London, British Library, Lansdowne 392
England |
London |
British Library |
Lansdowne 392 |
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s. xvmed |
English |
Scribal dialect: Warwickshire. Linguistic Atlas Grid Reference: 426 304, LP 4285 (McIntosh, Samuels and Benskin 1986, p. 244).
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A composite manuscript/miscellany containing a mid fifteenth-century copy of Mirk's
Festial. The other texts are earlier - short Latin, mainly biblical, texts.
Item: 1ff. 3r-95r |
Festial (IPMEP 734) |
'The helpe and the grace of almy?ty god ūrou?'. |
'his body and his soule butt...'. |
Added at top of f. 3r in a later fifteenth-century hand, 'This boke is called the ffestial of englische sermones necessari to simple curates and parishe priestes'. A third of f. 95 has been cut off from the right side. There are two blank paper leaves after f. 95. |
Erbe 1905.
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Item: 2ff. 96r-109v |
Libellus Dispensationum |
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Item: 3ff. 110r-111r |
Concordia epistolarum Sancti Pauli Apostoli |
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'Incipit concordia epistolarum sancti pauli apostoli'. |
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Item: 4f. 111v-113v |
Sacrosanctae Scripturae loci communies; quorum alii versibus hexametris |
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Item: 5ff. 114r-116v |
Prologus sancti Evangelii secundum Matthaeum |
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Item: 6f. 116v |
Dom. Jes. Christi genealogiae ex Matth.i. et Luc. iii. Colectae; cum glossis interlineas et in margine |
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Item: 7ff. 117r-120r |
Various Latin texts |
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Item: 8ff. 120v-121v |
Prologus in Cantica Canticorum, versibus hexametris |
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Codex |
Parchment |
260 x 170 mm |
Unable to ascertain. No catchwords.
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Festial only - pricking not visible. Writing space of 200 x 120 mm. Single columns with 30-38 lines. Frame and lines ruled in drypoint. |
Text 1 by one scribe writing in an Anglicana script with Secretary influences in a now faded brown ink. Hand begins tidily and is well formed but becomes untidy. Characteristics: single lobed a with a pointed head; double compartment a; long s in initial position with thick stroke; b-shaped and double v-shaped w; looped l, b, and h; ū.
Items 2 and 3 seem to be by one scribe.
Items 5, 6, and 7 are distinct from the other items, they are by one scribe and their folios are smaller and in double columns.
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In red (Festial): titles to the homilies, first letter of each homily has a one or two-line red initial, some rubrication in the first few folios.
Later texts: three-line red initials, some red highlights on paraphs, red paraphs.
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Not medieval. Size: 270 x 185 mm. Covered in black leather with gold stamp mitred and pasted onto pasteboard. Inside pastedown marbled paper. Five raised bands across the spine.
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ff. iii + 119 + iii. Two paper flyleaves at the beginning are foliated as 1 and 2 and one paper flyleaf at the end is foliated as f. 122. Modern pencil foliation supercedes nineteenth-century pen foliation.
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F. 3r top - later hand - 'This boke is called the ffestial of Englishe Sermones. Necessari to simple Curates and parishe priestes'. At the end of the volume is an index to the Festial, modern, f. 122r-v.
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Early folios faded and discoloured.
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Unknown |
Folio 3r bottom - 'Actor libri dicitur _____________ plommer'. Wakelin suggests that this inscription identifies this manuscript as the one lent to (Wakelin 1967, no. 14) by his friend of Longbridge near Warwick.
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Catalogued and encoded: Rebecca Farnham, University of Birmingham, August 2003.
- Fletcher, A. J. 1987. John Mirk and the Lollards, Medium Aevum, 56, 217-224.
- Horstmann, C., ed, 1881. Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge, Heilbronn: Henninger, p. cxviii.
- McIntosh, A., Samuels, M. L. and Benskin, M. 1986. A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English: County Dictionary, 4 vols, Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 4.
- http://searcharchives.bl.uk.
- Powell, S. 1991. John Mirks Festial and the Pastoral Programme, Leeds Studies in English, 22, 85-102.
- Wakelin, M. F. 1967. The Manuscripts of John Mirks Festial, Leeds Studies in English, 1, 93-118.