Library MS Research Articles

The Art and Science of Renaissance Natural History: Thomas of Cantimpré, Pier Candido Decembrio, Conrad Gessner, and Teodoro Ghisi in Vatican Library MS Urb. lat. 276

"The Art and Science of Renaissance Natural History: Thomas of Cantimpré, Pier Candido Decembrio, Conrad Gessner, and Teodoro Ghisi in Vatican Library MS Urb. lat. 276." Art is essential to the accurate description of organisms in natural history. The empiricism inherent in natural history is analogous to that in Renaissance humanism's approach to the text, particularly through its critical philological method. Vatican MS Urb. lat. 276 (1460) embodies a humanistic approach to the world, in that its author, Pier Candido Decembrio, while basing himself on Thomas of Cantimpré, rewrites the text, occasionally inserting critical comments of his own about phenomena he has witnessed. Decembrio's text can be better understood in the context of the natural history tradition from antiquity to the Renaissance. Teodoro Ghisi illustrates the manuscript 130 years later, basing himself on the latest and most accurate natural history information available, Conrad Gessner's Historia animalium. The tempera illustrations of the manuscript are closely related to sixteenth-century artistic trends, and particularly to the graphic arts tradition. The process of their addition to the manuscript can be termed "critical illustration," being a selective intellectual endeavor, either through choice of available previous depictions of an animal or through the highly accurate direct observation, analysis, and interpretive rendering of a specimen found in nature. Developments in the tradition of scholarship can thus be seen as analogous to developments in art, and both as related to the development of science in the Renaissance, well before the "scientific revolution."

Patronage and Devotion in the Prayer Book of Anne of Brittany, Newberry Library MS 83

Patronage and Devotion in the Prayer Book of Anne of Brittany, Newberry Library MS 83

An Early Source of the English Keyboard Suite

Lambeth Palace Library MS 1040 has received less attention than a companion volume, MS 1041 (inscribed ‘The Lady Ann Blount’ on the first leaf). Although there appears to be no musical connection between the two manuscripts, they have been together for a long time. The Library's old catalogues do not allow the volumes to be identified with certainty, but if ‘Two Musick Books’ refers to them they have been in the collection since at least the mid-eighteenth century.

The Apocalypse Cycle in the Bedford Hours

The Bedford Hours (British Library MS Additional 18850) has been called one of “the very finest examples of French art of the earlier half of the fifteenth century….” Its lavish use of gold and bright colors, its beautifully conceived calendar pages and large miniatures, its connection with the marriage of John of Lancaster, the duke of Bedford, to Anne of Burgundy, and its fascinating history as a manuscript have received much attention. Scholars, however, have virtually ignored the almost 1,250 marginal illustrations that decorate the manuscript's 289 folios. These tiny pictures are generally woven into the ivy-leaf border, painted within roundels of approximately one inch in diameter. Thematically related, they are usually placed two to a folio side, one within the left or right border, and one within the lower border. The roundels, furthermore, are accompanied by one-line Old French texts. These are always placed together below the lower border and are arranged so that the first text, written in blue, identifies the roundel within the side border, whereas the second text, written in gold, explains the roundel painted within the lower border.

A Greek Fragment of the Books of Samuel: Beinecke Library MS 544 (RA 846)

A Greek Fragment of the Books of Samuel: Beinecke Library MS 544 (RA 846)

THE REMEDIES IN BRITISH LIBRARY MS COTTON GALBA A.xiv, fos 139 and 136 r

THE REMEDIES IN BRITISH LIBRARY MS COTTON GALBA A.xiv, fos 139 and 136 r STEPHANIE HOLLIS, STEPHANIE HOLLIS University of Auckland Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar MICHAEL J. WRIGHT MICHAEL J. WRIGHT University of Auckland Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 41, Issue 2, June 1994, Pages 146–147, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/41-2-146 Published: 01 June 1994

British library MS 37049, Fol.96r‐96v: A mutilated tract on God's mercy and justice and material for its reconstruction

British library MS 37049, Fol.96^r‐96^v: A mutilated tract on God's mercy and justice and material for its reconstruction

"Iubiter et Iuno": An Anglo-Latin Mythographic Poem, edited from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 64 and British Library MS Cotton Vespasian E. xii

"Iubiter et Iuno": An Anglo-Latin Mythographic Poem, edited from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 64 and British Library MS Cotton Vespasian E. xii

