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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Preface
- The Early History of the Scriveners’ Company Common Paper and its So-Called ‘Oaths’
- Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 201 and its Copy of Piers Plowman
- Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis before Henry IV’s Usurpation?
- Le Songe Vert, BL Add. MS 34114 (the Spalding Manuscript), Bibliothèque de la ville de Clermont, MS 249 and John Gower
- Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 33: Thoughts on Reading a Work in Progress
- The Rawlinson Lyrics: Context, Memory and Performance
- Linguistic Boundaries in Multilingual Miscellanies: The Case of Middle English Romance
- What Six Unalike Lyrics in British Library MS Harley 2253 Have Alike in Manuscript Layout
- Evidence for the Licensing of Books from Arundel to Cromwell
- Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts: Walter Hilton, Nicholas Love and the Arundel and Holland Connections
- The Choice and Arrangement of Texts in Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2125: A Tentative Narrative about its Material History
- ‘Thys moche more ys oure lady mary longe’: Takamiya MS 56 and the English Birth Girdle Tradition
- Bookish Types: Some Post-Medieval Owners, Borrowers and Lenders of the Manuscripts of The Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy
- Laurentius Guglielmus Traversagnus and the Genesis of Vaticana Codex Lat. 11441, with Remarks on Bodleian MS Laud Lat. 61
- The Travels of a Quire from the Twelfth Century to the Twenty-First: The Case of Rawlinson B 484, fols. 1–6
- William Elstob’s Planned Edition of the Anglo-Saxon Laws: A Remnant in the Takamiya Collection
- Gutenberg Meets Digitization: The Path of a Digital Ambassador
- A Bibliography of Toshiyuki Takamiya
- Index of Manuscripts
- General Index
- Tabula Gratulatoria
- York Medieval Press: Publications
The Travels of a Quire from the Twelfth Century to the Twenty-First: The Case of Rawlinson B 484, fols. 1–6
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Preface
- The Early History of the Scriveners’ Company Common Paper and its So-Called ‘Oaths’
- Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 201 and its Copy of Piers Plowman
- Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis before Henry IV’s Usurpation?
- Le Songe Vert, BL Add. MS 34114 (the Spalding Manuscript), Bibliothèque de la ville de Clermont, MS 249 and John Gower
- Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 33: Thoughts on Reading a Work in Progress
- The Rawlinson Lyrics: Context, Memory and Performance
- Linguistic Boundaries in Multilingual Miscellanies: The Case of Middle English Romance
- What Six Unalike Lyrics in British Library MS Harley 2253 Have Alike in Manuscript Layout
- Evidence for the Licensing of Books from Arundel to Cromwell
- Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts: Walter Hilton, Nicholas Love and the Arundel and Holland Connections
- The Choice and Arrangement of Texts in Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2125: A Tentative Narrative about its Material History
- ‘Thys moche more ys oure lady mary longe’: Takamiya MS 56 and the English Birth Girdle Tradition
- Bookish Types: Some Post-Medieval Owners, Borrowers and Lenders of the Manuscripts of The Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy
- Laurentius Guglielmus Traversagnus and the Genesis of Vaticana Codex Lat. 11441, with Remarks on Bodleian MS Laud Lat. 61
- The Travels of a Quire from the Twelfth Century to the Twenty-First: The Case of Rawlinson B 484, fols. 1–6
- William Elstob’s Planned Edition of the Anglo-Saxon Laws: A Remnant in the Takamiya Collection
- Gutenberg Meets Digitization: The Path of a Digital Ambassador
- A Bibliography of Toshiyuki Takamiya
- Index of Manuscripts
- General Index
- Tabula Gratulatoria
- York Medieval Press: Publications
Summary
Neil Ker wrote that the dissolution of the monasteries in England was the great crisis in the history of manuscript libraries. It was also so in the history of manuscripts. We have a few names of the great collectors who obtained their manuscripts directly from the monasteries in that period, but, as Ker pointed out, smaller collections are often forgotten. It is not only the smaller collections that are often overlooked, but also the smaller survivors: the history of manuscript fragments and miscellaneous compilations, despite a recent increase in attention, is still a path less trodden than the study of the great books surviving from the Middle Ages. The present study is dedicated to a single manuscript fragment, preserved in an antiquary’s notebook. As the following discussion will show, the surviving evidence links this fragment to many lives across the centuries, and touches on the histories of more than one manuscript collection.
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson B 484 is described in the Bodleian Library catalogue as the ‘Collectanea of Sir James Ware, comprising fragments, extracts and notes mostly on Ireland but including (fol. 85) cutting without text from a Psalter, EN, Winchester, 10th century, second quarter’. The manuscript belonged to Sir James Ware (26 November 1594 – 1 December 1666), and bears his coat of arms on the front cover. The quire which interests us is the first item in this collection, occupying fols. 1–6. It contains a fragment of the twelfth-century Latin encyclopaedia Imago Mundi by Honorius Augustodunensis. For reasons that will be set out below, there are few discussions of this quire, which is nevertheless an important witness of the text. The present study presents new findings regarding the importance and history of this quire.
Importance
The Imago Mundi quire, consisting of a single gathering of six folios, is the first item in Rawlinson B 484. (Fig. 1 shows the first page.) The fragment of Imago Mundi it contains begins with the last two sentences or so of chapter 3 [3], and ends halfway through chapter 35 [36]. It is important since it appears to be one of only two early witnesses to the first version of Imago Mundi, composed in 1110. The other witness, which preserves a complete text, is Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 66 (s. xii, Sawley).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Middle English Texts in TransitionA Festschrift Dedicated to Toshiyuki Takamiya on his 70th birthday, pp. 250 - 267Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014