MS 385

Summary

Described Thomas James 335; Bernard 336; James, Corpus 385; Wilkins 385; Zbigniew Izydorczyk, Manuscripts of the ‘Evangelium Nicodemi’: A Census, Subsidia Mediaevalia 21 (Toronto, 1993), no. 45 (pp. 32–33).

[1]

p. 213

﹛A﹜ gret clerk þat men callen ricard of seynt victore in a bok þat he maketh of þe studye of wysdom witnessith and seyth þat two myʒtys arn in a a [sic] mannes souʒle ʒeuen of þe fader of heuene of wom al good cometh þe toon is resoun an þe toþer affeccoun thorw resoun we knowe & thorw affeccoun we loue …

p. 220

… of god & godly þyngis so þat it be fulfillid in þe þat is writen in þe [.]salm ibi beniamyn adoloscentulus in mentis excessu þat is to say þere is beniamyn þe ʒonge childe in raueschynge of mynde explicit þus endiþ beniamyn.

Beniamin Minor or A Tretyse of te Stodye of Wysdome tat Men Clepen Beniamyn. Also referred to (in CUL Ff.6.33) as ‘the boke of the xii patriarkys’. A free and much abridged translation of Richard of St Victor's De Preparatione Animi ad Contemplationem (or Beniamin Minor). Wells XI:22; Wells Rev. 9:3428 [23]. IPMEP 4. Ed. Yorkshire Writers, vol. 1, pp. 162–172; Phyllis Hodgson, Deonise Hid Diuinite and Other Treatises on Contemplative Prayer Related to ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’, EETS 231 (London, 1955, repr. with corrections 1958), pp.12–46, and in Phyllis Hodgson, The Cloud of Unknowing and Related Treatises, Analecta Cartusiana 3 (Salzburg, 1982), pp. 129–145. Hodgson (1958) was unaware of the present MS and although it is included at the foot of her (1982) list of MSS containing Beniamyn (p. xv), it appears to have come to her notice at a late date. She did not collate it, and no other reference is made to the MS in the volume. The text of Beniamyn is discussed in her commentary on p. 195. It is distinct from that which is IPMEP 5 and Jolliffe M.5. and begins: ‘A gret clerk þat men clepen richard of seynt victores settyþ in a book þat he made of contemplacion …’, and which is printed in G.E. Hodgson, Some Minor Works of Richard Rolle (London, 1923), p. 79, and as ‘Of Thre Wyrkynges’ in Richard Rolle: Uncollected Prose and Verse with Related Northern Texts, ed. Ralph Hanna, EETS 329 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 84–88.