REVIEWS

Journal Article REVIEWS Get access Through a Gloss Darkly: Aldhelm's Riddles in the British Library MS Royal 12.C.xxiii. By NANCY PORTER STORK. Pp. viii+274 (Studies and Texts 98). Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990. $39.50. HANNEKE WIRTJES HANNEKE WIRTJES Wadham CollegeOxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of English Studies, Volume XLIV, Issue 173, February 1993, Pages 87–89, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/XLIV.173.87 Published: 01 February 1993

Narrative Patterning and 'Guy of Warwick'

The Auchinleck version of the Middle English Guy of Warwick (1330-40) is the earliest and has proved the most puzzling to critics.' It differs significantly from both its likely source, an Anglo-Norman Gui of about one hundred years earlier, and later Middle English versions in the way it presents the story; a story which is much the same in all the versions.2 It concerns the life of the hero, Guy, and falls into two parts. Firstly there are the events which lead up to Guy's marriage: these are mainly adventures undertaken away from home to win the love of his lord's daughter, Felice, and they earn him the reputation of being the best of knights. It is this status specifically which wins him Felice's hand in marriage. In the second part of the romance, Guy's realization that he has neglected God sends him out into the world once more, but this time as an errant pilgrim, and during this period his adventures are undertaken for God's love rather than a woman's. The briefest of reunions with Felice follows, and then the hero's death. This second part of the romance is also concerned with the story of Reinbrun, Guy's and Felice's son. Reinbrun also has heroic adventures away from home, and returns at the end of the story to take his place as lord of Warwick. There are two main surviving Middle English versions of Guy besides that in the Auchinleck manuscript: they are in Caius MS 0o7 of about 1475, and in Cambridge University Library MS Ff.2.38 of the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century.3 Traces of other versions survive, but only in fragmented

Through a gloss darkly: Aldhelm's riddles in the British Library MS Royal 12.C.xxiii (review)

176 Reviews grasped the significance of the tetralogy for the play but gave a 'deeply anachronistic' (p. 92) reading of the ending, and Anthony Sher's acrobatic Richard. Glen Byam Shaw's and William Gaskill's productions at the R.S.C. show the way forward by their balance and truth to the text. The main faults of the book are some rather long sentences, which may be, paradoxically, the result of a straggle to say it all as briefly as possible, and the absence of notes. Kevin Magarey Department of English University of Adelaide Stork, Nancy P., Through a gloss darkly: Aldhelm's riddles in the British Library MS Royal 12.C.xxiii (Studies and texts, 98), Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990; paper; pp. vii, 274; 1 plate; R.R.P. CAN$39.50. In a study of Old English glosses in Latin manuscripts published in 1982, R.I. Page issued a call for a way of publishing gloss material that would go beyond the customary lists of transcribed lemmata and glosses. Such transcripts 'cannot give even the lexicographer all he needs, whereas the student who is interested, not just in Latin-Old English equivalents, but in the nature of glossing, the reasons it took the form it did, and the audience the glosses appealedto,will find many of the existing editions of limited use. There is no substitute for the manuscript, but there may be better ways of publishing the gloss material, of defining it more precisely, and it is time these were explored'. Page's challenge is admirably met in this new edition of Aldhelm's 100 Latin Enigmata and then associated glosses in a single manuscript: London, British Library, Royal 12.C.xxiii, fols. 79v-103v. Of Canterbury provenance and early eleventhcentury date, Royal 12.C.xxiii was written as a glossed manuscript, with interlinear Latin glosses designed to be transmitted along with the text. Generous margins were left for more extensive commentary glosses. The text hand, a finely written Caroline script, is responsible for all the Latin glosses and for 32 of the 77 O E glosses. A single second hand has contributed the remaining vernacular glosses. The O E glosses evidently had a lesser status and were added in an ad hoc fashion, having a much looser association than the Latin scholia with Aldhelm's text. The introduction covers a wide range of topics in a concise and practical form and in a lucid, easy style that makes the material accessible to the nonspecialist reader. After a full description of the manuscript and its contents, Stork discusses the often complex relationships between the extant manuscripts and their sets of glosses. Then follows a brief but systematic explication of all the types of gloss represented in the manuscript: metrical, grammatical, Reviews 177 syntactical, textual, lexical and the commentary glosses that draw so heavily on Isidore's Etymologiae. Her conclusion addresses such broader matters as the relation between text and gloss, the peculiarities of English manuscripts and the audience of theriddles.The appendices are especially useful. T w o indices of the Latin-Latin lexical glosses are provided, listed under both lemma and gloss, and an alphabetical list of the O E glosses in Appendix C is complemented by an analysis of the same material ananged in order of appearance in the manuscript on pp. 52-4. A n index to the commentary glosses is followed by an index of sources, a comprehensive bibliography and a general index. This book does not pretend to be a comprehensive edition of Aldhelm's text with full apparatus and notes. Rather the focus isfirmlyon the gloss material and its relation to the text in a single manuscript. Thus her edition presents an innovative reconstruction of each manuscript page with both interlinear and marginal glosses carefully located and clearly and accurately set out. The measure of her success with the layout can be gauged by comparison with the frontispiece plate, which reproduces folio 83r of the manuscript. Stork's edition allows us to read an important school text in the pedagogic context in which it was studied in later Anglo-Saxon England. Paul Sonell Department of English Otago...

