MS 298

Summary

Described Thomas James 171; Stanley N. 7; Nasmith 298; James, Corpus 298; Bieler, no. 11, p. 5; Wilkins 298. Partial description Hardy, vol.ii, pp. 22, 363–365.

[1]

f. 242 (formerly pt. 4, f. 64)

Agaynst theym that say that holy wrytt shoulde not be drawen into englishe we will make these reasons ffirst boetius in his booke de disciplina scholarum that children shoulde be taught in bookes of senecke …

f. 245^v (formerly pt. 4, 67^v)

… but they shold vnderstande þat grammatically is not ells but þe habite of right speakinge and right pronouncinge and right writinge.

‘This is a determinacoun of a doctor of divinitie agaynst theim that say it is not lawfull to haue holy wrytte & other bookes in englishe’. The Compendyous Treatise, or ‘First seiþ Bois’, a Wycliffite tract on Bible translation. Edited Curt F. Bühler ‘A Lollard Tract: On Translating the Bible into English’, Medium Ævum 7 (1938), pp. 170–183, from Camb. Trinity Col B.14.50, collated with six other MSS, including the present one. Text also printed Deanesly, pp. 439–445 from the same MS. Wells Rev. 2:529 [55]; IPMEP 37. As in the same text in MS 100 above, two copyists have been at work, and here too, the change of hand (between ff. 243 and f. 243^v) appears to coincide with a change of exemplars. At the head of f. 243^v a space has been left, and above it, in the hand of the second copyist, is the (partly smudged) line: ‘Hec […] ex quodam lacero fragmento bibliothece wigorniensis’ (cf. similar note in Camb. Corpus Christi 100 above, p. 229). As in MS 100, the section which in Bühler's edition is lines 229–240 appears at the very end of the text. The source of the first part of the text (pp. 227–228, i.e. lines 1–106 in Bühler's edition) is so far unidentified; the part of the text which follows the change of hand was copied from a Worcester MS which appears to have been transferred to Winchester Chapter Library in 1623–24 and subsequently destroyed in the fire of 1694. See also IMEP 13 indexing Lambeth 594 [12].