus, a recorded abbot of St Augustine’s in Canterbury in 1087 or 1088. Duns Scotus (d. 1308), one of the most influential early English Franciscans, declared that Mary could not have been a suitable mother for the pure Christ unless she too were conceived without sin. The Fasciculus morum, a Franciscan preaching handbook that circulated widely in late medieval England, frequently alluded to the Virgin’s purity, associating her nourishing blood with the sacrificial body and blood of the host and the wine, ‘for Christ’s flesh was taken and formed out of the most pure blood of the Virgin’. 57 Although the Takamiya scribe implied Benedictine authorization from Tewkesbury, two short prayers to St Francis (d. 1226) placed immediately above the image of the side wound reinforce how veneration of the saint’s stigmata popularized veneration of the wounds, particularly the side wound.58 Both appear beneath the roll’s only Latin rubric, ‘De Sancto Francisco, confessor O’, inked in red. Except for red-inked initial capitals and occasional red separators, the prayers are written in brown ink. ‘Celorum candor splenduit’ [‘The brightness of heaven glimmered’] attributed to Cardinal Raniero Capocci (d. 1250) and appearing in an Italian antiphoner (Assisi, Cattedrale San Rufino, Archivio e Biblioteca, MS 5, fol. 342) shortly after 1235, praises the stigmata the seraph marked upon the saint’s hands, feet and side in imitation of the five wounds.59 The second prayer, ‘Deus qui mira crucis misteria in beato francisco confessore tuo multiformiter demonstrasti’ 57 Rubin, Mother of God, pp. 303–4; Fasciculus Morum: A Fourteenth-Century Preacher’s Handbook, ed. and trans. S. Wenzel (University Park, PA, 1989), p. 221; M. Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York, 1983), pp. 239–43. 58 Skemer, Binding Words, p. 178; C. Salvati, ‘The Camoscio: Relic of the Side Wound of Francis of Assisi, “Living Eucharist’’’, in The Stigmata of Francis of Assisi: New Studies, New Perspectives, ed. J. Dalrun, M. F. Cusato and C. Salvati (St Bonaventure, NY, 2006), pp. 75–99 (pp. 77–8). 59 M. W. Blastic, ‘Francis and his Hagiographical Tradition’, in The Cambridge Companion to Francis of Assisi, ed. M. J. Robson (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 68–84 (pp. 68, 72–3); Cantus ID: 200711, Siglum: I-Ad 5. The antiphon has four other witnesses in Cantus and accompanies

ME Texts in Transition.indb 215

07/04/2014 00:03

216

Mary Morse

[‘O God, you have shown in many forms the miraculous mystery of the cross in the blessed confessor Francis’], implores the reader to follow Francis’ example in meditation upon the cross. This prayer, marked as an oration, also follows ‘Celorum candor splenduit’ in the English primers.60 English Franciscans particularly revered the stigmata and reported one unique vision of Francis enclosed within Christ’s side wound; Thomas of Eccleston, the chronicler, regarded the English Franciscans as models for the order.61 Some of the Beauchamp earls of Warwick, although patrons of Tewkesbury, favoured Franciscan churches for their burials. Although she requested and received burial at Tewkesbury after her death, Isabel Despenser died at the Franciscan convent of the Minoresses in London.62 Together, the Takamiya prayers to St Francis could have served multiple purposes: a scribal acknowledgement of Franciscan production or guidance, a commission for a lay owner desiring to follow Franciscan tertiary practices, or, when combined with the dorse texts and possible imitation of the knotted girdle of the Franciscans, another childbirth protection. In a Marian miracle borrowed from St Bonaventure’s Life of St Francis, a woman struggling to deliver a child for seven days turns black from prolonged labour. In her death throes, she begs Francis to help her. The saint appears and urges her to recite the antiphon ‘Salve regina’ with him. As they reach the phrase, ‘The fruit which the Virgin brought forth’, the child is born. In thanksgiving, the mother praises Mary for sending Francis as her intercessor. The Latin miracle appears in British Library Add. MS 19909 (fol. 250), a late fifteenthcentury Dominican collection of sermons from Germany.63 Although St Francis disappears in later birth girdles, the miracle suggests that some awareness of Francis’s intercessory role in childbirth, perhaps tied to his reverence for the Virgin, persisted in popular religion. Yet instead of the ‘Salve regina’, Takamiya 56 gives prominence to ‘Ave domina sancta maria’, a prayer that claims to have been written in letters of gold and delivered by an archangel to an altar of the Virgin in an abbey dedicated to her. Even the Devil knew it possessed such spiritual power that he had to steal the prayer. When the prayer that returns to the abbey is copied on this birth girdle, it is distinguished only by a two-line capital ‘A’ for ‘Ave’ and one red-slashed capital ‘T’ to initiate the significant ‘Tu peperisti creato / rem’ formula that later was embedded in prayers to the Holy Kinship of blessed mothers.64 an illustration of Francis receiving the stigmata in a fifteenth-century French book of hours (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Liturgical 397, fol. 11). 60 E. Hoskins, Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis or Sarum and York Primers with Kindred Books (London, 1901), p. 141. 61 A. Kehnel, ‘Francis and the Historiographical Tradition in the Order’, in The Cambridge Companion to Francis of Assisi, pp. 101–14 (pp. 103–4, 112–13). 62 J. M. Luxford, The Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries: A Patronage History (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 126, 130; J. H. Blunt, Tewkesbury Abbey and its Associations, 2nd edn (London, 1898), pp. 79–81. 63 Broughton, Miracles of the Virgin database. 64 L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood, pp. 56–9.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 216

07/04/2014 00:03

Takamiya 56 and the English Birth Girdle Tradition

217

As if to augment the message of ‘Ave domina sancta maria’ and to create an even stronger connection to the Virgin’s role in Christ’s sacrifice, the roll’s second miniature, placed immediately beneath the prayer, presents an empty cross (180 mm) flanked by the upright spear on the left and sponge on the right. The two triangular-tipped brown nails that would impale Christ’s hands point upwards but the third nail, positioned roughly where Christ’s feet would hang, points toward the shaft of the sponge. The crown of thorns wreathes the cross much as it wreathes the nails, but the green of the crown is whitened where the acidity of the pigment has eaten into the vellum.65 A pentangle-shaped shield in the centre of the cross shaft, edged in green, shows four red slashes evoking the wounds (a fifth slash, for Christ’s left hand, was probably intended but not added). Such a shield also appears on the empty cross in Wellcome 632. In a literal association with the elevation, the cross is mounted on four steps alternately coloured in brown and green with spaced blank vertical diamonds on each row: six on the bottom step, five on the second, five repeated on the third, and three on the fourth. The succession of steps seemingly signifies the correspondence between the crucifixion and the elevation of the host. Two separate English rubrics, ‘To the leuacion of the bodye of cryste ihu’ and ‘To the eleuacion of the blode of criste’, introduce two unique vernacular verse-prayers. The presence of English rubrics for English prayers is unusual, implying the Takamiya scribe’s deliberate attempt to indicate their centrality for both private meditation and public worship. The seven-line rhyme-royal verses offer a succinct and easily memorized evocation of the eucharist. In a departure from most English elevation prayers, the host and the blood receive equal primacy, each the subject of its own verse. Following the sequence of the mass, the prayer to the host appears first. Two lines borrowed from a popular prayer to an angel (DIMEV 3501) and incorporated into the verses suggest that the verses either draw from oral tradition or represent the scribe’s own original contribution.66 The first verse sustains the Franciscan connection between the Incarnation in Mary’s womb and Christ’s sacrifice of his body and blood each time the priest celebrates the eucharist.67

65 This corrosive green, known as verdigris, suggests the artist’s English training; see X. Muratova, ‘Remarks on Colours and Pigments in the French Court Illumination of the 13th Century’, Revista de História da Arte Série W.1 (2011), 51–7 (pp. 54–5). 66 R. H. Robbins, ‘Levation Prayers in Middle English Verse’, Modern Philology 40.2 (Nov. 1942), 131–46 (pp. 139–40); R. H. Robbins, ‘Popular Prayers in Middle English Verse’, Modern Philology 36 (1939), 337–50 (pp. 342–3). For other elevation poems, see Robbins, ‘Levation Prayers’. 67 Morse, ‘Two Unpublished Elevation Verses’, p. 274.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 217

07/04/2014 00:03

218

Mary Morse

More arma Christi Images The fourth and last miniature on Takamiya 56 returns to the arma Christi iconography briefly evoked in the miniatures of the cross and the nails. Although the miniature does not contain another cross, the sponge and spear reappear with a few more of the twenty-four meditational objects named in the arma Christi poem, ‘O Vernicle’. Olim Esopus, Beinecke 410 and Wellcome 632 feature most of the objects in their Passion miniatures.68 Between this miniature and the other two miniatures of the nails and the cross, the Takamiya arma Christi images include the nails, the crown of thorns, the scourges, the spear, the sponge, the ladder, the pincers, the lantern and possibly the pillar and the knife. The spear on the viewer’s right and sponge on the left, respectively stained red in the point and the head, are 93 mm high, matching the height of the thirteen-rung ladder they criss-cross. The other instruments appear below or intersect their shafts. The top of the three-ribbed lantern on the right could be a flame but just as easily could be a handle since both representations appear in the ‘O Vernicle’ miniatures in devotional manuscripts. The pincers, perhaps with the knife of circumcision inserted within the loop, floats near the bottom right of the ladder. A floating tree-like shape at the bottom left could be an aroid pillar, an iconographic oddity that Anne E. Nichols notes in one ‘O Vernicle’ manuscript and that Kathleen Scott dates to the 1420s.69 The absence of the veronica, robe, rope, pelican, coins and hammer suggests that the roll’s artist was not particularly concerned about the relationships in the groupings or about portraying all of the instruments. Depictions of the arma Christi in olim Esopus, Beinecke 410 and Wellcome 632 are more comprehensive, even in Wellcome 632’s crudely rendered and rubbed image. One instrument, each elaborately detailed, accompanies each stanza of ‘O Vernicle’ in the narrow marginal illustrations of olim Esopus, with a concluding Imago pietatis that represents a rare motif during the 1390–1420 period in which the roll was made.70 Beinecke 410, likely commissioned for a monastic owner of some wealth, features two exquisite and equally comprehensive arma Christi miniatures, with the addition of the robe and the veronica in the second.71 From what can be discerned in Wellcome 632, a dominant empty tau-cross serves as the top border and the meditational focus of the surrounding faintly visible arma Christi. Pragmatically, the value of vellum discouraged empty spaces. Because the last miniature on Takamiya 56 fills most of the membrane that was added to conform to the Virgin’s height, it is possible that the ladder, spear and sponge, roughly corresponding to the height of the 68 A. E. Nichols, ‘“O Vernicle”: Illustrations of an Arma Christi Poem’, in Tributes to Kathleen L. Scott: English Medieval Manuscripts: Readers, Makers and Illuminators, ed. M. Villalobos Hennessy (Brussels, 2009), pp. 139–69, esp. Part III (pp. 150–65). 69 Ibid., p. 149. 70 Ibid., pp. 139, 146–50; Kathleen Scott dates the roll on the basis of the Annunciation miniature at the top of the roll (personal correspondence). 71 The name ‘Thomas’ is inserted in the Latin suffrage to SS Quiricus and Julitta, leading Shailor (Catalogue, p. 310) to suggest that the Austin monk kneeling beneath the first miniature, possibly Thomas Barnak of Lincolnshire, may have been the owner.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 218

07/04/2014 00:03

Takamiya 56 and the English Birth Girdle Tradition

219

nails and the cross, assured users that all images on the girdle held equal value for contemplation. The scribe and artist had room to insert another short prayer or to depict more instruments, but the scribe added only the remaining two lines from the last prayer on the roll’s face, beginning ‘Tibi laus vera misericordia tibi gloria aeterna benignitas’ (‘Praise to you, true mercy. Glory to you, eternal kindness’).

Takamiya 56 as an Early Birth Girdle Exemplar As objects of devotion, manuscript and printed birth girdles occupied a liminal space between religious authority and folk superstition. Takamiya 56 assured its users that faith in the Virgin Mary, and through her, faith in Christ and the incarnation symbolized in the rituals of the eucharist, sustained the protections of the roll in childbirth. It does not depict any patron or insert any name into its prayers, but its textual and iconographic content could respond to the preferences of an individual or family with both Benedictine and Franciscan allegiances. Most significantly, Takamiya 56 embodies a tradition of matching birth girdle measures to the Virgin’s height that later became a birth girdle construct without the necessity of actual physical replication. As both a literal and metaphorical measure of devotion to the Virgin, Takamiya 56 offers early documentation of texts and images that contributed to the English birth girdle tradition.72

72 Courtesy of Professor Takamiya, the Dwight B. Waldo Library at Western Michigan University provides access to the digital images of this manuscript at http://luna.library. wmich.edu:8180/luna/servlet/s/z7jpp4.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 219

07/04/2014 00:03

Carrie Griffin

Bookish Types: Some Post-Medieval Owners, Borrowers and Lenders of the Manuscripts of The Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy •••

T

he Middle English Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy (hereafter Wise Book) is a text that was widely copied and circulated between the years c. 1380–1600.1 The text can perhaps best be understood as part of the Secreta secretorum or ‘advice to princes’ tradition from which it almost certainly emerged or, at least, by which it was influenced; it is a short exposition on the influence of the planets and the zodiac on human behaviour and character, on destiny, on (in some cases) appearance and on everyday life and living, interspersed with which are instructions on how to measure time, a debate on providence and free will, and some notes on the hours of the day and the reigns of the planets.2 Its tenure as one of the most popular and widely read texts of its kind in medieval England cannot be understated, and since the Wise Book describes in simple terms potentially complex concepts regarding the workings of the universe and My editorial work on this text was funded by a Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded by the National University of Ireland (2007–9). I am also indebted in my work on the Wise Book to Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya, who generously brought his manuscript copy (Tokyo, Takamiya MS 39) to Cambridge in 2009 where I was able to consult it at the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College. I dedicate this paper, with thanks, to him. 1 See C. Griffin, ‘The Middle English Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy: Instruction, Publics, and Manuscripts’ (Ph.D. dissertation, NUI Cork, 2006); and C. Griffin, The Middle English Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy: A Parallel-Text Edition (Heidelberg, 2013). 2 L. Braswell-Means, ‘Electionary, Lunary, Destinary, and Questionary: Towards Defining Categories of Middle English Prognostic Material’, Studies in Philology 89 (1992), 367–403 (p. 339), has noted the importance of the Wise Book, in particular its material concerning ‘the complexions of the signs, and their influence on personality’, for the Secreta tradition. The Secreta secretorum or Secretum secretorum was immensely popular amongst both scholarly and lay readers in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England and indeed across Europe, having been translated from the pseudo-Aristotelian Sirr al-asrar into Latin in the twelfth century. It was originally intended as a mirror for princes, but was enlarged into an encyclopedic work with the addition of a layer of scientific and occult material; see Secretum Secretorum: Nine English Versions, ed. M. A. Manzalaoui, EETS o.s. 276 (1977), p. xi and passim.

220

ME Texts in Transition.indb 220

07/04/2014 00:03

Bookish Types

221

presents them accessibly and comprehensibly, it evidently suited fairly widespread dispersal and copying: it is preserved (in varying degrees of completeness) in thirty-four late-medieval and early modern manuscript witnesses. It is frequently co-located with a set of nativities.3 Because of its logical structure which moves from macrocosm to microcosm and which normally comprises a prologue; an enumeration of the heavens, planets signs and months, and zodiacal signs; a debate by two philosophers on predestination and free will; sections on the spheres and heavens, the elements and complexions; and a computus, the Wise Book was easily fragmented and disseminated in parts;4 therefore it lends itself to the practices of scribes, compilers and patrons who, when assembling and planning books and texts, were increasingly selective. The manuscripts of the Wise Book certainly may have been more numerous contemporary with and in the years after its composition or, at least, its first circulation.5 The Wise Book, however, never had an early modern life in print, so perhaps the dispersal of its manuscripts cannot be compared to, say, a medieval text in manuscript that was printed in the early years of the new technology. In other words, the Wise Book may have relatively quickly come to occupy a particular space in the textual landscape of early modern England. It is likely, as we trace the career of the Wise Book post-print, that we are dealing with something of an arcane text available in manuscript only, and since there is evidence to suggest that the text continued to be copied (in, for example, London, British Library, MS Egerton 2433, which is an early sixteenth-century witness), it is worth considering that the text or perhaps more properly its manuscripts may have been regarded as objects of antiquarian interest, or indeed suitable for commonplacing, collecting and other practices related to book production. The high number of surviving manuscripts, and in particular those produced after 1485, suggests an interest in preservation, and we do not have the same sense here of a manuscript tradition interrupted or displaced by the increase in availability of printed texts. This situation relates not only to the copying of the text after the time in which printing was an option for circulation, but to the collection and, thereby, the preservation of the manuscripts of the text. These early and, indeed, later collectors may have recognized the unavailability of the text in print, and may have silently acknowledged the need to conserve and preserve the Wise Book in a landscape that not only privileges print but that sometimes allows the destruction and recycling of older, less ornate books. The persistence of the Wise Book is dependent on the activities of collectors: antiquarians or aficionados of the history of science and information, or those readers interested in the material manuscript book. The survival of the text in the different libraries of the post-medieval bibliophiles, then, enhances the singularity both of the text and its particular context, and surely must augment our sense of

3 For discussion of the nativities, see Griffin, Middle English Wise Book, pp. xlvii–xlix. 4 For a discussion of the various parts of the Wise Book in the different recensions, see ibid., p. xlvi and following. 5 For a discussion of the sources for and analogues to the Wise Book, see ibid., pp. l–lv.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 221

07/04/2014 00:03

222

Carrie Griffin

and comment on the nature and character of both the library and the collector. The libraries that now preserve the thirty-four handwritten versions are a global affair, with three manuscripts held in collections in the United States, and one now in the Tokyo library of Toshiyuki Takamiya, to which I return below. The remainder are held in Great Britain, in the main in the large repositories of the British Library, the Bodleian Library and the Cambridge collections.6 But these great collections are indebted to and carry on the work of the collectors who had, in a landscape in which printed books were in some cases more desirable and economically viable, the foresight and the wisdom to actively seek out handwritten books and texts that were of interest but that were perhaps also in danger of destruction. In the case of the Wise Book, and as mentioned, the issue of post-medieval ownership of its manuscripts is informed by the fact that the text did not have life in print until the twentieth century.7 Indeed, it could be argued that the text is a failure of sorts  –  a medieval ‘bestseller’ that is suspiciously and conspicuously absent from the canon of early printed works; however, the habit of the Wise Book of cropping up in the libraries of some of England’s greatest bibliophiles and antiquarians indicates that the text and its manuscripts remained appealing and relevant in reading cultures that now embraced the products of the printing press.8 It might be argued that the Wise Book did not lend itself to printing not only because it was too prosaic but because the new market for almanacs and other more effective instructional manuals and treatises may simply have meant that the wordy and perhaps less authoritative Wise Book was no longer considered relevant or useful, or meant that it quickly became to be regarded as a folkloric or antiquarian text. Perhaps it was to some extent replaced or displaced by the cost-effective, well-organized and more uniform almanacs and related works that were rolling off the presses in increasingly large numbers.9 Or perhaps the text was just too brief and lacked sufficient detail to warrant a full printed edition, and was perhaps too long or arcane  –  or indeed too ill-defined  –  to be considered for publication with other, similar material. But it continued to be copied at least, and presumably it was sometimes read; it was collected, and its manuscripts (which must have been significantly more numerous at the end of the fifteenth century then they are now) were preserved, swapped, sold and borrowed  –  and read  –  for centuries to come, and apparently maintained a strong position in the libraries of the major antiquarians and collectors in the 6 The most complete list and description of Wise Book manuscripts is to be found in ibid., pp. xii, xvi and following, which amends that found in G. Keiser, A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050–1500, vol. 10: Works of Science and Information (New Haven, CT, 1998), pp. 3766–7. 7 See Griffin ‘The Middle English Wise Book’ (2006) for a partial edition of the text; see also J. Krochalis and E. Peters, The World of Piers Plowman (Philadelphia, 1975), pp. 3–17, which prints a version from one manuscript: Cambridge University Library, MS Ll.4.14. 8 This despite the assertion that ‘many [scientific and utilitarian] texts continued into early printed books’ in Braswell-Means, ‘Electionary, Lunary, Destinary, and Questionary’, p. 368. 9 For a comprehensive history of printed almanacs see B. Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press (London, 1979; rev. edn 2008).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 222

07/04/2014 00:03

Bookish Types

223

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in particular. Indeed it may have been regarded as an important signifier of and window into medieval thought, belief and attitudes, specifically regarding the influence of the planets and zodiac, and their relevance in a theocentric society and, simultaneously, as an example of a text, or indeed a manuscript, important in its time but in danger of becoming scarce or ephemeral.

Samuel Pepys and Magdalene College MS Pepys 878 Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) is perhaps more famous now for his relationship with books  –  both his devotion to his wonderfully detailed Diary and to his library space and book-collection  –  than his various public roles as, for example, Clerk of the Acts to the Navy, by which appointment he became one of the principal officers responsible for the administration of the Navy; in 1673 he was elected MP for Castle Rising, Norfolk; and in the same year he took up the appointment as Secretary of the Admiralty.10 Following the exile of King James II, Pepys was removed from his position in the Admiralty and retired, devoting his time instead to ‘adding to his collection of books, prints and curiosities’ until his death in 1703.11 The manuscript of the Wise Book owned by Samuel Pepys, which is now Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys 878, contains one of the most complete versions of the text, found at pp. 1–16 (see fig. 1 for the first leaf). Pepys appended his bookplate to the manuscript at p. v, facing the opening page of our text. His ex libris (fig. 2) is an impressive addition to the manuscript, and was clearly designed to make an impact on the reader, it being a near full-page addition: a very visual paratext. The plate preserved in Pepys 878 is only one of several that was used by the book-collector; this particular example has a portrait of an older-looking Pepys, enclosed in a roundel, on a background of paper that is curled at the edges, and it bears his motto: Mens cujusque is est Quisque (‘the mind’s the man’, taken from Cicero’s De re publica) on the top part, above the roundel portrait. Below the likeness is the following inscription: ‘Sam. Pepys Cae. et Iac Angl. Regie. a Secretis Admiraliæ’. M. R. James describes Pepys 878 as being of vellum, of ninety-six leaves, and as being ‘partly in a very excellent hand’. 12 The manuscript, which Pepys acquired at some point before 1694,13 is a parchment volume with paper flyleaves which is written in an 10 Selections from the Diaries of John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys, ed. J. Gibson (London, 1957), pp. 18–19. This position of Clerk of the Acts was granted to Pepys as part of the benefits of supporting the restored Charles II in June 1660. Pepys’ cousin, Edward Montague, was at the same time made the Earl of Sandwich. Gibson notes that, though Pepys ‘knew little about ships and the sea … he was an industrious man and he soon became an expert’ (ibid. p. 18). 11 Ibid., p. 19. 12 M. R. James, Bibliotheca Pepysiana: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Library of Samuel Pepys, part III: Medieval Manuscripts (London, 1923), pp. 3–4. 13 This date can be discerned from the Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliæ et Hiberniæ in unum collecti [henceforth Catalogi Manuscriptorum], which was published

ME Texts in Transition.indb 223

07/04/2014 00:03

224

Carrie Griffin

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of the book.

Fig. 1  Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 878, fol. 1r

ME Texts in Transition.indb 224

07/04/2014 00:03

Bookish Types

225

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of the book.

Fig. 2  Kneller bookplate, from Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 878

anglicana formata, save for pp. 39–41, which is in a small cursive hand; the dialect of the book is East Anglian.14 There is no illumination or illustration; however, there are some rubricated initial letters and underlining in red. There is evidence of reading in the form of marginal notes in a later hand which is not that of Pepys. In addition to a plague tract attributed to John of Burgundy (pp. 187–92) there is a copy of the Liber de Diversis Medicins (pp. 133–52) and two tracts on urine: the De Urinis (pp. 108–113) and a tract in English called Of Urines (pp. 39–54). There are also several medical receipts and a dictionary of medical ingredients, a Latin herbal, texts on the seven signs and on canicular days, and a set of directions for the seasons and the months. Essentially Pepys 878 is a fairly typical medical compendium from the later Middle Ages, one that also contains the type of astrological material that is in Oxford in 1697 but which, James notes (Bibliotheca Pepysiana, p. v), ‘may have been drawn up some years earlier’; for that reason it is incomplete and James also notes (p. vi) that he found fourteen manuscripts of the fifty-one that he describes that are not recorded in the Catalogi Manuscriptorum. 14 R. McKitterick and R. Beadle, Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, vol. 5, part 1: Manuscripts (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 4–5.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 225

07/04/2014 00:03

226

Carrie Griffin

so frequently co-located with materia medica and which assisted both practitioners and lay readers in establishing favourable times for treatment as well as planetary reign. This manuscript makes sense if we consider that it may have once belonged to a medical practitioner, or a literate amateur, in East Anglia in the later medieval period, but it is may be less easy to reconcile this kind of manuscript volume with the library of Samuel Pepys. As noted, Pepys had a lifelong relationship with books, and his experiences of books, book-collectors and libraries punctuate his life, recorded and implied in both his letters and in his famous Diary. These experiences began when the famous diarist was still quite young; as a nine year-old (and again several times before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642) he visited Durdans, the Surrey residence of Sir Robert Coke. The place impressed itself upon him, not least because of its ‘fine, well stocked library’; he recorded in his Diary that he had been ‘been very merry’ there, and that he had experienced ‘much mirth’.15 As a thirteen-year-old pupil at St Paul’s school, he had been excited and impressed by a new schoolmaster, Samuel Cromleholme. Cromleholme, not yet thirty, was ‘an enthusiastic book collector who impressed his young namesake with his learning and rose to become high master in his turn’. 16 C. Tomalin notes that Cromleholme had helped to ‘nurture his love of books’. 17 These formative experiences continued at Cambridge, where Pepys attended at Magdalene from 1651. As an adult, each of Pepys’s homes, but in particular his house at Seething Lane that he shared with his wife Elizabeth, had at their hearts his library, which he continued to cherish and display even as his situation and living conditions altered and changed; while still at the Seething Lane house, in 1665, a plague year, he commissioned some ‘specially made glass fronted bookcases’, because, he wrote, his books were ‘growing numerous, and lying one upon the other on my chairs’).18 He helped to design them, they were built by a naval joiner; they are the first-known purpose-built bookcases in England, and are still in use.19 Towards the end of his life Pepys’s library became ‘his obsession and his comfort  … [his] necessary retreat was his library, and there, or in an adjacent room, high up in the house [at Buckingham Street’s York Buildings] where the light was good, he sat, alone or with one of his assistants to bring him the books he wanted, to replace them on the right shelf, sometimes to read to him and take dictation’. 20 He continued to actively acquire, lend and cherish books until his death in 1703; 15 Diary entries from 1 September 1662 and 26 July 1663, cited in C. Tomalin, Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self (London, 2002), p. 11. 16 Tomalin, Samuel Pepys, p. 28. Cromleholme was to lose his private library in the Great Fire of London, 1666; several booksellers suffered, including Pepys’s onetime supplier Thomas Kirton, who lost his shop and his home, along with thousands of pounds’ worth of stock, and whose business was ruined beyond recovery (ibid., p. 233). 17 Ibid., p. 233. 18 Diary, 23 July 1666; cited in Tomalin, Samuel Pepys, p. 187. 19 Ibid. 20 Tomalin, Samuel Pepys, pp. 353, 355.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 226

07/04/2014 00:03

Bookish Types

227

he acquired manuscripts, including autographs of Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots and Charles I; he initiated new collections, began to buy in large collections of old ballads, and continued to create a library, the ‘eclecticism’ of which made it unique.21 Somewhat irritatingly, Pepys did not record in very great detail his book acquisitions in his bound six-volume handwritten Diary, which was deposited, along with his library consisting of 3000 volumes, at Magdalene College Cambridge in 1724 following the death of Pepys’s favoured nephew John Jackson.22 What is certain, however, is that his library was one of his most valuable possessions;23 his will evidences careful thought on the afterlife of his impressive book collection which, at the time of his death, was valued at £4,000.24 Our book makes a kind of sense on Pepys’ shelves when it is connected to the major events and passions of his life; indeed, strangely, it serves to anticipate some of its defining moments. One life-altering time for Pepys was that surrounding the dangerous and painful operation that he was forced to endure in March 1658 to remove kidney stones, and Tomalin notes that Pepys was ‘the type of patient who is likely to have read [the surgical manual] himself. We know that he sought information and anatomical explanations from the doctors who attended him’.25 His natural scientific curiosity, as well as his concern for the proper management of his condition and his symptoms, would perhaps lead him to invest in and retain a volume that had a fair share of medical tracts and remedy books, such as The Liber de Diversis Medicins, a tract on uroscopy (surely of interest given the particular nature of Pepys’s complaint), a dictionary of medical ingredients, a regimen of health, and various medical notes and short texts.26 Pepys also lived through several years in which the population of London was threatened  –  and decimated  –  by the plague. 1665 was once such year, and it is tempting to imagine that, in such times, Pepys would perhaps have consulted MS 878 for its copy of John of Burgundy’s Plague Tract. This year, although a plague year, was one of the most significant of 21 Ibid., p. 357. 22 There are some details, but not generally about the titles or nature of individual books purchased; for example an entry from 2 March 1666 has the following: ‘carried home £10 worth of book, all I hope I shall buy a great while’ (Tomalin, Samuel Pepys, p. 267). 23 Selections from the Diaries, ed. Gibson, p. 20. 24 Tomalin, Samuel Pepys, p. 380. Tomalin notes that the instructions left by Pepys indicate that he had ‘prepared them with the greatest care and must have thought and planned the disposal of his library over a considerable period … they are also so idiosyncratic that he may have modelled the conditions on those of another Cambridge college library, that of Matthew Parker at Corpus Christi, which had similarly been protected to good effect’ (p. 375). Pepys proposed an annual visitation to his books by a representative of Trinity College Cambridge, giving them the right to the collection should they discover his instructions were not being obeyed (p. 375). 25 Tomalin, Samuel Pepys, p. 64. 26 McKitterick and Beadle, Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, vol. 5, part 1, p. xv, assert that ‘bearing in mind Pepys’s particular problems with his health the medical tracts must have been useful and that he must also have had a more than academic interest in John of Burgandy’s plague tract’.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 227

07/04/2014 00:03

228

Carrie Griffin

Pepys’s life in terms of his career,27 being that in which Pepys was elected to the Royal Society. He attended lectures and became interested in astronomy, even acquiring his own twelve-foot telescope. He met Robert Hooke and purchased his Micrographia, and he spent the summer months of 1665 looking at Jupiter and its satellites and enjoying scientific conversations with Royal Society colleagues.28 The study of astronomy had of course advanced considerably since the time in which the Wise Book had been current and widely read, but there is every chance that Pepys had an interest in the history and development of the discipline and, because of his lack of formal training (even though he was a formidable mathematician) he may have found a particular use for the text.29 That he took care to retain the book, given his tendency to quite frequently offload volumes, is remarkable in and of itself, but perhaps indicates a growing concern with illness and an increased passion for astronomy in the later years of his life. Pepys’s main interests and obsessions, then, find material reality in MS 878, and with some investigation it is perhaps not difficult to relate this manuscript to the general, eclectic contents of Pepys’s library, even as it reflects the turn towards what might be termed ‘modernity’ and somehow materially anticipates the Enlightenment. Many of the volumes that were displayed on the bookshelves signify his taste for advancements in science and, in particular, ‘the movement away from a superstitious to an empiric science’.30 In fact, J. Gibson notes that even as Pepys struggled with the problems of the Dutch attack in 1667, he found time to read Boyle’s treatise on hydrostatics, which he deemed ‘a most excellent book’ (1957: 24).31 As President of the Royal Society his most remarkable decision involved a book: he was to commission the publication of Isaac Newton’ Principia mathematica, although he did not order the Society to finance the printing of the volume.32 However, Pepys’s gaze was very much at times retrospective, as evidenced by his interest in the collection of older ballads and songs and, also, by his collecting of manuscripts and in early printed books. His collection of books to printed before 1558 shows a marked interest in, if not a preference for, books printed at the turn of the sixteenth century, in particular, those great medieval texts printed by Wynkyn de Worde, Richard Pynson and William Caxton and Robert Copeland; for example, he owned Lydgate’s Troy Book, printed by Pynson, 1513,33 27 In this year he ‘quadrupled his fortune’ and ‘sought and was given two appointments that extended his power and earning capacity, treasurer to the Tangier Committee and surveyor-general of victualing for the navy’ (Tomalin, Samuel Pepys, 170). 28 Tomalin, Samuel Pepys, pp. 170, 180. 29 Pepys was certainly not a formally trained astronomer or a physicist, but he was one of many other members of the Royal Society ‘who were linguistic scholars, antiquarians and mere gentleman’; he went on to become the Society’s president in 1684 (Tomalin, Samuel Pepys, p. 252). 30 Selections from the Diaries, ed. Gibson, p. 23. 31 Ibid., p. 24. 32 Tomalin, Samuel Pepys, p. 257. 33 STC 5579.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 228

07/04/2014 00:03

Bookish Types

229

and an edition of the Chronicles of England printed by Caxton in 1482.34 He also owned a version of the De proprietatibus rerum of Bartholomaeus Anglicus35 and a copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Brittaniae Regum et principium origo, printed in Paris by J. Badius Ascensius in 1508.36 He was in possession, at the time of his death, of thirty-eight medieval manuscripts, of which twenty-six feature texts in Middle English, many of them literary, scientific and medical.37 Pepys was undoubtedly regarded as a book collector of note in his own time because in 1694 he was approached by Arthur Charlett, master of University College Oxford, who asked him whether a list of the manuscripts in his possession could be included in the Catalogue of manuscripts in English and Irish libraries under preparation at Oxford under the direction of Edward Bernard, Savilian Professor of Astronomy. The resulting Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae in unum collecti, published in 1697, was a project that, as McKitterick and Beadle note, Pepys initially approached with some misgivings about the possibility of ‘impertinent applications’ to borrow or consult books that might be sparked by the publication of a catalogue.38 Eventually he relented and compiled a catalogue, despite telling John Evelyn in August 1694 that he had nothing worth reporting; a couple of months later he dispatched the description of his ‘pittance of manuscripts’, on which Bernard’s entry is based. Pepys, however, maintained a position of humility with regard to his manuscripts; this to Arthur Charlett: But how farr a Masse of Papers, for the most part unconnected and those out of any of the trodden Roads of common Reading, can bee thought convertible to publick use, I must acknowledge I cannot see …39 Nonetheless, Pepys eventually submitted a catalogue of some 129 manuscripts to Arthur Charlett. That his attitude to his manuscripts is that they are books which are ‘unconnected’  –  lacking in order, thematically  –  and ‘out of any of the trodden Roads of common Reading’, belies in Pepys, a man who is fastidious about his collection of printed books, a particular attitude towards the manuscript book and more specifically, to those manuscripts that lie outside of his well-known and public interests in the navy and seamanship, and in music and verse. His catalogue of manuscripts is organized under the headings ‘Historical, Political, Religious, 34 STC 9992. 35 STC 1536; printed by Wynkyn de Worde, 1495. 36 E. G. Duff, Bibliotheca Pepsyiana: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Library of Samuel Pepys, part II: General Introduction and Early Printed Books to 1558 (London, 1914). For a fuller discussion of Pepys’s manuscript holdings see McKitterick and Beadle, Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, vol. 5, part 1, p. xiv and following. 37 McKitterick and Beadle, Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, vol. 5, part 1, p. xv. 38 Ibid., p. xi. 39 Letters and the Second Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. G. Howarth (London, 1932), no. 230, cited in McKitterick and Beadle, Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, vol. 5, part 1, p. xi.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 229

07/04/2014 00:03

230

Carrie Griffin

Mathematical, Poetical, Naval’ (with the subheading ‘naval Architecture’) and the seventh category he uses is one that he evidently develops to deal with those manuscripts of his that are resistant to simple classification: ‘MIXT’. It is under this category he mentions Pepys 878, his Wise Book manuscript, which he describes as follows: An ancient English Tract of Astronomy and Astrology; with the Doctrine of Urines; and a large collection of Rules and Receipts Medicinal and Chirurgical, Pergam.40 Pepys evidently faced an issue when describing those miscellaneous manuscripts that mean something to him, or that may have been purchased, or otherwise acquired, for a particular, practical reason, or because of their obvious antiquarian interest at the time. It is noteworthy that, as observed by M. R. James, the ‘ordinary ingredients of a collection of manuscripts are not to be found’ in Pepys’s library.41 He quantifies this statement by pointing out what is not part of the collection: Not a single Latin Bible, Psalter, Missal, or Breviary did Pepys acquire. There is but one book of Hours  –  but that is interesting from the number of Scottish saints which it contains (1576). One patristic manuscript  –  Isidore … and that not theological: no Scholastic Divinity, not Canon or Civil Law. The Medical books are English.42 Pepys, despite his probable engagement with our manuscript on various matters, did not consider it to be quantifiable as a scientific book. In fact, he probably encountered similar difficulties that modern cataloguers experience when faced with miscellanies of texts. For him, there is no one, defining, stand-out text in the volume; certainly the plague tract, which ought to have interested him given the events of recent years, did not attract Pepys’s attention sufficiently to warrant a mention in his short description. As McKitterick and Beadle note, ‘the quasiscientific, astrological and medical texts should not be understood as representing the whole of either Pepys’s interests or his capabilities’; indeed he was a highly respected mathematician and theorist.43 Since, then, his collection of co-called ‘MIXT’ manuscripts features ‘auncient’ tracts on cookery, medicine, charms, surgery and one book of ‘monkish drawings … for Church use’ and an old AngloLatin dictionary, can we take these books to be the ones to which he refers to in his letter as ‘unconnected’, with little relevance for the contemporary scholar or general reader? Apparently, then, Pepys expresses an awareness of difference between those books that he gathered to use and read, or perhaps admire, and those that have,

40 Catalogi Manuscriptorum, vol. 2, p. 209. 41 James, Bibliotheca Pepysiana, p. vii. 42 Ibid., p. vii. 43 McKitterick and Beadle, Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, vol. 5, part 1, p. xvi.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 230

07/04/2014 00:03

Bookish Types

231

for him, an antiquarian appeal. This despite the fact that, for the great seventeenthcentury collector, his library has a uniformity that reflects a desire that it remain together as a collection and, moreover, as one that visually signifies uniformity. As Duff noted, ‘[t]he great majority of the volumes are in a uniform binding; all bear some mark of his care; and the whole Library is stored in presses designed by him … [w]ith the greatest forethought for its future, he bequeathed it under conditions which prevent any additions, and have almost succeeded in preventing any losses’. 44 However, Duff remarked, too, on the library’s ‘heterogeneous’ nature that reveals, he says, a man of ‘great breadth of interest’ (i); it is the materiality of his library, then, that effects a concern for sameness and similarity in Pepys. His diary (which, it must be noted, covers only nine years of his life), while it may not record much about the details of his book acquisition, other than general comments such as ‘I paid Mrs. Mitchell, my bookseller’)45 reveals much care taken by Pepys in terms of binding those frequently acquired books. One entry, from 18 January 1664–5, sees Pepys visiting his bookseller, where he ‘did give thorough direction for the new binding of a great many of my old books, to make the whole study of the same binding, within a very few’. 46 A few weeks later, on 3 February, he records collecting the bound volumes (and paying the £3 bill); and on 5 February a very pleased Pepys writes: ‘[d]own to my chamber, among my new books, which is now a pleasant sight to me to see my whole study almost of one binding’. 47 In August, 1666, Pepys brings some of his volumes to a bookseller in St Paul’s churchyard to have their spines gilded; this from the entry for 31 August: ‘[m]uch pleased to-day with thoughts of gilding the backs of all my books alike in my new presses’. The contrast between the ‘old’ books pre-binding and the renewed volumes collected by Pepys is striking here: Pepys seems to revel in the homogeneity of the appearance of his heterogeneous library and to consider, moreover, that older books have become ‘new’ through their recasting in his own binding. Effectively, the books are given a new context: only when housed in Pepys’ signature covers do the volumes fully come into his possession: ‘my new books’. However, although Pepys seeks to establish and implement uniformity of appearance in his beloved library, he also marked out difference and distinction in various ways. Although he organized his library in terms of size, Pepys did not mingle his manuscripts with his printed books.48 The distinction was not straightforward, of course, but it was precipitated, McKitterick argues, by the increased international circulation of those library catalogues, in particular 44 Duff, Bibliotheca Pepsyiana, p. i. 45 Diary, 23 January 1659–60; Duff, Bibliotheca Pepsyiana, p. ii. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 Pepys, while keeping his manuscripts separate from other materials in his library, also organized according to their size, a feature, David McKitterick suggests, of the seventeenth-century library in particular, where the ‘concept of distinction can be mapped in the catalogues and surveys of the mid-century’: Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450–1830 (Cambridge, 2003), p. 13.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 231

07/04/2014 00:03

232

Carrie Griffin

Nicholas Rigault’s 1622 catalogue of the French Royal Library which, for the first time, separated out manuscripts from printed works.49 But what can we conclude about Pepys’s sense of his own library and of how it ought to function? As Loveman notes Pepys, in his writings, indicated that his library had been conceived of ‘for the self-entertainment onely of a solitary, unconfined enquirer into books’; however, she posits that in reality the library/book collection of Pepys ‘had served a range of evolving social functions and as a locus for sociability’.50 It would seem that the great book-hoarder not only invited friends and acquaintances into his private space, but also allowed parts of his collection to reach the outside world through his activities as a lender.