A Newly Identified Fragment of the Anglo-Norman Prose ‘Complaint of Our Lady and Gospel of Nicodemus’ in Cambridge University Library MS Dd.4.35

A Newly Identified Fragment of the Anglo-Norman Prose ‘Complaint of Our Lady and Gospel of Nicodemus’ in Cambridge University Library MS Dd.4.35

Female Authors, Provincial Settings: The Re-versing of Courtly Love in the Findern Manuscript

"Female Authors, Provincial Setting: The Re-versing of Courtly Love in the Findern Manuscript." While the practice of examining medieval literature in its original manuscript context is always Important, it is particularly so in the case of the anonymous love lyrics of Cambridge University Library MS Ff.l.6, the "Findern Manuscript." Most of these lyrics have been classified as "courtly love lyrics," and the title many of them bear in modern anthologies and in the Index of Middle English Verse, "To his Mistress," informs us that they were written by men. But through an examination of the paleographical evidence and comparison with women's letters of the period, this article asserts that many of the lyrics were almost certainly written by women. Moreover, while the poems make use of the courtly idiom, their true nature is not "courtly" at all. They do not belong to the "game of courtly love," with its playful insincerity; they are, rather, sincere expressions of the thoughts and emotions of fifteenth-century English women living in the provinces. As such, they are not only among the first self-expressive specimens of the lyric in English; they also belong to a genre which has been held to be absent in the corpus of Middle English literature- the authentic woman's lament.

The End of The Summoner’s Tale and the Uses of Pentecost

The End of The Summoner's Tale and the Uses of Pentecost Glending Olson Cleveland State University pech,ps ch, mosat out ofpe ayre sal com doun tite, And omang his disciples don light, And with sere tunges ti! ]Jam spek ryght, Als dyd ti! j:Je apostels j:Je haly gast And pat sal be in mens sight mast, For pa pat his disciples sal be cald Sal ]Jam avant, and ]Jam selfhald Better of!ifand to God mare dere, pan ever war Cristes appostels here.1 ' Antichrist's phony Pentecost is not mentioned in all medieval discus­ sions of his deceptions, but it seems to be fairly well established, and it 1 1 The Pricke ofConscience. ed. Richard Morris (Berlin: A. Asher, 1863), p. 117, lines 4257-60. On the poem and its distribution throughout late-medieval England, see Robert E. Lewis and Angus McIntosh, A Descriptive Guide to the Manuscripts ofthe Prick of Conscience, Medium IEvum Monographs, n.s., 12 (Oxford, Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature, 1982). The authors say (p. 13) that Chaucer might have known The Prick. citing the parallels mentioned in Kate 0. Petersen's The Sources ofthe Parson'.r Tale (Boston: Ginn, 1901). Few of these seem distinctive; in his notes to The Parson's Tale in The Riverside Chaucer, Siegfried Wenzel mentions parallels between the works in just two places (lines 253-54 and 1076-80), neither unique. 1 ' Lines 4290-300. Here, and throughout its treatment of Antichrist, The Prick is indebted to Hugh Ripelin of Strassburg's Compendium theologicae veritatis 7.9: "malignum spiritum faciet super eos descendere, ut loquantur variis linguis. Spiritus enim malignus descender in eos in conspectu hominum, sicut Spiritus sanctus descendit in Aposrolos Christi. Unde jacrabunt se esse meliores Apostolis Christi, qui Spiritum acceperunt in conclavi." The Compendium was attributed to various authors, including Albertus Mag­ nus, and is printed in Auguste Borgnet's edition of Albert's Opera onmia, vol. 34 (Paris: Vives, 1895); this passage is on p. 242. 218 THE END OF THE SUMMONER'S TALE is among those staged in the Chester Antichrist pageant.16 Chester is the only one of the four more-or-less complete surviving cycles to have an Antichrist play, and the text is of course late. However, the Lollard Tretise ofMiraclis Pleyinge, which dates from the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, establishes that there were earlier enactments of this subject in England,17 so that performance of a parodic Pentecost as part ofa staging ofthe story ofAntichrist could well have been contempora­ neous with Chaucer. Antichrist's parodic Pentecost can also be found in medieval art, where the depictions, like those of the true Pentecost, are suggestive enough of an emanation downward upon receivers to be a plausible prompt for the imaginative play of the Summoner's final scene. A series of eight illustrations of Apocalypse 13 in the Bible moralisee (British Library MS Harley 1527, fol. 136v) shows Antichrist's imitations of Christ's death, resurrection, ascension, and sending of the Holy Spirit. The roundel illustrating this last act includes the two-horned beast, the seven-headed beast, and rays offire falling on the heads offollowers from a mask above, a precise visualization of Apoc. 13: 13 ("ignem faceret de caelo descendere in terram in conspectu hominum"). Directly below it is a traditional Pentecost scene, with rays of fire leading out of the mouth of a dove onto the apostles. 18 The suitability of this portion of the medieval lore of Antichrist to Chaucer's designs in The Summoner's Tale becomes clearer when we con­ sider his immediate social context. Identification ofAntichrist, Emmer­ son points out, proceeded throughout the Middle Ages in two different ways. The "historical" or exegetical Antichrist was that being (man or monster) who would lead the forces of evil against Christendom in the last stage of the sixth age of history. But there was also a more general­ ized Antichrist, what Emmerson calls a "polemical" Antichrist, or rather 11' See Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages. pp. 132-33, 183, and 284-85 n. 54, and p. 234 below. Szittya, Antifraternal Tradition, p. 246, discusses the...

