The Excision of Error

Abstract

This chapter examines Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Latin 46. This manuscript once contained a complete Latin translation of Marguerite Porete's The Mirror of Simple Souls but now holds only a few fragments, as the rest of the work was cut out of and/or unbound from the codex. In addition to providing new codicological information on the manuscript, the chapter shows the process of and reasons behind the Mirror's removal. It demonstrates how its textual company points toward an attitude of suspicion toward the codex as a whole and argues that it potentially has connections to both southern Germany and northern Italy. The social and intellectual connections between northern Italy and southern Germany—in the form of Italian-educated German scholars, monks, and ecclesiastical officials returning north—meant that knowledge of the Mirror as a dangerous or heretical book, which was prevalent especially in the environs of the University of Padua, could easily have traveled north and had an impact on the Mirror within this manuscript.