Dr John Dee and Huntington Library MS HM 64 Even though Pepys’s library was kept together, in accordance with the wishes expressed in his last will and testament, not all libraries were maintained, and it is a great irony that the fragmentation of certain book collections probably led to the creation of others. Indeed, several of the mathematical books in the possession of Pepys had formerly been in the library of Dr John Dee.51 Dee (1527–?1609), a fellowdiarist,52 was responsible for the creation of the great Bibliotheca Mortlacensis, which was Elizabethan England’s largest library.53 He acquired books and manuscripts, according to his cataloguers (J. Roberts and A. G. Watson), mainly to have as working tools, and not just because he was interested in them materially, or as antiquarian objects.54 Nevertheless, he found and perceived difference in the various aspects of his library: Dee’s own library catalogue of 1583 lists a total of 198 manuscripts in a separate sequence from the printed books; that total has been amended by Roberts and Watson by 130 manuscripts which he owned or probably owned. Of all of these only sixty-six bear Dee’s date of acquisition. Our manuscript, San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, MS HM 64, is not listed in Roberts and

49 McKitterick, Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, pp. 12–14. 50 K. Loveman, ‘Books and Sociability: The Case of Samuel Pepys’s Library’, Review of English Studies 61.249 (2009), 214–33 (p. 214). 51 Two scientific manuscripts owned by Pepys had formerly belonged to Dee: the volume of mathematical treatises (Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2329), which was had by Dee from Peterhouse; and the copy of Francis Bacon (Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 1207), which also belonged to Dee: James, Bibliotheca Pepysiana, p. vii). 52 Dee’s private diary is preserved in ‘two long-term almanacs, in the margins of which he entered memoranda of his domestic, fiscal, political intellectual and medical transactions’; these are Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Ashmole 487 and 488. See W. H. Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherst, MA, 1995), p. 4, p. 202 n. 2. 53 Sherman, John Dee, p. 23. 54 John Dee’s Library Catalogue, ed. J. Roberts and A. G. Watson (London, 1990), p. 14. According to Sherman, ‘Dee was relatively unconcerned with their visual impact  –  unlike image-conscious collectors such as Samuel Pepys’ (John Dee, p. 31).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 232

07/04/2014 00:03

Bookish Types

233

Fig. 3  San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 64, inside coverboard with pencilled note

Watson’s catalogue (1990) or in the online supplement to that publication.55 The manuscript is from the third quarter of the fifteenth century (at fol. 72r is a mention of Henry VII, making it likely that part of the manuscript at least was produced in 1485 or later) and is of paper, with i+197+i folios and measuring 305 × 210 mm. It is written in double columns and ruled in lead, and the one hand is a mixed secretary script, with rubrics in a textura formata. The book contains several diagrams and illustrations: a vein and zodiac men, uroscopy flasks (fols. 39r–47v), volvelles (fol. 15r–v) and an orbis terrarum map (fol. 17r). The book is signed ‘Iohn Bosgrove’ at fols. 74r, 76v, 81r and 106v (at fol. 81r: ‘Iohn Bosgrove ys a mytte man and man of the lerneing wythall’). The notes attesting Dee’s involvement and ownsership are as follows: a pencilled note on the inside board pastedown, which reads: ‘Dr Dee’s Philosophy / A Philosophical Work of the Fifteenth Century’ (fig. 3); also at fol. 1v is a barely legible pencilled note, in a different hand from that on the pastedown, reading: ‘From the library of the famous Dr Dee with curious poetry, page 75’. It is somewhat disappointing to discover these notes only to have the tantalizing possibility that Dee owned the book dismissed; however, as much as Roberts and Watson urge caution in the temptation to recover manuscripts like this one, frequently bearing no physical, definite links to Dee, for his library, they also point out that his engagement with his books  –  and in particular with his manuscript books  –  on a physical level cannot be generalized. His arms are not found on any of his books, even those that he had bound himself, and he was, according to his cataloguers, ‘neither lavish nor consistent in applying marks of ownership to his books’. 56 When Dee did mark his ownership in the manuscripts he used several methods. He could, of course, sign his name, which in the extant manuscripts is found fifty-three times.57 However he also liked to use sigla, most notably the astrological symbol for Jupiter and the ladder siglum, which seems to have been 55 Roberts and Watson maintain a living document on website of the Bibliographical Society; this consists of a supplement to their printed catalogue, and they update it regularly as new information comes to light. See http://www.bibsoc.org.uk/e-john-dee (accessed 22 Jan. 2014). 56 John Dee’s Library Catalogue, p. 23. 57 It is noted that Dee was ‘very interested in his name and in his books he used it in a number of forms’ (ibid.).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 233

07/04/2014 00:03

234

Carrie Griffin

unique to him and unique, too, to his manuscript books: it is found in fifty of them. By my rough estimations, after Roberts and Watson, approximately 170–80 manuscripts bear a signature or siglum (or sometimes both) relatable to John Dee; this leaves, however, approximately 150 manuscripts that have been attributed to Dee’s ownership (mostly because they are listed in his 1568 catalogue) that do not bear a mark of his ownership. Evidently, not all of the volumes owned by Dee were signed or marked by him, and this fact introduces the possibility that there are still extant unnoticed volumes that were once part of his library. The cataloguers offer some reasons for Dee’s inconsistency in signing or otherwise inscribing his books, chief among them is related the major distinction in Dee’s library between libri compacti and libri non compacti: or bound and unbound books.58 The libri non compacti form nearly a quarter of the whole. As the cataloguers state: ‘[v]ery few of these, indeed, survive or, to put it more accurately, appear to survive; evidence of Dee’s ownership in the form of his name or annotations may be absent because, if unbound and stored in folded sheets, perhaps in some kind of loose wrapper, they would be less convenient to use and were consulted less often.’59 Moreover, Dee’s library of manuscripts may in fact have been larger, consisting of more volumes than we have notice or record of, and we must, all things considered, allow for the possibility that it still is larger, comprised of books that were once owned by Dee but that remained unmarked, or unremarked upon. Dee’s own words on his collection are particularly revealing, and the following is his description of his library, preserved in London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius C.vii, fol. 9r–v; the rubric is ‘[a] briefe note and some remembrance of my late spoiled Mortlake-Library’ and refers to the sometime nature and contents that collection: ‘The divers bookes of my late library, [printed and anciently written, bound] and unbound, were in all near 4000; the fourth part of which were the written bookes.’60 The cataloguers do not accept that Dee’s own estimate that he owned 1,000 manuscript books is realistic, based on the evidence of the surviving identifiable copies. They accept that the number of printed books is a close estimate, but that the manuscripts cannot have numbered more than 500 as a top estimate.61 Allowing for some rose-tined retrospective comments by Dee, and a conservative doubling of the number of identified manuscripts, still leaves more than 250 ‘written bookes’ unaccounted for; that is a significant number. The extant library catalogues reflect Dee’s collection before his departure for Europe in 1583, when its owner was at the zenith of his fortunes, well respected and prosperous. His interests in astronomy and cosmology, and in texts relating to those subjects, was evident very early on: indeed Dee’s first acquisitions of manuscripts were astronomical and astrological, and his manuscripts show an 58 John Dee’s Library Catalogue, p. 22. 59 Ibid. 60 Quoted in John Dee’s Library Catalogue, p. 196. 61 John Dee’s Library Catalogue, p. 22.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 234

07/04/2014 00:03

Bookish Types

235

unusual consistency in their subject-matter right from his early acquisitions. Huntington Library, MS HM 64 can be said broadly to conform to the type of manuscript that interested him. This manuscript found its way into the repository at the Huntington Library via the sale of the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps, having been acquired around 1920 and restored, according to Hanna,62 like countless others, from the ‘private ownership’ that characterized the ‘great Victorian editorial project’ that effectively removed manuscripts like ours from public scrutiny. HM 64, as well as preserving a copy of the Wise Book (see fig. 4 for fol. 53r, part of the text) and The Sphere of Pythagoras, contains receipts and recipes and charms, running to the hundreds in number; The Book of Destinary; the De corio serpentis; and a copy of the Agnus Castus.63 It also has the Regimen sanitatis of Galen and excerpts from the Secretum secretorum, alongside several visual aids, described above. If the manuscript was owned by Dee, it was almost certainly was acquired by him for its perceived or potential usefulness rather than for any antiquarian appeal or interest. His earliest known acquisition of a manuscript volume was in 1549, when Dee was twenty-two years of age; while he was studying cosmography at Louvain he acquired the manuscript which is now London, British Library, MS Harley 536, a fifteenth-century version of the Naturalia of Albertus Magnus.64 Later that same year he bought (or was given) a manuscript of astronomical texts, now Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS lat. 740; he also owned a Greek commentary on Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos and a fourteenth-century manuscript containing, inter alia, Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon.65 He also of course produced his own astronomical text, the Propaedeumata aphoristica, which included a dedicatory epistle to Mercator, in 1558.66 His interests naturally included mathematics as well as alchemy and astrology; his expertise in the latter of course famously placed him at the centre of the court of Elizabeth from 1558, causing the queen to give Dee ‘the name of hyr Philosopher’; has also been described as the queen’s ‘magus’, a kind of magician-philosopher.67 However, a single identity cannot be applied to Dee since it ‘falls short of encompassing his wide-ranging career’ and interests.68 Indeed, even

62 R. Hanna III, The Index of Middle English Prose, Handlist I: A Handlist of Manuscripts Containing Middle English in the Henry E. Huntington Library (Cambridge, 1984), p. viii. 63 For descriptions, see S. De Ricci and W. J. Wilson, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States of America and Canada, 3 vols. (New York, 1935–40), vol. 1, p. 48; C. W. Dutschke, Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Huntington Library (San Marino, CA, 1989), pp. 130–9; Griffin, Middle English Wise Book, pp. xxx–xxxi; and Hanna, The Index of Middle English Prose, Handlist I, pp. 2–10. 64 John Dee’s Library Catalogue, p. 13. At Louvain Dee ‘studied under and alongside the foremost Continental cosmographers’, among them Ortelius and Mercator (Sherman, John Dee, p. 5). 65 Ibid., p. 14. 66 Sherman, John Dee, p. 6. 67 Ibid., pp. 8, 12. 68 Ibid., p. 13.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 235

07/04/2014 00:03

236

Carrie Griffin

Fig. 4  San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 64, fol. 53r

ME Texts in Transition.indb 236

07/04/2014 00:03

Bookish Types

237

in his response to and his individualization of Humanist ideals, Dee can be said to have exemplified a particular Humanism that had ’changed in way that made it no longer identifiable: it had grafted religious, medieval, legal and even magical branches onto its literary trunk’. 69 The dispersal of Dee’s library began while he was alive; Sherman describes this process as ‘perhaps the most significant redistribution of textual resources since the dissolution of the monasteries’. 70 This ‘redistribution’, and the ensuing scramble by bibliophiles such as Elias Ashmole and Robert Cotton to recover books that were owned by Dee, implies that the dispersal of his books was wide and was not well documented.71 Sherman notes that ‘the pursuit of his textual remains is a difficult and often frustrating process: the books that have survived are scattered throughout Britain, Europe, and America’. 72 Taken together with the erratic manner in which Dee inscribed his books, the now-disconnected state of Dee’s library perhaps invites unreasonable and unsupported attempts to link books to him and to his library. Or, indeed, perhaps the nineteenth-century linking of HM 64 with the name of the great polymath represents an attempt to understand more about the nature of the manuscript than about Dee himself, or indeed his library. In this landscape of lost books, or books that may or may not have once rested on the shelves of the Bibliotheca Mortlacensis, one thing is certain: HM 64 is the kind of book in which Dee would have had an interest. His library represented ‘virtually every aspect of classical, medieval and Renaissance learning’ and included ‘works on anger, burial, chastity, cosmetics, dogs, dreams, earthquakes, falconry, gymnastics, heresy, memory, roads and tides’. 73 The attempt to connect HM 64 to Dee, in nineteenth-century statements on the flyleaves of the volume, can perhaps be read as comments on the nature of the manuscript as much as they are attempts to authorize the volume.

Toshiyuki Takamiya and Takamiya MS 39 One of the great merits of the library of Toshiyuki Takamiya is that it has established a significant collection of medieval manuscripts  –  many of which contain texts in Middle English and other medieval European vernaculars  –  in Japan, thus creating an important new afterlife for texts like the Wise Book outside of the world’s Englishspeaking regions. The copy of the Wise Book, which is now Takamiya MS 39, found its way into the library when it was acquired by Professor Takamiya in May 1979 at

69 Ibid., p. 21. 70 Ibid., p. 30. 71 For which see Sherman, John Dee (pp. 30–1), who relates that Ashmole dispatched Anthony Wood to collect some Dee manuscripts from one Thomas Wale, a warden in the Tower of London; however, Wale had been so mystified by the manuscripts that, by the time Wood arrived, he had allowed his maid to use them to line pie-tins. 72 Sherman, John Dee, p. 31. 73 Ibid.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 237

07/04/2014 00:03

238

Carrie Griffin

Sotheby’s. The manuscript was part of the sale of the scientific book-collection of the American antiquarian Robert B. Honeyman.74 Robert Brodhead Honeyman was an engineering graduate of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania (1920). An avid collector throughout his lifetime, he amassed manuscripts, printed books, images and ephemera in a variety of areas: art, science, literature, stamps and decorations. He maintained two homes, one in New York and the second near Mission, San Juan Capistrano, Southern California, where he built his private museum at Rancho Los Cerritos. His collection of books was auctioned off at Sotheby’s, 30 April  –  2 May 1979. Honeyman died in 1987. The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, now holds his archive of Early Californian and Western American pictorial material.75 Honeyman’s interest in science and engineering led to his amassing of a significant collection of rare printed books and manuscripts over his professional lifetime; he had a particular interest in astronomy and, as evidenced by the exhibition of some of his books in an event called The Size and Shape of the Earth at his alma mater in October 1958,76 he owned several first editions of important works on astronomy, physics and other branches of science: on display at various locations throughout California in 1958 were, for instance: Galilei’s Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche (Leiden, 1638), a work on the mechanics of the pendulum; several works by Christian Huygens, including his Traité de la lumière (Leiden, 1690), a tract on optics; an edition of Colin Maclaurin’s A Treatise of Fluxions (Edinburgh, 1742); and a copy of Isaac Newton’s Principia mathematica (London, 1689), which had of course been printed at the request of the then-president of the Royal Society, Samuel Pepys.77

74 The manuscript, olim Honeyman MS Astronomy 10 (MS 58), has been described by C. U. Faye and W. H. Bond, Supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada (New York, 1962), 22 [no. 21]), and by Sotheby, Parke and Bernet & Co., The Honeyman Collection, vol. 3: Manuscripts and Autograph Letters of the Twelfth to the Twentieth Century (London, 1979), no. 1111, and by Griffin, Middle English Wise Book, pp. xxxii–xxxiii; it is also referred to by R. A. Linenthal, ‘The Takamiya Library’, The Book Collector 53 (2004), 15–31; and most recently it has been described in Takamiya’s own handlist to his collection: ‘A Handlist of Western Medieval Manuscripts in the Takamiya Collection’, in The Medieval Book: Glosses from Friends and Colleagues of Christopher de Hamel, ed. R. A. Linenthal, J. H. Marrow, and W. Noel (Houten, 2012), pp. 412–40 (p. 429). 75 See http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/honeyman.html (accessed 17 June 2013); the collection comprises over 2,300 items, with formats and media ranging from original oil paintings, watercolours, drawings, prints and lettersheets, covering the years c. 1790 to the early 1930s: M. W. Elings and E. Garcelon, ‘The Robert Honeyman Jr. Collection Digital Archive: EAD and the Use of Library and Museum Descriptive Standards’, Archives and Museum Informatics 12 (1998): 205–19 (p. 209). 76 The Size and Shape of the Earth: An Exhibition of Books from the Private Collection of Robert Brodhead Honeyman, Lehigh Class of 1920 (Lehigh University, 1958). The catalogue notes that Honeyman had loaned his books for similar exhibitions at several branches of the University of California during the 1958 International Geophysical Year. 77 Imprimatur S. Pepys, Reg. Soc. Praeses. Julii 5 1686. Londini, jussu Societatis Regiae ac typis Josephi Streater. Post apud plures bibliopolas, 1687.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 238

07/04/2014 00:03

Bookish Types

239

The manuscript that was then Astronomy 10, and is now Takamiya MS 39, was not featured in the exhibition, but its interest for Honeyman is obvious since it is both a handsome manuscript and an intriguing witness to the Wise Book. It can be dated to the end of the fifteenth century or the beginning of the sixteenth and is a paper manuscript, with ii+48 folios (fols. 30v–48v are blank); it measures 194 × 143 mm. Three leaves have been removed from the manuscript after fol. 30; this has affected the text of the Wise Book, which is incomplete in this witness. The remainder of the book is blank, and consists of a mixture of contemporary and nineteenth-century paper, the latter presumably added to improve the structure of the manuscript for binding; thus the manuscript may have existed as a collection of booklets before it was bound, apparently in the nineteenth century. The main part of the manuscript is written in brown ink in a late English cursive book hand, with headings and some capitals in red; four of the pages have diagrams and tabulae. Added at the front of the book (fol. iir) is a seventeenth-century folding astrological chart written in an italic hand; the chart is dated from 1646 to 1664. Instructions for use are written on the second half of the leaf; in the middle is a table with the signs, their shorthand symbols (for example, Aries is denoted with the symbol ♈) and notes on which body part is ruled by each. The binding is modern, and is brown calf, with ‘Astrology MS’ tooled in gold on the spine. The endpapers are green marbled, and the page edges have been gilded. Alongside the Wise Book the volume contains some short astrological texts in Latin and French, as well as the Book of Destinary; the Wise Book occupies fols. 1r–8v, and is, as I have stated, an incomplete version. Takamiya MS 39 found its way into several libraries and passed through the hands of many owners before it ended up in the hands of the present owner in 1979. This can be discerned both from its recent history and from the several marks of provenance that it still bears. It was previously, as already mentioned, one of the Honeyman manuscripts (no. 58), and the inside cover labels it ‘Honeyman MS Astron. 10’. Further down are several notes: ‘According to BM circa 1480– 1510 watermark identical with similar MSS Sloane collection (15th century) MSS in Sloane Collection (additional mss) similar in part’; a label: ‘Astrological Manuscript, about same date, which belonged to Nicholas Ferrar, very curious’; and a handwritten note: ‘J. E. Bailey sale, June 29 1889’, which refers to the ownership of the manuscript by John Eglington Bailey (1840–88); it was lot 1396 in the sale of 1889.78 On the verso of the binding paper, written in pencil, is the note: ‘(ca. 1500) Astrological MS Belonged to Nicholas Ferrar’, while fol. iv has the signature ‘John Onion’. The manuscript is now part of the Takamiya collection, having been acquired on 2 May 1979 at Sotheby’s & Co. (lot no. 1111) from their sale of Honeyman’s scientific books. The book merits further work than I have been able to devote thus far, principally because it displays several very interesting marks of provenance, including the suggestion that may have belonged to the seventeenth-century theologian and 78 Takamiya, ‘Handlist’, p. 429.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 239

07/04/2014 00:03

240

Carrie Griffin

merchant Nicholas Ferrar.79 What is manifest is that it passed through several libraries and hands, and it continues to remain an important witness to the Wise Book and a cultural artefact in its own right, and it is fitting that a text of the Wise Book takes its place in a library that contains so many representatives of the canon of medieval literary works. Not only has Professor Takamiya, like Pepys, been a ‘percipient collector’ of both manuscripts and early printed books for his own library, he has also been ‘a most important agent in creating Keio University’s collection of early books and manuscripts’ and, moreover, in ‘making rare early books available for reading by electronic means’. 80 The Takamiya library is a private collection in name only; like the library of Pepys it is has regularly been a locus for sociability and scholarly work, and many readers will have experienced the hospitality and generosity of the collector. And sometimes its books make long trips to meet interested readers across the world.

79 Nicholas Ferrar (1593–1637) was born in London, he attended school at Enborne in Berkshire and later Clare College, Cambridge. There he was elected fellow, and intended to study medicine, but due to ill-health he spent the year 1613–17 travelling Europe, for some time a part of the retinue of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick, Elector Palatine. He returned to England in 1618, turning down a professorship in geometry at Gresham College to pursue interests in the Virginia and East India Companies. He was returned to parliament for Lymington in 1624; he was ordained deacon at Westminster Abbey in 1626 and served as chaplain at his mother’s household in Little Gidding, Cambridgeshire, until his death. See ODNB, vol. 19, pp. 417–19. 80 D. Brewer, ‘Toshiyuki Takamiya in Cambridge’, in The Medieval Book and the Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya, ed. T. Matsuda, R. A. Linenthal and J. Scahill (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 1–2 (p. 2).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 240

07/04/2014 00:03

James J. Murphy

Laurentius Guglielmus Traversagnus and the Genesis of Vaticana Codex Lat. 11441, with Remarks on Bodleian MS Laud Lat. 61 •••

T

here are some occasions during the fifteenth century in which the interplay of content, print publishing and manuscript production can give us some valuable insights into the print–manuscript nexus. This is the case in the career of the Italian Franciscan Laurentius Guglielmus Traversagnus, or Lorenzo Traversagni, also known in Germany as Laurentius Saphonensis or Zaphonensis (from his birthplace in Saona, modern Savona, Italy).

The Historical Background Laurentius Traversagnus was born in Savona, Italy, in 1425, and entered the Franciscan order at the age of twenty.1 He studied at Padua with Francesco della Rovere, later to become Pope Sixtus IV. He was at Vienna from 1450 to 1459, where he composed a letter-writing manual, Modus conficiendi epistolas, later to prove very popular in print. He also wrote several theological works at different times in his career, but I am interested here mainly in the manuscript/print history of his three rhetorical texts, the only ones printed. In 1460 he was at the University of Toulouse offering lectures on rhetoric and moral philosophy. While there he copied out several major works of Boethius, Alain de Lille and Hildebert of Lavedin, each signed and dated precisely between 9 May 1460 and 21 January 1461. These copies survive in Cambridge University Library, MS Add. 8957. Then after brief stays in Genoa and Savona he went to Cambridge in 1476 to lecture again on rhetoric and Aristotle‘s Ethics. In 1477 he was in London, but returned to Cambridge in 1478 to lecture on rhetoric and on Saint Augustine’s City of God. While at Cambridge he composed a work titled Margarita eloquentiae sive rhetorica nova. His colophon dates its completion as 6 July 1478. It was printed by 1 Giovanni Farris offers a good biography of Traversagnus, together with some of his Latin texts written during his various travels: Umanesimo e religione in Lorenzo Guglielmo Traversagni (1425–1505), Publicazioni dell’ Ist. di lingua e letteratura Italiano, faccolta di magistro dell’ Universita de Genoa 4 (Milan, 1972).

241

ME Texts in Transition.indb 241

07/04/2014 00:03

242

James J. Murphy

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of the book.

Fig. 1 Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Cod. lat. 11441, illustrated in Lotte Hellinga, Caxton in Focus (London, 1986), p. 4, where the author explains that ‘the figure 10, the wiggle at the end of a line, and the dividing line are all marks made by the compositor to mark the beginning of the tenth page in quire O.’

William Caxton at Westminster in the same year. This is an important work in the history of rhetoric, but from the manuscript point of view it is especially significant in that the autograph manuscript used by Caxton has not only survived but, as Lotte Hellinga has pointed out, bears printer’s marks. She also notes that this is the only manuscript printed by Caxton which does bear printers’ marks. (See fig. 1.) The so-called ‘Schoolmaster Printer’ at St Albans reprinted Traversagnus’ Margarita eloquentiae two years later, in 1480, apparently from the Caxton copy.2 Why did he do this only two years after the Caxton printing? After all, the Schoolmaster Printer produced only eight books during his time at St Albans. It has been suggested that he may have printed it for the St Albans school. This seems unlikely to me: the Margarita is not only an advanced university text, but a revolutionary one in several ways, not very suitable for a school at St Albans level. Whatever the market forces might have been in 1480, it is interesting to note that more copies of the St Albans Margarita have survived than those of Caxton. Meanwhile Traversagnus had gone to Paris to teach rhetoric. Then, also in 1480, Caxton printed an Epitoma sive isagogicum margarite castigate eloquentie,3 apparently from a manuscript sent to him from Paris by Traversagnus. Despite its title, this work  –  one-quarter the size of the Margarita  –  is not merely an abridgment of it. As the editor of the Epitoma, Ronald Martin, has shown, it differs markedly from the longer work. In 1482 and 1483 Traversagnus was in London, then in Cambridge, Bruges and back to London again. But by 1487 he was back at the Franciscan convent in Savona, 2 The Caxton Margarita has never been edited. The St Albans version has been edited as Margarita eloquentiae castigate, ed. G. Farris (Savona, 1978). Nicholas Barker concludes from his analysis of shared typefaces that ‘the St. Albans press was a provincial branch, so to speak, of Caxton’s.’ See N. Barker, ‘The St Albans Press: The First Punch-Cutter in England and the First Native Type Founder’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographic Society 7 (1977–80), 257–278 (p. 258). 3 The Epitoma Margarita eloquentiae has been edited twice by Ronald H. Martin (1971 and 1986), the second time with an English translation (Leeds, 1986).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 242

07/04/2014 00:03

Traversagnus and the Genesis of Vaticana Codex Lat. 11441

243

his birthplace, where he spent the rest of his life before his death in 1503. He wrote several other theological treatises, but also spent time making manuscript copies of all his works. He bequeathed all his manuscripts to his Franciscan house. Meanwhile, sometime in the 1480s or 1490s an unknown copyist transcribed at least two-thirds of the St Albans version of the Margarita eloquentiae in a manuscript which has survived as Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Lat. 61. At some point the Franciscans of Savona transferred Traversagnus’ major manuscripts to the Vatican Library, including what is now MS Codex Vaticana Latina 11441. This includes, in order, the original of the Margarita eloquentiae used by Caxton, a copy of the manuscript of Modus epistolandi first printed by Ulric Gering at Paris in 1478, and a manuscript copy of the Epitoma printed by Caxton in 1480 but without any printer’s marks, as well as manuscripts of all his other works and a number of other items he had copied. The Vatican manuscript thus becomes a kind of autobiographical florilegium.4 What is one to make of all this? There are some issues of the so-called primacy of print. Yet we must remember, after all, that when the Benedictine Johannes Trithemius had his De laude scriptorum printed at Mainz in 1494, it was not to attack printing but to encourage the monks to keep copying by hand: Brothers, no one should say or think: ‘What is the sense of copying by hand when the art of printing has brought to light so many important books: a huge library can be acquired inexpensively.’ I tell you, the man who says this only tries to conceal his own laziness.5 Trimethius himself had already had several other works of his own printed, so he was not averse to printing itself. Nor, as we have seen, was Traversagnus. But some points are clear. First of all, it is clear that Traversagnus carefully kept copies of all his writings. In his last fifteen years in Savona he made sure that he had copies of all his own rhetorical works preserved in what is now Cod. Vaticana Lat. 11441, together with some other works he had copied, like Gasparino Barzziza and Antonio Luschi. Second, it is also clear that Traversagnus did not regard a print version as the final form of his works, carefully retaining the manuscripts of each one that did reach print. He bequeathed his manuscripts to his Franciscan community in Savona, but no printed books as far as I know. Third, he trusted Caxton enough to send him a manuscript of the Epitoma from Paris, after having personally seen the earlier Margarita eloquentiae through the press (as most Caxton scholars seem to believe). It is also interesting to note, in this connection, that for the Epitoma he was either unwilling or unable to secure the services of the Sorbonne printers who had been operating in Paris since 1470, 4 There is a careful list of its contents in J. Ruysschaert, Codices Vaticani Latini 11414–11709 (Rome, 1959), pp. 41–54. 5 Johannes Trithemius, In Praise of Scribes / De laude scriptorum, ed. with introduction by Klaus Arnold, trans. R. Behrendt (Lawrence, KS, 1976), p. 63. He adds, though, that ‘Printed books will never be the equivalent of handwritten codices.’ (p. 65).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 243

07/04/2014 00:03

244

James J. Murphy

or, for that matter, of the printer Ulrich Gering who had produced his own popular Modus conficiendi epistolas in Paris around 1478. Why Caxton again? Fourth, someone else thought the St Albans printed version of the Margarita was important enough to copy it out in manuscript form. We do not know why, except that it again indicates that a print version was not universally regarded as the final format. Perhaps a closer look at each of these rhetorical works will assist us in determining better what happened with Traversagnus’ output in the 1470s and 1480s.

The Modus Conficiendi Epistolas (1459?) The Franciscans, like the Dominicans, maintained houses of study all over Europe. Many, though not all, were in university centres. Traversagnus was not unusual is his travel between various centres: Vienna, Toulouse, Genoa, Cambridge, London and Paris. He went to Vienna at the age of twenty-five, to stay there nine years. Sometime during this stay he composed a short treatise in the well-known medieval genre of the ars dictaminis, or art of letter-writing.6 Its most common printed ‘title’ is Modus conficiendi epistolas, though it appeared in other versions. But any student of medieval manuscripts or early printed books has to remember that ‘titles’ as we know them are largely products of the print age. Medieval and early modern cataloguers  –  and publishers  –  often merely use some kind of descriptor to identify the content of a book. Hence, we see a proliferation of generic terms like ars rhetorica, ars theologica, ars logica, or ars moriendi. The unwary reader of apparent ‘titles’ of Traversagnus’ letter-writing manual might conclude falsely that he wrote several different treatises rather than just one with several appellations. This would have been a young man’s book, requiring little more than knowledge of the common genre. A treatise on theology, by contrast, would have required long study and careful preparation as well as approval of his prior. Nevertheless the Modus conficiendi epistolas is a thoughtful step above the rote manuals of his day, already showing signs of the humanistic bent Traversagnus was to reveal later in the Margarita eloquentiae. He turns his back on the five-part letter pattern which had been the ‘approved format’ in the field since the twelfth century.7 Instead he declares that the three parts of a letter are causa, intentio and consequens, stating that a letter should be organized in the same way as an oration (oratio). He cites both Cicero and Quintilian  –  highly unusual at this time for a treatise in this genre. 6 For the printing history of this work see Renaissance Rhetoric Short-Title Catalogue, 1460–1700, 2nd edn, ed. L. D. Green and J. J. Murphy (Aldershot, 2006), p. 435. 7 For the medieval history of this genre see J. J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance (Berkeley, CA, 1974: repr. Tempe, AZ, 2003), pp. 194–268. Martin Camargo has collected a number of his recent essays on the genre in Essays on Medieval Rhetoric, Variorum Collected Studies Series CS 1006 (Aldershot, 2006).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 244

07/04/2014 00:03

Traversagnus and the Genesis of Vaticana Codex Lat. 11441

245

José Ruysschaert calls Traversanus ‘a forgotten humanist’.8 For several reasons, this little work (five printed pages) deserves more study.

The Margarita Eloquentiae (1478) The colophon to Caxton’s printing of this work says: Explicit liber tercius: et opus Rhetorice facultatis per fratrem Laurentium Gulielmus de Saona Minorum sacratissimarum scripturarum, doctorumque probatis-samarium compillatum, et confirmatum, quibus ex causis censuit. Appellandum fore Margaritam eloquentie castigate.9 Compilatum autem hoc opus in Alma universitate Cantabrigie Anno domini 1478. die &610 Julii Quo die festum sancta Marthe recolitur: Sub protectione Serenissimi Regis Anglorum Eduardi quarti. So what we have here in 1478 is the Westminster printer of a book written in Cambridge by a peripatetic Italian Franciscan scholar who had already seen his own dictaminal manual printed on the Continent a number of times. Traversagnus, of course, had no English alternative to Caxton. It has been suggested that the book was intended as the first of we now call a ‘textbook’, that is, a book printed in numbers sufficient to have a reading copy for each member of the author’s class in Cambridge.11 This indicates that Caxton was in this case merely a job printer. Certainly the Margarita has no intellectual or literary connection to any other of Caxton’s publications. Then, two years later, in 1480, the Margarita was reprinted, by the so-called ‘Schoolmaster Printer’ at St Albans.12 The only recognizable difference between the two printings is that Caxton’s typesetter uses the classical form of the term ‘rhetorica’ while the St Albans printer tends to use the medieval form of ‘rethorica.’ As was the case with Caxton, there seems to be no relation between the content of the Margarita and the other seven books ascribed to the Schoolmaster Printer. This does not seem to be another case of job printing ordered by Traversagnus  –  see 8 J. Ruysschaert, ‘Lorenzo Guglielmo Traversagni de Savone (1425–1503): un humaniste franciscain oublié’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 46 (1953), 195–210. It was Ruysschaert who first noticed the printer’s marks in the Vatican manuscript and connected them to Caxton. 9 The St Albans printer at this point adds the phrase ‘ad eloquendum divina accomodatam’. 10 The Caxton compositor had mistaken ‘&6’ for ‘26’ and the St Albans printer copies it. 11 See J. J. Murphy, ‘The Double Revolution of the First Rhetorical Textbook Published in England: The Margarita eloquentiae of Gulielmus Traversagnus (1478)’, Texte: review critique et de théorie littèraire 8/9 (1989), 367–76. 12 This designation for the unknown St Albans printer was coined by the contemporary printer Wynken de Worde, who called him the ‘one somtyme scole mayster of saynt Albons’, based on the supposition that he was a teacher in the town school. But the abbey at St Albans, just 20 miles out of London, had been a prominent manuscript production centre for centuries, and thus a likely place to take up the new production method. The St Albans printer was probably an itinerant printer on contract.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 245

07/04/2014 00:03

246

James J. Murphy

the discussion of his Epitoma below  –  but may instead indicate some commercial demand for the text. The Margarita is an important book in the history of rhetoric: it is the first full rhetoric text printed in England,13 it is the first to apply the Pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium to modern preaching (breaking with the medieval tradition going back five centuries), and the first to urge classical studies for use in government and diplomacy. The book was particularly audacious because Traversagnus was then teaching at Cambridge University, not in the comparatively liberal Faculty of Arts but in the conservative Faculty of Theology. This factor may have had a bearing on his next publication.

The Epitoma sive isagogicum margarite castigate eloquentie By 1480 Traversagnus had left Cambridge and gone to Paris to teach rhetoric. In that year Caxton published an Epitoma sive isogogicum margarite castigate eloquentie14 apparently from a manuscript sent to him from Paris by Traversagnus. Despite its title, this work  –  one-quarter the size of the Margarita  –  is not simply an abridgement of it. The editor of the Epitoma, Ronald Martin, has shown in detail how it differs markedly from the longer work, relying more heavily this time on Cicero’s simpler De inventione rather than the more complete Rhetorica ad Herennium which is the base for the Margarita, abandoning many of the classical references, and adopting a more openly Christian tone. Was this Epitoma written by a chastened author as evidence of the failure of his Margarita at Paris, and possibly at Cambridge as well? His Margarita may have raised the hackles of theologians at both places by his espousal of pagan classical authors in connection with Christian preaching. Or he may have run into disciplinary rivals at Paris, where Guillaume Fichet had been teaching rhetoric for many years.15 Or he may simply have misjudged his ‘market’ at both places. We may never know. It is interesting, though, to see that he returns to Caxton for printing this work. Paris had been the home of the Sorbonne printers since the 1470s, and his own dictaminal manual had been printed in Paris by Ulrich Gering just two years earlier, in 1478. Perhaps the Paris printing establishment was hostile to an outsider, even a Franciscan one. In any case turning back to the Westminster printer does indicate Traversagnus’ trust in Caxton.

13 For an analysis of the text’s place in rhetorical history, see L. D. Green, ‘Classical and Medieval Traditions in Traversagni’s Margarita eloquentiae’, Quarterly Journal of Speech 72 (1986), 185–95. 14 See n.3 above. 15 See G. A. Kennedy, ‘The Rhetorica of Guillaume Fichet’, Rhetorica 5 (1987), 411–18.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 246

07/04/2014 00:03

Traversagnus and the Genesis of Vaticana Codex Lat. 11441

247

Oxford, Bodleian Library Ms Laud Lat. 61: A Case of Mistaken Identity? Meanwhile, sometime in the 1480s or 1490s, an unknown copyist transcribed at least two thirds of the St Albans version of the Margarita eloquentiae in a manuscript which has survived as Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Lat. 61. This would seem to bear out Curt F. Bühler’s judgment: ‘Experience has taught me that every manuscript ascribed to the second half of the fifteenth century is potentially (and often without question) a copy of some incunable.’ 16 Malcom Parkes has described the manuscript: Laud Lat. 61 is in a single hand throughout the volume. The hand (a secretary hand) looks to be English of the last quarter of the fifteenth century, with headings (and subheadings in the margins) in a crude English pre-humanistics. The hand does not resemble the plate you sent me [i.e. the Vaticana MS with Caxton’s marks]. I think this probably rules out an autograph of the author.17 The unknown scribe first wrote in a complete copy of the four-book Rhetorica ad Herennium, also known in the middle ages as Cicero’s ‘New Rhetoric (Rhetorica nova) to distinguish it from Cicero’s youthful De inventione, his ‘Old Rhetoric’ or Rhetorica vetus. What happened next may have been a case of mistaken identity. Having just copied the Rhetorica nova (Rhetorica ad Herennium), he may have come across a printed copy of a book which began as follows: Fratris laurentii gulielmi de saona ordinis minorum sacre theologie doctoris prohemium in novam rhetoricam At that point the scribe may have concluded that what he had in hand was a commentary on the Rhetorica ad Herennium, the most commented-upon book in the whole corpus of medieval and early modern rhetoric.18 What he did have, of course, was a copy of the St Albans 1480 printed edition of the Margarita, its St Albans source readily identifiable from its frequent use of the term rethorica. Modern readers know, both from the Caxton colophon, from several references in the text, and his own cataloguing at Saona, that Traversagnus intended his book to be known as the Pearl of Eloquence (Margarita eloquentiae). In fact he makes reference in the text to his own mother’s name, Margarita. He clearly meant to say that he was writing a ‘new book of rhetoric’  –  which indeed it was –but it was not the Pseudo-Ciceronian ’New Rhetoric’ of the medieval rhetorical tradition. This confusion is compounded, of course, by Traversagnus’ heavy reliance on the Rhetorica ad Herennium itself throughout his treatment of rhetoric in the book. If a

16 C. F. Bühler, The Fifteenth-Century Book: The Scribes, The Printers, The Decorators (Philadelhia, 1960), p. 16. 17 Personal letter to the author, 25 October 1993. 18 See the several works of John O. Ward of Sydney University on this subject, especially (with Virginia Cox), The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary tradition (Leiden, 2006).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 247

07/04/2014 00:03

248

James J. Murphy

pun was intended, it may have gone seriously awry in the case of the scribe of MS Laud Lat. 61. Whatever the scribe’s motivation, the handwritten copy of the Margarita in this manuscript is incomplete. It ends abruptly in mid-sentence in its Book Three during a discussion of rhetorical figures. Hence there is no colophon which might have identified the scribe, or his motive. There are no signs of pages cut out or torn out, and the sewing which binds the sheets together is intact; but the sheets of course could have been sewn after being found in their present incomplete state. We do not know whether the scribe’s resolve faltered  –  though the abrupt ending in mid-sentence tends to indicate that he was still proceeding with his work  –  or whether some bindery disaster occurred. Alternatively he may have simply stopped copying when he realized that he had made a mistake about the identity or content of the work. We shall probably never know. But the incident does show an interesting facet of the print-to-manuscript movement in late fifteenth-century England.