BRITISH LIBRARY MS HARLEY 78 AND THE MANUSCRIPTS OF JOHN SHIRLEY

Journal Article BRITISH LIBRARY MS HARLEY 78 AND THE MANUSCRIPTS OF JOHN SHIRLEY Get access SETH LERER SETH LERER Stanford University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 37, Issue 4, December 1990, Pages 400–403, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/37-4-400 Published: 01 December 1990

REVIEWS

Journal Article REVIEWS Get access Robert Thornton and the London Thornton Manuscript: British Library MS Additional 31042. By JOHN J. THOMPSON. Pp. xiv+84 (Manuscript Studies 2). Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987. £39.50 net. A. I. DOYLE A. I. DOYLE University LibraryDurham Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of English Studies, Volume XLI, Issue 162, May 1990, Pages 241–242, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/XLI.162.241 Published: 01 May 1990

Catalogue of Early Printed Music in Aberdeen Libraries Supplement, 1979–1988

This article is a supplement to Barry Cooper's catalogue of 1978 (see below, References). No musical items published before 1801 have entered Aberdeen Public Library since 1979. Of the four Aberdeen University collections mentioned below, Dep is in the library of the Department of Music, while SB and Lib R are in King's College Library. In the course of his original introduction, Barry Cooper mentioned the University's “copyright collection” (p.4), and the inadequacy of its catalogue. Richard Turbet is compiling a checklist of the contents of this collection's 297 volumes, now located within Aberdeen University Library and known as The Stationers’ Hall Collection. As to private collections, Roger Williams has catalogued those in Grampian Region in the care of the National Trust for Scotland, and the catalogues are being prepared for publication. There is early music in the collections at Castle Fraser, Drum Castle, Leith Hall and Brodie Castle. The Montcoffer House private collection, listed in Appendix 3 of the original catalogue, is now housed at Aberdeen University Library MS 2861.

More on the ‘Priapeum’ of Jacobus Cremonensis

In 1969 Ian Thomson published the texts of two humanist poems with a selective commentary. One of them, Item 144 of the Toledo Cathedral Library MS 100.42, fol. 233r (henceforth T, following Thomson's designation), which also appears as Item 68 in Cod. Vaticanus Barberinianus latinus 42, fol. 328r–v (henceforth simply B, again following Thomson), is a 20-line work attributed to the lawyer Jacobus Cremonensis salaciously describing an erotic contest between Priapus and the nymph Dione. Although Thomson's article appeared two decades ago, I have only recently come upon it, and wish here, if somewhat belatedly, to reply to several of Thomson's textual and other notes on this Priapic poem.

