Durham University Library Archives & Special Collections Catalogue
Manuscript codex, originally two separate sections, the first containing the Visio Thurkilli and the second works of Albertano da Brescia. The two parts were together by the mid 15th century. Owned by George Davenport and given by him to Bishop Cosin's Library around 1670.
Foliation, mid 15th century, of f.2-11, 20-172, 12-14: 3-167, with 92 twice (f.99 and 100)
Many pages of (B) marked “cor” in the lower outer corner, f.21r- 81v, or, in the inner edge, f.112v, 120v, 121v, 148v and 152v, perhaps by one of the hands responsible for supplying omissions in items (3) and (4), and side-notes, see above. Chapter-headings added in items (3) and (4). Running-titles and foliation added throughout, by the later 15th century hand responsible for adding book-divisions and chapter-numbers to the chapter-lists of items (3)-(4), and for notes about displacement of text on f.11v-12r, 146r, 149v and 153r; possibly also the same as the hand of the neat humanistic heading to item (4) chapter-list. Annotations, by at least two 15th century English secretary hands include “Stulte cur insanis cum te dolor vrget inanis”, f.36r, Walther 1963, no. 30390, down along outer edge .
Standard Tuckett binding, mid 19th century full brown calf over thick wooden boards (Charles Tuckett, binder to the British Museum, rebound many Durham manuscripts in the 19th century)
Written in England, 14th-15th century.
Both portions written in England, joined together by later 15th century.
The soiling and staining of f.1r and 19v indicate its earlier independent existence.
Inscription: “Iste liber constat thome harison ... Qui librum furat per collum pendere debet”, f.18v, erased (15th century).
“Geo. Davenport. | 1664.”, on slip from previous binding stuck to front pastedown; his note of contents, f.1*r. Ex-libris and shelf-numbers by Thomas Rud on f.2r.
Parchment, with some flaying edges, quires with hair-sides outermost.
112 wants 2 (blank ?) after f.1 + later paper slip (f.1*) after 1, 28.
No pricking for horizontal lines visible. Written space 141 x 86-90 mm; ruled in sharp brown, barely visible except on f.14v. 27-28 long lines.
Written in textura, unevenly, by one 14th century hand.
Text-capitals lined with red, f.2v-4r, 11r-12r and 13r. Initials: (i) occasionally, in text, 1-line, red or blue; (ii) to chapters, 2-line, blue, with, f.12v-17r, infilling and flourishing in red, or red, with, f.10v, infilling (a crude face) and flourishing in the same greenish blue as a rubric added in the lower margin. Flourishing, first half of 14th century.
One of the four copies listed by Schmidt (p.viii), described as “versionem longissime a textu primario recedentem praebet” (p.ix); its readings are not recorded. This copy is divided into 39 sections, as against 24 in Schmidt; 29 have rubrics. A poor text, with gaps left in places (f.9v) and filled in later (14th/15th century). The second quire (f.12-19) previously stood after what it is now the final item in the manuscript - see the added notes, “Quere residuum huius materie in ultimo quaterno huius libri incipiens folio (165)”, f.11v, “Consequitur hec materia finem primi quaterni huius libri”, f.12r, both subsequently crossed out; also the medieval foliation, in which f.11 is “12” and 20 is “13”, while f.14 is “167” and f.172 would have been 164. An added rubricated note, by the hand of the running heads, at the foot of f.146ra concerning the displacement in the text, has offset on f.143vb as well as on f.145vb, indicating that at some time the middle bifolium of the quire, f.144-5, was not between, e.g. when the quire was disordered or unsewn. f.1 blank, save for off-set as from a large initial on f.1v, not from f.2, 13 or any other page now in this book. f.18v-19v blank, save for erased inscriptions, f.18v, and note on Albertano of Brescia, added by George Davenport, f.19v.
Parchment, quires with flesh-sides outermost
3-88, 98 + 1 leaf (f.71) after 3, 10-218
No pricking for horizontal lines visible. Written space 123 x 75-80 mm; ruled in sharp grey shading to soft brown. 2 columns or, for chapter-lists to items (3) and (4), long lines; 28 lines.
Written in anglicana formata or, explicit to item (2), in bastard anglicana, or, explicit to item (3), in textura, expertly, by one hand.
Paraphs, in blue or red, f.20v-28v, 40r, 41r-v, 78v. Initials, to chapters, 2-line, blue, with infilling and flourishing in red, 14th/15th century. Running titles. Added in ink, later 15th century, by the principal hand augmenting the contents lists.
Variants are more substantial than those in the copies collated in the edition, amounting in places to paraphrase, cf. above incipit on f.20v. It has the same six divisions.