Epilogue It would be difficult to posit a ‘conclusion’ about these events and relationships. If nothing else, though, the Traversagnus case does remind us that every book or manuscript  –  of whatever age  –  appears for some reason. Each is the products of human beings with human motives and human constraints. For example Traversagnus may have been pitched into academic turmoil in Paris after leaving Cambridge, leading to his choice of a familiar printer in another country for his Epitoma, which in turn may have been the result of the public failure of his Margarita. Mere bibliographic descriptions of the books and manuscripts taken by themselves cannot reveal the full interplay of content and intention in manuscript and printed book production in the print-manuscript nexus.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 248

07/04/2014 00:03

Traversagnus and the Genesis of Vaticana Codex Lat. 11441

249

appendix Manuscript and Print in Traversagnus’ Rhetorical Works The following chart attempts to unravel these manuscript/print relationships. Manuscript X

Manuscript Y

Manuscript Z

Modus epistolandi

Margarita eloquentiae

Epitoma Margarita eloquentiae

Composed by 1459

Composed 1478

Composed 1480?

(13 printed editions, 1478–99) Printed by Caxton, 1478

Printed by Caxton, 1480

Now Vat Cod Lat. 11441,

Now Vat Cod Lat. 11441,

Now Vat Cod Lat. 11441

fols. 109–133‡

fols. 1–88v

fols. 89–108

Printed by ‘Schoolmaster Printer’, St Albans, 1480 from Caxton text Copied by unknown scribe from St Albans text. Now Bodleian MS Laud Lat. 61 (incomplete) ‡ fols. 134–203v = Traversagnus’ copy of Guarino Veronensis’ commentary on the Rhetorica ad Herennium, further reflecting his long interest in the text he follows so closely in his Margarita eloquentiae.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 249

07/04/2014 00:03

Natalia I. Petrovskaia

The Travels of a Quire from the Twelfth Century to the Twenty-First: The Case of Rawlinson B 484, fols. 1–6 •••

N

eil Ker wrote that the dissolution of the monasteries in England was the great crisis in the history of manuscript libraries.1 It was also so in the history of manuscripts. We have a few names of the great collectors who obtained their manuscripts directly from the monasteries in that period, but, as Ker pointed out, smaller collections are often forgotten.2 It is not only the smaller collections that are often overlooked, but also the smaller survivors: the history of manuscript fragments and miscellaneous compilations, despite a recent increase in attention, is still a path less trodden than the study of the great books surviving from the Middle Ages. The present study is dedicated to a single manuscript fragment, preserved in an antiquary’s notebook. As the following discussion will show, the surviving evidence links this fragment to many lives across the centuries, and touches on the histories of more than one manuscript collection. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson B 484 is described in the Bodleian Library catalogue as the ‘Collectanea of Sir James Ware, comprising fragments, extracts and notes mostly on Ireland but including (fol. 85) cutting without text from a Psalter, EN, Winchester, 10th century, second quarter’. 3 The manuscript belonged to Sir James Ware (26 November 1594  –  1 December 1666), and bears his The paper on which the present essay is based was presented at ‘Out of Bounds: Mobility, Movement and Use of Manuscripts and Printed Books, 1350–1550’ the Twelfth Biennial Conference of the Early Book Society in collaboration with the Twelfth York Manuscripts Conference in honour of Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya, held 3–7 July 2011 at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York. I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Paul Russell and Professor Simon Keynes for their comments and advice on early drafts of this article. I am also grateful to the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire for their generous grant award. 1 N. R. Ker, ‘The Migration of Manuscripts from the English Medieval Libraries’, The Library 23 (1942), 1–11 (pp. 5–6). 2 Ibid., p. 5. 3 Bodleian Library Electronic Catalogue of Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts: http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/medieval/rawlinson/rawl-b.html (accessed 23 June 2012).

250

ME Texts in Transition.indb 250

07/04/2014 00:03

The Travels of a Quire

251

coat of arms on the front cover.4 The quire which interests us is the first item in this collection, occupying fols. 1–6. It contains a fragment of the twelfth-century Latin encyclopaedia Imago Mundi by Honorius Augustodunensis.5 For reasons that will be set out below, there are few discussions of this quire, which is nevertheless an important witness of the text. The present study presents new findings regarding the importance and history of this quire.

Importance The Imago Mundi quire, consisting of a single gathering of six folios, is the first item in Rawlinson B 484. (Fig. 1 shows the first page.) The fragment of Imago Mundi it contains begins with the last two sentences or so of chapter 3 [3], and ends halfway through chapter 35 [36].6 It is important since it appears to be one of only two early witnesses to the first version of Imago Mundi, composed in 1110.7 The other witness, which preserves a complete text, is Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 66 (s. xii, Sawley).8 Furthermore, as I have shown elsewhere, one of the two Welsh translations of Imago Mundi (Delw y Byd), fragments of which are preserved in Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS Peniarth 17 (s. xiii2, perhaps 4 For more on Ware, see G. Parry, ‘Ware, Sir James (1594–1666)’, ODNB (http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/28729/, accessed 19 July 2012) and J. Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, Enjoying Territorial Possessions or High Official Rank; But Uninvested with heritable Honours, 4 vols. (1838), vol. 4, pp. 494b–498b. The most recent discussion and (partial) description of this manuscript is in B. Ó Cuív, Catalogue of Irish Language Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford and Oxford College Libraries, 2 vols. (Dublin, 2001), pp. xxii–xxiv, 113–14. See also W. O’Sullivan, ‘A Finding List of Sir James Ware’s Manuscripts’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy C, vol. 97C (1997), 69–99, and O. Pächt and J. J. G. Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Oxford, 1973), vol. 3, p. 3, no. 19. 5 The text is edited in Honorius Augustodunensis: Imago Mundi, ed. V. I. J. Flint, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 49 (Paris, 1982); an earlier edition is De Imagine Mundi Libri Tres, Patrologia Latina 172 (Paris, 1895), which reproduces the text of Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum XX, ed. A. Schotto (Lyon, 1677), pp. 964–95; see Flint in Honorius Augustodunensis, p. 44. For a concise biography of Honorius, and a bibliography, see V. I. J. Flint, ‘Honorius Augustodunensis’, in Authors of the Middle Ages, vol. 2: Nos. 5–6, ed. J. Mews and V. I. J. Flint (Aldershot, 1995), pp. 89–183. 6 The chapter numbers vary slightly between the editions. I therefore follow Flint’s chapter numbering and also give Migne’s in square brackets. Note that Flint rounds up the contents of the Rawlinson B 484 fragment to complete chapters, and lists the contents as chapters 4–34 [4–35] of Book 1; see Honorius Augustodunensis: Imago Mundi, ed. Flint, p. 31. 7 Honorius Augustodunensis: Imago Mundi, ed. Flint, p. 37. 8 Flint erroneously dates the Corpus Christi manuscript to the thirteenth century, and also erroneously lists the fourteenth-century text of London, British Library, MS Royal 13.A.xxi as another thirteenth-century witness; for a detailed argument regarding the dating of these manuscripts, see N. I. Petrovskaia, ‘La Disparition du quasi dans les formules étymologiques des traductions galloises de l’Imago Mundi’, in La Formule au Moyen-Âge, ed. E. Louviot and C. Stévanovitch, ARTeM (Turnhout, 2012), pp. 123–41 (p. 125 n. 10).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 251

07/04/2014 00:03

252

Natalia I. Petrovskaia

Fig. 1  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson B 484, fol. 1r; first page of the Imago Mundi fragment

ME Texts in Transition.indb 252

07/04/2014 00:03

The Travels of a Quire

253

Aberconwy) and Oxford, Jesus College, MS 111 (the Red Book of Hergest, s. xivex– xvinc, Morgannwg), is closely related to and, indeed, is probably based on either the text contained in this quire, or on its copy.9 The encyclopaedic treatise Imago Mundi survives in over a hundred medieval manuscripts, and consists of three books, the first of which is a description of the world, often referred to as a geographical and cosmographical treatise.10 This treatise was translated into several languages, including French, Spanish, Italian and Welsh.11 There are four versions of the text, written by Honorius in 1110, 1123, 1133 and 1139.12 The process of change appears to have been one of addition, with sometimes even entire chapters being added to later versions. What makes the first and shortest version of the text so interesting is that it appears to have been composed during the author’s stay in England. According to the text’s most recent editor, Valerie Flint, Honorius spent time in England, in Canterbury and perhaps Worcester, at the beginning of the twelfth century.13 During the following (thirteenth) century English scholars seem to have shown a great degree of interest

9 D. Huws, Medieval Welsh Manuscripts (Aberystwyth, 2000), pp. 58–60, 80–3; Petrovskaia, ‘La Disparition du quasi’, and N. I. Petrovskaia, ‘Delw y Byd: une traduction médiévale en gallois d’une encyclopédie latine et la création d’un traité géographique’, Études Celtiques 39 (2013), pp. 257–77; Delw y Byd, ed. H. Lewis and P. Diverres (Cardiff, 1928). 10 The number of surviving medieval manuscripts of the text is 112 according to the list given in Flint, ‘Honorius Augustodunensis’, pp. 165–7. Note, however, that this list does not include Rawlinson B 484. 11 For more information on the French version, see R. Bossuat, G. F.-X. M. Grente, L. Pichard et al., Dictionnaire des lettres françaises: le Moyen Âge (Paris, 1992), p. 555; F. Fritsche, Untersuchung über die Quellen der Image du Monde (Halle, 1880), p. 28; B. Ribémont, ‘Statut de l’astronomie et évolution des connaissances sur le cosmos chez les vulgarisateurs médiévaux: le cas des encyclopédies en langue vernaculaire’, in Observer, lire, écrire le ciel au Moyen Âge, Actes du Colloque d’Orléans (22–23 avril 1989) (Paris, 1991), pp. 289–300, p. 295. For an edition of the text of the French prose version, L’Image du monde de maître Gossouin: rédaction en prose, texte du manuscrit de la Bibliothèque nationale fonds français no. 574 avec corrections d’après d’autres manuscripts, ed. O. H. Prior (Lausanne, 1913). An edition and discussion of first verse version can be found in C. Connochie-Bourgne, ‘L’Image du monde, une encyclopédie du XIIIe siècle: édition critique et commentaire de la première version’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Paris  –  Sorbonne, Paris IV, 1999). For more on the Castilian version, entitled Semeiança del mundo, see F. G. Redondo, ‘Building a Literary Model: Prose in the Court of Alfonso X (1252–84)’, in A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula, ed. F. C. Aseguinolaza, A. A. Gonzalez and C. Dominguez (Amsterdam, 2010), pp. 582–94, and R. P. Kinkade, ‘Un nuevo manuscrito de la Semeiança del mundo’, Hispanic Review 39 (1971), 261–70. For an edition of the text, see Semeiança del mundo: A Medieval Description of the World, ed. W. E. Bull and H. F. Williams (Berkeley, 1959). For more on the Italian version, see V. Finzi, ‘Di un inedito volgarizzamento dell’Imago mundi di Onorio d’Autun’, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 18 (1894), 1–73. The medieval French rendition was also translated into Italian; for an edition see L’Ymagine del mondo (Firenze, Bibl. naz. cod. palat. 703), ed. F. Chiovaro (Naples, 1977). 12 See Honorius Augustodunensis: Imago Mundi, ed. Flint, pp. 35–42. 13 Ibid., pp. 7–8.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 253

07/04/2014 00:03

254

Natalia I. Petrovskaia

in Imago Mundi specifically, as well as in Honorius’s work in general.14 Moreover, all known early manuscripts of the first version of the work appear to originate from England, and, as has already been pointed out, the Welsh translation of the text was made on the basis of this text.15 Our fragment, therefore, is an important early witness of the English or  –  more correctly, in light of its Welsh connections  –  the British tradition of Imago Mundi.

Manuscript Context As was mentioned above, the Imago Mundi quire is the first item in the manuscript; the second vellum quire (fols. 7–16) is unrelated, and contains heraldic illustrations.16 Fol. 17, which follows, is another item on vellum. The rest of the manuscript is paper, of which fols. 18–54 are miscellaneous paper pages bound into the notebook at an uncertain date. Most of these contain notes from Cottonian manuscripts, which seem to be the primary (acknowledged) source of notes within this notebook.17 The unifying theme of the collection appears to be Ireland, as shown by the illustration pasted into the obverse of the binding at the front, which comes from the second edition (1658) of James Ware’s De Hibernia.18 Indeed, Ireland provides a focus for most of Ware’s work. One thinks in particular of his De Hibernia et Antiquitatibus ejus, De Praesulibus Hiberniæ and De scriptoribus Hiberniae.19 14 Such as Robert of Hereford, William of Malmesbury, and Henry of Huntington; for more see Honorius Augustodunensis: Imago Mundi, ed. Flint, p. 9. 15 This cumulative evidence invites the speculation of whether the first version of the Imago Mundi had not been composed during Honorius’s stay in England. See the reference to the manuscripts and the discussion of the various recensions in Honorius Augustodunensis: Imago Mundi, ed. Flint, pp. 8, 35–8. 16 Descibed by McNeill as ‘poorly drawn and roughly coloured to the number of 44, with 7 others very rudely drawn in ink and left uncoloured’, see C. McNeill, ‘Rawlinson Manuscripts (Class B)’, Analecta Hibernica 1 (1930), 118–78 (p. 134). 17 A preliminary examination allows an approximate list of the folios where these notes are contained with the manuscripts from which the notes are derived. These are listed in Appendix 1 below. For a biographical sketch of Robert Cotton, and a bibliography, see S. Handley, ‘Cotton, Sir Robert Bruce, first baronet (1571–1631)’, ODNB (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/6425/, accessed 12 July 2012). 18 This image is by Wenceslaus Hollar (1607–1677), ‘Hibernia Antiqua’, and is an etching accompanying James Ware’s De Hibernia; it can be seen on the Early English Books Online website. 19 Ware, De Hibernia et Antiquitatibus ejus, Disqvisitiones. In qvibus Praeterea quae de Hibernia antiqua explicantur, Mores et Consuetudines Hibernorum, tam veterum, quam mediorum temporum describuntur (London, 1654); Ware, De Praesulibus Hiberniæ, commentarius. A prima gentis hibernicae ad fidem Christianam conversione, ad nostra usque tempora (Dublin, 1665); Ware, De scriptoribus Hiberniae libri duo. Prior continet scriptores in Hibernia natos. Posterior, scriptores alios qui in Hibernia munera aliqua obierunt (Dublin, 1639). The first of these was translated into English and published together with a short biography of the author in 1705 as Ware, The Antiquities and History of Ireland by the Right Honourable Sir James Ware, Knt (Now first Published in one volume in English, and the life of Sir James Ware prefixed) (London, 1705).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 254

07/04/2014 00:03

The Travels of a Quire

255

The composition of the manuscript is complex.20 Most of it is paper, bearing notes in Ware’s own hand. The foliation begins at the Imago Mundi quire, which is preceded by three unfoliated pages, in paper. Two are blank and one contains a list of contents, written in Ware’s hand, with additions by a later hand, which omits at least one item from the back of the manuscript which is a two-column list of Irish saints.21 The original foliation ends at fol. 84. This is followed by fiftyfour unfoliated paper leaves, and the foliation resumes, in modern pencil, at ‘fol. 85’, which on the recto has the Anglo-Saxon miniature from MS Cotton Galba A.xviii (s. ix, Winchester), the Athelstan Psalter, pasted onto it.22 The caption is in a hand which may be Sir James Ware’s. There is a genealogy on fol. 85v, which is probably in James Ware’s hand, and is likely to have originally comprised the final page of the notebook, since it is in the same hand as the genealogy pasted in on the inside of the back binding. Indeed, the four leaves following fol. 85 (the items missing from the table of contents) are on markedly different paper  –  in terms of both texture and format.23 The script of the Imago Mundi quire dates to the same period as that of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 66, the mid- to late-twelfth century at

20 An account of the contents of the manuscript is available in McNeill, ‘Rawlinson Manuscripts (Class B)’, pp. 133–8; note, however, that the detailed description stops at fol. 67, mentioning after it only the list of Irish saints on the four leaves at the end. 21 See the description in McNeill, ‘Rawlinson Manuscripts (Class B)’, pp. 133–8; Ó Cuív, Catalogue of Irish Language Manuscripts, pp. 113–15. The list is discussed in J. Hennig, ‘A List of Irish Saints in Rawl. B 484’, Éigse 6 (1948–52), 50–5. 22 For more on the miniature, see Pächt and Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts, vol. 3, p. 3, no. 19, and pl. II; also referred to in Ó Cuív, Catalogue of Irish Language Manuscripts, p. 114. 23 Indeed, fols. 86–89 appear to go together, as they have the identical signs of having been folded in four. The genealogy on fol. 85v is of the de Lacy family, starting with Hugh de Lacy (d. 1186); for more on the de Lacy family, see N. J. Synnott, ‘Notes on the Family of de Lacy in Ireland’, The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 6th series 9 (1919), 113–31. Synnott mentions that a Patent enrolled in the office of the Auditor by Sir James Ware in 1628 contains an error, naming Hugh de Lacy (the first) not only Lord of Meath (correctly) but also (in error) Lord of Connaught and Earl of Ulster (p. 129 n. 48). Note that the genealogy on fol. 85v of the Rawlinson manuscript does not have the error: it refers to de Lacy only as Dom[inus] Midiae, i.e. ‘Lord of Meath’. This suggests that the genealogy was written in our manuscript after 1628. For more on Hugh de Lacy see also M. T. Flanagan, ‘Lacy, Hugh de (d. 1186)’, ODNB (http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/15852/, accessed 12 July 2012). The genealogy on the inside of the back cover is of the Burke/Bourke family, starting with William fitz-Adelm de Burgh (d. 1205); for more on the family, see J. G. Barry, ‘The Bourkes of Clanwilliam’, The Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland 4th series vol. 9 (1889), 192–203; the obit. date given by Ware for William is correct according to S. H. F. Johnston, ‘The Lands of Hubert de Burgh’, English Historical Review 50 (1935), p. 418 n. 2; it is, however, given as 1206 in C. A. Empey, ‘Burgh, William de (d. 1206)’, ODNB (http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/4000/, accessed 12 July 2012).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 255

07/04/2014 00:03

256

Natalia I. Petrovskaia

the earliest.24 Although it is impossible at present to identify where exactly the original manuscript of this quire was written, its origins are, based on the script, English. Furthermore, its link to Peniarth 17 and the Red Book suggests that this manuscript could have been at some point in a milieu that included Welshmen. It is known that the Corpus manuscript was in such a milieu at Sawley, but it is not clear what connection this may have to the Rawlinson fragment.25 Tracing the early history of the fragment based on the script and textual relations thus appears to be impossible at the present time. It therefore remains to see how much information we can glean if we attempt to trace its history back from its current location.

Manuscript History Rawlinson B 484 came to the Bodleian Library as part of the collection of Richard Rawlinson (1690–1755).26 Though the history of the manuscript between Ware and Rawlinson is relatively easily sketched, its history before coming into Ware’s possession is fraught with uncertainty.27 It is therefore simplest to separate the discussion into two parts, first addressing the history of the manuscript between Ware’s ownership and its current location, and subsequently presenting the evidence for its provenance in Ware’s collection. Most of Sir James Ware’s manuscripts, including the notebook now known as Rawlinson B 484, came into the possession of his son, Robert Ware, at his death in 1666.28 Later, Ware’s manuscripts passed through the hands of Henry Hyde, second

24 For an examination of the script and the relation between the manuscripts, see Petrovskaia, ‘La Disparition du quasi’, and Petrovskaia, ‘Delw y Byd’. 25 For discussions relating to the presence of Welshmen in Lancashire, and at Sawley in particular, see D. N. Dumville, ‘Celtic-Latin Texts in Northern England, c. 1150–c. 1250’, Celtica 12 (1977), 19–49; reprinted in D. N. Dumville, Histories and Pseudo-Histories in the Early Middle Ages (Aldershot, 1990), pp. 19–49; see also F. Edmonds, ‘A Twelfth-Century Migration from Tegeingl to Lancashire’, in Wales and the Wider World, ed. T. M. CharlesEdwards and R. Evans (Donington, 2010), pp. 28–56. 26 M. Clapinson, ‘Rawlinson, Richard (1690–1755)’, ODNB (http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/23192, accessed 5 Aug 2012); see also Richard Rawlinson: A Tercentenary Memorial, ed. G. R. Tashjian, D. R. Tashjian and B. J. Enright (Kalamazoo, MI, 1990). 27 A brief overview can be found in General Biographical Dictionary: Containing An historical and Critical Account of the Lives and Writings of the Most Eminent Persons in Every Nation; Particularly The British and Irish: From the Earliest Accounts to the Present Time, ed. A. Chalmers, vol. 17 (London, 1817), p. 144. Note that an early catalogue of Ware’s manuscripts was published in 1648 (1641 according to Chalmers): Librorum Manuscriptorum in Bibliotheca Jacobi Waroei Equitis Aurati Catalogus (Dublin, 1648); available on the Early English Books Online website. Our manuscript does not feature in this catalogue. Ware’s manuscripts also feature in E. Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae in unum collecti (Oxford 1697), also available on the Early English Books Online website. 28 See Burke, Genealogical and Heraldic History, vol. 4, p. 498.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 256

07/04/2014 00:03

The Travels of a Quire

257

Earl of Clarendon.29 We know that Rawlinson B 484 underwent that fate, since at the top of fol. 1r it bears the Clarendon number ‘Vol. LXX’.30 Ware’s manuscripts are listed in the catalogue of the Clarendon collection, which was published in the collection of catalogues by Edward Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae in unum collecti, vol. II, part II.31 Our manuscript does, indeed, feature as no. 70 on pp. 12–13 of that catalogue, and is easily recognized by the list of its contents given there.32 Clarendon’s manuscripts were catalogued for auction after his death, but the sale does not appear to have taken place, all the manuscripts having been bought together before the sale by James Brydges, Duke of Chandos (1674–1744).33 Our manuscript also appears to have followed this path, for when the Chandos library was sold in 1747 and the Ware manuscript collection was finally dispersed, our manuscript was among those acquired by Richard Rawlinson.34 Rawlinson’s 29 R. Flower, ‘Manuscripts of Irish Interest in the British Museum’, Analecta Hibernica 2 (1931), 292–340 (p. 300); Parry, ‘Ware, Sir James’; Ó Cuív, Catalogue of Irish Language Manuscripts, p. xxvii. 30 This number is followed by a strange squiggle, which appears to be a deletion, made in circular motions. The Clarendon number 70 is given alongside the current number of the manuscript in O’Sullivan, ‘A Finding List of Sir James Ware’s Manuscripts’, p. 81. Ó Cuív, however, suggests that this number belongs to Ware’s classification system, rather than the Clarendon: see Ó Cuív, Catalogue of Irish Language Manuscripts, pp. xxv, xxvii. 31 Published in Oxford, 1697; the full text is available on Early English Books Online. It was justly described by De Ricci as ‘one of the most notable achievements of early English bibliographers’: see S. De Ricci, English Collectors of Books and Manuscripts (1530–1930) (Cambridge, 1930), p. 9. 32 The list of contents as given in the catalogue is reproduced in Appendix 2 below. 33 Ó Cuív, Catalogue of Irish Language Manuscripts, p. xxviii; Flower, ‘Manuscripts of Irish Interest’, p. 301; A. S. G. Edwards, ‘Sir James Ware, the Collecting of Middle English Manuscripts in Ireland in the Seventeenth Century, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales’, Chaucer Review 46 (2011), 237–47, p. 245; B. J. Enright, ‘The Ware-Chandos Manuscripts’, Bodleian Library Record 6 (1957–61), 586–7. The catalogue in question is known as the Bateman catalogue. The full reference is: C. Bateman, A catalogue of the library of a person of honour: being a very curious collection of books in all faculties; but more especially in matters of state and regarding the polity of our own nations: with near 1000 choice MSS. both ancient and modern, relating to the estate of England and Ireland, not elsewhere to be found, among which are about 300 volumes in folio of the rotuli parliamentorum, and journals of the houses of lords and commons. Besides divers designs, drawings etc. All neatly bound and gilt back, and many Turky-leather and large paper. To be sold by Christopher Bateman, at the Bible and Crown in Pater-Noster-Row (London, 1709). A copy of the catalogue has been digitized and is available on Early English Books Online. For more on James Brydges, see J. Johnson, ‘Brydges, James, first duke of Chandos (1674–1744)’, ODNB (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3806/, accessed 19 July 2012). 34 O’Sullivan, ‘A Finding List of Sir James Ware’s Manuscripts’, p. 81, gives 1576 as the Bateman catalogue number for Rawlinson B 484; however, no such manuscript number is to be found in the Bateman catalogue. Furthermore, this number is more in line with the Chandos numbering system, which O’Sullivan gives in the next column, and appears, indeed, to belong to it. (O’Sullivan lists no Chandos number for this manuscript.) The catalogue for the sale of the Chandos library is C. Cock, A catalogue of the large and

ME Texts in Transition.indb 257

07/04/2014 00:03

258

Natalia I. Petrovskaia

collection was subsequently bequeathed to the Bodleian Library, bringing the manuscript to its current location. Having outlined the journey of the manuscript from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first, the question remains of how it originally came into Sir James Ware’s possession. To put a date on the manuscript/notebook in its entirety, and thus to establish by which point the Imago Mundi quire was added to it, is difficult, owing to its composite nature. We can only surmise, from the fact that the binding bears Ware’s coat of arms and appears to have been designed to accommodate not only the notebook but also the accompanying loose leaves, that the quire was bound into the present manuscript before Sir James Ware’s death (1 December 1666). The manuscript does not feature in Ware’s manuscript catalogue of 1648, but that may well be because it is primarily composed of his notes, rather than acquired texts.35 When the quire might have entered Ware’s possession is quite a different question. The following is an attempt to narrow down the range of possibilities by using contextual evidence from the manuscript itself. There are few dates in the notebook that appear to correspond to the time of the composition of the notes. These are 1632 (fol. 48r), 1652 (corrected to 1653, fol. 55r), 4 May 1654 (fol. 56v), 22 January 1658 (fol. 57r), 29 January 1658 (fol. 63r), 2 September 1663 (fol. 65r), 9 July 1664 (fol. 67r), 1 August 1664 (fol. 72r), and 8 August 1664 (fol. 77r).36 The final dates are consistent with what we know of James Ware’s life. His final publications are dated 1664 and 1665, and he died on 1 December 1666.37 The fact that the notebook belongs to such a late stage in James Ware’s career explains why so much of it is blank. It is also tempting to speculate that he stopped making notes in this notebook because of illness, since the final folios, although dated and less chaotic than the earlier entries, are interspersed with notes in a different hand.38 This second hand is characterized by curls and valuable library of the most noble and learned James Duke of Chandos, lately deceas’d: consisting of the greatest variety of books in all branches of polite literature. Which will be sold by auction by Mr. Cock, at the Great Room in Exeter-Exchange in the Strand on Thursday the 12th of March 1746–7, and the twenty-nine following evenings (Sundays excepted) (London, 1747). Note that Rawlinson owned a copy of the Bateman catalogue of the Clarendon collection, where he noted which of the manuscripts he had subsequently acquired via the Chandos sale. This copy is now Oxford, Bodleian Library, Mus. Bibl. III 4° 13. 35 The catalogue in question is the Librorum Manuscriptorum in Bibliotheca Jacobi Waræi Equitis Aur. Catalogus (Dublin, 1648); see also Ó Cuív, Catalogue of Irish Language Manuscripts, p. xxiv. 36 There is one further seventeenth-century date, 1633 on fol. 24r, which, however, does not refer to the note; it is discussed in further detail below. 37 The publications in question are Venerabilis Bedae epistolae duae (1664), Rerum Hibernicarum annales, 1485–1558 (1665), and De praesulibus Hiberniae commentarius (1665); see Parry, ‘Ware, Sir James’. 38 This may well be that of Robert Ware, his son; for more on Robert Ware, see, for example, P. Wilson, ‘The Writings of Sir James Ware and the Forgeries of Robert Ware’, Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 15 (1917–19), 83–94 (pp. 86–8); and Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History, vol. 4, p. 498a.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 258

07/04/2014 00:03

The Travels of a Quire

259

Fig. 2  Hand switch at fol. 72r, lines 16–17

flourishes that are in stark contrast to Ware’s own angular and tilted handwriting. The sequence of switch-overs is as follows: on fol. 72r, line 16 Ware’s hand stops and another takes over (see fig. 2).39 This second hand continues from fol. 72r, line 17 until fol. 77r, where Ware’s hand reappears. Ware carries on until the end of fol. 79r, and fol. 79v is again in the second hand. Ware’s hand then returns on fols. 80v–83r, to be then replaced by the other hand, which carries on until fol. 84v. What appears to have happened at fols. 79r–80v is that Ware turned over two leaves rather than one and kept writing. The switch of hands at fols. 72r–77r presents a more complex problem. The only possibility that springs to mind is that Ware might have been indisposed between 1 and 8 August 1664 and had asked someone else to continue his notes during that period. The same person then filled in the blank left by Ware on fols. 79v–80r and continued after Ware’s own notes stop on fol. 83r. In any case, we can reasonably suppose that Ware stopped actively working on the notebook after 8 August 1664, the date of the last entry in his hand. We can thus conclude that the dates of Ware’s activity in the notebook are most probably c. 1632–1664. This gives us a date-range of about thirty years within which he might have acquired the Imago Mundi fragment and bound it into the notebook. The related question is where he might have acquired the manuscript. There are many possible sources from which he might have obtained it, and the wide daterange of the notebook does not limit our choices. Yet we know the manuscript to be

39 Counting the date as line 1.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 259

07/04/2014 00:03

260

Natalia I. Petrovskaia

English, and it seems reasonable to suppose (although difficult to prove) that Ware might have acquired it in England. The two main manuscript libraries Ware used in England belonging to collectors who would be likely to alert him to the existence of such a text, and indeed (though not necessarily) to also give him a manuscript or fragment, are those of Ussher (1581–1656) and Cotton.40 It is also important that notes from manuscripts in both collections can be identified in our notebook. Ussher’s library was located in Lincoln’s Inn, London, where we know Ware made copies from Ussher’s manuscripts at least in 1651.41 Ussher was the primate of Ireland and is generally regarded as Ware’s mentor.42 The ties between the two men were therefore very close and deep. As for Cotton, there are multiple notes made from Cottonian manuscripts in Rawlinson B 484. Indeed, the Cottonian library appears to be the predominant source for notes in this manuscript and is thus our prime suspect as the source for the quire, or at least for Ware’s interest in the text. Furthermore, at least one item in Rawlinson B 484 comes from the Cotton library  –  the miniature cut from the Athelstan Psalter.43 Finally, it should also be noted that, Ware is known to have borrowed manuscripts from Cotton’s library.44 We know that Ware made at least four visits to England. The first appears to have been in 1626, the second was in 1629.45 In 1644 he was sent to England to meet with King Charles in Oxford, but it seems unlikely that he would have acquired the manuscript fragment in question then, or indeed, that he had any notes with him on the way back, for he was captured on his way back to Ireland and imprisoned in the Tower for ten months, after which time he was able to return to Dublin.46

40 For more on Ware’s use of these two libraries, see O’Sullivan, ‘A Finding List of Sir James Ware’s Manuscripts’, p. 72, and M. Williams, ‘History, the Interregnum and the Exiled Irish’, in M. Williams and S. P. Forrest, Constructing the Past: Writing Irish History, 1600– 1800 (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 27–48 (p. 43). For more on Ussher, see A. Ford, ‘Ussher, James (1581–1656)’, ODNB (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28034/, accessed 12 July 2012). 41 O’Sullivan, ‘A Finding List of Sir James Ware’s Manuscripts’, p. 72. 42 For more on Ussher, see R. B. Knox, James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh (Cardiff, 1967); R. Welch, ‘The Book in Ireland from the Tudor Re-Conquest to the Battle of the Boyne’, in Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. 4, ed. J. Barnard and D. F. McKenzie (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 701–18 (p. 715); W. O’Sullivan, ‘Ussher as a Collector of Manuscripts’, Hermathena 88 (1956), 34–59; also J. T. Leerssen, ‘Archbishop Ussher and Gaelic Culture’, Studia Hibernica 22/3 (1982/3), 50–8 (p. 54); Williams, ‘History, the Interregnum and the Exiled Irish’, p. 42. 43 See n. 22 above. For a list of Cottonian manuscripts referred to in Rawlinson B 484, see Appendix 1 below, and n. 69 for further possible identifications suggested by Tite. 44 Ware is known to have borrowed Vitellius B.viii, Nero D.iii, and Julius A.iii; See C. G. C. Tite, The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library: Formation, Cataloguing, Use (London, 2003), pp. 86–7, 93. 45 General Biographical Dictionary, ed. Chalmers, vol. 17, p. 138. 46 Parry, ‘Ware, Sir James’; General Biographical Dictionary, ed. Chalmers, vol. 17, p. 141; while at Oxford, Ware was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Law (ibid.).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 260

07/04/2014 00:03

The Travels of a Quire

261

He travelled to France in April 1649, when he was expelled from Dublin, and it is possible but unlikely that he would have acquired the Imago Mundi text there, since we know the manuscript to be English.47 It is more likely that he acquired it during his stay in London, which started in 1651, and lasted, with occasional visits to Ireland, until his reinstatement as auditor-general in 1661.48 Alternatively it is still possible that he may have acquired the quire during the visits of 1626 or 1629×1632.49 The dates for Ware’s notes from Ussher’s manuscripts are not noted. We can therefore attempt to anchor the notebook to one of Ware’s visits to England through his notes from Cottonian manuscripts. Ware’s notes refer to the Cotton manuscripts by their imperial shelfmarks, and it is unlikely that the system would have already been in place during Ware’s first visit in 1626, and we can thus discount it.50 The last notes from Cottonian manuscripts were taken by Ware between 1632 and 1652, since the last folio bearing notes from a Cottonian manuscript is fol. 52, positioned between the dated fols. 48 and 55. Furthermore, the earliest notes could well have been taken during the 1629 visit. We therefore need to identify the dates for the two sets of notes from Cotton manuscripts Ware made during his visits. Since the manuscript is in a fragile state it is difficult to determine where the notebook proper starts and where the miscellaneous notes bound into it end. The ‘notebook’ proper appears to start at fol. 55. Fols 40–41 (which contain notes from Tiberius C.iii and Tiberius C.v) seem to have been once folded vertically together with fols. 32–39, all of which are of different format. Fols 49–50 have the same vertical fold. The vertical fold, which would make the set of papers thin and long, would have made them a convenient size and shape to carry around and possibly fit in a pocket. It therefore appears that most, if not all the folios containing Ware’s notes from Cotton manuscripts up to and including fol. 41 were at one time separate sheets of paper folded, and probably carried, together.51

47 Ibid., p. 142; for the localization of the manuscript see above. 48 General Biographical Dictionary, ed. Chalmers, vol. 17, pp. 142–3; Ware’s books were published in London during that period; including the two editions of his De Hibernia in 1654 and 1658, and the Opuscula Sancto Patricio (London, 1656). 49 Parry, ‘Ware, Sir James’; O’Sullivan, ‘A Finding List of Sir James Ware’s Manuscripts’, p. 72. While it can be argued that this is unlikely, since the manuscript is not in his 1648 catalogue, it would be unwise to assume that this uncompleted notebook, even if it had already been started, would have been included in the catalogue. 50 Handley, ‘Cotton, Sir Robert Bruce’, see also C. G. C. Tite, The Manuscript Library of Sir Robert Cotton (London, 1994), p. 21; J. Summit, Memory’s Library: Medieval Books in Early Modern England (Chicago, 2008), p. 149. 51 Note, however, that within this set fols. 32–35 appear to be notes from manuscripts in James Ussher’s collection. These folios are of a different format from the rest (the rest is also of various formats) but appear to have the same folding pattern. It may be that they date from a different period, but it is difficult to prove. In either case, the connections between the two Irish antiquaries spun decades. Cunningham and Gillespie write that in 1639 Ware entered extracts from a manuscript later owned by Ussher ‘into his notebook’

ME Texts in Transition.indb 261

07/04/2014 00:03

262

Natalia I. Petrovskaia

The first dated entry in the notebook occurs on fol. 48r, and bears the date 1632. This might help throw some light on the subject of the date of Ware’s notes from Cottonian manuscripts. On both the preceding and the following pages are notes made by Ware from Cottonian manuscripts. This implies that this set of notes, at least, dates from Ware’s earlier visit, 1629×1632. It is important to recall that Robert Cotton died on 4 May 1631.52 This would mean that Ware’s notes from Cotton’s manuscripts on fol. 48v onwards (and possibly some of the notes that occur on earlier folios in the manuscript) were made after Cotton’s death, when his library had already passed to his son, Thomas Cotton (1594–1662).53 Equally important is the fact that, as has already been mentioned, Ware refers to Cottonian manuscripts by their imperial shelf marks  –  a system that Robert Cotton introduced in the later 1620s and which was not fully in place until after Robert Cotton’s death.54 This implies that most of Ware’s notes in Rawlinson B 484, or at least those made from Cotton manuscripts, date from the late 1620s or even from around 1632, the date of fol. 48r.55 This could fit with the date of Ware’s second known visit to England, which falls in 1629, during which he is known to have worked in a number of libraries.56 To decide between Ussher and Cotton as possible providers or inciters for the acquisition of the Image Mundi fragment is difficult. However, the specifics of the two collectors’ particular interests and the context of their collections might provide us with a clue. Ussher’s interests lay primarily in ecclesiastical and patristic literature, as attested, for example, by the particularities of his use of Cotton’s own library.57 While there is nothing to tie Ussher to the Rawlinson fragment of Imago Mundi, or on fact to any other version of that text, Cotton had several manuscripts but do not identify the notebook in question: B. Cunningham and R. Gillespie, ‘James Ussher and his Irish Manuscripts’, Studia Hibernica 33 (2004/5), 81–99 (p. 89); for further details of their exchange of manuscripts, see pp. 84, 87, 88; see also O’Sullivan, ‘A Finding List of Sir James Ware’s Manuscripts’, pp. 69–70, 72. 52 Handley, ‘Cotton, Sir Robert Bruce’. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid.; see also Tite, The Manuscript Library of Sir Robert Cotton, p. 21; Summit, Memory’s Library, p. 149. 55 Burke writes that it was Ussher who introduced Ware to Cotton during Ware’s first visit to England. This first visit appears to have taken place in 1626; see Burke, Genealogical and Heraldic History, vol. 4, p. 495a; General Biographical Dictionary, ed. Chalmers, vol. 17, p. 138. 56 Parry, ‘Ware, Sir James’; whether Ware stayed in England from 1629 until 1632 or if he made several visits is unclear. 57 See Knox, James Ussher, pp. 98–112; K. Birkwood, ‘“Our learned primate and that rare treasurie”: James Ussher’s use of Sir Robert Cotton’s manuscript library, c. 1603–1655’, Library & Information History 26:1 (March 2010), 33–42. Indeed, Ware appears to have been one of the go-betweens between Ussher and Cotton, see C. G. C. Tite, ‘“Lost or Stolen or Strayed”: A Survey of Manuscripts Formerly in the Cotton Library’, in Sir Robert Cotton as Collector: Essays on an Early Stuart Courtier and his Legacy, ed. C. G. Wright (London, 1997), pp. 262–306 (p. 270, 297–8, n. 53). For more on Ussher’s connections to Cotton and exchange of manuscripts, see Tite, pp. 268–70.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 262

