Volume 1

Catalogue of the Stowe manuscripts in the British Museum.

  • British Museum. Department of Manuscripts (Stowe MSS)
Date:
1895-1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Catalogue of the Stowe manuscripts in the British Museum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    etc., is headed “ Incipit prologus super legendas sanctorum quas compilavit frater Jacobus, nacione Januensis, de ordine fratrum pr^dicatorum,” and is followed by a table of contents. The work ends with the legend “ de dedicatione Ecclesiae,” and with the words (slightly different from the usual text), “quod ipse nobis pr^stare dignetur ut ipse cuius iste liber est et ipsius procurator ipsiusque scriptor et omnis in ipsum cernens et legens aut aliquod verbum quod in eo continetur devote intelligens vitam perducat sempiternam et leticiam indeficientem; Qui vivit et regnat cum Deo Patre in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia secula seculorum. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.” As in other early copies {e.g. Add. 11,882), the lives of SS. Sophia, Fabian, Apollonia and Boniface are absent; while the titles of two lives (“ de sanctis Felicissimo et Agapeto ” and “ de sancto Tyburtio ”) are inserted in the table of contents, but have nothing corresponding in the text. The name of the scribe is given in the following lines at the end :— “ Qui non sum canus scripsi qui dicor Alanus, Sed niger in toto per corpus dente remoto. Exoro Christum, librum qui cemit in istum, Ne quin invadat fine repente cadat.” Vellum; ff. 245. Early xivth cent. In double columns of 53 lines. With initials in red, blue, and green; and grotesque drawings in pen and ink in the margins of several of the pages. An inscrip- tion at the bottom of f. 2 states that the book was presented to the Chapel of St. Stephen, Westminster, by Eobert de Elmham, canon of the same, who died there 8 March, 1365 [6]. Eobert de Elmham received a canonry of St. Stephen’s in 1358 (Newcourt, Bepertorium Ecclesiasticum, vol. i. 745). On the last leaf is a memorandum by Sir Eoger Twysden, that he bought the volume from Stephen Potts, a bookseller of Aldersgate Street, London, about 1626. SmaU Folio. 50, 51. La Legende Dor^ie : the French version of the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Yoragine, made by Jean de Yignay, circ. 1340, including the additional Lives given by De Vignay for which there is no original in Jacobus. There are in all 236 narratives, including those which refer to Festivals as well as the Lives of the Saints. Begins, without title, with the rubric “ Cy comence le prologue de lacteur de ce liure,” etc., which introduces the trans- lator’s preface, beg. “Monseigneur saint iherome.” The author’s preface follows, beg. “ Le temps de ceste presente vie,” f. 1 b. The table of contents begins on f. 2, and the text of the work on f. 4. In two volumes. The last Life is that of St. Aubin [Albinus],
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