Adam of Buckfield and John Sackville: Some Notes on Philadelphia Free Library MS Lewis European 53

A manuscript which was once thought to have belonged to Petrarch and which is now owned by the Free Library of Philadelphia, currently catalogued as MS Lewis European 53, contains several items of interest to historians of philosophy and science. Included among the twelve mostly anonymous treatises in the codex (see below) are three hitherto unnoticed witnesses to the Aristotle commentaries of the Oxford master of arts, Adam of Buckfield. The sixth item in the collection is one of six surviving copies of Adam's commentary on the pseudo-Aristotelian De plantis, four already having been listed in Charles Lohr's inventory published in this journal and the fifth, in a Munich manuscript, having recently been brought to my attention by the same scholar. The ninth item is a copy of the first recension of Adam's commentary on the De sensu et sensato and the tenth item a copy of the first recension of the same master's commentary on the De generatione et corruptione. None of these works has been edited.

A Lytell Cronycle: Richard Pynson’s Translation (c 1520) of La Fleur des Histoires de la terre d’Orient (c 1307) by Hetoum

readers who care to learn about the author and his career, Robert Calder’s thoroughly proficient biography provides ample opportunity. munro beattie / Carleton University Hetoum; Glenn Berger, ed., A Lytell Cronycle: Richard Pynson’s Trans­ lation (c 1520) of La Fleur des Histoires de la terre d’Orient (c 1307) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988). lxviii, 203. $47.50 The Armenian aristocrat Hetoum wrote La Fleur des histoires de la terre d’Orient about 1307. It is in four parts: the first a geographical survey of Central Asia and the Middle East, the second a historical survey of the regions, the third an account of the rise of the Mongols and the subse­ quent conflicts between the Mongol rulers of Persia and the Moslem rulers of Egypt, the fourth an outline of a proposal for a new Crusade involv­ ing an alliance between the Mongols, the neighbouring Christian nations, and Western Europe. Hetoum’s work was very popular and influential in the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Mandeville’s Travels, for ex­ ample, used parts of La Fleur des Histoires, and two Tudor translations were made of which one was presented to the Duke of Buckingham and the other to Henry VIII. However, it is not a well-known work today, and Glenn Berger’s edition of Richard Pynson’s A Lytell Cronycle and selections from the British Library MS Royal 18.B.26 is the only complete English text of Hetoum’s work currently available. A Lytell Cronycle is the sixth in the series put out by Toronto Medieval Texts and Translations of important yet difficult to find medieval works. The quality of Berger’s editing is exemplary. He has had to deal with the id­ iosyncrasies of two different texts as well as the errors in translation from the French original. Berger has followed modern usage in word-division, punc­ tuation, capitalization, and paragraphing; however, he has kept Pynson’s spelling of well-known Mongol names such as Cangius and Cobila can for Genghis and Kublai Khan. It is understandable that Berger would not un­ necessarily change Pynson’s spelling, but Berger’s spelling of proper names can be erratic. “Genghis” appears, for example, in three forms: Cangius in Pynson’s text, Genghis in the notes and commentary, and Chinggis on a map! Overall, none the less, Berger’s editing is helpful. He includes notes on English/French variants which elucidate the obscurities in Pynson’s transla­ tion or record significant omissions and additions to the original. In addition to a useful introduction to the historical background of Hetoum’s life and work as well as the Tudor translations and a discussion of the different meth­ ods of translation, the editor provides a fascinating look into the chivalric 119 atmosphere of the early Henrician court and the diplomatic maneuverings which made the seemingly anachronistic idea of a crusade appear momen­ tarily appealing. To Hetoum’s text Berger provides maps and illustrations as well as copious historical notes and commentary, a selective bibliography, textual notes, notes on English/French variants, an index of proper names and places, and a glossary. To enable the reader to compare translations, selections from the British Library MS appear in an appendix. The volume is printed with admirable accuracy. The appeal of this volume to the historian is obvious. As an Armenian, Hetoum had an unusual perspective on the Middle East of the late thirteenth century and the convergence of four cultures, Western Crusader, Armenian Christian, Moslem, and Persian Mongol. Hetoum is often inaccurate or confused in his historical facts, as Berger carefully points out and corrects in his commentary, but he was close to the historical events and may have been an eyewitness to some of them. His firsthand knowledge of the Mongols and their culture is exceptional. The appeal of this text for the student of English literature is less evi­ dent. La Fleur des Hisioires was a basic source for Mandeville’s Travels and it is disappointing that the editor does not provide more indication of which particular parts of Hetoum’s text were used. Berger’s commentary is focussed largely on the historical aspects of Hetoum’s text...