07/04/2014 00:03

The Travels of a Quire

263

which contained this encyclopaedia: Cleopatra B.iv (s. xii, Byland), Vespasian E.iii (s. xiiimed, ?Burton-upon-Trent), and Vitellius E.viii (s. xvi).58 Indeed, Cotton is connected with the Imago Mundi text in more ways than one, as it appears that another manuscript that includes it, London, British Library, MS Royal 13.A.xxi, had also at one point passed through his hands.59 If we are to suppose that Ware acquired the Imago Mundi quire from Cotton during one of his stays in London, it would be as likely to have been during Robert Cotton’s lifetime, as during that of his son. On the one hand, Robert Cotton was far more liberal with his library than his son.60 There is also evidence of an exchange of manuscripts between Cotton and Ware.61 On the other hand, the recorded manuscript loans made to Ware from the Cotton library are from 1651.62 It is well known that Cotton had a habit of cutting up manuscripts and therefore fragments are more likely to have passed through his hands.63 Indeed, Colin Tite describes Cotton as an ‘agent in dividing and passing on material as well as keeping it’, as responsible for the disruption of libraries of medieval England as was the Dissolution.64 Note, however, that Cotton’s library was shut, with access to it limited, for the period 1629–31, coinciding with much of Ware’s earlier visit, only to 58 Flint, ‘Honorius Augustodunensis’, p. 166, lists only Cleopatra B.iv; Tite, ‘Lost or Stolen or Strayed’, p. 296 n. 34, lists also Vespasian E.iv, which, however, contains not Honorius’s Imago Mundi, but rather its French adaptation, the Ymage du monde by Gossouin de Metz. See the British Library Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue entry for the contents of this manuscript searcharchives.bl.uk (accessed 14 August 2012). Vitellius E.viii is a composite manuscript, damaged by fire in 1731; the date given here is for the Imago Mundi section only: see the British Library Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue. Note that it is listed as lost in S. Hooper, A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library: To which are added Many Emendations and Additions. With and Appendix, containing An Account of the Damage Sustained by the fire in 1731; And also a Catalogue of the Charters Preserved in the same Library (London, 1777), pp. 16, 124. 59 See n. 8 above. It appears that the Chronicle of Cotton Vespasian B.ix originally followed on the Imago Mundi text of MS Royal 13.A.xxi; Cotton’s exchange list in BL Add. MS 35213 refers to a ‘Chronicles part of Imago Mundi 4o’ being acquired, and, later, to a ‘Imago Mundi in Black Valour and Bossed’ to be returned; see Tite, ‘Lost or Stolen or Strayed’, p. 267, and J. P. Carley, ‘The Royal Library as a Source for Sir Robert Cotton’s Collection: A Preliminary List of Acquisitions’, in Sir Robert Cotton, ed. Wright, pp. 208–29 (pp. 217–18). 60 For changes in the access to the library in the latter years of Robert Cotton’s life, and during the time of his heir, see Tite, The Manuscript Library of Sir Robert Cotton, pp. 25–9; C. G. C. Tite, ‘The Cotton Library in the Seventeenth Century and its Manuscript Records of the English Parliament’, Parliamentary History 14 (1995), 121–38 (p. 126); note, however, that books were still being borrowed from the library in the 1630s and 40s (ibid., p. 128). See also the entry for Sir Thomas Cotton in Handley, ‘Cotton, Sir Robert Bruce’. 61 General Biographical Dictionary, ed. Chalmers, vol. 17, pp. 138–9. 62 Tite, Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library, pp. 86–7; see also n. 44 above. 63 As Summit notes, ‘In Cotton’s hands or under his orders, manuscripts were routinely split apart’, sometimes in the middle of the text; see Summit, Memory’s Library, p. 146 and p. 297 n. 48. 64 Tite, ‘Lost or Stolen or Strayed’, p. 270; Tite, The Manuscript Library of Sir Robert Cotton, p. 45.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 263

07/04/2014 00:03

264

Natalia I. Petrovskaia

be opened after Cotton’s death.65 It is therefore unclear whether Ware’s notes from Cotton manuscripts on the miscellaneous leaves, and the various vellum quires date from the early visit of 1629, from the presumed visit of 1632 (our dated entry in the notebook), or from Ware’s prolonged stay in England in the 1650s.66 As has already been mentioned, the suggestion that Ware’s Imago Mundi quire might have come from Cotton is supported by the fact that Cotton is known to have owned at least three Imago Mundi manuscripts. More significant, however, is the fact that Ware saw at least one of these manuscripts, since he took notes from Vitellius E.viii, as evidenced by his inscription on fol. 20 of Rawlinson B 484. (See Appendix 1 below.) While fol. 20 itself bears no date, it appears to have been part of a group of folios (fols. 20–25) which appear to have at one point been folded vertically together. This may be of importance, since fol. 24r is one of the few that do bear a date. At the top of the page Ware had marked the provenance of his notes: ‘Ex libro I Bibliothecae ord. Praemonstraensis Author Joh. Le Page’ and below this added ‘Paris 1633’. This, rather than dating the note itself, dates its source. The note refers to the work of Johannes Pagus, also known as John Pagus or John le Page (fl. 1230), entitled Bibliotheca Praemonstratensis Ordinis: Omnibus Religiosis, Praesertim Vero sancti Augustini Regulam profitentibus, utilis maximeque necessaria, a volume of which was published in Paris in 1633.67 We can suppose, therefore, that Ware’s notes not only for fol. 24r but also for those folios which appear to have been kept folded with it (fols. 20–25) are likely to date from after 1633. If that supposition is correct, then Ware’s notes from Vitellius E.viii are likely to date from his later stay in England, in the years 1650/1×1660. It is possible that it was while making notes from this manuscript that Ware became aware of the existence of Imago Mundi. It may perhaps be even the case that it was then that he acquired his fragment of the text, possibly also from the Cottonian collection. Furthermore, since we know of at least four manuscripts of Imago Mundi to have been in, or to have passed through Robert Cotton’s hands, it may well be possible that other fragments, including that now in Rawlinson B 484, were also present in his collection at one point. It may also be that Ware was made aware of the Imago Mundi during his research in the Cotton library, either during Thomas Cotton’s time, or his father’s, but acquired his quire elsewhere. Unless further evidence comes to light, more definite conclusions remain impossible. 65 J. Planta, A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian library Deposited in the British Museum / Printed by Command of His Majesty King George III in Pursuance of an Address of the House of Commons of Great Britain (London, 1802), p. xi. It is interesting that when the library was officially catalogued during this enforced closure, it was found that much of the material in it was unbound, and even unstitched; Tite, The Manuscript Library of Sir Robert Cotton, pp. 21–2, 24. 66 We know that Ware borrowed manuscripts from the library in 1651; see Tite, Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library, pp. 86–7. 67 For more on John le Page, and a bibliography, see The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. N. Kretzmann, A. Kenny and J. Pinborg (Cambridge, 1982), p. 868. The Bibliotheca Praemonstratensis Ordinis is available to view online at Google Books.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 264

07/04/2014 00:03

The Travels of a Quire

265

Conclusion It has been possible to establish that the Imago Mundi quire now preserved in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson B 484 was originally written in England towards the end of the twelfth century. It contains a fragment of the earliest version of Book I of Imago Mundi, composed by Honorius Augustodunensis c. 1110. The variants preserved in this manuscript identify it as a possible exemplar of one of the two versions of Delw y Byd, the medieval Welsh translation of Imago Mundi. Rawlinson B 484 shares certain important variant readings with two manuscripts containing version A of Delw y Byd: Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniath 17 and the fragment on cols. 975–98 of the Red Book of Hergest. While it has not been possible to identify the exact historical context of the writing of the original manuscript, it is possible that this context was similar to that of the related late-twelfth-century manuscript of Imago Mundi now in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 66, associated with Sawley Abbey in Lancashire towards the end of the twelfth century, in a milieu where many immigrants from North Wales were present. The Northwalian manuscript connections of the Rawlinson fragment of Imago Mundi and the prosopographic and political connections of Corpus 66 might indicate that these two manuscripts share a common early history. This, however, can only be confirmed if further evidence comes to light. The Imago Mundi quire came into the possession of Sir James Ware probably in the 1650s, but possibly as early as 1632. It is likely that he was alerted to the existence of this text when making notes in the Cottonian library during his stay in London in the 1650s, probably while making notes from Vitellius E.viii. This manuscript was one of at least three in Sir Robert Cotton’s library that contained a copy of the Imago Mundi. Whether the fragment now in Rawlinson B 484 might be a quire acquired by Robert Ware from the Cotton library cannot as yet be established with any certainty. However, it seems likely that it was acquired in London in the 1650s and subsequently bound into the present notebook along with Ware’s notes made during that and previous stays. The quire has remained in the manuscript since. After Ware’s death it passed to his son, Robert Ware, who sold it to Henry Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. Its next owner was James Brydges, Duke of Chandos, who bought the Clarendon library wholesale after Clarendon’s death. The notebook with the Imago Mundi quire was among the manuscripts acquired by Richard Rawlinson when the Chandos collection came to be sold in 1747. Finally, the manuscript came to rest in the Bodleian Library with the Rawlinson collection, as Rawlinson B 484. Thus, the complex history of the quire’s travel begins with obscure origins somewhere in twelfth-century England, and continues, possibly via Wales or a Welsh milieu in the Marches or Lancashire, through a shadowy period of approximately four centuries for which we currently have no way of tracing it, and into the sixteenth century, when it may or may not have been acquired by Robert Cotton. Ker’s observation concerning 1540 as being a year about which extends a grey area of uncertainty, is particularly apt here, for the traces of the manuscript are blurred for a century or so around that date, and only become distinct once we enter the time of the great antiquaries of the seventeenth century, with the appearance of the first manuscript

ME Texts in Transition.indb 265

07/04/2014 00:03

Natalia I. Petrovskaia

266

catalogues of private libraries, of which James Ware’s of 1648 is the earliest.68 That Ware’s catalogue does not mention our manuscript is unsurprising: the notebook in which the Imago Mundi is bound was not a collection of texts, and was being used by Ware as late as the early 1660s, and it is likely that the quire itself came into his possession sometime in the previous decade. As time progresses, the history of the manuscript is easier to trace. In that, the history here outlined of this obscure, but important quire is, perhaps, typical for its kind. It is to be hoped that it will help throw some new light on the mysterious life of medieval quires preserved in antiquaries’ notebooks.

appendix 1 Cotton shelfmarks noted by Ware The following list contains only those entries for which Cotton shelfmarks are noted by Ware.69 Location of note in Rawlinson B 484

Manuscript from which the notes are derived

fol. 20r

Vitellius B.ii

fol. 20v

Vitellius E.viii

fol. 22v

Faustina B.vi

fol. 37r

Vitellius F.xvi Vitellius B.x

fol. 39v

Cleopatra E.ii (fol. 72) Cleopatra E.i Nero D.iv

fols. 40r–41r fol. 47r

Tiberius C.iii Tiberius C.v Julius A.vii

fol. 48v

Faustina B.ix

fol. 49v

Rol. in Bibl. Cotton [unidentified item]

fol. 50r

Vitellius B.iii

fol. 50v

Vitellius B.iv

fol. 51r

Faustina B.vii

fol. 52v

Domitian A.iv

68 Ker, ‘Migration of Manuscripts’, p. 5. 69 Tite has also identified notes from Julius C.ii on fol. 77v, and identified some further Cottonian manuscripts as possible sources of other notes in Rawlinson B 484. These include Tiberius A.x, C.vii; Claudius E.iii; Nero D.iv, E.v; Otho D.iii; Titus B.x–xi. See Tite, Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library, pp. 93–4, 105, 108–9, 129, 137, 139, 155, 195.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 266

07/04/2014 00:03

The Travels of a Quire

267

appendix 2 The contents of MS 70 in Bernard’s catalogue of the Clarendon library1 70. 70. Liber dictus Imago Mundi. Insignia quarundam Familiarum Anglicarum in Hibernia, depicta in membrana, f. 7. Decretum contra quosdam Praelatos, &c. Provinciae Cassileensis, ex ordine Praedicatorum, & Minorum, Gallice, f. 7. King Edward the IVth’s Letter to ahe [sic., corr. the] Lord Lievtenant of Ireland against Frier William Rety, who had procured from the pope to be Minister of the Order of Friers Minors of Ireland, f. 18. Miscellanea de rebus Hibernicis, ex Bibl. Cotton. ut plurimum excerpta, f. 19. Ara Romana Cestriae effossa An. 1652. f. 55. Charta Fundationis Coenobii S. Andreae in Territorio de Ardes, f. 56. Ex Libro Nigro Jo. Alani Archiep. Dublin. f. 57. Ex Archivis curiae communis Banci, f. 63. Charta Regis Joannis concessa Willielmo De Burgo, f. 65. Registrum Majorum de Drogheda, f. 67. De Prioratu B. Trin. Dublin. f. 72. Records touching the Baron of Slayne, f. 82. b. Stemma Hugonis de Lacy. Fragmentum quoddam Hibernicum. Subnectitur Index Alphabeticus, 4to.

1 Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae in unum collecti, vol. II, part II, pp. 12–13.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 267

07/04/2014 00:03

Timothy Graham

William Elstob’s Planned Edition of the Anglo-Saxon Laws: A Remnant in the Takamiya Collection •••

A

n item acquired in 1999 for the Takamiya collection of manuscripts and   early printed books is of great significance for those interested in the history of Anglo-Saxon studies.1 It comprises sixty-seven handwritten leaves that include a transcription of an Old English legal text and sets of variant readings to Anglo-Saxon law codes, derived from several sources. A series of notes scattered throughout the manuscript reveals both the time period during which it was compiled and the identity of those responsible for it. The first of these notes occurs on fol. 2v, at the end of the transcription of the Old English text known as Judex: ‘Jan. 28. 1711/12. hæc ego & soror mea unà contulimus’ (‘January 28 1711/12. My sister and I jointly collated this text’).2 Of immediate This essay first appeared in Poetica 73 (2010), 109–41. It is reprinted here with minor revisions by permission, as an affectionate tribute to Toshiyuki Takamiya, whose extraordinary generosity afforded me the opportunity to study his manuscript over an extended period. I would like to thank Carl T. Berkhout for commenting on an earlier draft of the essay and, in particular, for drawing my attention to the volume of William Elstob’s collectanea now in the Bodleian Library. 1 Tokyo, Takamiya Collection, MS 129. The history of the ownership of the manuscript before it was put up for sale by Bloomsbury Book Auctions of London on 10 June 1999 is unrecorded in the auction catalogue. The immediate past owner preferred to remain anonymous; in a communi­cation of 2 September 2008, Rupert Powell, the Managing Director of Bloomsbury, informed the present author that ‘the owner was a private consignor from abroad’ but would not reveal anything further. The 1999 sale of the manuscript is noted by A. S. G. Edwards, ‘Manuscripts at Auction: January 1999 to December 1999’, English Manuscript Studies 9 (2000), 292–7 (p. 293). 2 At this time the reckoning of the year in Great Britain and some other Western European countries commenced with 25 March (the feast of the Annunciation), whereas elsewhere the year began on 1 January. Dates between 1 January and 24 March were therefore often given with the year cited according to both reckonings. Only in 1752 did Great Britain officially adopt 1 January as the beginning of the new year. It was also then that the country adopted the reformed Gregorian calendar, which was ten days in advance of the unreformed calendar. This discrepancy explains why the note on p. 142 of the Takamiya manuscript, quoted below, identifies 11 December as the winter solstice.

268

ME Texts in Transition.indb 268

07/04/2014 00:03

William Elstob’s Planned Edition of Anglo-Saxon Laws

269

interest here is the reference to ‘my sister’, a female collaborator in the enterprise. Other notes are yet more informative, facilitating a more precise identification of the two collaborating scholars. On p. 26, at the end of the list of variants to the law code of King Ine of Wessex, we read: Collatæ sunt hæ leges cum Libro impresso Wheloci clarissimi, & cum Codice Benedict. in eodem Coll. & finita collatio. Sept. die 4to. 1714. GE. EE. [These laws were collated with the printed book of the most distinguished Wheelock, and with the Benet manuscript in the same college, and the collation was completed on the 4th day of September, 1714. GE. EE.] Initials recur in three other notes. The first of these follows the variants to the laws of King Edgar (p. 84; see fig. 1): Collat. WE. EE. Uariantes hasce Lectiones ipse Transcripsi ex Manuscripto Codice Chartaceo in folio majori, Quod olim peculium erat D. Simondsii Dewesii jam vero Honoratissimi D.D. Comitis Oxon. Summi Magnæ Brit. Thesaurarii. 41.A.9. Postea ad examen Autographi membranacei in folio minori secunda cura revocavi, WE. adjuvante studiorum meorum indivisa comite EE. sorore mea dilectissima. 34.A.16. Junii die 18. 1714. [Collated, WE, EE. These variant readings I myself transcribed from the paper manuscript of large folio size that formerly belonged to Sir Simonds D’Ewes and is now the property of the most honourable Earl of Oxford, the Lord High Treasurer of Great Britain, 41.A.9. Later, in a second effort, I, WE, returned to examine the parchment original, of small folio size, 34.A.16, assisted by my most beloved sister EE, the inseparable companion of my studies. June 18, 1714.] A briefer note following the variants to a text identified as Cnut’s ecclesiastical laws (p. 102) merely states: ‘Collata & examinata. Octob. 3. 1713. WE. EE’ (‘Collated and examined, October 3, 1713. WE. EE’). Finally, on the last page of the manuscript (p. 142), after the end of the list of variants to a text identified as Cnut’s secular laws, we read: ‘Collata atq(ue) examinata Decemb. 11o Solstit. Hyemali, an. 1713. WE. EE’ (‘Collated and examined, December 11th, the winter solstice, 1713. WE. EE’).

William and Elizabeth Elstob The identification of the individuals represented by the initials is straightforward. GE and WE both refer to William Elstob (1674–1715), the Latin form of whose name was Gulielmus, while EE is his sister Elizabeth (1683–1756). The two had been orphaned by the time William reached the age of eighteen: their father died in 1688, their mother in 1692. The family was originally from the north of England, but between 1687 and 1690 William was educated at Eton College, and at the time of his mother’s death he was an undergraduate at The Queen’s College, Oxford; after gaining his Bachelor’s degree he was elected a fellow of University College, where he proceeded M.A. in 1697. While at Oxford William became involved in

ME Texts in Transition.indb 269

07/04/2014 00:03

270

Timothy Graham

Fig. 1  Tokyo, Takamiya Collection, MS 129, p. 84. William Elstob’s note dated 18 June 1714.

the circle of the ‘Oxford Saxonists’, an important group of scholars who for some forty years from the late 1670s participated in and promoted the study of the Old English language and the publication of Old English texts. Queen’s College played a major part in this movement, for it was at Queen’s that a lectureship in AngloSaxon studies (the first at Oxford University) was established in 1679; University College was also involved in the Saxonist movement during the mastership of Arthur Charlett (1692–1722), and the college took pride in the legend  –  at the time widely believed  –  that it had been founded in the ninth century by King Alfred. The Oxford Saxonists published several major Old English texts  –  among them the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Old English Heptateuch and the Old English version of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. Their most monumental achievement, however, was the publication between 1703 and 1705 of George Hickes’s Linguarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus (‘Treasury of the Ancient Northern Languages’) accompanied by Humfrey Wanley’s superb catalogue of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. The Thesaurus was in reality a collaborative enterprise involving all the Oxford Saxonists. William Elstob contributed to it an edition and Latin translation of Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, which he had originally published in 1701 and which Hickes quoted in its entirety in his ‘De linguarum veterum septentrionalium usu disssertatio epistolaris’ (‘Epistolary Dissertation on the Use of the Ancient Northern Languages’), which begins the Thesaurus. In introducing the Wulfstan text, Hickes describes William as ‘in literatura & antiquitate Septentrionali præclare eruditus’ (‘admirably learned in Northern

ME Texts in Transition.indb 270

07/04/2014 00:03

William Elstob’s Planned Edition of Anglo-Saxon Laws

271

literature and antiquities’).3 William also assisted Sir Andrew Fountaine with the dissertation on Anglo-Saxon coins that forms another part of the Thesaurus. William’s major project during the later 1690s was the preparation of an edition of the Old English version of Paulus Orosius’s Historiarum adversum paganos libri VII. At the time, the translation was believed to have been the work of King Alfred. The edition Elstob planned to print would therefore have formed part of the Oxford Saxonists’ effort to publish those vernacular works associated with the king. Humfrey Wanley alluded to Elstob’s project when, writing to Hickes in February 1698, he commented that ‘an honest Gentleman of this [i.e. University] College, may publish Orosius, and so compleat our Royal Founders works.’ 4 Lacking adequate financial backing, however, William was unable to publish his edition of Orosius, although his transcription of the text served as the basis for the edition published by Daines Barrington in 1773.5 A specimen of William’s prospective edition had, however, been printed at the Oxford University Press in 1699, and according to Elizabeth, it was her chance encounter with it that first stimulated her own interest in Anglo-Saxon language and literature.6 Elizabeth became the first woman known to have studied Old English since the sixteenth-century revival of interest in the language. In addition to assisting her brother with his scholarly projects, she launched several of her own and attracted the admiration of prominent members of the Oxford Saxonist circle, including George Hickes himself; she became known as ‘the Saxon nymph’.7 In 1702, when her brother was appointed rector of the united parishes of St Swithin and St Mary Bothaw in London, Elizabeth went to live with him at his residence in Bush Lane  –  within sight of St Paul’s Cathedral  –  and in the ensuing 3 G. Hickes, Linguarum vett. septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archæologicus (Oxford, 1703–5), part 1, pp. 98–106. Hickes’s comment about William Elstob occurs on p. 98. 4 See A Chorus of Grammars: The Correspondence of George Hickes and his Collaborators on the ‘Thesaurus Linguarum Septentrionalium’ , ed. R. L. Harris, Publications of the Dictionary of Old English 4 (Toronto, 1992), p. 199. 5 Elstob’s transcript survives as Oxford, Trinity College, MS 92. Barrington’s edition was published in London as The Anglo-Saxon Version, from the Historian Orosius. By Ælfred the Great. 6 Elizabeth describes her encounter with the Orosius specimen on pp. vi–vii of the preface to her edition of Ælfric’s homily on St Gregory (cited in n. 8 below): ‘Having accidentally met with a Specimen of K. Alfred’s Version of Orosius into Saxon, design’d to be publish’d by a near Relation and Friend [i.e. her brother], I was very desirous to understand it, and having gain’d the Alphabet, I found it so easy, and in it so much of the grounds of our present Language … as drew me in to be more inquisitive after Books written in that Language.’ A copy of the Orosius specimen is in London, British Library, MS Lansdowne 373, fols. 86–7. 7 The appellation is used by the diarist and antiquary Ralph Thoresby in a diary entry of July 1712 recording a visit to the Elstobs’ London home. See The Diary of Ralph Thoresby, F.R.S., ed. J. Hunter, 2 vols. (London, 1830), vol. 2, p. 131. For a fine assessment of Elizabeth’s contributions to Anglo-Saxon studies, see M. Gretsch, ‘Elizabeth Elstob: A Scholar’s Fight for Anglo-Saxon Studies’, Anglia 117 (1999), 163–200, 481–524.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 271

07/04/2014 00:03

272

Timothy Graham

years they pursued several scholarly projects both independently and together. In 1709 Elizabeth published her edition and Modern English translation of Ælfric’s homily on St Gregory, to which her brother contributed a Latin translation preceded by a preface in which he describes Elizabeth as ‘dulcis & indefessa studiorum meorum comes’ (‘sweet and tireless companion of my studies’).8 In 1715  –  the year of William’s death  –  appeared Elizabeth’s grammar of the Old English language. Entitled The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue, this was the first grammar of Old English to be written in English rather than Latin; Elizabeth explains in her ‘Apology for the Study of Northern Antiquities’, which serves as the preface to the work, that she was aiming her grammar at a female readership and had first been asked to write such a work by a young woman who desired to learn the Anglo-Saxon language but who did not have good Latin.9 Between 1709 and 1715 Elizabeth and her brother worked on two other major projects that never reached completion. Elizabeth wished to publish a complete edition of Ælfric’s homilies, accompanied by a translation and critical notes. Her transcript of the homilies was approvingly described by George Hickes as ‘the most correct I ever saw or read’, but publication never went beyond the issue of thirty-six pages of proofs by the university press at Oxford.10 The second major but unfinished project on which the Elstobs worked after 1709 was a new edition of the Anglo-Saxon laws. The project was apparently conceived by William but to some extent involved Elizabeth’s collaboration. It was an ambitious and wide-ranging undertaking, as is revealed by the set of proposals William drew up for it.11 First, he sought to provide a more accurate edition of those Anglo-Saxon laws that the antiquary William Lambarde had printed in his Archaionomia of 1568, the editio princeps of Anglo-Saxon laws. Lambarde’s work had been reissued, with the incorporation of some additional texts, by the Cambridge Anglo-Saxonist Abraham Wheelock in 1644, but neither Lambarde nor Wheelock had included in his edition the early Kentish laws (the laws of Kings Æthelberht, Hlothhere, Eadric

8 E. Elstob, An English-Saxon Homily on the Birth-Day of St Gregory (London, 1709), sig. G4v. 9 E. Elstob, The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue (London, 1715), p. ii. She there notes that ‘considering the Pleasure I my self had reaped from the Knowledge I have gained from this Original of our Mother Tongue, and that others of my own Sex, might be capable of the same Satisfaction: I resolv’d to give them the Rudiments of that Language in an English Dress.’ 10 Elizabeth’s transcript of Ælfric’s homilies survives as London, British Library, MSS Lansdowne 370–4 and Egerton 838. Hickes’s comment on her transcript occurs in a letter of December 1712 to Arthur Charlett in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ballard 12, fol. 129r; quoted in S. H. Collins, ‘Elizabeth Elstob: A Biography’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1970), p. 145. The thirty-six pages of proofs survive as British Library, Department of Printed Books, 695.1.8 and 224.e.17. 11 The proposals are quoted in S. Pegge, ‘An Historical Account of that Venerable Monument of Antiquity the Textus Roffensis’, Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica 25 (1784), pp. 1–32, at pp. 18–19; and in J. Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. 4 (London, 1812), pp. 120–1.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 272

07/04/2014 00:03

William Elstob’s Planned Edition of Anglo-Saxon Laws

273

and Wihtred), which survive in a single twelfth-century manuscript belonging to Rochester Cathedral; this manuscript, known as the Textus Roffensis, had been unknown to Lambarde when he published Archaionomia.12 William’s proposals establish that he planned to include these Kentish laws in his edition. The proposals also record his intention to examine and compare the medieval translations of the Anglo-Saxon laws into Latin, and to publish one or more of these translations if he deemed it worthwhile; in addition, he would publish the complete Latin translation of the laws made some decades earlier by the antiquary William Somner (1598– 1669). He would include in the edition a set of notes to the laws drawn from the writings of the antiquaries Sir Henry Spelman, Sir John Selden, Francis Junius, Sir Simonds D’Ewes, Johannes de Laet and George Hickes, and would add further notes based on his own study of the texts. The book was to begin with a general preface in which William would outline ‘the original and progress of the English Laws to the Norman Conquest, and thence to Magna Charta.’ Finally, the laws of each individual king would have their own preface; at the end of the book there would be a set of glossaries and indexes. There are interesting allusions to William’s work on this monumental project in the writings of his contemporaries. In a memoir on her brother’s life written in the 1730s, Elizabeth herself mentions his having compiled a ‘vast Collection of Materials towards Publishing a curious Edition of the Saxon Laws’, although she provides no more precise description of those materials.13 As early as 6 May 1709 Elizabeth had alluded to her brother’s having already made considerable progress on the project; in a letter of that date to Ralph Thoresby (1658–1725), where she summarizes her brother’s recent and planned work in the field of Anglo-Saxon studies, she remarks that ‘King Alfred’s translation of Orosius, he has ready for the press, and a great many materials towards the Saxon Laws, and a promise of more.’ 14 Records of Rochester Cathedral indicate that several months earlier, in December 1708, William had requested that the Textus Roffensis be sent to him in London; his request was evidently granted, for on 25 June 1712 the dean and chapter ordered the return of the manuscript.15 12 Formerly housed in Rochester Cathedral, the Textus Roffensis has since 1990 been kept at the Medway Archives and Local Study Centre, Strood, Rochester, under the shelfmark DRc/R1. 13 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ballard 63, p. x. I am most grateful to Dr Elizabeth Teviotdale of Western Michigan University for providing me with the text of this reference. 14 Letters of Eminent Men addressed to Ralph Thoresby, F.R.S., 2 vols. (London, 1832), vol. 2, p. 163. 15 The loan of the Textus Roffensis to William escaped the attention of earlier scholars, who believed that William must have been able to gain access to the manuscript while it was in the hands of John Harris, prebendary of Rochester Cathedral, who brought it to London while preparing his History of Kent, published in 1719 (Pegge, ‘Historical Account’, p. 10). The December 1708 request to borrow the manuscript and the dean and chapter’s June 1712 order to return it are recorded in Medway Archives and Local Study Centre, Records of the Dean and Chapter of Rochester, DRc AC/5, pp. 55, 95. These records actually refer

ME Texts in Transition.indb 273

07/04/2014 00:03

274

Timothy Graham

Thoresby makes several references to the project in his diary, where he records three visits to the Elstobs’ house in London in the summer of 1712. On 8 July Elizabeth showed him both a manuscript of Ælfric’s homilies that she had borrowed from Cambridge University Library in connection with her work on her edition of the Catholic Homilies and a transcript of the Textus Roffensis.16 Thoresby remarks that the transcript had been made by ‘a poor boy she keeps, most of it before he was quite ten years of age’, and comments that the boy was capable of imitating ‘the Saxon, and other antique hands, to a wonder’. The transcript is now London, British Library, MS Stowe 940. It includes two title pages, on fols. 3r and 21r, both naming its scribe as ‘Jacobus Faber’ (James Smith); the title on fol. 21r describes Smith as ‘puer decennis’ (‘ten-year-old boy’) and notes that he completed the work over a period of three months, while the title on fol. 3r records that William and Elizabeth Elstob carefully examined and collated the transcript in London on 23 May 1712 (that is, about a month before the dean and chapter of Rochester requested the return of the Textus Roffensis). Stowe 940 in fact includes copies only of the Textus Roffensis’s cartulary and its regnal lists, not its Anglo-Saxon laws. Elizabeth Elstob herself, however, prepared a fine transcript on parchment, for presentation to the library of Sir Robert Harley, of the Textus Roffensis’s texts of the early Kentish laws and King Æthelberht’s foundation charter for the church of Rochester. This transcript is now London, British Library, MS Harley 1866; Elizabeth presented it to Harley in 1713, and Humfrey Wanley, Harley’s librarian, noted that in it, ‘Mrs. Elstob hath finely imitated the Hand-writing of the … Textus Roffensis.’17 Thoresby alludes to William’s publication plans in his record of his second and third visits to the Elstobs’ house. On Sunday 10 August 1712, after attending St Swithin’s and hearing William preach, Thoresby dined with him, ‘and was much pleased with his learned design of the Saxon laws, which he showed me the manuscript of … and the curious transcript of the Textus Roffensis, and gave me a specimen of it, wrote as the whole manuscript was from the original by a boy under

to ‘Edward Elstub’ but the timing surely indicates that the loan was to William Elstob. John Harris seems to have brought the Textus Roffensis to London only after William had returned it to Rochester. When Harris himself finally returned it, the manuscript was fortunate to escape more or less unscathed from a potentially harmful accident: the ship in which it was transported capsized in rough weather, causing the manuscript to spend several hours under water, but the only sign of damage was some minor discoloration of the leaves. See J. Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. 9 (London, 1815), p. 775. I am grateful to Julian Pooley of the Nichols Archive Project, c/o Surrey History Centre, for drawing this incident to my attention. 16 Diary of Ralph Thoresby, ed. Hunter, vol. 2, p. 131. The Ælfric manuscript is believed to have been Cambridge University Library, MS Gg.3.28, which contains both the first and the second series of Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies. It is remarkable that Elizabeth was permitted to borrow the manuscript from the library. 17 A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols. (London, 1808–12; repr. Hildesheim, 1973), vol. 2, p. 272. See also Collins, ‘Elizabeth Elstob’, p. 133. For the date of Elizabeth’s presentation of her transcript to Harley, see Collins, p. 192.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 274

07/04/2014 00:03

William Elstob’s Planned Edition of Anglo-Saxon Laws

275

ten years of age, who waited at the table.’18 One week later, on 17 August, Thoresby was once again at the Elstob residence. On this occasion William presented him with a copy of his Essay on the Great Affinity and Mutual Agreement of the Two Professions of Divinity and Law, which William published a few months later, in 1713. In briefly describing the essay, Thoresby again alludes to Elstob’s intention to publish the Anglo-Saxon laws; he notes that in the essay, Elstob ‘shows much ancient learning relating to the Saxon laws, which he is going to publish, with the addition of many more, unknown to Lambert, Wheelock, &c.’ 19 Like Elizabeth’s memoir, Thoresby’s allusions to Elstob’s planned edition are short on specific details as to the materials Elstob had succeeded in preparing. A fuller description of those materials is, however, provided by David Wilkins (1685–1745), who in 1721 published his own edition of the Anglo-Saxon laws.20 In his preface Wilkins notes that the first edition of Anglo-Saxon laws had been published by Lambarde in 1568 but that it had included errors and omissions. He goes on to mention Abraham Wheelock’s reissue of Lambarde’s Archaionomia, into which Wheelock incorporated some materials not included in Lambarde’s original publication; but he observes that Wheelock’s publication itself had shortcomings that William Elstob sought to rectify: Editioni Lambardianæ ex Clar. Seldeni Eadmero addidit Whelocus Leges Gallo-Normannicas Guilielmi Conquestoris, & Henrici Primi Latinas. Ast viri hujus Clarissimi cura, quæ Cantabrigiæ Anno 1644 in Folio, lucem vidit, licet multis parasangis superaret Lambardianam, non tamen adeo placuit viris Eruditis, quin novam, secunda perfectiorem & meliorem votis expeterent. Hoc Guilielmus Elstob vir in Literis Anglo-Saxonicis versatissimus præstare instituerat. Hinc Wheloci vestigia premens Leges, quas Editio ejus exhibet, cum MSS. Cantabrigiensibus, Bodlejano, Roffensi, & Cottonianis contulerat, versioneque nova adornare proposuerat, ut sic Leges antea jam publici Juris factæ, ejus opera & studio emendatiores prodiissent. Verum morte immatura præreptus, propositum exequi non potuit.21 [To Lambarde’s edition Wheelock added, from the renowned Selden’s Eadmer, the Anglo-Norman laws of William the Conqueror and the Latin laws of Henry I. But the work of this most eminent man, which saw the light in folio size at Cambridge in 1644, although it surpassed Lambarde’s by far, nevertheless did not please learned men but that they expressed the wish for a new edition, better and more perfect than the second one 18 Diary of Ralph Thoresby, ed. Hunter, vol. 2, p. 155. 19 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 158. 20 D. Wilkins, Leges Anglo-Saxonicæ ecclesiasticæ & civiles; accedunt leges Edvardi Latinæ, Guilielmi Conquestoris Gallo-Normannicæ, et Henrici I Latinæ (London, 1721). 21 Wilkins, Leges Anglo-Saxonicæ, preface, sig. **1rv. ‘Seldeni Eadmero’ is a reference to John Selden’s edition of Eadmer’s Historia novorum, into which Selden incorporated the laws of William I and Henry I: J. Selden, Eadmeri, monachi Cantuariensis, historiæ nouorum, siue, sui sæculi libri VI (London, 1623).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 275

07/04/2014 00:03

276

Timothy Graham

[i.e. Wheelock’s]. This William Elstob, a man highly instructed in AngloSaxon letters, had determined to provide. For this reason, following hard in Wheelock’s footsteps, he had collated the laws included in his [Wheelock’s] edition with Cambridge, Bodleian, Rochester and Cottonian manuscripts, and had planned to equip them with a new translation, so that in this manner the public laws issued in former times would through his pains and industriousness have stood forth in a more correct form. But forestalled by an untimely death, he was unable to carry out his proposal.] As will be seen below, Wilkins’ description, with its reference to Elstob’s collation of the laws printed by Wheelock against specific manuscripts, coincides quite closely with the contents of Takamiya MS 129, thereby indicating that Wilkins had firsthand knowledge of Elstob’s materials.

Physical Description and Contents of Takamiya MS 129 The Takamiya manuscript contains a total of sixty-seven paper leaves. Although the manuscript now lacks a binding, most of the leaves are held together at the spine by the remnants of the sewing supports, thread and glue of a former binding; however, several leaves at the front and back have broken free and are now loose. Sixty-five of the leaves have a pencil pagination, apparently of the twentieth century, centred in the lower margins of their rectos. Two loose leaves (here called fols. 1–2), now placed at the front of the manuscript, lack this pagination; their content is also somewhat different from that of the rest of the manuscript, as will become clear in the description below. Although these two leaves are now separate from one another, they may originally have formed a bifolium.22 The first paginated leaf is numbered ‘13’, attesting to the former presence of six preceding leaves; the two unnumbered leaves, given the absence of any pagination on them and the difference in their content, should probably not be reckoned among those six leaves. These two leaves seem, however, to have been placed at the front of the manuscript for some time; centred in the upper margin of the first of them (fol. 1) is a small, rectangular paper label with the number ‘10’ entered in pencil, apparently a library mark or lot number (the label is visible in fig. 2). In addition to the modern pencil pagination, each individual item within the manuscript has its own ink pagination, entered in the upper margins on both rectos and versos by William Elstob. Thus the first item, which spans the two unnumbered leaves, has an ink pagination running from ‘1’ to ‘4’; the second item, spanning pp. 13–26, has its pages numbered in ink from ‘1’ to ‘14’; the third item, running from pp. 29–44, is paginated from ‘1’ to ‘16’; and so on. Throughout most of the manuscript, these ink numbers are generally entered to the left or right of Elstob’s 22 This is suggested by the first leaf ’s having the ‘Garden of Holland’ watermark, described below, while the second leaf has the ‘IV’ countermark; on both leaves the marks are oriented upside down.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 276

07/04/2014 00:03

William Elstob’s Planned Edition of Anglo-Saxon Laws

277

Fig. 2  Tokyo, Takamiya Collection, MS 129, fol. 1r. Opening of the Judex transcript.

running heads, which provide abbreviated titles for the individual items; the two unnumbered leaves, however, have no running heads. The manuscript includes three blank leaves (pp. 27–8, 51–2, 103–4), which mark transitions from one item to another. These leaves lack Elstob’s ink pagination, but they have been included in the modern pencil foliation. The quiring of the numbered leaves can be deduced both from the surviving thread and from examination of the watermarks in the paper  –  given that the orientation of the watermarks and countermarks can assist in establishing which leaves are conjoint with which. Pp. 13–20 probably formed a quire of two nested bifolia; pp. 21–8, 29–36 and 37–44 formed three quires, each consisting of two nested bifolia. From p. 45 onward, each quire consists of a single bifolium. The final leaf of the manuscript (pp. 141–2) is a singleton. The paper used for the manuscript displays two different watermarks. For approximately the first half of the manuscript, the mark is the popular design known as ‘Garden of Holland’ or ‘Maid of Dort’. The design shows a round, fenced enclosure, at the right of which sits a female figure holding a long pole that rises diagonally to the left, with a hat suspended from its tip. In front of the maid, in the centre left area of the enclosure, is a lion rampant holding a sword in its right paw and a set of arrows in its left. Above and to the left of the top of the enclosure is the inscription

ME Texts in Transition.indb 277

07/04/2014 00:03

278

Timothy Graham

‘pro patria’.23 The paper is countermarked with ‘IV’, the initials of the wellknown papermaker Jean Villedary.24 The ‘Garden of Holland’ design occurs on the first of the unnumbered leaves as well as on numbered leaves up until p. 65. The second design makes its first appearance on p. 69. It is another popular mark, ‘Arms of Amsterdam’, displaying a shield flanked by two rampant lions and topped by a crown above which is an orb surmounted by a cross; within the centre of the shield is a vertical band containing three X-shaped crosses. The paper showing this design is also countermarked with the initials ‘IV’. The two watermarks alternate with one another between pp. 69 and 115, with some sheets featuring one design, some the other. From p. 117 onward, only ‘Arms of Amsterdam’ appears. The marks attest that the paper used by Elstob was manufactured in Holland by a papermaker who specialized in production for the English market. The paper itself is now exceptionally brittle and fragile. Small portions of the edges of several leaves at the front and back of the manuscript have broken away; the damage is most severe on the first unnumbered leaf, where it has produced the loss of some text entered in the outer margin. Conservation of the leaves to prevent further damage is a clear desideratum. There is some staining to the leaves. In particular, a large, brownish damp stain covers the lower area of the leaves of much of the manuscript. This stain may be seen, somewhat faintly, on the first numbered leaf (p. 13); it is darker on subsequent leaves, then becomes lighter again, and is still visible on p. 119. There seems to be no trace of the stain on the two unnumbered leaves. The contents of the manuscript may be itemized as follows: 1 fols. 1–2  A transcription of the Old English text known as Judex.25 2 pp. 13–26  Variant readings to the laws of Ine, king of Wessex (688–726).26 On p. 13 Elstob has provided this item with the title ‘Var(iantes) Lect(iones) ad Leg(es) Inæ Regis e Textu Roffensi’ (‘Variant readings to the laws of King Ine from the Textus Roffensis’).27 23 The design closely resembles no. 127 in W. A. Churchill, Watermarks in Paper in Holland, England, France, etc., in the XVII and XVIII Centuries and their Interconnections (Amsterdam, 1935); but the countermark is ‘IV’, as in Churchill’s no. 133, rather than ‘AI’ as in no. 127. 24 On Villedary, see Churchill, Watermarks, pp. 21–2, where Churchill notes: ‘It is not known whether Villedary worked in conjunction with the other Dutch paper-makers, or whether they made use of his initials, which had become a hall-mark of excellence.’ 25 For this text, see Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. F. Liebermann, 3 vols. (Halle, 1903–16; repr. Aalen, 1960), vol. 1, pp. 474–6; and Eine altenglische Übersetzung von Alcuins De virtutibus et vitiis, Kap. 20 (Liebermanns Judex): Untersuchungen und Textausgabe, ed. R. Torkar (Munich, 1981). 26 For Ine’s laws, see Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, vol. 1, pp. 88–123; F. L. Attenborough, The Laws of the Earliest English Kings (Cambridge, 1922; repr. Felinfach, 2000), pp. 36–61. 27 Elstob’s abbreviation Var. could in fact be expanded as either Variantes or Variæ, as he uses both forms when he writes the word out in full. Whichever form he intended by the abbreviation, the meaning is the same.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 278

07/04/2014 00:03

William Elstob’s Planned Edition of Anglo-Saxon Laws

279

3 pp. 29–44  Variant readings to the laws of King Alfred (871–99). Elstob begins by providing on pp. 29–30 a transcription of the end of the introduction to Alfred’s laws,28 then provides variants to the law code proper.29 Elstob’s title (p. 29): ‘Leg(um) Aluredi Regis Var(iantes) Lect(iones)’ (‘Variant readings of the laws of King Alfred’). 4 pp. 45–9  Variant readings to the treaty between King Edward the Elder (899– 924) and the Viking leader Guthrum.30 Elstob’s title (p. 45)  –  influenced by the presentation of this text in the Textus Roffensis  –  incorrectly identifies the text as the treaty between Alfred and Guthrum: ‘Var(iantes) Lect(iones) ad Foedus Ælfredi R(egis) & Guthrumni R(egum) [sic]’. 31 5 pp. 49–50 Elstob’s transcription of a text on wergild.32 Elstob’s title (p. 49): ‘Supplementum ad Foedus Ælfredi & Guthrumni, & deinde Edovardi & Guthrumni e Textu Roffensi’ (‘Supplement to the treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, and thereafter of Edward and Guthrum, from the Textus Roffensis’). 6 pp. 53–6  Variant readings to the two law codes of King Edward the Elder.33 Elstob’s title (p. 53): ‘Var(iantes) Lect(iones) ad Leg(es) Edovardi Regis’. 7 pp. 57–9  Variant readings to the first and second law codes of King Edmund (939–46).34 Elstob’s title (p. 57): ‘Var(iantes) Lect(iones) ad Leg(es) Eadmundi Reg(is)’. 8 pp. 61–75  Variant readings to two of the law codes of King Athelstan (924–39)  –  the codes designated II and V Athelstan in modern scholarship.35 Elstob’s title (p. 61): ‘Var(iantes) Lect(iones) ad Leg(es) Æthelstani R(egis)’.

