London, British Library, Lansdowne 392
| Shelfmark | Date and Language | Contents |
| Physical Description | History | Record History | Bibliography |

Shelfmark
Country:England
Settlement:London
Repository: British Library
Idno:Lansdowne 392
AltName:
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Date and Language
Date:s. xvmed
Language: English
Dialect:Scribal dialect: Warwickshire. Linguistic Atlas Grid Reference: 426 304, LP 4285 (McIntosh, Samuels and Benskin 1986, p. 244).
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Contents
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: 1
Locus:ff. 3r-95r
Title:Festial (IPMEP 734)
Incipit:'The helpe and the grace of almy?ty god ūrou?'.
Explicit:'his body and his soule butt...'.
Note: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.
Bibliography:Erbe 1905.

Item: 2
Locus:ff. 96r-109v
Title:Libellus Dispensationum
Incipit:
Explicit:
Bibliography:

Item: 3
Locus:ff. 110r-111r
Title:Concordia epistolarum Sancti Pauli Apostoli
Incipit:
Explicit:
Rubric:'Incipit concordia epistolarum sancti pauli apostoli'.
Bibliography:

Item: 4
Locus:f. 111v-113v
Title:Sacrosanctae Scripturae loci communies; quorum alii versibus hexametris
Incipit:
Explicit:
Bibliography:

Item: 5
Locus:ff. 114r-116v
Title:Prologus sancti Evangelii secundum Matthaeum
Incipit:
Explicit:
Bibliography:

Item: 6
Locus:f. 116v
Title:Dom. Jes. Christi genealogiae ex Matth.i. et Luc. iii. Colectae; cum glossis interlineas et in margine
Incipit:
Explicit:
Bibliography:

Item: 7
Locus:ff. 117r-120r
Title:Various Latin texts
Incipit:
Explicit:
Bibliography:

Item: 8
Locus:ff. 120v-121v
Title:Prologus in Cantica Canticorum, versibus hexametris
Incipit:
Explicit:
Bibliography:
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Physical Description
Form:Codex
Support: Parchment
Extent:260 x 170 mm
Collation: Unable to ascertain. No catchwords.
Layout:Festial only - pricking not visible. Writing space of 200 x 120 mm. Single columns with 30-38 lines. Frame and lines ruled in drypoint.
Writing: 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.
Decoration: 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.
Binding: 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.
Foliation: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.
Additions: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.
Condition:Early folios faded and discoloured.
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History
Origin:Unknown
Provenance:Folio 3r bottom - 'Actor libri dicitur _____________ plommer'. Wakelin suggests that this inscription identifies this manuscript as the one lent to Thomas Hearne (Wakelin 1967, no. 14) by his friend of Longbridge near Warwick.
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Record History
Catalogued and encoded: Rebecca Farnham, University of Birmingham, August 2003.
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Bibliography
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