The list of rubrics here (f.34v-35v) differs from that in the edition p.135-136, omitting 1, subdividing 11 into six and 50 into two, so producing fifty-six as against fifty-one chapters; the arrangement of the text corresponds, with the prologue and cap. 1 undivided, cap. 11 divided at b), c), d), 1) and 2), and cap. 50 divided at p. 123 line 7. London BL MSS Additional 18922, and Royal 12.D.vii. do not have lists of rubrics; rubrics 2-56 correspond to rubrics iv-end in Cambridge Sidney Sussex College MS 48 [c.1400] (Lancaster Dominicans), and xj-lxv in Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 306 [c.1300] (London Dominicans) which lists the rubrics of the three works by Albertanus found here in a single sequence in different words. The chapter-numbers in the text are added in red, so also in ink the chapter-headings to caps. 2 and 35-end, apparently in blank spaces rather than over erasures, in anglicana with secretary final s and sometimes a, cf. those in item (4). The text has a number of omissions by homoteleuton, of which the most substantial (p.95/25 - 97/7: f.70v) is supplied on an added leaf (f.71v), in a mixed 15th century script (predominantly secretary) of documentary type; the others in the margin: f.46r (p.28/19-21), 49r (p.36/14-16), 56r (p. 56/8-12), 58r (p. 62/8), 63r (p. 75/2-4), and 73r (p. 101/10-12), in several contemporary hands, including (f.56r) that of the added leaf, f.71v. f.71r (added leaf) blank.
Here the sixty-seven divisions of the text match the final state of the chapter-list (f.83r-84r): Bk I caps 1-7; II,1-22, with a heading “De incomodis praui” left unnumbered between 2 and 3, the heading for 7 repeated between 5 and 6 and deleted, and 14 “De senectute” omitted and added later; III,1-14; IV,1-24, with 5-10 in the order 6 (altered twice), 8, 10, 5, 7, 9 but numbered correctly, and 20 followed by an unnumbered heading “De Pace” between 17 and 18. Albertano 1824 has sixty-five divisions, not arranged in books, which differ from those in this copy by dividing II,2 in two, and III,6 in three; and combining II,13 and 14, III,8 and 9, IV,1 and 2, IV,7 and 8, IV,18 and 19. Between f.146-160 four sections of text, each 13-15 columns long, are disarranged (B, A, D, C), with notes and signs to guide the reader added mid 15th century: f.146ra ends in the middle of III,8; (B) III,13 and part of III,14, occupies f.146rb-149v, (A) middle of III,8 - III,12, f.149v-153r; (D) middle of IV,2 - middle of IV,6, f.153r-156v; (C) most of III,14 - middle of IV,2, f.156v-160r. This disarrangement probably arose from the intrusion in the exemplar of a bifolium or bifolia carrying the blocks of text A and D inside the central bifolium or bifolia of a quire, so separating the blocks of text B and C, or possibly from the disordering of two pairs of very small quires. Chapter-numbers and headings added, as in item (3). As in item (3) there are a number of omissions by homoteleuton corrected in the margin, e.g. f.93v, 95r, 100v, 107v, in secretary by one (?) early 15th century hand.
Left unfinished. Written as prose, with “/” added in darker ink over a stop, at the end of many verses. The final 4 lines of f.172vb are blank after erasure, irrecoverable apart from “1553” towards the end.
Di Albertano giudice da Brescia trattati tre; testo di lingua 
, (Brescia: per Gaetano Venturini a spese di B. e P. Fratelli Uberti, 1824)
Albertani Brixiensis, Liber consolationis et consilii, ex quo hausta est fabula gallica De Melibeo et prudentia, quam, anglice redditam et The tale of Melibe inscriptam, Galfridus Chaucer inter Canterbury tales recepit , ed. Sundby, T. Chaucer Society 2nd series, no. 8 (London: Chaucer Society, 1873)
De amore et dilectione dei et proximi et aliarum rerum et de forma vite, ed. Hiltz, S. L., [dissertation] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1980)
Brunetto Latinos levnet og skrifter: i et tillæg: Philippi Gualtieri Moralium Dogma, Albertani Brixiensis Ars loquendi et tacendi, Versio islandica c. XXVI Moralium dogmatis , ed. Sundby, T. (Copenhagen: Jacob Lunds Boghandel, 1869)
Catalogi veteres librorum Ecclesiae cathedralis
dunelm. Catalogues of the library of Durham cathedral, at
various periods, from the conquest to the dissolution, including
catalogues of the library of the abbey of Hulne, and of the mss.
,
Surtees Society 7, (London: J.B. Nichols and Son, [1838]).
Visio Thurkilli relatore, ut videtur, Radulpho de Coggeshall , ed. Schmidt, P. G. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1978)
Walther, H., Carmina medii aevi posterioris latina 1. Initia carminum ac versuum medii aevi posterioris latinorum: alphabetisches Verzeichnis der Versanfänge mittellateinischer Dichtungen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1959-69)
Walther, H., Proverbia sententiaeque latinitatis medii aevi. Lateinische Sprichwörter und Sentenzen des Mittelalters in alphabetischer Anordnung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963-86)