28 For the portion of the introduction transcribed, see Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, vol. 1, pp. 44–6, ‘On ðyssum ane dome mon mæg geþencan … licode eallum wel to healdene.’ 29 Cf. ibid., vol. 1, pp. 46–88; Attenborough, Laws of the Earliest English Kings, pp. 62–93. 30 For this text, see Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, vol. 1, pp. 128–34; Attenborough, Laws of the Earliest English Kings, pp. 102–9. 31 The Textus Roffensis does not include a copy of the treaty between Alfred and Guthrum, but the title of its copy of Edward-Guthrum implies that the text that follows is Alfred-Guthrum: ‘Þis syndon þa domas ðe Ælfred cyncg ⁊ Guþrum cyncg gecuron’ (‘These are the laws that King Alfred and King Guthrum decided upon’). See Textus Roffensis: Rochester Cathedral Library Manuscript A.3.5, Part I, ed. P. Sawyer, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 7 (Copenhagen, 1957), fol. 40r. Modern scholarship has shown that the Edward–Guthrum text does not genuinely date from the reign of Edward the Elder, but rather was composed in the early eleventh century by Wulfstan. See P. Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, vol. 1: Legislation and its Limits (Oxford, 1999), pp. 389–91. 32 For this text, see Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, vol. 1, pp. 392–4. 33 For I and II Edward, see ibid., vol. 1, pp. 138–44; Attenborough, Laws of the Earliest English Kings, pp. 114–21. 34 For I and II Edmund, see Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, vol. 1, pp. 184–90. 35 For II and V Athelstan, see ibid., vol. 1, pp. 150–69; Attenborough, Laws of the Earliest English Kings, pp. 126–43, 152–5.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 279

07/04/2014 00:03

280

Timothy Graham

9 pp. 77–84  Variant readings to the ecclesiastical and secular laws of King Edgar (957–75).36 Elstob’s title (p. 77): ‘Leges Eadgari Regis secundum Lectiones Variantes in Codice cum Dewesiano, tum Cottoniano’ (‘The laws of King Edgar according to the variant readings in both the D’Ewesian and the Cottonian manuscripts’). At the point where the secular laws begin (p. 80), Elstob provides the title, ‘Variæ Lectiones ad Leges Eadgari Regis Humanas atq(ue) Politicas’ (‘Variant readings to the human and political laws of King Edgar’). 10 pp. 85–102  Variant readings to the ecclesiastical laws of King Cnut (1016–35)  –  that is, the code known to modern scholars as I Cnut.37 Elstob’s title (p. 85): ‘Legum Regis Canuti Variantes Lectiones, secundum Exemplar Cod(icis) M(anu)s(crip)ti olim in Bibliotheca Dewesiana nunc autem in Harleyana’ (‘Variant readings of the laws of King Cnut, according to the version of the manuscript codex formerly in the D’Ewesian Library but now in the Harleian Library’). 11 pp. 105–42 Variant readings to the secular laws of King Cnut (II Cnut).38 Elstob’s title (p. 105): ‘Var(iantes) Lect(iones) ad Canuti R(egis) Leg(es) Sæcul(ares)’ (‘Variant readings to the secular laws of King Cnut’). All Old English words, phrases, and texts within the manuscript are written in a neat script that imitates Anglo-Saxon minuscule, not only employing the Anglo-Saxon special forms æsc, eth, thorn and wynn, along with the Tironian abbreviation for and, but also using round-backed d, low-set f, flat-topped g, r with descender, low-set s, and t that does not rise above the headline. Latin notes and translations are written in a rightward-sloping italic script of a kind typical for the early eighteenth century. Although two different scripts are used, throughout the manuscript a single hand seems to be at work: no change is detectable in the character of either the imitative Anglo-Saxon minuscule or the italic script. Given that William Elstob speaks in the first person in some of the initialled notes, it seems reasonable to conclude that the hand is his  –  that he alone was responsible for the actual writing of the manuscript. The help given by his sister, which he is at pains to acknowledge, presumably consisted in her collaboration in the checking of sources; the two could have worked together on this while William took upon himself the task of recording the fruit of their labours. In the following detailed discussion of the content of Takamiya MS 129, although William Elstob is identified as the sole scribe of the manuscript, Elizabeth’s collaborative role should be borne in mind.

36 These laws form a single code, although in Liebermann’s edition they are separated into two codes, II and III Edgar: see Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, vol. 1, pp. 194–206. Cf. Wormald, Making of English Law, vol. 1, p. 313. 37 For I Cnut, see Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, vol. 1, pp. 278–306. 38 For II Cnut, see ibid., vol. 1, pp. 308–70.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 280

07/04/2014 00:03

William Elstob’s Planned Edition of Anglo-Saxon Laws

281

The Judex Transcript The item on the unnumbered leaves (fols. 1–2) provides a complete transcription, accompanied by ancillary materials, of the Old English text known to modern scholars as Judex. The text is a brief treatise on judicial morals that translates the chapter De iudicibus (‘On Judges’) of Alcuin’s work De virtutibus et vitiis.39 It is found in just one Anglo-Saxon manuscript: London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A.i, part 1, fols. 48r–50v, where it occurs, along with another brief text, Romscot, between the chapter list for the laws of Kings Alfred and Ine and the laws themselves. Judex had not been included in William Lambarde’s Archaionomia of 1568, nor in Abraham Wheelock’s 1644 reissue of the Archaionomia. William Elstob’s transcription occupies a narrow column in the middle of each of the four pages onto which it is copied (see fig. 2). He heads it with a note identifying the manuscript in which Judex is to be found: ‘Codex MS. in Bibliotheca Cottoniana Volumine 125. folio 47.a’ (‘Manuscript codex in the Cottonian Library, vol. 125, fol. 47a’). He here refers to Nero A.i by the number assigned to it in the earliest catalogue of the Cottonian library;40 the folio number ‘47a’ records the page on which the text begins according to the early modern foliation of the manuscript, which at this point is one behind the current foliation. As can be seen from fig. 2, Elstob’s transcription is carefully and neatly executed in an imitation of AngloSaxon minuscule. Each new sentence of the transcript begins with a capital letter, as is also the case in Nero A.i. To make his capitals stand out more prominently, Elstob provided them with an infilling of red pigment; this is not a feature of Nero A.i, but the Elstobs introduced such highlighting of the initial letters of sentences in other transcripts that they made  –  for example, Elizabeth’s transcript of Ælfric’s homilies in London, British Library, MS Lansdowne 370, and her Textus Roffensis transcript in London, British Library, MS Harley 1866. Although Nero A.i is the only surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscript to contain the text of Judex, it was not the immediate source of Elstob’s transcript. Comparison of Elstob’s version with the text of Judex in Nero A.i reveals several minor differences between the two. For example, in places where Nero A.i uses the character thorn, Elstob’s transcript may show eth, and vice versa. In two places Elstob uses d where Nero has ð (genyderad for genyðerad, fol. 1v2, and forweordaþ for forweorðaþ, fol. 2r4). On fol. 1r22 Elstob writes heorta where Nero has heortan; on fol. 1v3 he has scyldegan for scyldigan. In one place the Cotton manuscript’s i becomes y in the transcript (hy, fol. 3r24). There are also several differences in punctuation: Elstob omits some punctuation marks that occur in Nero; he occasionally adds a mark not found there; and he may use a punctus where the Cotton manuscript has a punctus versus, and vice versa. These various differences establish that Elstob used as his immediate source the seventeenth-century copy of the Nero manuscript’s 39 See Wormald, Making of English Law, vol. 1, pp. 382–3, as well as the extended treatment in Eine altenglische Übersetzung, ed. Torkar. 40 See C. G. C. Tite, The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library: Formation, Cataloguing, Use (London, 2003), p. 130, entry for MS Nero A.i.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 281

07/04/2014 00:03

282

Timothy Graham

text of Judex that occurs on fols. 73r–74r of London, British Library, MS Harley 596, a collection of transcripts of largely Anglo-Saxon legal materials and charters compiled by the parliamentarian and antiquary Sir Simonds D’Ewes (1602–50). Almost every one of Elstob’s departures from the version of Judex in Nero A.i may be found in Harley 596. Especially indicative of Elstob’s reliance on the seventeenthcentury intermediary is his initial omission, on fol. 1r22, of the phrase wisra manna, which he subsequently added in the interline. The omission is to be explained by a more extensive omission in Harley 596, fol. 73v, where a total of eight words was first left out because of eyeskip between two occurrences of wisra manna in Nero A.i. The correction of this omission in Harley 596 required the insertion of a complete line of text in that manuscript; Elstob’s error in his own transcript was occasioned by his initial misunderstanding of the manner in which the inserted line is entered on the page in Harley 596. Even Elstob’s heading at the top of his transcript, quoted above, turns out merely to repeat, word for word, the heading that occurs in Harley 596. Elstob may, indeed, never have had Nero A.i in his hands. Like other early modern Anglo-Saxonists who transcribed or collated Old English texts, he was on occasion content to work from a fellow scholar’s copy rather than reverting to the original manuscript on which that copy was based.41 While the practice is understandable for an age lacking the ease and speed of modern travel and photographic technologies, it also produced some inaccuracies in the work accomplished. The space to left and right of the central column of Elstob’s Judex transcript is reserved for ancillary materials. In the left margin of fol. 1r Elstob has entered a fourteen-line note of which the first eight lines are copied from a note entered by Sir Simonds D’Ewes alongside the beginning of his Judex transcript in Harley 596. Elstob’s complete note is as follows (see fig. 2): Fragmentum hoc ad Leges Alfredi pertinens vetustissime exaratum in Codice cottoniano Volumine 125. cum plurimum discrepet ab ea parte Legum ejusdem Regis quæ in Textu Roffensi MS. reperiuntur inibi inserendum fol. 2. b. monendum duximus. Nota hæc occurrit in Apographo Dewesiano, cujus mihi nuper copia facta est, gratia Magnificentissimi D.D. Com. Oxon. & Mortimer, Summi Magnæ Britan. Thesaurarii. [We thought that it should be pointed out that this fragment pertaining to the laws of Alfred, written in a most ancient hand in the Cottonian codex, no. 125, since it differs considerably from that part of the laws of the same king found in the Textus Roffensis, should be inserted there [i.e. in the Textus Roffensis] on fol. 2b. This note occurs in the D’Ewesian apograph, of which a copy was recently made for me through the grace of the most magnificent Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, the Lord High Treasurer of Great Britain.] 41 See Malcolm Godden’s interesting comments on Elizabeth Elstob’s use of a transcript of Ælfric’s homilies while preparing her edition of Ælfric’s Life of St Gregory: M. Godden, ‘Old English’, in Editing Medieval Texts English, French, and Latin Written in England: Papers Given at the Twelfth Annual Conference on Editorial Problems, University of Toronto, 5–6 November 1976, ed. A. G. Rigg (New York, 1977), pp. 9–33 (p. 21, p. 32 n. 34).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 282

07/04/2014 00:03

William Elstob’s Planned Edition of Anglo-Saxon Laws

283

The ‘D’Ewesian apograph’ to which Elstob here refers is of course Harley 596 itself. Of particular interest is Elstob’s statement that a copy thereof was made for him by the Lord High Treasurer  –  that is, the great collector Sir Robert Harley (1661–1724). Sir Simonds D’Ewes’s entire collection of manuscripts passed into Harley’s hands in 1705, when Humfrey Wanley, Harley’s librarian, purchased it for £450. Six years later, in May 1711, Harley acquired the titles by which Elstob here refers to him. Both Elstob and his sister had occasional dealings with Harley; William, indeed, hoped that Harley might be able to offer him a preferment that would provide better financial support for his scholarly activities than his London vicarage.42 The copy of Harley 596 that William says Harley had ‘recently’ caused to be made for him seems not to have survived. The right margin of all four pages carrying the Judex transcript is largely reserved for a Latin translation of the Old English text. At the top of the right margin on fol. 1r, in a note of which some letters have been lost through damage to the edge of the leaf (see fig. 2), Elstob reveals that he has copied this Latin translation from p. 532 of Sir Henry Spelman’s Concilia, decreta, leges, constitutiones, in re ecclesiarum orbis Britannici, published in 1639. The translation is in fact not Spelman’s own, but that of the Quadripartitus, a Latin translation of the Anglo-Saxon laws that dates from the early twelfth century; more specifically, Spelman seems to have known the Quadripartitus translation of Judex from the version provided in the chronicle attributed to John of Brompton, fifteenth-century abbot of Jervaulx.43 The lower part of the right margin on fols. 1r, 1v and 2r carries a few notes on the text of the Latin translation, preceded on fol. 1r by Elstob’s record of the source of these notes. Some letters of Elstob’s comment have been lost through damage to the outer edge of fol. 1; the comment may be reconstructed as follows, with conjectural readings of the lost letters here placed within square brackets: Animadversiones seu Emendationes quæd[am] manu Gul. Somneri, Quas ex ejus Co[?dice] in meu(m) trascriptas [sic], huc transfere[ndas] putavi. [Certain observations or emendations in the hand of William Somner which, transcribed from his [?book] into mine, I have thought should be copied here.] The comment implies that Elstob had found the notes in a book belonging to Somner, perhaps his copy of Spelman’s Concilia, from which Elstob transcribed them into his own copy. William Somner (1598–1669) was a prominent AngloSaxonist of the mid-seventeenth century who in 1659 published the first printed dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon language. He had a strong interest in the laws of the

42 See Collins, ‘Elizabeth Elstob’, p. 129. 43 For the Quadripartitus translation of Judex as given in the Brompton chronicle, see R. Twysden, Historiæ Anglicanæ scriptores X (London, 1652), col. 903. Specific readings in the Latin text provided by Spelman agree more closely with the chronicle than with any other version of the Quadripartitus.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 283

07/04/2014 00:03

284

Timothy Graham

Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman kings.44 The notes of his that Elstob here records are simple observations on errors in the Latin translation provided by Spelman: for example, where Spelman has ‘quod non parcatur dimitti alicui’, Somner suggests that dimitti should be diviti; and where Spelman has ‘non potest accedere rectam Iudicii satisfactionem’, Somner prefers attendere to accedere. Elstob places a letter of the alphabet next to the point in the text to which each of Somner’s notes relates, then repeats the same letter at the beginning of the note; in other words, the letters function like footnote numbers. The letter a entered next to the word tum, to which the first of Somner’s notes relates, is visible in fig. 2. This first note reads as follows: ‘tum. Sed Somn. tamen. bene a[?utem] Lector, cum þonne sit vox Sax[onica]’ (‘tum. But Somner tamen. And rightly, Reader, since the Saxon word is þonne’). The note records Somner’s preference for the translation tamen over Spelman’s tum and Elstob’s approval of Somner’s emendation. Of particular interest is Elstob’s direct address to the reader, which is something one would expect to find in a printed text rather than in a set of personal papers. The presence of this address to the reader strongly implies that Elstob planned to print the Judex text along with its notes, just as they appear on these two leaves. In other words, if Elstob’s planned edition had borne fruit, these leaves could have served as printer’s copy. As already noted, these leaves do not share the modern pencil foliation that is entered on all the other leaves of the Takamiya manuscript. Originally they may not have formed part of the same booklet as the other leaves. They do, however, preserve important testimony to Elstob’s publication plans by revealing that he would have included Judex  –  a text never previously printed in its vernacular version  –  in his edition of the Anglo-Saxon laws.

The Lists of Variants The remainder of the Takamiya manuscript contains lists of variant readings to Anglo-Saxon law codes. The lists are organized chronologically by the reigns of the kings to whom the laws pertain: thus they start with the seventh-century Ine, proceeding to the ninth-century Alfred, to his son Edward the Elder, and so on. The only anomaly in this ordering is that the list of variants to the laws of King Edmund (939–46) precedes the list of variants to the laws of Edmund’s brother King Athelstan (924–39), who reigned before him. Apart from this aberration, the organization also accords with the order in which the laws occur in Lambarde’s Archaionomia. It is worth noting that this is not the order in which Elstob, assisted by his sister, collated the law codes: the dated notes in the manuscript indicate that the collation of the laws of King Cnut, the last king represented, was completed on 11 December 1713, whereas the collation of the laws of King Ine, the first king represented, was completed more than eight months later, on 4 44 Somner made a complete Latin translation of the Anglo-Saxon laws; as noted above, Elstob’s proposals for his edition reveal that he planned to incorporate Somner’s translation into it. Somner’s translation is described in J. Petheram, An Historical Sketch of the Progress and Present State of Anglo-Saxon Literature in England (London, 1840), p. 64.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 284

07/04/2014 00:03

William Elstob’s Planned Edition of Anglo-Saxon Laws

285

Fig. 3  Tokyo, Takamiya Collection, MS 129, p. 13. Beginning of the list of variants for the laws of King Ine.

September 1714. Elstob  –  or perhaps a later owner of his materials  –  must have rearranged his lists of variants into regnal order after the work of collation was complete. With minor exceptions, the format for listing the variants is similar throughout. Elstob precedes each variant reading with a letter of the alphabet which serves as a reference mark (see fig. 3). The variant reading itself often consists of a single word, but may also comprise a phrase of two or more words and may occasionally extend to several lines of text. Elstob groups the variants under chapter headings that accord with the chapter divisions of the particular law code whose variants he is recording: thus in fig. 3 the variant readings for the preface to Ine’s laws are grouped under the heading ‘Præfat.’, with the variants to chapter 1 of the law code beginning with the heading ‘CAP. I.’ Usually Elstob begins a new sequence of alphabetical referencing letters for each chapter of a law code. If a particular chapter has so many variants that it requires more than one complete sequence of alphabetical referencing letters, Elstob may begin a second alphabetical sequence  –  as he did for chapter 43 of

ME Texts in Transition.indb 285

07/04/2014 00:03

286

Timothy Graham

Alfred’s laws on pp. 43–4 and for chapter 1 of Edward the Elder’s laws on p. 53  –  or he may switch to a sequence of arabic numerals  –  as he did for chapter 1 of Alfred’s laws on p. 31, for chapter 2 of Cnut’s ecclesiastical laws on pp. 86–7, and elsewhere. The referencing system is slightly different for the laws of Edgar (pp. 77–84). In this case, for much of the text, rather than beginning a new alphabetical sequence for each new chapter, Elstob continues with the sequence used in the previous chapter; thus the variants to the preface of Edgar’s ecclesiastical laws have referencing letters running from a to f, those for chapter 1 run from g to o, and those for chapter 2 begin from p (p. 77). In addition to letters of the alphabet and arabic numerals, Elstob occasionally uses symbols as reference marks: for example, throughout his listing of variants for the laws of Edward the Elder (pp. 53–6), he notes at the head of the group of variants for each individual chapter that the Textus Roffensis lacks a title for the chapter, in each case preceding his comment ‘Titulus deest TR’ with a symbol and beginning his sequence of alphabetical reference letters only with the first actual variant for the chapter. Elstob’s listing of the variants presupposes that he and his sister were using a base text against which they compared the manuscripts whose variants he records. It seems likely a priori that this base text would have been an existing printed edition of the Anglo-Saxon laws, and this is confirmed by his comment at the end of the Ine variants (p. 26) that he and Elizabeth have compared the Textus Roffensis ‘cum Libro impresso Wheloci’ (‘with the printed book of Wheelock’): their base text was Wheelock’s 1644 reissue of Lambarde’s Archaionomia. A comparison between a sample of the variants Elstob records and the equivalent readings of Wheelock’s edition shows that the variants listed do indeed preserve spellings or phrasings different from those found in Wheelock. It seems highly likely that at the appropriate points in his copy of Wheelock, Elstob entered the same reference letters, numbers and symbols that he uses as reference markers for all the variants in his manuscript. For example, in the preface to Ine’s laws (see fig. 3), he would have entered the letter a next to the opening phrase in Wheelock’s edition, the letter b next to the edition’s reading geþeaht, the letter c next to the edition’s lære, and so on: the reference letters would have linked the appropriate point in the edition with the variants he records in his manuscript. That he did indeed enter marks in his base text is confirmed by an otherwise mysterious note that occurs at the end of his list of variants to the ecclesiastical laws of Cnut (p. 102). Following the reference letter w, Elstob writes ‘quæ uncis sunt inclusæ omittit D. adjungit autem C’ (‘D omits those [words] enclosed within brackets, but C adds them’).45 There are no words within brackets at this point in his list of variants; one must therefore conclude that he placed brackets around the phrase in question in his base text, accompanied by the reference letter w.46 Wheelock’s edition does indeed end 45 ‘D’ and ‘C’ are Elstob’s sigla for the two manuscripts that supplied his variants to Cnut’s laws. See below for identification of these manuscripts. 46 A similar note occurs on p. 17, within the variants to chapter 22 of Ine’s laws: ‘Quæ uncis sunt inclusæ TR. Hic loci non exhibet. nec B’ (‘[The words] that are enclosed in brackets the Textus Roffensis does not here display, nor does B’). Again, there are no brackets at

ME Texts in Transition.indb 286

07/04/2014 00:03

William Elstob’s Planned Edition of Anglo-Saxon Laws

287

I Cnut with a concluding formula  –  ‘A sy Godes nama ecelic gebletsod. ⁊ lof him. ⁊ wuldor. ⁊ wurþmint. symble æfre to woruld. Amen’47  – that does not occur in

Harley 55, Elstob’s D, but occurs as a sixteenth-century addition in Cotton Nero A.i, Elstob’s C.48 At two points in his lists of variants, Elstob provides what amount to full transcriptions of sections of text that he found in the Textus Roffensis. At the beginning of his variants for Alfred’s laws (pp. 29–30), he provides a transcript  –  preceded by the reference letter a  –  of the last portion of the preface, from ‘On þyssum anum dome mon mæg geþencan ðæt he æghwylcne dom’ to ‘hy þa cwædon. þ(æt) heom þ(æt) licode eallum wel to healdene.’49 The transcript occupies forty lines of Elstob’s manuscript. At its head he provides a reference to the page and line number on which this portion of the preface begins in Wheelock’s edition: ‘PRÆF. pag. 21. lin. 28’  –  thereby offering further confirmation that Wheelock’s edition served as his base text. His probable reason for transcribing such a substantial portion of text was that there are numerous, although largely minor, variations between the version of this passage in the Textus Roffensis and the one printed by Wheelock. Elstob provides another straight transcription on pp. 49–50, at the end of his list of variants to the treaty between Edward and Guthrum. In his source manuscript, the Textus Roffensis, the original scribe immediately followed his copy of the treaty with a text on the payment of compensation to the kin of a murdered man, apparently without realizing that this was a separate text.50 Known to modern scholars as Wergeld, this text had not been included in the Archaionomia. Elstob’s title for it  –  ‘Supplementum ad Foedus Ælfredi et Guthrumni, et deinde Edovardi et Guthrumni e Textu Roffensi’  –  merely acknowledges the position it occupies in the Textus Roffensis. All the manuscripts used for compiling the lists of variants can be easily identified. The most important was the Textus Roffensis, the manuscript that was unknown to William Lambarde at the time he published Archaionomia but that was well known to the Elstobs; as noted above, William Elstob was able to borrow it from Rochester Cathedral, and (assisted by the ten-year-old James Smith) the Elstobs prepared their own transcripts of portions of it. Identified throughout the lists of variants as ‘TR’, the Textus Roffensis was the sole source for the variants to the treaty between Edward and Guthrum (pp. 45–9), for I and II Edward (pp. 53–6), for II Edmund (pp. 58–9) and for II and V Athelstan (pp. 61–75). For the variants to the laws of Ine this point in the manuscript, so Elstob must be referring to brackets he entered in his copy of Wheelock’s edition. 47 Historiæ ecclesiasticæ libri V … quibus accesserunt Anglo-Saxonicæ leges, ed. A. Wheelock (Cambridge, 1644), p. 107 within Archaionomia. 48 See A Wulfstan Manuscript Containing Institutes, Laws, and Homilies: British Museum Cotton Nero A. I, ed. H. R. Loyn, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 17 (Copenhagen, 1971), fol. 16r, outer margin. 49 See Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, vol. 1, pp. 44–6. In the Textus Roffensis this portion of text occurs on fols. 15r–16r: see Textus Roffensis, ed. Sawyer. 50 See Textus Roffensis, ed. Sawyer, fol. 41v.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 287

07/04/2014 00:03

288

Timothy Graham

and Alfred (pp. 13–26, 29–44), Elstob used a second manuscript in addition to the Textus Roffensis. In both cases he gave that second manuscript the siglum ‘B’. His note at the end of the Ine variants (p. 26), referring to ‘Codice Benedict. in eodem Coll.’, establishes that ‘B’ was a manuscript in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: in the early modern period the college was frequently referred to as ‘Benet College’ because of its proximity to St Benet’s (i.e. St Benedict’s) Church, where members of the college worshipped. The only complete copy of the laws of Ine and Alfred among the manuscripts at Corpus Christi College is to be found in MS 173, the Parker Chronicle and Laws.51 A comparison between that manuscript and the variant readings that Elstob attributes to his ‘B’ proves that CCCC 173 was indeed the source of those readings.52 For both Ine’s and Alfred’s laws, Elstob evidently added the B variants to his lists only after he had recorded those from the Textus Roffensis; there is often a clearly detectable change in the ductus of his script and/or the colour of his ink for the B variants (as can be seen in fig. 3), and in many cases he has had to squeeze them somewhat awkwardly into available space, as on pp. 16, 22, 36 and 40, where he was obliged to use the margin. It accords with this that his title for the list of Ine variants refers only to the Textus Roffensis as a source; his use of the Corpus Christi manuscript seems to have been an afterthought.53 Elstob uses ‘B’ as a siglum a third time, in his listing of variants to I Edmund (pp. 57–8). In this case, however, his source was not CCCC 173, which does not contain the text of I Edmund. Nor was it CCCC 383, the college’s other major manuscript of Anglo-Saxon laws; while the latter manuscript does indeed include I Edmund, its readings do not agree with those recorded by Elstob. Rather, his source was the copy of I Edmund to be found on pp. 96–7 of CCCC 201, part 2, a miscellaneous collection of homilies, laws and ecclesiastical texts. Again, the positioning of the B variants establishes that Elstob consulted this Corpus Christi manuscript only after he had already recorded the variants of the Textus Roffensis. For the remaining laws covered in the manuscript  –  II and III Edgar (pp. 77–84) and I and II Cnut (pp. 85–142)  –  the Textus Roffensis could not serve as a source for the variants recorded by Elstob as it does not include these law codes. Rather, for the laws of both kings, Elstob used sources that he identifies by the sigla ‘C’ 51 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 173 is available in a facsimile edition: The Parker Chronicle and Laws (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS. 173): A Facsimile, ed. R. Flower and A. H. Smith, EETS o.s. 208 (London, 1941; repr. London, 1973). 52 An imperfect copy of the laws of Alfred and Ine is to be found in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 383, but the readings of that manuscript do not agree with the variants recorded by Elstob. 53 Elstob made a full transcript of the text of the laws of King Alfred from CCCC 173 in his volume of collectanea, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. lang. c.11, fols. 118r–121v. In a note at the end of this transcript (fol. 121v) he comments that he and his sister checked the transcript on 24 August 1714  –  that is, just eleven days before the two completed their collation of the laws of Ine against Wheelock’s edition and the Corpus Christi manuscript. The note on p. 26 of the Takamiya manuscript dates that collation to 4 September.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 288

07/04/2014 00:03

William Elstob’s Planned Edition of Anglo-Saxon Laws

289

and ‘D’. His title at the head of the Edgar variants reveals that the sigla refer, respectively, to a Cottonian and a D’Ewesian manuscript, identifiable as London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A.i, which had belonged to Sir Robert Cotton, and London, British Library, MS Harley 55, which had belonged to Sir Simonds D’Ewes before passing into the Harleian collection. Harley 55 and Nero A.i are two of the most important manuscripts containing laws to survive from the Anglo-Saxon and early Anglo-Norman period; each consists of two originally separate parts that were subsequently bound together. The two parts of Nero A.i actually contain two different copies of III Edgar, although the second copy, on fols. 88r–89r, is fragmentary, having lost its beginning. In his listing of variants to III Edgar, Elstob uses the identifier ‘Fragm. C’ to refer to variants derived from this fragmentary copy. Although Nero A.i and Harley 55 were the ultimate sources for the Edgar variants, Elstob’s note on p. 84 (see fig. 1), at the end of his Edgar listings, reveals that the process of compiling the variants involved more than a straight dependence on these two Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. He begins the note by observing that he first compiled his variants by transcribing them from a paper manuscript of large folio size that had formerly belonged to Sir Simonds D’Ewes and was now no. 41.A.9 in the Harleian collection; only thereafter did he proceed, with his sister’s help, to examine the parchment manuscript of small folio size, no. 34.A.16 in the Harleian collection (‘Uariantes hasce Lectiones ipse Transcripsi ex Manuscripto Codice Chartaceo in folio majori, Quod olim peculium erat D. Simondsii Dewesii jam vero Honoratissimi D.D. Comitis Oxon. Summi Magnæ Brit. Thesaurarii. 41.A.9. Postea ad examen Autographi membranacei in folio minori secunda cura revocavi, WE. adjuvante studiorum meorum indivisa comite EE. sorore mea dilectissima. 34.A.16’). The paper manuscript to which he refers as ‘41.A.9’ is Harley 596, Sir Simonds D’Ewes’s own set of transcripts of Anglo-Saxon legal materials compiled from various sources; the parchment manuscript he identifies as ‘34.A.16’ is Harley 55.54 An examination of Harley 596 reveals that it provided every single one of the variants to II and III Edgar recorded by Elstob in his own manuscript. D’Ewes’s transcript of the Edgar laws, copied from Harley 55, occurs on fols. 58v–60v of Harley 596. In the outer margin of each page of his transcript, D’Ewes has recorded the variant readings of Nero A.i, identified as ‘C’. Elstob’s procedure as he collated the laws of Edgar was clearly to set Harley 596 alongside his copy of Wheelock’s edition. Every time he noticed a variation between Wheelock’s printed text and the main text of D’Ewes’s transcript, he recorded the variant with the designation ‘D’; all of his ‘C’ variants, including those designated as ‘Fragm. C’, he simply copied from the margins of Harley 596. His dependence on the D’Ewes transcript is confirmed by his copying of comments and symbols found in the transcript. For example, on p. 78 of his manuscript, he records a phrase from 54 For a listing of the current and former shelfmarks of the manuscripts in the Harleian collection, see the table in Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts, vol. 1, unnumbered page immediately following the Second Preface.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 289

07/04/2014 00:03

290

Timothy Graham

chapter 3 of II Edgar, places brackets around the phrase, and notes, ‘Non habet hæc uncis inclusa C’ (‘C does not have these [words] enclosed in brackets’). Exactly the same comment is found in the outer margin of fol. 58v of Harley 596. Again, on p. 79, Elstob records six lines of text from chapter 5 of II Edgar; immediately below, he records C’s variant readings to these lines, linking each variant to the relevant point in the text with a pair of matching symbols that exactly replicate the symbols found on fol. 59r of Harley 596. On p. 84, at the end of his listing of Edgar variants, Elstob copies out the complete text of chapter 8 of III Edgar, placing this comment in the margin next to the beginning of the passage: ‘sequentia hæc usq(ue) ad finem in codice Cottoniano & Lambarde hiulca & male prorsus cohærentia in Fragmento vero Cottoniano ut & hic plenius veriusq(ue) leguntur’ (‘these following [words], up to the end, [occurring] with gaps and cohering thoroughly badly in the Cottonian book and in Lambarde, are to be read more fully and more truly in the Cottonian fragment, as also here’). He has copied the entire comment from fol. 60r of Harley 596. Elstob’s dependence on Harley 596 means that some of the variants he records actually preserve erroneous spellings found in Harley 596, where D’Ewes miscopied either the text of Harley 55 or the variant readings he found in Nero A.i. While there is no reason to doubt Elstob’s statement, in his note on p. 79, that he and his sister examined Harley 55 itself following his consultation of Harley 596, it is the latter that was his real source for the Edgar variants. The variants to I and II Cnut tell a similar story. Again the sources of Elstob’s variants are identified as ‘C’ and ‘D’, but again Elstob was dependent on the transcript of I and II Cnut to be found on fols. 60v–73r of Harley 596. Elstob’s title at the head of his variants for I Cnut (p. 85) states that he has compiled them ‘secundum Exemplar Cod(icis) M(anu)s(crip)ti olim in Bibliotheca Dewesiana nunc autem in Harleyana’ (‘according to the version of the manuscript codex formerly in the D’Ewesian Library but now in the Harleian Library’). Below this title Elstob transcribes the rubricated title of the law code as it occurs in Harley 55, but accompanies this with a note about the title which he has copied from Harley 596, thereby establishing his use of the latter. The note reads: Hæc omnia quæ præcedunt, in meo M(anu)s(cript)o [nimirum D. Simondsii Dewesii] codice rubris literis depicta, desunt in M(anu)s(cript)o Cottoniano, atq(ue) in Willielmi Lambardi, & Abr. Wheeloci editis Exemplaribus. [All that precedes, rendered in red letters in my [that is, Sir Simonds D’Ewes’s] manuscript codex, is lacking in the Cottonian manuscript, and in the printed versions of William Lambarde and Abraham Wheelock.] An interesting feature of the transcript of I and II Cnut in Harley 596 is that most of the marginal variants recording the readings of Nero A.i are in the hand not of D’Ewes, but of the great Dutch philologist Francis Junius (1591–1677), who spent a significant portion of his career in England and was for a time an associate of D’Ewes’s. From the middle of fol. 60v of Harley 596, these variants are in a firm script easily recognizable as that of Junius to anyone familiar with his transcripts

ME Texts in Transition.indb 290

07/04/2014 00:03

William Elstob’s Planned Edition of Anglo-Saxon Laws

291

of Old Englist texts; the variants are, moreover, attributed to Junius in the Harley catalogue.55 Elstob was aware of Junius’s contribution to this part of Harley 596: he mentions Junius’s name several times in his listings for I Cnut (although not in those for II Cnut, apart from a single reference on p. 105). For example, on p. 92 his variant p for chapter 7 quotes a phrase that he notes does not occur in ‘D’: ‘has voces D. omittit, sed scribuntur supra lineam Junii manu’ (‘D omits these words, but they are written above the line in Junius’s hand’).56 On fol. 63r of Harley 596 the phrase does indeed occur as an interlinear insertion in Junius’s hand. But Elstob was also occasionally misled by Junius’s contributions to Harley 596. On p. 88, as his variant e to chapter 4 of I Cnut, Elstob records the words ‘⁊ þ(æt) he hada gehwylcre weorðian’, commenting that these words are in ‘D’ but that they are omitted in ‘C’ (‘hasce autem voces omittit C’). The phrase does indeed occur in Harley 55, the source of the D’Ewesian transcript  –  but it was originally omitted in error from the transcript. Junius set this right by adding the words in the interline of fol. 61r of Harley 596, but for some reason Elstob then drew the incorrect conclusion that the phrase did not occur in Nero A.i, which does in fact include it.57 A further error occurs on p. 90 of Elstob’s manuscript, where he records that at the end of chapter 5 of I Cnut, ‘D’ has the reading ‘swa mid þryfealde swa mid anfealdre lade. be þam þe seo dade sy’. The actual reading of Harley 55 is ‘swa mid þryfealde lade. be þam þe seo dade sy’.58 On fol. 63r of Harley 596 Junius has added the words ‘swa mid anfealdre’ in the interline, not because these words were erroneously omitted from the D’Ewesian transcript of Harley 55, but because they occur at this point in Nero A.i; Elstob has again misinterpreted Junius’s addition because of his failure to consult the original manuscripts themselves. The accuracy of Elstob’s work on Cnut’s laws thus suffers from his dependence on Harley 596.

