Durham University Library Archives & Special Collections Catalogue
Composite manuscript codex written in England at the turn of the 14th/15th century, containing religious works. An early assemblage of five contemporary separable sections. The first part of (A) is very similar to (D) in lay out, script, and catchwords, hand 1; the latter part of (A) is the work of the scribe who supplied catchwords in (B) and is also the scribe of (E), hand 2. All five sections have initials flourished in the same distinctive style, with careless reading, offsetting and spattering of colour.
Parchment; poor and irregular except f.75-121 and 156-71; many flaying edges and flaws; quires with flesh-side outermost; 266-270 x 200 mm., or, (E) up to 20 x 15 mm. less; outer and lower edges of (B) cropped.
foliated 1-242, with 91, 126 and 152 repeated.
A few paraphs in blue, f.75, 76, and in (C) and (E).
Initials: (i) to sermons (item 1) or chapters, 2 or 3 line or, item 1, also 4 and 5 line, blue, with infilling and flourishing in red in a style distinguished by the use of broad loops enclosing a line of small circles (most often 3); (ii) to item 1, 8 line, as (i). There are a remarkable number of wrong or nonsensical blue initials (e.g. f.19r, 31v, 65v, 70v, 74v, 172r), which cannot all be from illegible guide-letters. Both the blue and red of the flourished 4-line initial P on f.27v have offset distinctly on f.34, its conjoint, indicating that it was done while the bifolium was loose; also A from 19v to 26r, N from 21v to 24r; but there is more offsetting between facing pages as gathered (e.g. red on f.25r, 205v, blue on f.139r, 207r), showing that they were closed when still wet. Blue has been spilled badly on f.129r and 151v-152r, and pink on f.232v-233r. The flourishing appears all to have been done by one hand throughout and so after the assembly of the several sections of the volume. The flourishing of the initials is all by one hand, the minor initials crenulate, as commonly, the major dentate and bilobate, indicating a date not before 1380.
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). f.1-2, thick and conjoint, probably from previous binding, with stains from turn-ins on f.1r. Disused holes for sewing in all five sections.
Written in England, 14th/15th century.
Headings added to items (7) and (8) in the same 15th/16th century hand.
“Donu[m] Rici Winwood ar 5 Junij 1655 B. Whitelocke”, f.3r, probably in the hand of Bulstrode Whitelocke (1605-75), who recorded in his diary, 18 Feb. 1654/5, that Winwood had offered him the use of any of his father Sir Ralph's books (Diary, p. 490-2.
The inscription is identical with one in Durham Cathedral Library MS. A.iv.30 (13th century Bible, from Besançon Dominicans and Witham Charterhouse in 15th century, given by Henry Bland, Dean, in 1729), except that the second name is obliterated (perhaps because of Whitelocke's Parliamentary activities).
“Geo. Davenport. | 1664.” on paper cutting from previous binding stuck to front pastedown; his list of contents, attributing item (8) to John Wilton, f.2r, heading to items (1) and (7), and note from Pits on Wilton, f.210v are all in his hand. Note on f.2v by Thomas Rud identifying item (1) and his ex-libris and shelf-numbers of the Library on f.3r.
1-88, 98 with 4 and 5 (f.70 & 71) transposed, 10-158
Up to f. 73v/3 (quires 1-97):
no visible line-pricking. Written space 198 x 152 mm; ruled in soft brown. 45 long lines.
f.73v/4-74v: written space 220 x 170 mm; no visible line-pricking or ruling. 47 long lines.
f.75-121v (quires 10-15):
no visible line-pricking or ruling, save blind on f.120v and 121v. Written space c. 230 x 170 mm. Two columns. 52-60 lines.
Up to f. 73v/3: written in anglicana formata with short r, proficiently, by the same somewhat variable hand as (D): hand 1, end of 14th century.
f.73v/4-121v: written in current anglicana, with double and single compartment a, rapidly, by hand 2, leftwards-leaning, in deep black ink, badly rubbed on f.76, 80-83.
Running titles: f.75-121v only, in ink, by the scribe.