Other Materials; The Fate of Elstob’s Papers Takamiya MS 129 provides invaluable, hitherto unstudied evidence of William and Elizabeth Elstob’s collaboration on a planned new edition of the Anglo-Saxon laws  –  but it also raises tantalizing questions. It is notable, for example, that it includes no list of variants for the laws of King Æthelred (978–1016). Lambarde’s Archaionomia had included the texts of I and II Æthelred, and I Æthelred was among the law codes to be found in the Textus Roffensis, where it occurs on 55 Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts, vol. 1, p. 362, entry for Harley 596, item 55: ‘Leges Canuti Regis, ex eodem exemplari MSto. in Bibliotheca Deuuesiana; cum Codice Cottoniano per Franciscum Junium collata’ (‘The Laws of King Cnut, from the same manuscript in the D’Ewesian library, collated with the Cottonian manuscript by Francis Junius’). 56 Elstob’s references to Junius are sometimes in abbreviated form: ‘Jun. man.’ (as on p. 90) or simply ‘J.m.’ (as on p. 97). 57 See Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, vol. 1, p. 284, which records the occurrence of the phrase in both Harley 55 and Nero A.i. 58 See Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, vol. 1, p. 288.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 291

07/04/2014 00:03

292

Timothy Graham

fols. 46r–47r. It would seem likely a priori that Elstob would have compiled a list of the variant readings of I Æthelred, and it is curious not to encounter such a list in the manuscript, where its natural place would have been between the variants for the laws of Edgar and those for the laws of Cnut. One also wonders what would have been the content of the now missing leaves at the front of the manuscript, which were still present at the time the modern pencil foliation was entered. As the main purpose of the manuscript is to provide variant readings for the law codes of the Anglo-Saxon kings published by William Lambarde, with the lists of variants arranged chronologically by reign, and as the first such list in the manuscript as it survives pertains to King Ine, the earliest king represented in the Archaionomia, it is difficult to conjecture what might have been on the missing leaves. The sixty-seven leaves of the Takamiya manuscript hardly amount to a ‘vast Collection of Materials’ such as, in her memoir on her brother’s life, Elizabeth Elstob attested that William had accumulated in his work on the Anglo-Saxon laws. Clearly, then, the manuscript must represent merely a portion of the work accomplished. A further portion is found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. lang. c.11. Although this manuscript has been cited in recent scholarly work, it has not yet been the subject of a detailed analysis.59 Comprising a total of 127 leaves, it contains, for the most part, William Elstob’s transcriptions of texts from the Textus Roffensis. Most noteworthy are his transcriptions of the laws of the early Kentish kings on fols. 17v–40r. He accompanies these transcriptions with Latin translations and with sets of marginal notes drawn in part from the work of earlier scholars and in part from his own observations; he also includes information about the Kentish kings quoted from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and the works of other historians such as William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon and John of Brompton. These materials, then, correspond quite closely to the description of Elstob’s plans in the proposals for his edition; as noted above, those proposals announced his intention to accompany the Old English texts of the laws with translations, notes and prefaces. The materials in MS Eng. lang. c.11 could have provided the basis for a printed edition of the early Kentish laws, which had never previously been published. On the inside of the front cover of the Bodleian manuscript is entered the letter ‘B’. The manuscript is therefore identifiable as the ‘scripta nostra collectanea Lib. B’ (‘our written collectanea, book B’) mentioned by Elstob in a note in the Takamiya manuscript.60 The existence of this volume implies that Elstob had another set of 59 Citations occur in S. Keynes, ‘The Cult of King Alfred’, Anglo-Saxon England 28 (1999), 225–356 (p. 267 n. 192), and Gretsch, ‘Elizabeth Elstob’, p. 175 n. 45. I hope to devote a future study to MS Eng. lang. c.11. 60 This note occurs on p. 75, following the list of variants to the laws of Athelstan. Elstob observes in the note that Wheelock’s edition follows Athelstan’s laws with a chapter titled Be werum that does not occur in its entirety at this point in the Textus Roffensis, although that manuscript does include the final portion of the chapter, in transposed order, on fol. 39v; he adds that this portion can be found in book B of his collectanea: ‘Caput Notissimum Be werum. T.R. hic non exhibet totum: partem tamen a Ceorles scilicet

ME Texts in Transition.indb 292

07/04/2014 00:03

William Elstob’s Planned Edition of Anglo-Saxon Laws

293

collectanea labelled ‘A’. There is indeed a reference to such a volume within the Bodleian manuscript, where, in the inner margin of fol. 6v, alongside a reference to the Textus Roffensis’s copy of the laws of William the Conqueror, Elstob comments, ‘vide Librum apographoru(m) meoru(m). A’ (‘see book A of my transcripts’). Exactly what this volume contained must remain a matter of conjecture, as it seems not to have survived. It is, however, possible that between them, the two volumes of collectanea and the Takamiya manuscript represented the full extent of William Elstob’s work on the Anglo-Saxon laws. The fate of William’s papers following his death on 3 March 1715 is intriguing. Those of them that were in his London house at the time of his death would have remained in the hands of his sister, who lived with him. But Elizabeth came upon hard times following her brother’s death, as she was left to administer his estate and discharge his debts.61 By 1718 she was obliged to abandon London, perhaps in order to avoid the threat of being condemned to debtor’s prison.62 She apparently disappeared into Worcestershire, assuming the name ‘Frances Smith’; it was at Evesham in Worcestershire that the antiquary George Ballard (1705/6– 55) rediscovered her in 1735, when she was in charge of a small private school, earning one groat per child per week. Ballard befriended Elizabeth, drawing her to the attention of potential patrons; as a result, in 1739 she was able to assume the position of governess within the household of Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (1715–85), Duchess of Portland, the granddaughter of Sir Robert Harley. Elizabeth retained this position until her death in 1756, although she never returned to her Anglo-Saxon studies. In a letter of 21 July 1748 Elizabeth mentioned to Ballard what had happened to the bulk of her papers at the time of her departure from London: ‘at my first going into Worcestershire, I entrusted my manuscripts and books with several other things in the hands of a Person, with whom I believ’d they wou’d be very safe, but to my great surprize and grief I heard soon after she was gone to the West Indies to a Daughter that was settled there and cou’d never hear of her since.’63 Although Elizabeth seems not to have known what subsequently happened to the papers, it is possible to reconstruct their fate from references in a variety of eighteenth-century sources. Apparently her uncle Charles Elstob  –  who was a prebendary of Canterbury Cathedral from 1686 until 1721 and in whose Kentish household Elizabeth had ad geweorþod sed transpositum ostendit, fol. 39b. petenda autem ex scriptis nostris collectaneis Lib. B.’ Elstob’s transcription of this portion of text from the Textus Roffensis occurs on fol. 107v of MS Eng. lang. c.11. 61 For a succinct account of Elizabeth’s life following her brother’s death, see S. F. D. Hughes, ‘Elizabeth Elstob (1683–1756) and the Limits of Women’s Agency in Early-EighteenthCentury England’, in Women Medievalists and the Academy, ed. J. Chance (Madison, WI, 2005), pp. 3–24 (pp. 14–16). This part of Elizabeth’s life is treated at greater length in Collins, ‘Elizabeth Elstob’, pp. 192–236. 62 Collins, ‘Elizabeth Elstob’, p. 192. 63 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ballard 43, item 38; quoted in Collins, ‘Elizabeth Elstob’, p. 193, and, in abbreviated form, in Hughes, ‘Elizabeth Elstob’, p. 15.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 293

07/04/2014 00:03

294

Timothy Graham

passed her childhood after the death of her mother  –  was able to acquire the items Elizabeth had left with her friend. His possession of these materials is mentioned by the antiquary Samuel Pegge (1704–96) in his account of the Textus Roffensis published in 1784.64 That Elizabeth was seemingly unaware that Charles Elstob had obtained her and her brother’s papers can be explained by her apparent estrangement from her uncle during this period of her life.65 Charles Elstob died in 1721. Correspondence between George Ballard and the antiquary Joseph Ames (1687–1759) dating from 1737 reveals that Ames was able to acquire at least some of the Elstob papers, perhaps at the sale of Charles Elstob’s estate.66 On 24 May 1737 Ballard wrote to Ames: ‘Some time ago I was informed that you had purchased the MS papers of the incomparably learned and ingenious Mrs. Elstob. I shall be glad to be certainly informed that her invaluable papers are in such a careful hand.’67 We do not have Ames’s reply, but it prompted a further letter from Ballard, dated 29 June, in which he comments: ‘I am very much pleased to understand that you have preserved the papers of Mr. and Mrs. Elstob. … I should take it extremely kind if you would oblige me with a short account of those papers.’68 Ames evidently supplied such an account  –  which revealed to Ballard that he had by no means succeeded in acquiring all the Elstob papers. In his next letter, dated 30 July, Ballard writes: ‘My best acknowledgments are due for your last epistle, and Catalogue of Mr. and Mrs. Elstob’s manuscript papers; with which although I was greatly pleased, yet at the same time I was much grieved to find that so many of their valuable papers have escaped your hands.’ 69 Ballard knew that there were significant gaps in Ames’s acquisition because Elizabeth Elstob had in the meantime provided him with a list of her brother’s papers, including in the list several items unknown to Ames. What exactly Ames had managed to acquire can be gleaned, at least in part, from other eighteenth-century references. His collection included five of the six volumes of Elizabeth’s transcriptions and translations of Ælfric’s homilies (London, British Library, MSS Lansdowne 370–4);70 William Elstob’s transcription of the Old English Orosius (Oxford, Trinity College, MS 92); and the transcription 64 Pegge, ‘Historical Account’, p. 11. 65 Collins, ‘Elizabeth Elstob’, p. 194. 66 It was Pegge’s opinion that the sale of Charles Elstob’s estate furnished the occasion for Ames’s acquisition of the papers (‘Historical Account’, p. 11); the Ballard–Ames correspondence, however, does not reveal how the papers came into Ames’s hands. I am most grateful to Julian Pooley for drawing my attention to the exchange of letters between Ballard and Ames. 67 The letter is printed in J. Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, vol. 4 (London, 1822), p. 210. 68 Ibid., p. 211. 69 Ibid., p. 212. 70 For Ames’s possession of these five volumes, see Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ballard 40, fol. 137, where it emerges that in the autumn of 1747 Ballard was negotiating with Ames for the purchase of the volumes on Elizabeth’s behalf; see also Collins, ‘Elizabeth Elstob’, pp. 238–9. The sixth volume (London, British Library, MS Egerton 838) had evidently already become separated from the rest.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 294

07/04/2014 00:03

William Elstob’s Planned Edition of Anglo-Saxon Laws

295

of portions of the Textus Roffensis by the ten-year-old James Smith, the Elstobs’ serving-boy (London, British Library, MS Stowe 940). Whatever Ames had acquired was subsequently dispersed at the posthumous auction of his collection in 1760. Pegge obtained the Orosius transcription and claims to have acquired James Smith’s Textus Roffensis transcript. His claim, however, contradicts notes at the front of the transcript itself, which record that at the Ames auction it was bought by Matthew Duane (1707–85), subsequently passing to Duane’s nephew, Michael Bray, from whom it was purchased in 1798 by the antiquary Thomas Astle, himself a keen imitator of ancient scripts and the author of a major work on The Origin and Progress of Writing, published in 1784; it then passed, with the rest of Astle’s manuscripts, into the Stowe collection.71 Nowhere is there any indication that Ames had been able to lay his hands on William’s materials for his proposed edition of the Anglo-Saxon laws. Those materials seem to have had a different fate, and again there are eighteenth-century allusions that cast some revealing light. Before his death William had lent his legal materials to Judge John Fortescue Aland (1670–1746), to assist the latter with the publication in 1714 of The Difference between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy   –  a work originally written in the fifteenth century by Aland’s ancestor, the great political theorist and legal writer Sir John Fortescue.72 Aland evidently retained William’s materials after the latter’s demise. In August 1716 David Wilkins, who was then preparing his own edition of the Anglo-Saxon laws, sought the assistance of his patron William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle  –  whom William Elstob had served as chaplain  –  in gaining access to William’s materials. In a letter to Nicolson, Wilkins noted that ‘It would be some assistance to me to have the sight and use of them, if, by your Lordship’s intercession, I could be favoured with them.’ 73 Four months later, Wilkins repeated his request, observing that ‘Mr. Solicitor General [i.e. Aland] has got all Mr. Elstob’s labours upon the Saxon Laws; he was pleased to give me hopes of having them. Your Lordship’s intercession for it will effectually procure me the use of what I should absolutely have towards completing my edition.’74 Apparently Wilkins was able to obtain his wish, for on 14 July 1717 he wrote to Nicolson that ‘I have almost finished every thing relating to my Saxon design. … I want nothing of his [Elstob’s] whole collection.’ 75

71 On fol. 1r of MS Stowe 940 is a note signed by Astle, recording his purchase of the manuscript from Bray and the line of transmission from Ames to Duane to Bray; on fol. 2r is a note, presumably by Duane (so Astle believed, for he refers to it as ‘Mr. Duane’s Note’), recording the purchase of the manuscript at the Ames auction. As for William’s Orosius transcript, Pegge entrusted it to Daines Barrington (1727/8–1800), who used it as the basis for his edition of the Old English Orosius, published in 1773. The manuscript subsequently passed into the library of Trinity College, Oxford. 72 The loan to Aland is noted in Collins, ‘Elizabeth Elstob’, pp. 185–6. 73 See Letters on Various Subjects, Literary, Political, and Ecclesiastical, to and from William Nicolson, 2 vols. (London, 1809), vol. 2, p. 447. 74 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 456–7. 75 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 462–3.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 295

07/04/2014 00:03

296

Timothy Graham

It is in fact striking that the contents of the Takamiya manuscript correspond rather closely to the description of William’s work on the laws provided by Wilkins in the preface to his edition. Wilkins there notes that William collated the laws published by Wheelock against manuscripts in Cambridge, in the Bodleian Library, in Rochester, and in the Cottonian collection.76 Apart from his somewhat puzzling reference to the Bodleian  –  which owns no major manuscript of the AngloSaxon laws  –  and the absence of any reference to Harleian manuscripts, Wilkins’ description accords quite well with the contents of the Takamiya manuscript, which includes the fruits of the Elstobs’ comparison of Wheelock’s edition against manuscripts (or transcripts of manuscripts) housed in Cambridge, Rochester and the Cotton library. Some nineteenth-century clues suggest that William’s lists of variants and his two volumes of collectanea remained together as a three-volume set. The account of MS Eng. lang. c.11 in the Summary Catalogue of Post-Medieval Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford records that in 1845, that manuscript was one of three volumes of Elstob’s legal materials auctioned off at the sale of the estate of Fleetwood Parkhurst (d. 1844).77 Parkhurst was the owner of Ripple Hall on the banks of the River Severn and the friend of the poet Walter Savage Landor; it is unknown how he might have acquired Elstob’s materials. All three volumes were later acquired by the voracious collector Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792–1872) and were together designated as MS Phillipps 11787.78 Subsequently the set was broken up. In 1896 two volumes  –  presumably the two books of collectanea  –  were sold together at Sotheby’s. In 1927 these same two volumes were purchased by the Bodleian at the Sotheby’s sale of the estate of W. A. Lindsay, but one of the two was ‘not found’ and therefore did not pass into the Bodleian; its fate remains unknown.79 If the Takamiya manuscript was indeed one of the three volumes that made up MS Phillipps 11787, the history of its ownership from the point at which it was separated from the other two until it came up for sale in 1999 has remained elusive. What is certain, however, is that the manuscript provides illuminating testimony to a major project in the history of Anglo-Saxon studies. Affording us precious insights into the working practices of William Elstob and attesting to his collaboration with his gifted sister, it adds significantly to our understanding of the Anglo-Saxon endeavours of this most remarkable pair of scholars. 76 ‘… Wheloci vestigia premens Leges, quas Editio ejus exhibet, cum MSS. Cantabrigiensibus, Bodlejano, Roffensi, & Cottonianis contulerat’: Wilkins, Leges AngloSaxonicæ, first (unnumbered) page of the preface, quoted at greater length above. 77 M. Clapinson and T. D. Rogers, Summary Catalogue of Post-Medieval Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford: Acquisitions 1916–1975 (SC 37300–55936), vol. 1 (Oxford, 1991), p. 271 no. 40391. 78 The brief entry in the Phillipps catalogue describes MS 11787 as ‘Transcript of part of Textus Roffensis, or, Registrum Roffense. 3 Vols fol. ch[artaceus] s. xvii. (Plura Saxonica)’. See The Phillipps Manuscripts: Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum in Bibliotheca D. Thomæ Phillipps, Bt. Impressum Typis Medi-Montanis, 1837–1871, ed. A. N. L. Munby (London, 1968), p. 203. 79 Ibid.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 296

07/04/2014 00:03

Takako Kato & Satoko Tokunaga

Gutenberg Meets Digitization: The Path of a Digital Ambassador •••

F

or digital humanists in the twenty-first century, Johannes Gutenberg is more than the inventor of mechanical printing technologies with movable type; he can be seen as having revolutionized all of Western written culture before the digital age. The impact of Gutenberg’s printing technologies and that of modern digital technologies have been compared and contrasted by many. As early as 1962 Marshall McLuhan in his Gutenberg Galaxy predicted the arrival of ‘electronic interdependence’ in a ‘global village’.1 Project Gutenberg, the world’s first digital library, was founded in 1971, and has initiated, encouraged and promoted the creation and distribution of the e-book.2 Google then launched their massdigitization project in 2004 using optical character recognition technology in international collaboration with major university and public libraries.3 But in comparing the old with the new, Peter Shillingsburg looks at copies of the Gutenberg Bible in his From Gutenberg to Google and wonders ‘where, in 500 years, would anyone stand to look at a museum display of the first electronic book and would the words “endurance” and “beauty” come to mind?’4 Keio University’s acquisition of a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, which was realized in the spring of 1996, was also more than symbolic for the development of digital humanities as well as for Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya’s career.5 Studies of books as material objects were still little known in Japanese universities in the 1990s. Takamiya, however, was already an acclaimed book collector and bibliographer in both the East and the West, recognized for owning a substantial collection of medieval manuscripts, incunabula and early printed 1 M. McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto, 1962), p. 31. 2 ‘About’, in Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:About, accessed July 2013). All the Internet resources cited in this essay were last accessed in July 2013 by the authors. 3 ‘About Google Books’, in Google Books (http://www.google.com/googlebooks/about/). 4 P. L. Shillingsburg, From Gutenberg to Google: Electronic Representations of Literary Texts (Cambridge, 2006), p. 1. 5 Keio purchased a copy that was formerly in the Estelle Doheny collection from Maruzen Bookseller.

297

ME Texts in Transition.indb 297

07/04/2014 00:03

298

Takako Kato & Satoko Tokunaga

books.6 He was also a devoted user of Keio University Library (Keio UL) and contributed to the expansion of its special collection by giving expert recommendations of Western rare books for acquisition.7 His postgraduate seminar at Keio offered a unique opportunity for Japanese students of English literature to appreciate and work with medieval manuscripts and early printed books, which were often from his private collection. He always emphasized the importance of examining original materials, and taught us the excitement of discovering individual stories embedded in specific copies. Indeed, a hidden story about Keio and the Gutenberg Bible was first brought to light in 1996. Yukichi Fukuzawa, the founding president of Keio University, was a member of the First Japanese Embassy to Europe dispatched by the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1862.8 The purchase of the Bible in 1996 stimulated Takamiya and his colleagues to investigate his embassy, which resulted in their identification of an interesting entry in Fukuzawa’s diary: he saw the first printed Latin Bible, i.e. the Gutenberg Bible, during his visit to St Petersburg. Their research further led to the discovery that Fukuzawa’s signature, dated 25 August 1862, still remains in the visitor’s book of the then Imperial Library of Russia. After further careful research, it was proved that Fukuzawa had indeed encountered one of the extant copies of the Gutenberg Bible, now in the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana (Cologny, Switzerland).9 He was probably one of the earliest Japanese witnesses to this historical treasure, as Japan had closed its door to the outside except for China and Holland since the beginning of the seventeenth century. 6 A list of his manuscripts is published in: T. Takamiya, ‘A Handlist of Western Medieval Manuscripts in the Takamiya Collection’, in The Medieval Book: Glosses from Friends and Colleagues of Christopher de Hamel, ed. J. H. Marrow, R. A. Linenthal and W. Noel (’t Goy-Houten, 2010), pp. 421–40. Part of his incunabula collection is registered by Koichi Yukishima in his Incunabula in Japanese Libraries (IJL2), 2nd edn (Tokyo, 2004); Yukishima is to publish the third edition of this census very soon. 7 For Keio UL’s collection of medieval manuscripts and incunabula, see Mostly British: Manuscripts and Early Printed Materials from Classical Rome to Renaissance England in the Collection of Keio University Library, ed. T. Matsuda (Tokyo, 2001); Codices Keionenses: Essays on Western Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in Keio University Library, ed. T. Matsuda (Tokyo, 2005); S. Tokunaga, ‘The First Report of the Keio Incunabula Project: A Checklist of Incunabula in the Keio University Library’, The Round Table 18 (Keio University, Takamiya seminar, 2004), 7–21; S. Tokunaga, ‘Early English Books (c. 1473–1600) in the Keio University Library’, Geibun-Kenkyu (Journal of Arts and Letters) 95 (2008), 8–17; S. Tokunaga, ‘Incunabula’, in Digital Gallery of Rare Books and Special Collections (http://project.lib.keio.ac.jp/dg_kul/). 8 Fukuzawa, whose figure appears on the current Japanese 10,000 yen note, is one of the founders of modern Japan. For the life and achievements of Fukuzawa, see, for instance, A. Macfarlan, Yukichi Fukuzawa and the Making of Modern World (http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/texts/fukuzawa_final.pdf). 9 T. Takamiya, Introduction to Gutenberg no nazo: Katsuji media no tanjyo to sonogo (The Mystery of Gutenberg: The Birth of Print Media and Afterwards) (Tokyo, 1998). See also ‘The Keio Gutenberg Bible’, in HUMI Project (Keio University, 2001) (http://www.humi.keio.ac.jp/treasures/incunabula/B42-web/b42/lecture_e/html/ contents.html).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 298

07/04/2014 00:03

Gutenberg Meets Digitization

299

Professor Takamiya was aware of the significance of facsimiles for the study of early books and greatly promoted their creation. Although the importance of examining the original materials is indisputable, rare manuscripts and early printed books are seldom readily available for sustained reference. The emergence of facsimiles in the previous century has no doubt substantially expanded the bibliographical community and advanced the study of books as material objects. Facsimiles both in microfilm and in print allowed scholars to examine the physical evidence of a book closely and compare it with other books. Professor Takamiya served as a key figure in this movement. For example, he helped Boydell & Brewer Ltd to publish facsimiles of Middle English manuscripts such as Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 61 (Chaucer’s Troilus), Cambridge University Library, MS Gg.4.27 (Chaucer’s poems including the Canterbury Tales) and the Vernon Manuscript, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet a.1 (medieval miscellany).10 He was also one of the promoters for creating the full-coloured facsimile of the Ellesmere Chaucer, which was published jointly by the Huntington Library and Yushodo Antiquarian Bookseller.11 It is no coincidence, therefore, that Takamiya presented a copy each of the Ellesmere facsimile to the University of Sheffield Library in 1998 and to the University of Glasgow Library in 2011 when he was awarded honorary doctorates in literature by these universities in recognition of his contributions to digital humanities.12 Keio UL is one of the few libraries in Japan to house two copies of this beautifully made de luxe facsimile and also two copies of the monochrome facsimile published in 1997. These facsimiles allow students at Keio to learn about physical features of such a masterpiece manuscript without travelling across the ocean. Professor Takamiya was also instrumental in expanding the library’s repository, both for teaching and research purposes. Keio UL thus holds significant collections of reproduced medieval texts in various forms, traditionally in print and in microfilm and more recently in digital form  –  such as the whole sets of the Short Title Catalogue and Wing microfilm collections, various manuscript facsimiles and microfilms, English Experience Series, Early English Books Online (EEBO) and Parker on the Web. Before the launch of the EEBO, Takamiya used to teach his graduate students (including the authors of this article) one of the most important disciplines: how to use the STC, Cross Index to Reels and microfilm readers. Finding the necessary images in the microfilm reel held in Keio UL was intellectually and physically demanding, like a treasure hunt. Three volumes of the STC were stored on the ground floor, the Index and the microfilm readers were on the second floor, 10 A. S. G. Edwards, ‘Manuscripts, Facsimiles, Approaches to Editing’, in Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English Literature: The Influence of Derek Brewer, ed. C. Brewer and B. Windeatt (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 202–14. 11 The Canterbury Tales: The New Ellesmere Chaucer Facsimile (of Huntington Library MS EL 26 C9), ed. D. Woodward and M. Stevens (Tokyo, 1995). 12 They are now held in Western Bank Library at the University of Sheffield, shelfmarked with ‘RBR F 821.17’; and in the Special Collection at the University of Glasgow Library, shelfmarked with ‘Sp Coll Hunterian Add. f103’.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 299

07/04/2014 00:03

300

Takako Kato & Satoko Tokunaga

and the microfilms on the fourth basement, so we used to go up and down the stairs, load dozens of microfilms and finish a long day suffering from what we called ‘microfilm sickness’. In the 1990s and the early 2000s Professor Takamiya held graduate seminars for codicology and bibliography every year, where students were assigned to examine facsimiles of medieval texts, such as Malory and Chaucer, discussing the impact and influence of different media to a single text.13 It was therefore appropriate that Professor Takamiya inaugurated the Director of the Humanities Media Interface (HUMI) Project, which was launched in 1996. The HUMI, pronounced as ‘fumi’, a Japanese word meaning documents, literature and history, was ‘an inter-faculty initiative’, funded by the Education Ministry, the Information-Technology Promotion Agency (IPA) and Keio University.14 The project’s objectives, when it started the digitization of the Keio copy of the Gutenberg Bible, reflected the concepts of traditional facsimile reproduction  –  that is, to serve both textual scholarship and conservation purposes. The focus on textual scholarship and the necessity of keeping the cost down, however, had often resulted in the publication of monochrome facsimiles.15 The HUMI was therefore unique in its time, as it aimed not only to reproduce the ‘beauty’ and ‘durability’ of the original, but also to explore ‘the potentials of digital research’.16 Using the digital images, the project revealed new and different perspectives of the book, which were not visible with the naked eye. In the 1990s it was also a common and respectable practice for humanities scholars to outsource ‘technical support’. In the humanities, digital activities were often seen as subsidiary, only there to serve more established academic disciplines.17 13 Our first major publications grew out from the papers delivered at his graduate seminars: T. Kato, Caxton’s ‘Morte Darthur’: The Printing Process and the Authenticity of the Text, Medium Ævum Monographs (Oxford, 2002); S. Tokunaga, ‘The Sources of Wynkyn de Worde’s Version of “The Monk’s Tale”’, The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 7th ser. 2 (2001), 223–35. 14 ‘Introduction: About HUMI’, in HUMI Project website, http://www.humi.keio.ac.jp/en/introduction/index.html. 15 See R. Beadle, ‘Facsimiles of Middle English Manuscripts’, in A Guide to Editing Middle English, ed. V. P. McCarren and D. Moffat (Ann Arbor, MI, 1998), pp. 319–34. 16 The potential of digital research  –  conducting research that can be done only in the digital environment  –  has since been recognized and discussed. See, for example, K. Kiernan, ‘Electronic Textual Editing: Digital Facsimiles in Editing’, in Electronic Textual Editing, ed. L. Burnard, K. O’Brien O’Keefe and J. Unworth (New York, 2006) (http://www.tei-c.org/About/Archive_new/ETE/Preview/kiernan.xml); and Codicology and Palaeography in the Digital Age 1 and 2 (Cologne, 2009, 2011) (http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/2939/ and http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/4337/). For recent projects that use digital images extensively, see for example, DigiPal: Digital Resource and Database of Palaoegraphy, Manuscripts and Diplomatic (http://digipal.eu/); Late Medieval English Scribes (http://www.medievalscribes.com/). Manuscripts Online: Written Culture, 1000–1500 (http://www.manuscriptsonline.org/) collects many online resources of medieval manuscripts with digital facsimiles. 17 The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), for example, used to require scholars to accompany their research proposals with technical ‘appendices’. Disjunction

ME Texts in Transition.indb 300

07/04/2014 00:03

Gutenberg Meets Digitization

301

This early misunderstanding of its potential entailed both practical and theoretical challenges regarding the definition and identity of digital humanities.18 New centres of digital humanities are still emerging today, while established ones are attempting to redefine themselves.19 In this context the HUMI Project was ahead of its time as it already recognized that the creation of digital data should not remain merely as ‘technical support’, but lead to a new dimension of scholarly research. The HUMI consisted of members from various backgrounds  –  medievalists, librarians, photographers and staff members of the Faculty of Science and Technology  –  and put the utmost priority from the outset on the capturing of images in as high quality as possible. Digitization is, in Takamiya’s words, ‘more than just creating a passable facsimile on a computer screen. It is an opportunity for transcending the confines of the traditional format, with its bound pages.’ He continues: Once digitized, every component can be unbound and rebound in an infinite number of ways. The book becomes a new entity in ‘cyberspace’  –  perhaps more vivid than ever possible in the real world, where rare books are often inaccessible. In the worlds of virtual reality we can re-experience it in a personal way. This means that digitized rare books, including the Gutenberg Bible, will never become forgotten relics of past wisdom. They will come alive every time someone has access to them. This, then, is the raison-d’être of the HUMI Project.20 In fact HUMI’s carefully chosen and captured close-up images have brought into between the main research proposal and the appendix at the planning stage has often presented unforeseen challenges to the projects. This problem was fully addressed by the Council, who now requires a technical ‘plan’, which is fully integrated to a research plan. See M. Pidd and D. Robey, AHRC Technical Appendix: Review and Recommendations (http://hridigital.shef.ac.uk/technical-appendix). 18 For definitions of the discipline, see for example, A Digital Humanities Manifesto (http://manifesto.humanities.ucla.edu/) and S. Schreibman, R. Siemens and J. Unsworth, ‘The Digital Humanities and Humanities Computing: An Introduction’, in A Companion to Digital Humanities, ed.  S. Schreibman, R. Siemens and J. Unsworth (Oxford, 2004) (http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/). 19 Examples of relatively new centres and initiatives include Cambridge Digital Humanities Network (http://www.digitalhumanities.cam.ac.uk); UCL Centre for Digital Humanities (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dh/); The Digital Humanities Centre at the University of Nottingham (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/humanities/digital/index.aspx). Meanwhile, King’s College London has transformed itself into a department with an aim to define Digital Humanities as an independent academic discipline (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/ artshums/depts/ddh/about/index.aspx); Digital.Humanities@Oxford aims to provide an overview of the digital humanities activities in Oxford as a whole (http://digital.humanities.ox.ac.uk/About/history.aspx). At the first Digital Humanities Congress organized by Humanities Research Institute in Sheffield in 2012, many papers including the keynote lectures discussed the definition and significance of the discipline (http://www.shef.ac.uk/hri/dhc2012). 20 Quoted in J. M. Mendel, ‘Report on a Visit to Keio University, HUMI Project’ (1998) (http://www.wtec.org/loyola/digilibs/c_05.htm).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 301

07/04/2014 00:03

302

Takako Kato & Satoko Tokunaga

sharp relief interesting physical features of the book. For example, a close-up image of a capital letter revealed that water-based red ink did not always work well together with oil-based black printing ink. Close-up images revealed a wavy surface of paper, distinctly shown at the fore-edge, suggesting that either the printer damped the paper before printing in order to obtain a clearer impression and the binder did not press the book enough to straighten the printed surface, or the book was kept in a damp place for a long period of time.21 Another achievement of the HUMI with Takamiya as director was the production of cover-to-cover facsimiles of the Gutenberg Bible with high-quality full-coloured images, which has opened up new paths into digital bibliographies.22 First tackling the Keio Gutenberg  –  now extant in the first volume only, consisting of 648 pages and weighting 7.2 kg  –  the team experimented with various types of digital and analogue cameras. The team also reached a very high level of accuracy in the reproduction of the original by ensuring that the distance between the surface of the page and the camera would be consistent and that the camera lens would always keep the same angle perpendicular to the surface of the page, with the page constantly receiving the same amount of light.23 This was successfully achieved by keeping the book open on a flat surface and shooting it from above. The key to this success was HUMI’s crew members, who were extremely careful, responsible, welldisciplined, organized and highly focused. The HUMI’s digitization activities were not limited to the Keio Gutenberg Bible. The project actively pursued co-operative ventures with research libraries and museums both inside and outside Japan. Soon, they started exploring the possibilities of digital expeditions, which was an innovative idea. Since the 1990s many libraries had launched new digital enterprises by establishing their own in-house digitization facilities.24 Meanwhile, digitization projects outside the individual libraries tended to focus on either mass digitization using microfilms 21 ‘The Keio Gutenberg Bible’, in HUMI Project. 22 See, for example, M. Agata, ‘Stop-press Variants in the Gutenberg Bible: The First Report of the Collation’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 97.2 (2003), 139–65; S. Tokunaga, ‘A Digital Approach to the History of the Book: The Case of Caxton’, Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic–Literary Studies 60 (2004), 65–76; M. Ikeda, ‘Illumination and Rubrication of Two Gutenberg Bibles: Unravelling their Links to the Fust and Schöffer Office’, Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 87 (2012), 71–92. 23 K. Masaaki, Kichosho Digital Archive no jissen gijutsu (Practical Methodologies for Digital Archiving of Rare Books) (Tokyo, 2010); S. Nartschik, ‘The Digitization Technology of the HUMI Project’, in HUMI Project (http://www.humi.keio.ac.jp/en/ digitization/s-report.html). 24 See, for example, A. J. L. Armour, ‘HUMI Survey of Digital Library & Digital Convention Projects in the United States of America’, in HUMI Project (http://www. humi.keio.ac.jp/japan/docs_j/report/annual/1998/1_5_1_text.html). More recently, see for instance, Digitised Images from Bodleian Libraries Special Collections (http://digital. bodleian.ox.ac.uk/); Cambridge Digital Library (http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/); Glasgow Incunabula Project (http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/incunabula/); Image Collections at the University of Manchester Library (http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/searchresources/ imagecollections/).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 302

07/04/2014 00:03

Gutenberg Meets Digitization

303

or theme-based digitization. In contrast, the HUMI was independent from Keio UL, and would take initiatives to create the best-quality images that served research purposes. It is not surprising that it was Cambridge University Library (CUL), with which Takamiya had strong connections, that first joined the HUMI’s internationally collaborative venture. A considerable amount of work and negotiation were required before this collaboration was realized, however. The law of gravity clearly implies that if we photograph a book from above, the camera or parts of the camera could accidently drop on the 500-year-old book worth millions of pounds. Despite HUMI’s accomplishment of the digitization of the Keio copy, the CUL was resistant to the HUMI’s photographic methods, while HUMI did not easily yield to compromise with respect to the quality of the images. All-out efforts were made in order to achieve a mutual agreement. It was during this process that the HUMI’s adjustable book cradle, consisting of three separately movable parts, was devised by the team. The cradle was designed to be gently manipulated so that the book would never open more than 110°, while presenting a nearly flat image of a page to the camera, and the camera, shooting at such an angle, would not be directly over the book. Further improvement to the shooting system was implemented with specially made arrangements and devices.25 As a result, the agreements for collaborative projects to digitize the Gutenberg Bible were concluded with the CUL in 1998, the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz in 1999 and the British Library (BL) in 2000. The HUMI then expanded its scope of international collaboration beyond Gutenberg, continuing its activity under the title Digital Archive Research Centre (DARC), from 2001 to 2005. It counted in total nineteen expeditions to ten libraries and institutions in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Poland and the USA, and digitized nineteen volumes of the Gutenberg Bible, two medieval manuscripts (the Bury Bible in the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and the Winchester manuscript of Malory’s Morte Darthur in the BL), two copies of English incunabula (Caxton’s first and second editions of the Canterbury Tales in the BL) and Naraehon, the Japanese medieval illustrated book.26 The HUMI’s expedition was always welcomed with enthusiasm by the hosting institutions, since its reputation as a highly proficient digitization team seems to have been established and thus preceded the team’s arrival from Japan. The HUMI probably could not have achieved such a solid reputation without

25 To minimize unwanted colour casts and reflections the studio was surrounded by black curtains and the crew members wore black clothes; a three-dimensional wedge-shaped focusing device, made of paper, allowed correction to an accuracy of 1 mm; using a specially made camera stand, an operator could adjust the position of the camera accurately. See ‘The Digitisation by the HUMI Project’, in Treasures in Full: Malory’s Arthurian Manuscript (http://www.bl.uk/treasures/malory/digitisation.html). 26 They also include: Pelplin Theological Seminary, Chester Beatty Library, National Library of Scotland, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester, and Pierpont Morgan Library.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 303

07/04/2014 00:03

304

Takako Kato & Satoko Tokunaga

Professor Takamiya as its digital ambassador. Takamiya’s generosity, friendliness and, needless to say, passion for books are well known. He is also experienced with public lectures, a natural entertainer and performer, and his world-class presentations are backed up with careful planning and considerable practice. His students were taught that the quality of the presentation matters as much as the content of a conference paper, and they observed his own care in the manner of presentation of his own graduate seminars and conference papers. Professor Takamiya’s talks about the HUMI Project regularly included witty and humorous anecdotes, and often acclaimed for his impeccable performance and the unprecedented quality of the digital images on the screen. One of his early presentations about the HUMI was delivered at the Early Book Society (EBS) Conference in Lampeter in 1999, at a time when paper handouts and slides were commonly used and PowerPoint was still a novelty. His presentations, behind the scene, often required communicating with conference organizers in advance to ensure that the projector at the venue would do justice to the quality of the digital images. Takamiya’s and HUMI’s contribution to the digitization of early books was so widely acknowledged that he was awarded an Hon. Litt.D. from the University of Sheffield in 1998 and an Hon. D.Litt. from the University of Glasgow in 2011, both to commemorate his achievement and leadership in the field of digital medieval studies. Professor Takamiya was also aware of the importance of the dissemination of research outcomes and of the establishment of scholarly networks. His sensational and proficient presentations inspired others. He encouraged his graduate students to go out into international scholarly communities, and they were sent out to study and/or work at various places outside Japan, including Bangor, Birmingham, Cambridge, Leicester, London and Oxford in the UK, and New York in the USA. Young Japanese medievalists trained by Takamiya flew to international conferences such as the Early Book Society, New Chaucer Society, Kalamazoo International Congress on Medieval Studies and Leeds International Medieval Congress. Since the Lampeter Conference in 1999, for example, there have been about thirty papers given by Takamiya, members of ‘the Takamiyans’ and its extended family at the Early Book Society conferences  –  Derek Pearsall once called us the ‘Takamiya gang’ of the EBS. The HUMI and its farsighted ambassador were acutely aware of the logistics of freely disseminating research data online, which were still alien concepts in the 1990s. The majority of libraries and projects used to publish their digital data on CD-ROMs, DVDs, or membership subscription websites that often incurred substantial charges, and many still do. Typically, it has always been scholars with funding who would approach libraries, ask if they could digitize rare books by paying incredibly high fees, and seek ‘permission’ to use and disseminate the digital data for their research. The HUMI, in contrast, published the whole facsimile of the Keio Gutenberg Bible on its website where it is still freely accessible to this date.27 27 ‘The Keio Gutenberg Bible’, in HUMI Project.

ME Texts in Transition.indb 304

07/04/2014 00:03

Gutenberg Meets Digitization

305

The HUMI Project has digitized three of the BL’s Treasures in Full, the Winchester Malory Manuscript, Caxton’s printed editions of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Gutenberg’s Bible.28 The CUL, The Morgan Library & Museum, the National Library of Scotland and Bayerische Staatsbibliothek have also published the HUMI digital facsimiles of the Gutenberg Bible online, freely accessible to the public.29 Other Gutenberg digitization projects have followed.30 The HUMI has been a pioneer of the free digital publishing culture that is now suddenly developing further. For example, in a brand new scheme, the ‘British Library Labs’, it is the BL, not individual scholars, that offers the funding. Scholars are not required to pay high fees to use the digital images; instead, the BL reaches out to scholars and asks for innovative and creative research that uses their digital collections, and the library is committed to disseminating the research data and outcomes for free and as widely as possible.31 More and more libraries are becoming keener to digitize their manuscripts and rare books and facilitate the world-wide dissemination of their digital data on their library websites. The advancement of technologies and the economic shift of digital culture are such that special collections of not a few libraries in the UK and the USA have started to change their digitization policies. In many libraries individual scholars are now allowed to use their own digital cameras to create digital data in manuscript and rare book rooms as long as the images they take are for research purposes only. The HUMI’s highly organized and proficient expeditions would probably serve as a model for scholars who are now building digital environments. Many of Professor Takamiya’s ex-students, now teaching and conducting research at various universities, are following the footsteps he marked out. Both the writers of this article, for example, are currently working on English incunabula independently and jointly; we have so far visited over thirty libraries and captured thousands of images, now collaborating to create a freely available and cross-searchable database of copy-specific features of incunabula.32 The legacy created by Toshiyuki Takamiya in the history of digital medieval studies has thus been passed on to his students or ‘gang members’, who will gratefully ensure that his inspirational approach to digital humanities will continue to flourish over many generations.

28 Treasures in Full (http://www.bl.uk/treasures/treasuresinfull.html). 29 The CUL copy is available at The HUMI Project (http://www.humi.keio.ac.jp/treasures/ incunabula/B42/). See The Morgan Library & Museum, The Morgan Gutenberg Bible Online (http://www.themorgan.org/collections/works/gutenberg/humi); the National Library of Scotland, Gutenberg Bible (http://digital.nls.uk/74481666); Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Digitale Bibliothek  –  Münchener Digitalisierungszentrum (MDZ) (http://inkunabeln.digitale-sammlungen.de/Exemplar_B-408,1.html). 30 See, for example, The Gutenberg Bible (Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas, Austin, 2002) (http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/gutenberg/web/ pgstns/01.html). 31 ‘British Library Labs’ (The British Library, 2013) (http://labs.bl.uk/). 32 Caxton and Beyond: Copy-Specific Features in Incunabula (http://www.caxtonandbeyond.dmu.ac.uk/).

ME Texts in Transition.indb 305

07/04/2014 00:03

A Bibliography of Toshiyuki Takamiya ••• 1969–2002 compiled by Isamu Takahashi with the assistance of Ryoko Nakano 2003–13 updated by Satoko Tokunaga This is an updated list of Professor Takamiya’s major publications, integrating the bibliography compiled by Dr Isamu Takahashi for the festschrift celebrating Professor Takamiya’s 60th birthday. Among numerous publications of Professor Takamiya, this list focuses on published academic writings. The items of each year are given in the order of books, articles, translations, book reviews, and other categories. Within each category, their order is chronological where it is known. When written in Japanese, the original titles are provided only for those of books and periodicals. The following abbreviations are used: A article published either in a book or in a periodical B published book or pamphlet J written in Japanese O other categories R book review T translation TT Toshiyuki Takamiya

1969 O ‘Malory’s “Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkeney” with Special Reference to the Question of Unity of Le Morte Darthur’ (unpublished MA thesis, Keio University, 1969)

1973 AJ ‘On the Supernatural Characters in Malory’s “Tale of Gareth”’, Geibun Kenkyu (Keio Journal of Arts and Letters) 32 (1973), 146–70

1974 A ‘“Wade”, “Dryvande”, and “Gotelake”: Three Notes on the Order of Composition in the Morte Darthur’, Studies in English Literature (Tokyo), English no. (1974), 131–48

306

ME Texts in Transition.indb 306

07/04/2014 00:03

A Bibliography of Toshiyuki Takamiya

307

1975 AJ ‘The Tradition of Soseki’s “Kairo-ko”’, Eigo Seinen (Rising Generation) 20.11 (February 1975), 514–18 AJ ‘The Structure, Meaning, and Characterizations of Malory’s “Tale of Gareth”’, Geibun Kenkyu (Keio Journal of Arts and Letters) 34 (1975), 1–14 AJ ‘A Hilton Manuscript Once in the Possession of Luttrell Wynne’, Bulletin of the Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies 7 (1975), 171–91

1977 A ‘Walter Hilton’s Of Angels’ Song: Edited from the British Museum MS Additional 27592’, Studies in English Literature (Tokyo), English no. (1977), 3–31 (repr. in Two Minor Works of Walter Hilton (Tokyo: privately printed, 1980))

1978 B In English the Sun Is Yellow, in Japan We Call It Red: An Address to the Wynkyn de Worde Society at Stationers’ Hall, 21 July, 1977 (London: Wynkyn de Worde Society, 1978)

1979 AJ ‘The Morte Darthur and the Arthurian Cult in the Tudor Period’, Bulletin of the Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies 11 (1979), 145–64

1980 B Two Minor Works of Walter Hilton: The Inner Temple MS of Walter Hilton’s ‘Eight Chapters on Perfection’, Edited by Fumio Kuriyagawa, and Walter Hilton’s ‘Of Angels’ Song’ Edited from the British Museum MS Additional 27592, by Toshiyuki Takamiya (Tokyo: privately printed, 1980; first publ. in Studies in English Literature (Tokyo), English no. (1977), 3–31) A ‘Chaucer’s Sad and its Related Words’, in Key-Word Studies in ‘Beowulf ’ and Chaucer, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Centre for Mediaeval English Studies, 1980), pp. 59–65 AJ ‘The Exemplars of Peterhouse MS 190’, Bulletin of the Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies 12 (1980), 167–79

1981 B TT and Derek Brewer, eds., Aspects of Malory, Arthurian Studies 1 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer; Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1981; repr. with an updated bibliography 1986) BJ Shinsuke Ando, Haruo Iwasaki, and TT, eds., Kuriyagawa Fumio Chosaku Shu (The Works of Fumio Kuriyagawa), 2 vols. (Tokyo: Kinseido, 1981) A ‘“Ascolat” in the Winchester Malory’, in Aspects of Malory, pp. 125–6

ME Texts in Transition.indb 307

07/04/2014 00:03

308

A Bibliography of Toshiyuki Takamiya

A ‘A New Manuscript of Walter Hilton’s Eight Chapters on Perfection: The British Library, Additional MS 60577’, Poetica (Tokyo) 12 (1981 for Autumn 1979), 142–9 A ‘The Will of Jankyn Smyth, Bury St. Edmunds, 1481’, in Fine Books and Book Collecting: Books and Manuscripts Acquired from Alan G. Thomas and Described by his Customers on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Christopher de Hamel and Richard A. Linenthal with a foreword by Lawrence Durrell (Leamington Spa: Hall, 1981), pp. 28–30 A ‘A Ghost in Brown-Robbins’ Index (1943) and Robbins-Cutler’s Supplement (1965)’, Mediaeval English Studies Newsletter 5 (December 1981), 3 O ‘A Bibliography’, in Aspects of Malory, pp. 179–86

1982 A ‘A Hitherto Unrecorded Manuscript of the Gilte Legende’, Mediaeval English Studies Newsletter 6 (July 1982), 1–2 AJ ‘Soseki and Three Medievalists’, Bulletin of the Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies 14 (1982), 163–78 T TT and Andrew Armour, trans., ‘“Kairo-ko”: A Dirge’, by Soseki Natsume, Arthurian Literature 2 (1982), 92–126

1983 A Ronan Coghlan, TT, and Richard Barber, ‘A Supplementary Bibliography of Twentieth Century Arthurian Literature’, Arthurian Literature 3 (1983), 129–36 AJ ‘Soseki and Medieval Studies’, Koku Bungaku (Japanese Literature) 28.14 (1983), 40–5 AJ ‘Margery Kempe and the Wife of Bath’, Bulletin of the Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies 15 (1983), 199–212 TJ Asa O (King Arthur in Legend and History), by Richard Barber (Tokyo: Tokyo Shoseki, 1983)

1985 AJ ‘Iconography of the Lady of Shalott: An Introduction’, Gengo Bunka (Linguistic Culture) 3 (1985), 71–81 A ‘Caxton’s Malory Re-edited’, Poetica (Tokyo) 21 & 22 [combined issue] (1985), 48–70 R ‘Caxton’s Malory: A New Edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, Based on the Pierpont Morgan Copy of William Caxton’s Edition of 1485, ed. James W. Spisak (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983)’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 7 (1985), 251–4

ME Texts in Transition.indb 308

07/04/2014 00:03

A Bibliography of Toshiyuki Takamiya

309

1986 B TT and Derek Brewer, eds., Aspects of Malory, Arthurian Studies 1 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer; Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1981; repr. with an updated bibliography 1986) A ‘Medieval English Literature and Sōseki’, in Sōseki Conference ’85, Occasional Publications 1 (London: Sōseki Museum, 1986), pp. 15–25 A ‘A Bibliography to Aspects of Malory’, in Aspects of Malory, pp. 179–93 TJ TT and Yuri Fuwa, trans., Kishido to Jentoruman (The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman), by Mark Girouard (Tokyo: Sanseido, 1986)

1987 AJ ‘Morphology of the Margins’, Geibun Kenkyu (Keio Journal of Arts and Letters) 51 (1987), 13–28

1988 A ‘A Hitherto Unedited Manuscript of Trevisa’s De Proprietatibus Rerum’, in Philologia Anglica: Essays Presented to Professor Yoshio Terasawa on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Kinshiro Oshitari and others (Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1988), pp. 308–19 R ‘Walter Hilton’s Mixed Life Edited from Lambeth Palace MS 472, ed. S. J. OgilvieThomson, Salzburg Studies in English Literature, Elizabethan & Renaissance Studies 92: 15 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1986)’, Medium Aevum 57 (1988), 113–14

1989 A J. C. Holt and TT, ‘A New Version of “A Rhyme of Robin Hood”’, English Manuscript Studies, 1100–1700 1 (1989), 213–21 AJ ‘Fragments of St Augustine’s Expositions of the Psalms Copied by Eadmer’, Bulletin of the Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies 21 (1989), 175–89 TJ Rafaeruzenpa no Gakatachi (The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites), by Steven Adams (Tokyo: Libroport, 1989)

1990 B Yasuhiro Yano, Haruo Iwasaki, Tadao Kubouchi, Hiroshi Ogawa, Akio Oizumi, William Schipper, and TT, eds., A Bibliography of Publications on Medieval English Language and Literature in Japan from April 1987 to March 1989 (= Mediaeval English Studies Newsletter, supplement 3 (August 1990)) B Akio Oizumi and TT, Medieval English Studies Past and Present (Tokyo: Eichosha for the Centre for Mediaeval English Studies, 1990)

ME Texts in Transition.indb 309

07/04/2014 00:03

310

A Bibliography of Toshiyuki Takamiya

AJ ‘Medievalism in the Early Victorian Book Production: Henry Shaw, Owen Jones, and Noel Humphreys’, Geibun Kenkyu (Keio Journal of Arts and Letters) 58 (1990), 188–201 R ‘The Arthurian Tradition: Essays in Convergence, ed. M. F. Braswell and John Bugge (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1988)’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 12 (1990), 261–4 O ‘A List of Published Writings of Derek Brewer’, in Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer, ed. Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 263–8 O ‘Japanese Concordances’, Chaucer Newsletter 12.2 (Autumn 1990), 1–5

1991 A Entries on ‘Soseki Natsume’ and ‘Chinatsu Kuzuu’ in The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, ed. Norris J. Lacy (New York: Garland, 1991) TJ Kyakusuton Insatsu no Nazo (Caxton in Focus: The Beginning of Printing in England), by Lotte Hellinga (Tokyo: Yushodo, 1991)

1992 B TT and Richard Beadle, eds., Chaucer to Shakespeare: Essays in Honour of Shinsuke Ando (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1992) A ‘Gawain’s Green Girdle as a Medieval Talisman’, in Chaucer to Shakespeare, pp. 75–9 O ‘Eiichi Suzuki, 1937–1991’, Mediaeval English Studies Newsletter 26 (June 1992), 7–8

1993 BJ Seiyo Shomotsugaku Kotohajime (An Introduction to the Western Bibliophily) (Tokyo: Seidosha, 1993) BJ Mizu no Onna (From the Deep Waters: Maidens of Myth and Mystery) (Tokyo: Treville, 1993) A ‘Editor/Compositor at Work: The Case of Caxton’s Malory’, in Arthurian and Other Studies Presented to Shunichi Noguchi, ed. Takashi Suzuki and Tsuyoshi Mukai (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), pp. 143–51 AJ ‘Two Superimposed Circles, or the Kasane-mon Pattern: A Note on Rossetti’s Introduction of Japonisme’, Geibun Kenkyu (Keio Journal of Arts and Letters) 63 (1993), 79–87

1994 BJ Aishoka no Kenburijji (A Bibliophile’s Cambridge) (Tokyo: Tosho Shuppansha, 1994) BJ Aishoka no Nenrin (A Bibliophile’s Growth) (Tokyo: Tosho Shuppansha, 1994)

ME Texts in Transition.indb 310

07/04/2014 00:03

A Bibliography of Toshiyuki Takamiya

311

AJ ‘What the Layout of Caxton’s Morte Darthur Means’, Gengo Bunka (Linguistic Culture) 11 (1994), 66–82 TJ The members of Takamiya Seminar, trans. [supervised by TT], Chusei wo Yumemita Hitobito (A Dream of Order: The Medieval Ideal in NineteenthCentury English Literature), by Alice Chandler (Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1994) R ‘The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Version, trans. by Tadahiro Ikegami (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1993)’, Yearbook of Langland Studies 8 (1994), 195–6

1995 BJ Asa O Densetsu Mangekyo (An Arthurian Kaleidoscope) (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1995) A ‘Chaucer Studies in Japan: A Personal View’, in The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation, ed. Martin Stevens and Daniel Woodward (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library; Tokyo: Yushodo, 1995), pp. 327–35 A ‘“On the Evils of Covetousness”: An Unrecorded Middle English Poem’, in New Science Out of Old Books: Studies in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in Honour of A. I. Doyle, ed. Richard Beadle and A. J. Piper (Aldershot: Scolar, 1995), pp. 189–206 AJ ‘Copy-Fitting Technique: The Text of the Morte Darthur from Caxton the Publisher’s Point of View’, Round Table (Takamiya Seminar, Keio University) 10 (1995), 43–51

1996 B From the Deep Waters: Maidens of Myth and Mystery (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1996) A Entries in Treasures of the Keio University Library: In Search of Gutenberg in the Digital Universe, ed. the HUMI Project, Keio University, with TT as editor-inchief (Tokyo: HUMI Project, Keio University, 1996) A ‘Chapter Divisions and Page Breaks in Caxton’s Morte Darthur’, Poetica (Tokyo) 45 (1996), 63–78 A ‘Love and Transgression in Soseki’s Story of the Maid of Ascolat’, in Mediaevalitas: Reading the Middle Ages, ed. Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996), pp. 139–51 TJ Takami Matsuda and others [incl. TT], trans., Daiei Toshokan (Treasures of the British Library), compiled by Nicolas Barker and the curatorial staff of the British Library (Tokyo: Museum Tosho, 1996) O ‘Diary Notes: Dr Ian Doyle on his Seventieth Birthday’, in The Nicholas Love Conference at Waseda, 20–22 July, 1995: A Report, ed. Paul Snowden (Tokyo: Waseda University Press, 1996), pp. 9–13

ME Texts in Transition.indb 311

07/04/2014 00:03

312

A Bibliography of Toshiyuki Takamiya

1997 BJ TT and Noriyuki Harada, Zusetsu Hon to Hito no Rekishi Jiten (An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of the History of Books and People) (Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobo, 1997) A ‘Richard and Robert as False Executors in Late Medieval England’, Anglistik 8 (1997), 49–59 AJ ‘Mineko as a “Water Maiden” and the Mermaid in Soseki’s Sanshiro: Soseki and English Literature and Art’, Koku Bungaku (Japanese Literature) 42.6 (1997), 34–40 A ‘Medievalism and Soseki’, Year’s Work in Medievalism 6 (1996 [1997] for 1991), 1–7 A ‘A Hilton Manuscript Once in the Possession of Luttrell Wynne’, Book Collector [special number for the 150th anniversary of Bernard Quaritch] (1997), 85–93 (repr. in The Pleasures of Bibliophily: Fifty Years of the Book Collector: An Anthology, ed. A. S. G. Edwards (London: British Library, 2002), pp. 305–10) R ‘A Companion to Malory, ed. Elizabeth Archibald and A. S. G. Edwards (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996)’, Notes and Queries n.s. 44.3 (September 1997), 386–7 O ‘Introduction’, Poetica (Tokyo) 50 [25th anniversary issue] (1998), iii–iv

1998 A ‘In the Forest of Broceliande: Merlin and Vivian in Burne-Jones and in Chausson’, Geibun Kenkyu (Keio Journal of Arts and Letters) 73 [special issue in honour of Professors Shinsuke Ando and Haruo Iwasaki on their retirement] (1997 [1998]), 381–92 AJ ‘An Artist Setting Forth: Beardsley’s “Questing Beast”’, Eigo Seinen (Rising Generation) 144.5 (August 1998), 246–8 TJ Taro Ishiguro, trans. [supervised by TT], Shin Daiei Toshokan e no Shotai (A Souvenir Guide to the British Library) (Tokyo: Museum Tosho, 1998) O ‘Introduction’, Geibun Kenkyu (Keio Journal of Arts and Letters) 73 [special issue in honour of Professors Shinsuke Ando and Haruo Iwasaki on their retirement] (1997 [1998]), 1–9

1999 BJ Gutenberuku no Nazo (Gutenberg Mysteries: The Birth of Printing Media and After) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1998 [1999]) BJ Asa O Monogatari no Miryoku (The Enchantment of the Arthurian Legend: From the Celts to Soseki) (Tokyo: Shubun International, 1999) AJ ‘A Novelist Who Wanted to Be a Malory: John Steinbeck’, Plume: Studies in French Language and Literature 3 (1999), 61–4 A ‘Caxton’s Copy-fitting Devices in the Morte Darthur (1485): An Overview’, in Chaucer in Perspective: Middle English Essays in Honour of Norman Blake, ed. Geoffrey Lester (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 358–74

ME Texts in Transition.indb 312

07/04/2014 00:03

A Bibliography of Toshiyuki Takamiya

313

AJ ‘A History of Studies in the Book: Bibliography, Book History, and Digital Bibliology’, in Visions of a University Research Museum: A Report of the Keio Consortium for a Digital Research Library, the Second Year (Tokyo: HUMI Project, Keio University, 1999), pp. 138–42 AJ ‘A Lily and a Star: Howard Pyle’s “The Lady of Shalott”’, Geibun Kenkyu (Keio Journal of Arts and Letters) 76 (1999), 133–45 O ‘Jeremy Griffiths’, Mediaeval English Studies Newsletter 40 (June 1999), 1

2000 A Masako Takagi and TT, ‘Caxton Edits the Roman War Episode: The Chronicles of England and Caxton’s Book V’, in The Malory Debate: Essays on the Texts of ‘Le Morte Darthur’, ed. Bonnie Wheeler, Robert L. Kindrick, and Michael Salda (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 169–90 AJ ‘A Road to the Group Portrait: Chaucer’s Pilgrims in Paintings and Engravings’, Eigo Seinen (Rising Generation) 146.8 (November 2000), 508–11 R ‘Nicholas Love at Waseda: Proceedings of the International Conference 20–22 July 1995, ed. Shoichi Oguro, Richard Beadle, and Michael G. Sargent (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997)’, Book Collector 49.2 (Summer 2000), 301–3

2001 AJ ‘John Harris: A Nineteenth-Century English Facsimilist in the Age of Bibliophiles’, Philologia: Essays in Honour of Shoichi Watanabe on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Norio Tsuchiya, Kazuyuki Shimotani, and Chiaki Imasato (Tokyo: Taishukan Shoten, 2001), pp. 58–67 A A. S. G. Edwards and TT, ‘A New Middle English Carol’, Medium Aevum 70 (2001), 112–15 A A. S. G. Edwards and TT, ‘A New Fragment of Gower’s Confessio Amantis’, Modern Language Review 96.4 (October 2001), 931–6 A Entries in Mostly British: Manuscripts and Early Printed Materials from Classical Rome to Renaissance England in the Collection of Keio University Library, ed. Takami Matsuda (Tokyo: Keio University, 2001) TJ Seiyo Shotai no Rekishi (Historical Scripts: From Classical Times to the Renaissance), by Stan Knight (Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2001)

2002 AJ ‘The Text and the Image: Digitization of the Gutenberg Bible by the HUMI Project and its Use in Academic Researches’, in Digital Technology and the Museum (= Science in Humanity 39 (2002)), pp. 17–33

ME Texts in Transition.indb 313

07/04/2014 00:03

314

A Bibliography of Toshiyuki Takamiya

A ‘A Hilton Manuscript Once in the Possession of Luttrell Wynne’, in The Pleasures of Bibliophily: Fifty Years of the Book Collector: An Anthology, ed. A. S. G. Edwards (London: British Library, 2002), pp. 305–10 (first publ. in Book Collector [special number for the 150th anniversary of Bernard Quaritch] (1997), 85–93)

2003 A ‘The History of the Book in Fifteenth Century Britain: An Introduction’, Poetica 60 [special issue: The History of the Book in Fifteenth Century Britain’] (2003), i–iii O ‘In Memory of Shinsuke Ando’ (1932–2002), Poetica 59 (2003), 1–3 A ‘John Harris the Pen-and-Ink Facsimilist’, Caxton’s Canterbury Tales: The British Library Copies, ed. Barbara Bordalejo (Leicester: Scholarly Digital Editions, 2003) [CD-ROM]

2004 AJ Masaaki Kashimura and TT, ‘Digital Archiving of Rare Books: Present and Prospect’, Nihon Insatsu Gakkaishi (Journal of Printing Science and Technology) 41.3 (June 2004), 149–58 AJ ‘The Ellesmere-Hengwrt Scribe: On the Discovery of Prof. Linne Mooney’, The Rising Generation (Eigo Seinen) 15.8 (November 2004), 490–1 R Lotte Hellinga and J. B. Trapp, eds., The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. 3: 1400–1557 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature 19 (2004), 93–9 OJ ‘Two Gentlemen: Professor Yasunari Takahashi and Professor Shinsuke Ando’, in Omoide ha Mini Nokori: Takahashi Yasunari Tsuisoroku (The Remaining Memoir: Reminiscences of Yasunari Takahashi, ed. Michi Takahashi (Tokyo: Chuokoron, 2004), pp. 78–80 OJ ‘The Future of the Book’, GYROS 9 (December 2004), 82–94

2005 A Jason O’Rourke and TT, ‘Two Hitherto Unrecorded Fragment of the Brut’, Notes and Queries 52. 2 (2005), 162–3 AJ ‘Albéniz’s Merlin: An Introductory Study’, Geibun Kenkyu (Keio Journal of Arts and Letters) 88 (June 2005), 298–310 AJ ‘Comic Relief in Medieval English Literature’: The Case of Football in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Geibun Kenkyu (Keio Journal of Arts and Letters) 88 (June 2005), 127–31 AJ ‘Revivalism’ in Kindai towa Nanika (What is the Modern), City, Architecture and History 7 (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press 2005), pp. 21–66

ME Texts in Transition.indb 314

07/04/2014 00:03

A Bibliography of Toshiyuki Takamiya

315

2006 OJ ‘An Explanatory Note’, in Hikawa Reiko, Arthur O Kyutei Monogatari (A Story of King Arthur’s Court), vol. 3 (Tokyo: Chikuma, 2006)

2007 AJ ‘Reading aloud, Reciting and Silent Reading’, The Round Table (Takamiya Seminar, Keio University) 21 (2007), 57–65 AJ ‘A Concern about the Present State of Rare Book Management at the University Library’, Geibun Kenkyu (Keio Journal of Arts and Letters) 92 (June 2007), 160–8 AJ ‘On Gutenberg’s Printing Types: Digital Technologies and the HUMI Project’, Kokubungaku: Kaishaku to Kyozai no Kenkyu (Japanese Literature: A Study of Interpretation and Teaching Materials) [special issue] (August 2007), 169–73 AJ ‘Beyond the Middle Ages and the Medievalism’, The Rising Generation (Eigo Seinen) 153.6 (September 2007), 358–63

2008 AJ ‘The Arthurian Legend and the Pre-Raphaelites: From a Viewpoint of Book History’, The Rising Generation (Eigo Seinen) 154.4 (July 2008), 198–201 AJ ‘Thomas Cranmer’s Copy of Phrygio’s Chronicon (1534): An Aspect of Early Continental Printed Books with English Ownership, Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature 23 (2008), 1–6 TJ Isamu Takahashi trans. [supervised, with an afterword, by TT], William Blades, The Enemies of Books (Tokyo: Yasaka Shobo, 2004), 203–19 OJ ‘‘Printing Types of Incunabla’, in Kakimoji kara Insatsu Moji e: Katsuji Shotai no Genryu wo Tadoru (From the Written Letters to Printed Letters: Tracing the Sources of Printing Types) (Tokyo: Joshibi University of Art and Design, 2008), pp. 72–4

2009 AJ ‘Digitisation of Books, from Gutenberg to Google: A Palimpsest of Darnton’s Article’, Shiso (Thought) 1022 (June 2009), 166–72 AJ ‘Fukuzawa and London’, Booklet 17 (Keio University Art Center, 2009), 121–5 TJ ‘Google and the Future of Books’, by Robert Darnton, Shiso (Thought) 1022 (June 2009), 173–85 OJ ‘Professor Shiokawa Toshikazu and Durandus’ in Kyoiku-Bunka no Hito: Shiokawa Toshikazu Tsuito-shu (A Man of Education and Culture: In Memory of Shiokawa Toshikazu) (Osaka: Osaka Aoyama Gakuen, 2009), 95–8 OJ Satoko Tokunaga, Takami Matsuda, TT, Mari Ogawa and Mami Kanno, ‘An Exhibition Catalogue of D. S. Brewer Mythography Collection’, repr. in The Hiyosih Review of English Studies 56 (March 2010), 27–47

ME Texts in Transition.indb 315

07/04/2014 00:03

316

A Bibliography of Toshiyuki Takamiya

OJ ‘The Arthurian Legend: From the Middle Ages to the Present Day’, in An Encyclopedia of the Twenty-First Century English Culture, ed. Yasuo Deguchi, Akio Kobayashi and Takako Saito (Tokyo: Shoseki, 2009), pp. 692–705 OJ ‘Possessed and Obsessed: Medievalism around the End of the Nineteenth Century’, Oscar Wilde Kenkyu (Studies in Oscar Wilde) 10 (June 2009), 1–12

2010 AJ ‘The Formation of the Britwell Court Library and afterwards’, in Nadataru Zoshoka, Kakureta Zoshoka (Well-Known Book Collectors, Less Known Book Collectors), ed. Michio Sato (Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2010), pp. 41–55 A ‘A Handlist of Western Medieval Manuscripts in the Takamiya Collection’, in The Medieval Book: Glosses from Friends and Colleagues of Christopher de Hamel, ed. Richard A. Linenthal, James H. Marrow and William Noel (’t Goy-Houten: Hes & De Graaf, 2010), pp. 421–40 RJ ‘The Oxford Companion to the Book: Covering Manuscripts of the Antiquity to Digital Books’ , Maruzen Library News 12 (November 2010), 12–13 OJ ‘Professor Derek Brewer and I’, Poetica 73 [special issue, In Memoriam Derek Brewer, ed. and prefaced by TT] (June 2010), 17–21 OJ ‘The Description of Nature in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: From the Notes of Professor Jack Bennett’, Chuki-Eigo ni okeru Shizen, Kankaku, Bunka: Shigen to shite no Chuseijin no Kankaku (Nature, Sense and Culture in Middle English: The Sense of Medieval People as a Resource, ed. Koji Yoshimura (Osaka: Osaka Kyoiku Tosho, 2010), pp. 3–9

2012 B R. F. Yeager and TT, eds., The Medieval Python: The Purposive and Provocative Work of Terry Jones (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2012) BJ Hon no Sekai wa Henna Sekai (The Extraordinary World of Books) (Tokyo: Yushodo, 2012) A ‘Macbeth and Malory in the 1625 Edition of Peter Heylyn’s Microcosmus: A Nearly Unfortunate Tale’, in The Medieval Python, pp. 229–39 OJ ‘The World of Beautiful Books’, Gakuto (A Study Light) 109.2 (June 2012), 42–5

2013 BT Satoko Tokunaga, trans. [supervised and prefaced by TT], William Caxton and Early Printing in England, by Lotte Hellinga (Tokyo: Yushodo, 2013) A ‘Kiyoko Nagase and her “Grendel’s Mother”’, in Magistra Doctissima: Essays in Honor of Bonnie Wheeler, ed. Dorsey Armstrong, Ann W. Astell and Howard Chickering (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2013), pp. 17–24 AJ ‘Was the Festschrift a Twentieth-Century Phenomenon?’, Tosho (Library) 774 (August 2013), 2–6

ME Texts in Transition.indb 316

07/04/2014 00:03

A Bibliography of Toshiyuki Takamiya

317

AJ ‘Association Copies of Female Scholars of Old English: The Cases of Elizabeth Elstob and Anna Gurney’, in Shomotsu no Raireki, Dokusha no Yakuwari (The Provenance of Books and the Role of Readers), ed. Takami Matsuda (Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2013), pp. 133–48 OJ ‘Grendel’s Mother Is (1929): Feminism of Kiyoko Nagase’, Hikaku Bunka (Comparative Culture) (Institute for Comparative Studies of Tokyo Woman’s Christian University) 59 (March 2013), 3–7

2014 AJ ‘In Search for Malory’s Text’, Studies in English Literature 6 [regional branches combined issue] (2014), 67–76 (181–90) A TT and Richard A. Linenthal, ‘Early Printed Continental Books Owned in England: Some Examples in the Takamiya Collection’, in Makers and Users of Medieval Books: Essays in Honour of A. S. G. Edwards, ed. Carol M. Meale and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014), pp. 178–90 A ‘Bibliophiles in Darwin, 1975–78: A Reminiscence’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society [special issue ed. Ed Potten and Satoko Tokunaga] (2014)

ME Texts in Transition.indb 317

07/04/2014 00:03

ME Texts in Transition.indb 318

07/04/2014 00:03

Index of Manuscripts ••• Aberdeen, Aberdeen University Library MS 134  139, 140n, 142n Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MSS Brogyntyn ii.1 (olim Porkington 10)  118n Peniarth 17  251, 256 Assisi, Cattedrale San Rufino-Archivio e Biblioteca, MS 5,  215 Brussels, Bibliothèque royale 2544-5  162n Cambridge (UK) Cambridge University Library, MSS Dd.5.55 / Dd.V.55  162n, 165 Ee.4.30 / Ee.IV.30  162n Ff.5.40 / Ff.V.40  162n, 165 Ff.6.33 / Ff.VI.33  167n, 189n Gg.3.28 274n Gg.4.27 / Gg.IV.27  120, 132n, 299 Ii.1.36 / Ii.I.36  136n Ll.5.18 202n Mm.2.9 / Mm.II.9  205n, 206n Mm.5.14 / Mm.V.14  118n Add. 574  174n Add. 621  174n Add. 1216  174n Add. 1326  174n Add. 1653  174n Add. 2038  174n Add. 6578  137, 170n, 188n Add. 6686  162n Add. 8957  241 Corpus Christi College MSS 61 299 66  251, 255–6, 265 173 288 256 174n 268 162n 383 28 Emmanuel College MS 3.3.8 (James 241)  174n

Fitzwilliam Museum MS 2-1957  209, 210n Gonville & Caius College MSS 107 118n 160/81 136n 332 174n 512 131n Magdalene College MSS Pepys 878  223–32 Pepys 2125  xviii, 177–98 St John’s College G.35 (James 202)  162n Trinity College MSS B.1.18 174n B.15.18 161–2n O.2.13 118n O.2.53  209, 210n O.7.47  162n, 167 R.3.21  210, 211n Chicago, Newberry Library, MS 83  207n, 214 Clermont-Ferrand, Bibliothèque de la ville de Clermont, MS 249  75–87 Dublin, Trinity College, MS 213  118n Durham, Cathedral Library, MS B.III.28  174n Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MSS 6126 162n Advocates 19.3.1  118n Hereford, Cathedral Library, MS P.1.X  174n Horningsham, Wiltshire, Longleat House MSS 55  118n, 122–4 257 118n 298  162n, 168 Kew, The National Archives (TNA), MSS DL 28/1/6  59n, 60n DL 28/1/7  59n Leeds, Leeds University Library, MS Ripon Cathedral Library MS 6  173–4

319

ME Texts in Transition.indb 319

07/04/2014 00:03

320

Index of Manuscripts

Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 91  118n, 174n Liverpool, Liverpool University, MS Rylands F.4.10  162n, 168 London British Library MSS Additional 10036  118n Additional 10826  214 Additional 11748  162n Additional 17920  214n Additional 19909  216 Additional 22283 (Simeon)  118–20, 124, 162n, 163–4 Additional 31042  118n Additional 34114  xvii, 75–87 Additional 37049  184n, 210–11 Additional 37492  100 Additional 61823  212n Additional 88929  201, 202n, 203, 209, 211n, 212 Additional Charter 5829  51–3 Additional Charter 6016 (Birch 257) 52–3 Additional Charter 11158  49 Arundel 74  81n Arundel 168  202n Cotton Caligula A.ii  118n Cotton Claudius A.ii  201n Cotton Claudius E.iii  266n Cotton Claudius E.viii  81n Cotton Cleopatra C.x  214n Cotton Cleopatra E.i–ii  266 Cotton Domitian A.iv  266 Cotton Faustina B.vi  266 Cotton Faustina B.vii  266 Cotton Faustina B.ix  266 Cotton Julius A.iii  260n Cotton Julius A.vii  266 Cotton Nero A.i  281–2, 287, 289–91 Cotton Nero D.iii  260n Cotton Nero D.iv  266 Cotton Nero E.v  266n Cotton Otho D.iii  266n Cotton Tiberius A.x  266n Cotton Tiberius C.iii  266 Cotton Tiberius C.v  266 Cotton Tiberius C.vii  266n Cotton Titus B.x–xi  266n Cotton Vespasian E.xvi  118n

ME Texts in Transition.indb 320

Cotton Vitellius B.ii  266 Cotton Vitellius B.iii  266 Cotton Vitellius B.iv  266 Cotton Vitellius B.viii  260n Cotton Vitellius B.x  266 Cotton Vitellius D.iii  118n Cotton Vitellius E.viii  266 Cotton Vitellius F.xvi  266 Egerton 613  131n Egerton 838  272n, 294n Egerton 2433  221 Egerton 2862  116 Harley 55  287, 289–91 Harley 217  174n Harley 596  282–3, 289–91 Harley 1022  162n, 166 Harley 1035  162n Harley 1701  118n Harley 2252  118n Harley 2253  xvii, 117, 118, 120, 124, 125–33 Harley 2387  162n Harley 2398  177–8, 181, 186 Harley 4733  122, 124 Harley 5919  201 Harley 6573  162n Harley 6579  162n, 164 Rot. Harl. 43.A.14  201, 203, 209n, 212 Rot. Harl. T.11  201, 205–6, 209, 212 Lansdowne 362  162n, 168 Lansdowne 370–4  272n, 281, 294 Lansdowne 388  100 Royal 7 A.i  174n Royal 7 D.xvii  174n Royal 13 E.ix  70 Royal 20 B.xiv  214n Sloane 2593  111 Stowe 940  274, 295 College of Arms, Arundel 22  118n Guildhall Library, MS 5370  1–20 Inner Temple Library, MS Petyt 524  162n Lambeth Palace Library, MSS 306  118n, 204 472  162n, 310 London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), MSS 9051/1 13n 9071/1 13n

07/04/2014 00:03

Index of Manuscripts London, continued Wellcome Historical Medical Library, MS 632  201–6, 208–12, 217–19 Westminster School, MS 4  162n, 168 Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS Eng. 77  141, 157 New Haven, CT, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 410  201, 203, 208–12, 218 New York Columbia University Library, MS Plimpton 257  162n, 164 Pierpont Morgan Library, MSS M. 486  214 Glazier 39  201 Oxford All Souls’ College, MSS 25 162n 98  56, 84n Bodleian Library, MSS Ashmole 33  xvii, 88–103 Ashmole 61  118n Ashmole 487  232n Ashmole 488  232n Ballard 12  272n Ballard 40  294n Ballard 43  293n Ballard 63  273n Bodley 100  162n, 169 Bodley 131  171 Bodley 162  174n Bodley 264  120–1, 123–4 Bodley 425  136n Bodley 446  136n Bodley 529  174n Bodley 592  162n Canon. misc. 257  174n Digby 2  127n Digby 86  117n, 133 Douce 74  214n Douce 126  118n Douce 261  116 Eng. lang. c.11  288n, 292–3, 296 Eng. poet. a.1 (Vernon)  118–20, 124, 162n, 163–4, 185n, 299 Fairfax 2  141 Fairfax 3  40n, 43, 55–6, 74 Greaves 60  118n Laud Lat. 61  xviii, 241–9

ME Texts in Transition.indb 321

321

Laud misc. 108  132n Laud misc. 496  174n Laud misc. 602  162n, 169 Liturgical 397  216n Rawlinson A.398  174n Rawlinson B.484  xviii, 250–67 Rawlinson C.86  118n Rawlinson C.285  162n, 165 Rawlinson C.287  174n Rawlinson C.941  139 Rawlinson D.913  xvii, 104–15 Rawlinson Liturg. e.13  214 Rawlinson Poetry 38  21 Rawlinson Poetry 137  38 Tanner 407  210–11 Top Glouc. d.2  207 Corpus Christi College, MSS 201  xvi, 21–39 410 174n Jesus College, MS 111  253 St John’s College 8.D  174n Trinity College, MS 92  271n, 294 University College, MSS 18 174n 28  162n, 167 97  164n, 177n, 194n, 196 Philadelphia Free Library of Philadelphia, MS Lewis E.201  206 Redemptorist Archives of the Baltimore Province (olim Esopus)  201n Rosenbach Museum and Library, MS H.491  161n University of Pennsylvania Library, codex 218 (olim 218)  162n Rochester, Medway Archives and Local Study Centre, Records of the Dean and Chapter of Rochester, MS DRc/R1 (olim Rochester Cathedral Library MS A.3.5)  273–4, 276, 279n, 287, 295 San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, MSS EL 26.A.17  43–56, 73 EL 26.C.9  299 HM 64  232–7 HM 112  162n HM 128  118n HM 266  162n Stonyhurst College A.vi.24  162n

07/04/2014 00:04

322

Index of Manuscripts

Tokyo Keio University Library, MS Hopton Hall  184n Takamiya Collection (now New Haven, CT, Beinecke Library), MSS 8  138n, 176 39  220n, 237–40 45 106n 56 199–219 58 106n 129 268–96 Utrecht, Catharijneconvent Museum, MS ABM h4a  206

ME Texts in Transition.indb 322

Vatican City Vatican Archives, Reg. Avenion. 179 160n Vatican Library, Codex Vaticana Latina 11441 241–9 Worcester, Worcester Cathedral Library, MSS F.160 (olim Cathedral Music Library MS 1247)  205n F.172 162n York, York Minster, Dean and Chapter Library, MS XVI.K.5  160

07/04/2014 00:04

General Index ••• Adam of Usk, see Usk, Adam Adams, Robert, 22n, 38n Albertus Magnus: Naturalia, 105, 235 Alcuin, 279n, 281 Alexander and Dindimus, 121 Alfred the Great, king, 270–1, 273, 279–82, 284, 286–7, 292n All Hallows, London Wall, 141–2, 150 Allen, Hope Emily, 136n, 185, 186n, 194, 194n, 212n Allen, Rosamund S., 142, 142n Alnwyck, William, 172 Amis and Amiloun, 120 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 131n, 270 Anglo-Saxon law, 268–96 Anne de Bretagne, 207, 207–8n Anne of Bohemia, queen, wife of Richard II, 65, 76 Appellants (Lords Appellant), 63, 64, 68, 73n, 175 Appulby, Simon: The Fruyte of Redempcion, 148, 149, 149n, 150–1 arma Christi, 179, 186n, 191, 194–6, 209, 218 Arnold, K., 243n Arthur, King, 123, 124 Arundel, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, xvii–xviii, 56, 63, 67, 69–73, 84n, 134–46, 148–9, 151n, 152–6, 158–62, 167, 170–2, 175 Ascensius, J. Badius, 229 Ashmole, Elias, 237 Assumption of our Lady, 121n, 132n, 139n, 171, 201 Aston, John, preacher, 193 Aston, Margaret, 80n, 134n, 137, 145n, 159, 160n, 178n Augustodunensis, Honorius: Imago Mundi, 251, 253n, 254n, 263n, 265 Ave Maria, 206