86 sermons. Up to the major change of hand (f.73v) in Sermon 42 the text is of the C type, the third recension emanating from Clairvaux; from that point it is of the A type, the second recension, which circulated from an early date in England. In Sermon 66 there is a gap (f.99r/a 3 lines up), presumably from the loss of a leaf or leaves in an exemplar at some point in the transmission.
16-198, 204
No visible line-pricking. Written space 205-215 x 157 mm; ruled in soft brown, often with lines (unused) for writing down to bottom edge. 43-46 long lines.
Written in anglicana formata , proficiently, by hand 3, end of 14th century.
Entirely based on the Speculum Historiale of Vincent of Beauvais. The Durham and Florence manuscripts alone give Vincent's citations of his sources, here marginally. This copy seems to lack the latter of two passages used to date the work to 1322 or later, from an augmented Paris manuscript.
As found in Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale III,ii-viii. The prefatory section is abbreviated and the fifth (lupus et grus), seventeenth (equus et asinus), and twenty sixth (homines duo, fallax, verax et simii) fables are omitted.
Six paragraphs, the first, and longest, on death and disasters, e.g. “Amisi vxorem bonam”, f.145r/28; a version of Pseudo-Seneca, De copia verborum, a work composed from Martin of Braga's Formula vitae honestae (Bloomfield 4457) and the early letters of Seneca, Bloomfield 4860. This may be part of a larger work beginning on f.144r - Cicero, Laelius de amicitia, extracts from caps 5-27, on abstract matters. A slightly different version is found in Cambridge St Johns College MS 120 f.174v-176r, 13th cemtury.
Approximately the first quarter of the text. No text is missing between one folio and the next in the final short quire (20), f.152*-155, and so its shortness may be evidence that the original intention was to make a copy of only the first part of the text, though it runs to the end of the page.
21-228
No visible line-pricking or ruling. Written space 200 x 156 mm; framed in grey. 32-42 long lines.
Written in an individual angular anglicana formata, with both forms of a from f.158v, and secretary as well as sigma and 8-like final s; from lower half of f.161r having unlooped ascenders on b, h and l.
f.171v blank.
23-268, 278 wants 7 (save stub, blank?) after f.209
No visible pricking. Written space 204 x 154 mm; ruled in sharp brown, providing, f.199v-201v, 3 unused lines for writing at foot. 45 long lines.
Written by hand 1, anglicana formata, as at start of (A).
Prologue and 28 homilies. f 209-210 blank (stub of cancel between 209 and 210, 210r-v ruled), except for Davenport's note on 210v about the following item.
2814, 298, 3010
No visible pricking or ruling for this text. A line of 23-29 pricks at 5 mm intervals in the lower margins of f.211 and its conjoint 216, f.219 and its conjoint 224, and pairs of pricks on the outer edges of f.211-16, 219-20 and 224, with horizontal grey ruling from them on f.216v and 219r, suggest that these leaves were previously prepared in part for two-column pages orientated 90° from the present. Written space 186-194, or, from f.233 onwards, 214-220 x 140-150 mm; framed in soft brown. c. 45 or, from f.233 onwards, c. 52 long lines. The conspicuously narrower and/or shorter f.211-234 are probably related to the changed use of the bifolia.
Written by hand 2,current anglicana , but less hasty than in (A) and in brown not blackish ink.
Breaks off at ii, 3. Up to the point where it breaks off it has the arrangement peculiar to Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson A.372, which is akin to two other English copies (Cambridge, St John's Coll. MS 84; Vatican, MS Ottob.lat. 73).
Bloomfield, Morton W., Guyot, Bertrand-Georges, Howard, Donald R. and Kabealo, Thyra B., Incipits of Latin works on the virtues and vices, 1100-1500 A.D. Including a section of incipits of works on the Pater noster 
(Cambridge, Mass.: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1979)
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]).
Diaz y Diaz, M. C., Index scriptorum latinorum medii aevi Hispanorum (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1958-59)
Newhauser, R. and Bejzcy, I., A supplement to Morton W. Bloomfield et al. Incipits of Latin works on the virtues and vices, 1100-1500 A.D. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008)
Stegmüller, Friedrich, Repertorium biblicum medii aevi , (Madrid: 1950-1980)
The diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke 1605-1675 . ed. R. Spalding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)