Bailey, John Eglington, 239 Balan, Emir of Babylon and Spain, 97–8 Barrington, Daines, 271, 295n Barron, Caroline, 12, 67 Barron, W. R. J., 100 Bartholomaeus Anglicus: De proprietatibus rerum, 229 Bateman, Christopher, 257n-258n Bath Cathedral Priory, 122 Bazire, Joyce, 168n, 180n, 188n-189n Beadle, Richard, 43n, 171n, 177n, 193, 199n, 208n, 225n, 227n, 229, 230, 300n, 310–11, 313 Behrendt, Roland, 243n Belacyse, Alice, 176 Bell, H. Chalmer, 136n Benedict XII, Pope, 173 Benedictine order, 81, 171–3, 174n, 188, 190n, 199, 205n, 215, 216n, 219, 243 Bennett, Michael, 41, 42n Bernard de Monclar, 86–7 Biggs, Douglas, 40n, 67–8, 71 Birts, Rosemary, see Dorward, Rosemary Birts Blackfriars Council of 1382, 135–6 Blanchard, Laura, 206n Bliss, A. J., 163, 164n, 167 Bliss, Philip, 104, 105n, 106 Blunt, John Henry, 139n, 140n, 142n, 143, 216n Böddeker, K., 1258, 131n, 132n Bohun, Humphrey de, Earl of Hereford, 47 Bolingbroke, Henry, Duke of Hereford, see Henry IV Bonaventure/Pseudo-Bonaventure: Meditationes Vitae Christi, 137, 150n, 173–5, 176, 184, 187–90, 207 Bonde, William, 150 Borges, Jorge Luis, 106 Bower, Walter, Scottish chronicler, 70

323

ME Texts in Transition.indb 323

07/04/2014 00:04

324

General Index

Bowyer, William, 3 Bozon, Nicholas, attrib.: Proverbes de bon enseignement, 118 Braybrook, Robert, bishop of London, 3–5, 14 Brewer, Derek, 59–60, 240n, 299, 307, 309–10, 315–16 Brewer, J. S., 157n Bridgettine Breviary of Syon Abbey, 139, 142, 150, 151, 152n, 153, 157, 167n, 169, 188–90 Briggs, C. F., 63 Brikwyld, John, 13 Brompton, John of, abbot of Jervaulx, 283, 292 Brook, G. L., 125–8, 129n, 130, 131n, 133 Broun, William, scrivener, 13 Brown, Carleton, 127n, 131n, 183n Browning, John, 131 Brut chronicle, 122–4, 314 Bruyllant, hero of French romance, 98–9 Brydges, James, Duke of Chandos, bookcollector, 257, 265 Bühler, Curt F., 201n, 204n, 208n, 214n, 247 Bull, W. E., 253n Bullard, J. V., 136n Burgh, Benedict, 122 Burley, Simon, 63, 65–6 Burrow, John, 104n, 107n, 108–10, 111n, 112, 114–15 Caie, Graham D., 38n Cambridge University, 246 Canterbury Tales, see under Chaucer, Geoffrey Carlson, David, 40, 42–3, 58–9, 61n, 71–2 Carruthers, Mary, 112 Carthusian charterhouses, 161n, 167n, 170–1, 173, 175, 188, 190 Cato’s Distichs, 118–19, 122 Catto, Jeremy, 134n, 135, 154n, 190 Caxton, William, xvi, 143–5, 151n, 228–9, 242–7, 249, 300n, 302n, 303, 305, 308, 310–14, 316 Chanson d’Antioche, 77–8, 81–2, 84 Chanson de geste Fierabras, see Sir Firumbras Chanson de Roland, La, 96, 98, 100–2 Charlemagne, emperor, 88, 93–5, 97–100, 102, 202–5, 209 Charles VI, king of France, 86

ME Texts in Transition.indb 324

Charles d’Orléans or Charles, Duc d’Orléans, 86 Charlett, Arthur, master of University College Oxford, 229, 270, 272n Charter of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost, 164, 184–5, 198 Chartier, Alain, 86 Bréviare des Nobles, 86 ‘Le lay de pays’, 86 Chastising of God’s Children, The, 168, 180n, 187–8, 189n, 198 Chaucer, Geoffrey, xvi, 1, 4n, 23n, 41, 55–6, 61n, 66, 72–3, 80, 82n, 83, 84n, 99, 117, 143, 171, 178n, 197n, 257n, 299–300, 305, 307, 310–14 An ABC, 66 The Book of the Duchess, 76 The Canterbury Tales, 143, 144n, 171, 257n, 299, 303, 305, 314 The Tale of Melibee, 66 The Legend of Good Women, 66 Troilus and Criseyde, 99, 143, 171, 299 Chichester Cathedral, 38, 159 Chiovaro, F., 253n Christine de Pisan, 72, 73n, 86 Épistre d’Othea, 86 chronicles, 43, 59, 62, 64–5, 66n, 68, 70–1, 80, 122n, 123, 131n, 172n, 173, 204, 216, 229, 263n, 270, 283, 288, 313 Cirencester, 72, 175 Claidich, Richard, scrivener, 13 Clark, J. P. H., 160n, 162n Clay, Rotha Mary, 194 Clement VII, Pope, 79 Cloud of Unknowing, The, 166n, 186n Cloune, John, scrivener, 5n, 8, 12–15 Cloune, Matilda, 13 Cnut, king, laws of, 269, 280, 284, 286–8, 290–2 Cock, C., 257n, 258n Colet, John, Dean of St Paul’s, 148–51, 194 Colledge, Eric, 114n, 168n, 180n, 188–9 Constans, Leopold, 75, 83, 85 Coopland, G. W., 66n Copeland, Robert, 228 Cossier, John, scrivener, 4–5, 8, 10, 12–18 Cotton, Robert, book-collector, 237, 254n, 261–7, 275, 280–3, 289, 296 Cromwell, Oliver, 134–5, 156–8

07/04/2014 00:04

General Index Cummings, Brian, 178 Damian-Grint, Peter, 122n Darker, William, Carthusian of Sheen, 167n, 189 Dasent, John Roche, 147n De Urinis, 225 de Worde, Wynkyn, 138, 143–4, 148, 150n, 163n, 200n, 201, 219, 228, 229n, 245n, 300n, 307 Dee, John, 232–5, 237 Deonise Hid Diuinite, 166n, 168n Deschamps, Eustache, 86 Despenser, Edward le, 1st Baron le Despenser, 79 Despenser, Henry le, bishop of Norwich, xvii, 78–82, 87 Despenser, Isabel, 213, 216 D’Ewes, Simonds, book-collector, 269, 273, 280, 282–3, 289–91 Dieulacres Chronicle, 70–1 Dimitte me Domine, 181–2, 191–3 Dirige, 182 Dobson, R. B., 66n Doctrinal of Sapience, 144–5 Donaldson, E. Talbot, 21, 24–5 Dorward, Rosemary Birts, 163, 167 Doty, Brant Lee, 210n, 211n Doyle, A. I., 38n, 43n, 45, 119n, 136n, 137n, 163, 164n, 169n, 174n, 177n, 178n, 180, 181n, 194, 311 DuBoulay, F. R. H., 67n, 68 DuBruck, E., 189n Eadmer, 275, 309 Ebborall, Thomas, 141 Eccleston, Thomas of, chronicler, 216 Echard, Siân, 58, 59n Eco, Umberto: The Name of the Rose, 105n, 106 Edward III, 45n, 50, 206 Edward IV, 169n, 204, 206 Edward VI, 158n, 201, 206 Edward the Black Prince, x, 48–51, 54 Edward the Confessor, 45, 200 Eleanor of Provence, queen, wife of Henry III, 200 Elizabeth of York, 200

ME Texts in Transition.indb 325

325

Ellesmere Manuscript of The Canterbury Tales, 299, 311 Elmham, Thomas, prior of Lenton, 171 Elstob, Elizabeth, xviii, 268–96 Elstob, William, xviii, 268–96 Ely Cathedral, 160, 162 Epistle of St John the Hermit, 165 Esdras, see Prognostics of Esdras Evelyn, John, 223n, 229 ‘Fair Maid of Ribblesdale’, 125 Fanger, Claire, 58n Farris, Giovanni, 241n, 242n Fasciculus Morum, 215 Fastolf, John, 80 Fein, Susanna, 117n, 118n, 125, 126n Felton, Sibyl de, abbess of Barking, 171 Ferrar, Nicholas, 239, 240 Ferumbras, see Sir Firumbras Fifteen Oes, 210 Firumbras, see Sir Firumbras Fisher, John H., 42–3, 61 Fishlake, Thomas, 160, 167, 171 Fitzhamon, Robert, 207 Fitzjames, Richard, Bishop of London, 148–51 fleurs-de-lys, 47 Flint, Valerie I. J., 251n, 253, 254n, 263n Floripas, daughter of the Emir Balan, 96–7 Floris and Blancheflour, or Floriz and Blauncheflur, 120, 212n Flourman, Nicholas, apprentice scrivener, 3 Flower, Robin, 257n, 288n Fordham, John, prior of the cathedral church of Worcester, 172 ‘Four requests of Our Lady to Jesus’, 187, 189, 191 Fowler, D. C., 63n Fox-Davies, A. C., 45, 50, 52n Foxe, John, 155 Fredell, Joel, 42–3, 73n Froissart, Jean, 56, 76–7, 85 Fukuzawa, Yukichi, president of Keio University, 298, 315 Furnivall, F. J., 119n, 183n, 204n Galen: Regimen sanitatis, 235 Galloway, Andrew, 27, 29, 34, 64–5, 68

07/04/2014 00:04

326

General Index

Geoffrey of Monmouth: Brittaniae regum et principum origo, 229 Gering, Ulric, printer of Paris, 243–4, 246 Ghost of Guy, 187 Gibson, James, 223n, 227n, 228 Given-Wilson, Chris, 40, 59n, 64n, 65n, 66n, 70n, 71n Gleason, John, 148, 149n, 151n, 153n Godfrey of Bouillon, 78n, 81, 83 Golden Legend, 143 Gossouin, maître, 253n, 263n Governance of Kings & Princes, 63n Gower, John, xvi, xvii, 40–74, 75, 77, 83–5, 87, 117, 143, 171, 313 Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia, 55, 62 Cinkante Balades, 76, 84, 85n Confessio Amantis, xvii, 40–74, 76, 83–5, 171, 313 Cronica Tripertita, 43, 61, 70, 72–3 Mirour de l’Omme, 61, 68, 69n, 83 Traitiè pour les amantz marietz, 55, 84 Vox clamantis, 42, 55–6, 61, 62n, 73 Graham, Timothy, xviii, 268–96 Gréban, Arnoul, French mystery plays author, 189 Green, Richard Firth, xvi, 1–20, 58n Grendone, William, scrivener, 3 Griffin, Carrie, xviii, 220–40 Griffiths, Gareth, xvii, 116–24 Guddat-Figge, Gisela, 117, 119–20, 121n, 122n, 123 Gutenberg, Johannes, xvi, 297–8, 301–6, 312–13, 315 Guy of Burgundy, 96, 225, 227 Hall, Joseph, 132n Hanna, Ralph, 24, 26, 116, 136, 141n, 142n, 164n, 165n, 166, 178n, 179n, 181n, 235 Hardman, Philippa, xvii, 88–103, 201n, 203n Harris, John, prebendary of Rochester Cathedral, 273–4n, 313–14 Harris, Joseph, 114 Harris, Richard L., 271n Harley, Robert, book-collector, 274, 283, 293 Harley lyrics, 125n, 128, 129–31n Harvey, Barbara, 65n, 200n Havens, Jill C., 141n, 177n, 178, 182, 183n, 185, 186n, 194n, 196–7

ME Texts in Transition.indb 326

Hector, L. C., 65n Henri de la Tour, Bishop of Clermont, 86 Henry IV (Henry of Lancaster, Henry Bollingbroke, Earl of Derby, Duke of Hereford) xvii, 40, 43, 46–54, 56, 58, 64, 67n, 73, 161, 175 Henry V (Henry of Monmouth), 122n, 172–3, 190 Henry VIII, 155–6, 157n, 173, 210n, 219 Herrtage, Sidney J., 88n, 89, 99, 100n Hickes, George: Linguarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus, 270–2 Hilton, Walter, xviii, 159–70 Ad Quemdam seculo renunciare volentem, 161, 162n De Imagine peccati, 160 De Utilitate et prerogativis religionis, 160 Of Mixed Life, 160, 164–5, 309 Scale of Perfection, xviii, 160, 162–70 Hirsh, John C., xvii, 104–15 Hoccleve, Thomas, 56 Hodgson, P., 166n Hogg, James, 211n Holland, Joan, Duchess of Kent, 171, 174–5 Holland, Thomas, Duke of Surrey, 175–6 Honeyman, Robert Brodhead, 238–9 Hooke, Robert: Micrographia, 228 Hooper, S., 263 Honorius Augustodunensis, 251, 253, 254n, 263n, 265 L’Image du Monde de maître Gossouin, 253n, 263n Imago Mundi or De Imagine Mundi or L’Ymagine del mondo, 251–5, 258–9, 261, 263–7 Semeiança del mundo, 253n Horner, Patrick J., 190 Horobin, Simon, xvi–xvii, 21–39 Horsley, Adam, 160 Horstmann, Carl, 119, 185–6n Hoskins, Edgar, 216n Hudson, Anne, 134n, 136–7, 140–3n, 145–7n, 152n, 163n Hue de Tabarie, 78, 83 Hughes, Jonathan, 80n, 141n, 161, 170–1 Hughes, P. L., 154–6n Hunter, Joseph, 271n, 274–5n Huntyngton, Isabelle, 13–14 Huntyngton, Robert, scrivener, 5n, 12–16, 19

07/04/2014 00:04

General Index Hyde, Henry, Earl of Clarendon, bookcollector, 256, 265 ‘Icham of Irlande’, 107n, 110, 113 Ine, king of Wessex, law code of, 269, 278, 281, 284–8, 292 Irvine, S., 131n Isabella, queen of Bavaria, 189 Ive, William, 141 Jackson, John, 227 James Brydges, Duke of Chandos, 257, 258n, 265 James, M. R., 178n, 210n, 223, 230 Jenkinson, Hilary, 1, 5–6 Jeffery, Brian, 69n John, Duke of Bedford, 80 John of Burgundy: Plague Tract, 225, 227 John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, 45–6, 48, 50–2, 54, 64, 67, 70, 73, 85n Jones, Terry, xvii, 40–74, 316 Joseph of Arimathie, 119 Judex, 268, 277, 279, 281–5 Kane, George, 21, 24–5, 26n, 131n Kato, Takako, xvi, 297–305 Keio University, xv–xvi, 184n, 240, 297–300, 301n, 302–5, 306–16 Ker, Neil R., 105n, 118n, 132n, 141n, 167n, 173n, 250n Kettryngham, Geoffrey de, scrivener, 15 King Horn, 117, 121n, 132 King of Tars, 118–19 Kingston, Richard, 60 Kirkstall Abbey Chronicles, 64n, 66n, 71 Knighton, Henry, chronicler, 59 Lacy, Edmund, bishop of Exeter, 172, 255n, 267 Lambarde, William: Archaionomia, 272–3, 275, 281, 284, 286–7, 290–2 Langland, William, xvi, 21–39, 119n, 171n The Vision of Piers Plowman, xvi, 21–39 Larkin, J. F., 154–6n Le Page, John, 264 Ledrede, Richard, bishop of Ossory, 113–14 Leo X, Pope, 153, 205 Letter Books of the City of London, 2–3n, 4–5, 8n, 10n, 14, 71

ME Texts in Transition.indb 327

327

Liber de Diversis Medicins, 225, 227 Lindeboom, Wim, 42–3 Livres du graunt Caam, 121 Llandaff Cathedral, 79 Lluis de Font, 160 Lollard knights, 62 London, xvi, xviii, 1–20, 32, 61, 71, 116, 121, 122n, 137–8, 141, 142n, 145, 148–51, 153–5, 161n, 171, 175–7, 188, 190, 200, 201n, 207n, 216, 227, 237n, 240n, 241–2, 244, 245n, 260–1, 263, 265, 268n, 271, 273–4, 283, 293, 304, 315 Lord’s Prayer (or Pater noster), 150, 166, 182, 186, 196, 203, 206, 208–10 Louis d’Orléans, 86 Louis, Cameron, 210n Loune, John, scrivener, 15 Love, Nicholas: Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, xviii, 137, 138n, 141n, 144, 145n, 148, 151–2, 159, 170–6, 188, 190, 207, 208n, 311, 313 ‘Lover’s Complaint’, 125 Lundy, Anita G., 185n, 191, 193–4 Luther, John, xviii, 134n, 142, 145–6, 150n, 151–5 Lutton, Robert, 186n, 194, 195n Lydgate, John, 117, 190n, 204n, 228 Lyncoln, Thomas, scrivener, 8, 14–15 Lyndwood, William: Provinciale, 136 Macaulay, G. C., 40–3, 45, 47–8, 50, 55–6, 58, 74, 85n MacFarlane, K. B., 80 Madden, Frederic, 104, 105n Magi, 206–7 ‘Maid by the wode lay’, 114 ‘Maiden in the mor’, 107n, 112, 114 Malory, Thomas: Le Morte Darthur, 300, 303, 305–10, 312–13, 316–17 Malvern Hills, 34 Manzalaoui, M. A., 220n Marco Polo, 121 Martin, G. H., 2 Martin, Ronald H., 242, 246 Mary, Virgin Mary, 65–6, 121n, 139n, 173n, 183–4n, 186, 188n, 189–90, 194–5, 197–201, 204–7, 212–19 Maximion, 132 Maxwell, Felicity, 173–5, 176

07/04/2014 00:04

328

General Index

McKitterick, David, 225n, 227n, 229–31, 232n McKitterick, Rosamund, 106n, 177n McKnight, G. H., 132n McLeod, Glenda K., 73n McLuhan, Marshall, 297 McNamer, Sarah, 184 Meditation on the Passion, 165, 171, 183 Medytacions of Saynt Bernarde, 144 Melton, William: Sermo Exhortatorius, 148 Meyer, Paul, 75n, 76, 121n Mézières, Philippe de, 66 Michel, Jean, French mystery plays author, 189 Milan, siege of, 1369, 79 Mirk, John, 152n, 201, 213 Mirror of Mankind, 183 Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, xviii, 137–42, 145, 148–9, 151–2, 164, 170–1, 174–6, 188, 190, 207, 208n Montagu, John, the Earl of Salisbury, 72 Montclar Anglars, lords of, 86 Mooney, Linne R., xv–xix, 1, 4n, 5, 58n, 107, 171n, 204n, 213n, 215 Morse, Mary, xviii, 199–219 Mortimer, Ian, 52 Morton, John, of York, 171 Mount Grace, Carthusian Charterhouse of, 137–9, 170–6 Mowbray, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, 65–6 Murphy, James J., xviii, 241–9 Myroure of oure Ladye, 139–40, 142–3 Nebuchadnezzar, dream of, illustration, 54 Newgate prison, 3 Newton, Isaac: Principia mathematica, 228, 238 Nichols, Ann Eljenholm, 195, 210n, 218 Nicholson, Peter, 40n, 42, 56–7, 59, 61 Nicolson, William, 295 Nix, Thomas, Bishop of Norwich, 156 Nolan, Barbara, 82–3, 84n Norwich Cathedral, 81, 166 O deus in celis, 71–2 Oliver, Duc, hero of French romance, 90–1 On King Richard’s Ministers, 43, 71–2 ‘On virtues and vices’, 177, 186 Ordène de Chevalerie, 78, 82

ME Texts in Transition.indb 328

Orosius, Paulus: Seven Books of History against the Pagans, 271, 273, 294 O’Sullivan, M. I., 102n O’Sullivan, William, 251n, 257n, 260–2n Otuel, see Sir Ottuel of Spayne Oxford University, 104, 105n, 134–7, 139n, 147, 159, 192, 225n, 229, 260, 261n, 269–72, 304 Panter (or Pantier), Thomas, scrivener, 3–5 Pantin, W. A., 172, 173n Parker Chronicle, 288 Parkes, Malcolm B., 43, 55–6, 133n, 247 Parliament of Devils, 183n Passion Isabea, La, 189n Patent Rolls, 14n, 66n Pater Noster, see Lord’s Prayer Pearl, 76 Pearsall, Derek, 38n, 42n, 119n, 163n, 304, 317 Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, 64–6 Pecock, Reginald, 141, 146n Pepys, Samuel, 197, 223, 225–32, 238, 240 Petrovskaia, Natalia I., xviii, 250–67 Phillipps, Thomas, book-collector, 106, 235, 296 Pinkhurst, Adam, xvi, 1, 4–5, 15 Pole, John, 160, 167 Polhille, Richard, 14 Powell, Susan, xvii, 134–58, 200–1n, 213n Preest, D., 80n Prick of Conscience, 38, 165 Prickynge of Love, 164 Prognostics of Esdras (Erra pater) 187 Proverbes de bon enseignement, 118–19 Proverbes of diverse profetes, 118–19, 122 Ptolemy: Tetrabiblos, 235 Putter, Ad, xvii, 116–24 Pynson, Richard, 149n, 154, 163n, 228 Quaritch, Bernard, Ltd., 104–6, 115, 313, 315 Radcot Bridge, battle of, 66–7 Rawlinson, Richard, book-collector, xviii, 256n, 257, 258n, 265 Reed, Arthur W., 148, 154, 156n Remley, P. G., 63 Renevey, Denis, 38n, 170n Reynes, Robert, 210, 211n

07/04/2014 00:04

General Index Richard II, 40–3, 46, 53, 55–7, 61–3n, 65–8, 71, 73n, 74, 76–7, 122, 159n, 161, 175 Richard the Redeless, 42–3, 71–2 Rigg, A. George, 58n, 61n, 282n Riley, Henry Thomas, 3n, 80n, 172n Robbins, Rossell Hope, 107–8n, 125, 128n, 130n, 163n, 195n, 217n, 308 Robert of Sicily, 118–19 Rochester Cathedral, 172, 273–4, 276, 279n, 287, 296 Roland, hero of French romance, 96, 98, 100–1, 102n Roland, Song of, see Chanson de Roland Rolle, Richard, of Hampole, 169, 185–6n Commandment, 164–5, 184–5 De Emendatio Vitae, 165–6 Ego Dormio, 164, 185 Form of Living, 164–6, 184–5, 194, 198 Oleum effusum, 166 The Rule of Life of Our Lady, 166, 185 Roman d’Alexandre, 121 Roman d’Éneas, 77–8, 81–2, 84 Roman de Thèbes, 77–8, 81–2 Romance of Duke Rowland, 100n Rood, Theodoric, 146–7 Rowland, see Romance of Duke Rowland Royal Book, 143–5 Royal Society, 228, 238 St Albans, Schoolmaster Printer of, xviii, 242–5, 247, 249 St Augustine, 36, 215, 241, 244n St Bonaventure, 137, 216 Life of St Francis, 216 St Bridget of Sweden, 139, 182, 210 St Catherine, 123 St Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, 193 St Francis, 215–16 St Gregory, 271n, 272, 282n St Jerome, 106 St Margaret, 200–1n, 202, 208n St Michael, the Archangel, 213–14 St Oweyn, 192 Saladin, 78n, 83 Salisbury Cathedral, 79 Samuels, Michael L., 22n, 23, 163–4n Sandford, Francis, 45, 47n, 50n, 52 Sargent, Michael G., xviii, 137, 138–9n, 141, 145n, 159–76, 188n, 207–8n, 313

ME Texts in Transition.indb 329

329

Saul, Nigel, 40, 42, 62–3n, 65n, 73n Savona, Italy, 241–3 Sawyer, Peter, 279n, 287n Scase, Wendy, 38n, 118–19n, 146n Schmidt, A. V. C., 36, 39, 119n Schroeder, H. J., 153n Scott, Kathleen, 121n, 176, 190n, 195n, 208n, 210–11n, 218 Scriveners’ Company of London, xvi, 1–20 Scrope, Richard, Archbishop of York, 72, 161 Scrope, William le, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, 52 Seaton, Ethel, 75–7, 83–5 Secretum Secretorum, 220n, 235 Selden, John, 273, 275 Seman, Martin, scrivener, 4–5, 8, 10, 12–18 Sharpe, Reginald R., 2–3n, 10n, 71n Shaxton, Nicholas, Bishop of Salisbury, 201, 204 Shepherd, Stephen, 88, 90, 96, 97n Shillingsburg, Peter, 297 Simeon manuscript, 118–20, 124, 162n, 163–4 Sir Firumbras, or Sir Fyrumbras, xvii, 88–9, 97, 99, 100, 102 Sir Otuell of Spayne (or Sir Otuel), 100, 102n Sixtus IV, Pope, 214, 241 Skeat, Walter W., 21, 26 Smith, A. H., 288n Smith, David M., 172 Smith, Lucy Toulmin, 59, 60n, 201n Smith, Richard, book collector, 185, 197–8 Solopova, Elizabeth, 126, 128, 132–3 Somerset, Fiona, 134n, 140–1, 142n, 152, 153n, 178n, 197 Somme le roi, 136, 144 Somner, William, antiquary, 273, 283 Song of Roland, see Chanson de Roland Songe du Vieil Pelerin, Le, 66 Songe Vert, Le, xvii, 75–87 Speculum Devotorum, 152, 188 Speculum ecclesie, 184–5 Speculum peccatoris, 187–8, 196 Speculum Vitae, 136–7 Spelman, Henry, 273, 283–4 Sphere of Pythagoras, 235 Spofford, Thomas, prior of St Mary’s in York, 172 ‘Spring Song of the Passion’, 125–6 Stanley, Eric, xvii, 125–33 Stansfield, Michael, 175–6

07/04/2014 00:04

330

General Index

Statutes of the Realm, 157n Steer, Francis W., 2, 5–6, 8, 12 Stevens, Martin, 300n, 311 Stockton, E. W., 62n, 70n, 73n Strohm, Paul, 190 Suso, Henry: Horologium sapientiae, 184 Swanson, R. N., 196, 214n Syon, Bridgettine monastery at, 139, 142, 150–3, 157, 167n, 169, 188–90 Taguchi, Mayumi, xviii, 177–98 Takamiya, Toshiyuki, xv–xviii, 75, 106, 115, 134, 136, 138, 162n, 175n, 176, 199, 203–4, 220, 222, 237, 239–40, 250, 268, 297–305, 306–17 Taylor, C., 162n Taylor, J., 64n, 66n Taylor, Sean, 21–2, 26 Ten Commandments, 123 Tewkesbury Abbey, 199, 206–7, 212–13, 215–16 Textus Roffensis, 272n, 273–4, 278–9, 281–2, 286–8, 291–5, 296n Thesaurus Linguarum Septentrionalium, 270–1 Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, 47–8, 63, 67 Thompson, E. M., 70n, 80n Thoresby, Ralph, 271n, 273–5 ‘Three Foes of Man’, 130 Thurgarton Priory, 160, 168–70 Titus and Vespasian, 122, 124 Tokunaga, Satoko, xvi, 297–305, 306–17 Toulmin Smith, Lucy, 59, 60n Toulouse, University of, 241 Traversagnus, Laurentius, xviii, 241–9 Epitoma Margarita eloquentiae, 242–3, 246, 248–9 Margarita eloquentiae castigate, xviii, 242, 246, 248–9 Modus conficiendi epistolas, 241 Treatise of Love, 144 Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God, 168n, 180n Trithemius, Johannes, 243 Tschann, J., 133n Tuck, Anthony, 60–1 Tunstall, Cuthbert, Bishop of London, 154–5 Turville-Petre, Thorlac, 116n, 117, 319

ME Texts in Transition.indb 330

Twysden, Roger, 283n Upton, Richard, prior of Crowland, 172 Urban V, Pope, 79 Usk, Adam: Chronicle, 43, 59, 65 Ussher, James, bishop of Armagh, bookcollector, 260–2 Venus, 41, 55–6, 75–7, 83, 162n, 163 Verba Seniorum, 165 Vernon Manuscript, 118–20, 124–5, 163–4, 185n, 299 Voyages of Marco Polo, 121 Wabuda, Susan, 194 Walsingham, Thomas, 43, 59, 70, 80, 172 Cronica Maiora or Historia Anglicana, 43, 70 Wanley, Humfrey, 125–6, 127–9n, 130, 270–1, 274, 283 Ware, James, author and book-collector, 250, 251n, 254–66 De Hibernia, 254 Warner, Lawrence, 26 watermarks, 85–6, 179, 239, 276n, 277–8 Watson, A. G., 232–4 Watson, Nicholas, 134, 135n, 141n Weldon, James, 27–30 Wenzel, Siegfried, 114, 116n, 215n Wessyngton, John, prior of Durham, 172 Westminster Abbey, 200, 240n Westminster Chronicle, 59, 65 Wheelock, Abraham, 269, 272, 275–6, 281, 286–7, 288n, 289–90, 292n, 296 Whethamstede, John, prior of St Albans, 141n, 172–3 White, David, Somerset Herald, 52 Whitehead, F., 98n Whittington College, London, 141–2 Wilkins, David, 3n, 135n, 154–5n, 275–6, 295 Willard, Charity Cannon, 73 Williams, H. F., 253n Wilmart, A., 183 Wimbledon, Thomas, sermon at St Paul’s cross, 177–8, 183, 192, 198 Winchester Malory manuscript, 304, 306, 308 Windeatt, B. A., 99, 300n, 311 Woodville, Richard, Lord Rivers, 121

07/04/2014 00:04

General Index Woodward, Daniel, 300, 312 Wright, Thomas, 132, 201n, 262–3n Wulfstan: Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, 270, 279n Wycliffe, John, 135–6, 141, 142n, 145, 147, 155, 159n Wycliffite Bible, xviii, 140–2, 146, 151

ME Texts in Transition.indb 331

331

Yeager, Robert, xvii, 40, 42n, 55n, 61–2n, 75–87, 316 York Minster, 148, 160, 167 York Plays, 201

07/04/2014 00:04

ME Texts in Transition.indb 332

07/04/2014 00:04

Tabula Gratulatoria ••• Mary-Jo Arn Julia Boffey Piero Boitani Graham D. Caie Margaret Connolly Christopher Edwards Murray J. Evans Susanna Fein Yuri Fuwa Vincent Gillespie Timothy Graham Richard Firth Green Carrie Griffin Gareth Griffith Robert Harding Phillipa Hardman John C. Hirsh Simon Horobin Sanae Ikeda Daichi Ishikawa

•••

333

ME Texts in Transition.indb 333

07/04/2014 00:04

334

Tabula Gratulatoria

••• Peter Murray Jones Terry Jones Takako Kato Shoichiro Kawai Richard A. Linenthal Hiroyuki Matsumoto Riki Miyoshi (Richard House) Linne R. Mooney Mary Morse Daniel W. Mosser Tsuyoshi Mukai James J. Murphy Stefanie Nartschik-Mikami Peter Nicholson Lea T. Olsan Derek Pearsall Matti Peikola Natalia I. Petrovskaia Oliver Pickering Susan Powell Ad Putter David Raybin

•••

ME Texts in Transition.indb 334

07/04/2014 00:04

Tabula Gratulatoria

335

••• Jane Roberts Michael G. Sargent Barbara A. Shailor Jeremy J. Smith Christopher Sokol Eric Stanley Yoichi Sumi Mayumi Taguchi Isamu Takahashi M. Teresa Tavormina Andrew Taylor Satoko Tokunaga Nila Vázquez Akihiro Yamada Hisaaki Yamanouchi R. F. Yeager Yoko Yuasa Patrick Zutshi

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Cambridge University Library

•••

ME Texts in Transition.indb 335

07/04/2014 00:04

ME Texts in Transition.indb 336

07/04/2014 00:04

YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: P UBL ICATION S God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of LateMedieval Women Visionaries, Rosalynn Voaden (1999) Pilgrimage Explored, ed. J. Stopford (1999) Piety, Fraternity and Power: Religious Gilds in Late Medieval Yorkshire, 1389–1547, † David J. F. Crouch (2000) Courts and Regions in Medieval Europe, ed. Sarah Rees Jones, Richard Marks and A. J. Minnis (2000) Treasure in the Medieval West, ed. Elizabeth M. Tyler (2000) Nunneries, Learning and Spirituality in Late Medieval English Society: The Dominican Priory of Dartford, Paul Lee (2000) Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England, Lesley A. Coote (2000) The Problem of Labour in Fourteenth-Century England, ed. James Bothwell, P. J. P. Goldberg and W. M. Ormrod (2000) New Directions in Later Medieval Manuscript Studies: Essays from the 1998 Harvard Conference, ed. Derek Pearsall (2000) Cistercians, Heresy and Crusade in Occitania, 1145–1229: Preaching in the Lord’s Vineyard, Beverly Mayne Kienzle (2001) Guilds and the Parish Community in Late Medieval East Anglia, c. 1470–1550, Ken Farnhill (2001) The Age of Edward III, ed. J. S. Bothwell (2001) Time in the Medieval World, ed. Chris Humphrey and W. M. Ormrod (2001) The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, ad 300–1300, ed. Martin Carver (2002) Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime, 1399–1406, ed. Gwilym Dodd and Douglas Biggs (2003) Youth in the Middle Ages, ed. P. J. P Goldberg and Felicity Riddy (2004) The Idea of the Castle in Medieval England, Abigail Wheatley (2004) Rites of Passage: Cultures of Transition in the Fourteenth Century, ed. Nicola F. McDonald and W. M. Ormrod (2004) Creating the Monastic Past in Medieval Flanders, Karine Ugé (2005) St William of York, Christopher Norton (2006) Medieval Obscenities, ed. Nicola F. McDonald (2006) The Reign of Edward II: New Perspectives, ed. Gwilym Dodd and Anthony Musson (2006) Old English Poetics: The Aesthetics of the Familiar in Anglo-Saxon England, Elizabeth M. Tyler (2006) The Late Medieval Interlude: The Drama of Youth and Aristocratic Masculinity, Fiona S. Dunlop (2007) The Late Medieval English College and its Context, ed. Clive Burgess and Martin Heale (2008)

ME Texts in Transition.indb 337

07/04/2014 00:04

The Reign of Henry IV: Rebellion and Survival, 1403–1413, ed. Gwilym Dodd and Douglas Biggs (2008) Medieval Petitions: Grace and Grievance, ed. W. Mark Ormrod, Gwilym Dodd and Anthony Musson (2009) St Edmund, King and Martyr: Changing Images of a Medieval Saint, ed. Anthony Bale (2009) Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c. 1100–c. 1500, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al. (2009) The Royal Pardon: Access to Mercy in Fourteenth-Century England, Helen Lacey (2009) Texts and Traditions of Medieval Pastoral Care: Essays in Honour of Bella Millett, ed. Cate Gunn and Catherine Innes-Parker (2009) The Anglo-Norman Language and its Contexts, ed. Richard Ingham (2010) Parliament and Political Pamphleteering in Fourteenth-Century England, Clementine Oliver (2010) The Saints' Lives of Jocelin of Furness: Hagiography, Patronage and Ecclesiastical Politics, Helen Birkett (2010) The York Mystery Plays: Performance in the City, ed. Margaret Rogerson (2011) Wills and Will-Making in Anglo-Saxon England, Linda Tollerton (2011) The Songs and Travels of a Tudor Minstrel: Richard Sheale of Tamworth, Andrew Taylor (2012) Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, ed. Richard G. Newhauser and Susan J. Ridyard (2012) Socialising the Child in Late Medieval England, c. 1400–1600, Merridee L. Bailey (2012) Barking Abbey and Medieval Literary Culture: Authorship and Authority in a Female Community, ed. Jennifer N. Brown and Donna Alfano Bussell (2012) Christians and Jews in Angevin England: The York Massacre of 1190, Narratives and Contexts, ed. Sarah Rees Jones and Sethina Watson (2013) Reimagining History in Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicles, John Spence (2013) Henry V: New Interpretations, ed. Gwilym Dodd (2013) Rethinking Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, Carolyn P. Collette (2014)

york st u di es i n m e dieva l the ol o g y I Medieval Theology and the Natural Body, ed. Peter Biller and A. J. Minnis (1997) II Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages, ed. Peter Biller and A. J. Minnis (1998) III Religion and Medicine in the Middle Ages, ed. Peter Biller and Joseph Ziegler (2001) IV Texts and the Repression of Medieval Heresy, ed. Caterina Bruschi and Peter Biller (2002)

ME Texts in Transition.indb 338

07/04/2014 00:04

york manuscripts conference Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England: The Literary Implications of Manuscript Study, ed. Derek Pearsall (1983) [Proceedings of the 1981 York Manuscripts Conference] Manuscripts and Texts: Editorial Problems in Later Middle English Literature, ed. Derek Pearsall (1987) [Proceedings of the 1985 York Manuscripts Conference] Latin and Vernacular: Studies in Late-Medieval Texts and Manuscripts, ed. A. J. Minnis (1989) [Proceedings of the 1987 York Manuscripts Conference] Regionalism in Late-Medieval Manuscripts and Texts: Essays celebrating the publication of ‘A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English’, ed. Felicity Riddy (1991) [Proceedings of the 1989 York Manuscripts Conference] Late-Medieval Religious Texts and their Transmission: Essays in Honour of A. I. Doyle, ed. A. J. Minnis (1994) [Proceedings of the 1991 York Manuscripts Conference] Prestige, Authority and Power in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts, ed. Felicity Riddy (2000) [Proceedings of the 1994 York Manuscripts Conference] Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions. Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall, ed. A. J. Minnis (2001) [Proceedings of the 1996 York Manuscripts Conference]

manu s cri p t cu lt u re i n t he b ritish isl e s I Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England, ed. Margaret Connolly and Linne R. Mooney (2008) II Women and Writing, c. 1340–c. 1650: The Domestication of Print Culture, ed. Anne Lawrence-Mathers and Phillipa Hardman (2010) III The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts: Texts, Owners and Readers, ed. Ralph Hanna and Thorlac Turville-Petre (2010) IV Scribes and the City: London Guildhall Clerks and the Dissemination of Middle English Literature, 1375–1425, Linne R. Mooney and Estelle Stubbs (2013) V Robert Thornton and his Books: Essays on the Lincoln and London Thornton Manuscripts, ed. Susanna Fein and Michael Johnston (2014)

here sy and i nqu i si t i on i n the m iddl e ag e s Heresy and Heretics in the Thirteenth Century: The Textual Representations, L. J. Sackville (2011) Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Medieval Quercy, Claire Taylor (2011) Heresy, Inquisition and Life-Cycle in Medieval Languedoc, Chris Sparks (2014)

ME Texts in Transition.indb 339

07/04/2014 00:04

ME Texts in Transition.indb 340

07/04/2014 00:04

Middle English texts_PPC 26/03/2014 08:54 Page 1

his exciting collection of essays is centred on late medieval English manuscripts and their texts. It offers new insights  into the works of canonical literary writers, including Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, William Langland, Walter Hilton and Nicholas Love, as well as lesser-known texts and manuscripts. It also considers medieval books, their producers, readers, and collectors. It is thus a fitting tribute to one the foremost scholars of the history of the book, Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya, whom it honours.

T

SIMoN HoRoBIN is Professor of English Language and Literature 

at the University of oxford;  LINNE R. MooNEy is Professor of Medieval English Palaeography in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of york. She is also Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies at york. 

Cover: Takamiya Deposit MS 8, Nicholas Love, Mirrour of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, folio 1, The Toshiyuki Takamiya Deposit at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, yale University.

HOR OBIN and MOONE Y (eds)

CoNTRIBUToRS : Timothy Graham, Richard Firth Green,  Carrie Griffin, Gareth Griffith, Phillipa Hardman, John Hirsh,  Simon Horobin, Terry Jones, Takako Kato, Linne R. Mooney,  Mary Morse, James J. Murphy, Natalia Petrovskaia, Susan Powell,  Ad Putter, Michael G. Sargent, Eric Stanley, Mayumi Taguchi,  Isuamu Takahashi, Satoko Tokunaga, R.F. yeager.

MIDDLE ENGLISH TEXTS IN TRANSITION

MANUSCRIPT CULTURE IN THE BRITISH ISLES

MIDDLE ENGLISH TEXTS IN TRANSITION

yoRK MEDIEVAL PRESS

an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com

A Festschrift dedicated to Toshiyuki Takamiya on his 70th birthday yoRK MEDIEVAL PRESS

Edited by SIMON HOR OB IN and LINNE R. MOONEY