This handlist indexes 82 manuscripts from twelve Midlands collections. The collections examined are diverse in origin: the cathedral libraries include Hereford and Worcester, whose collections include manuscripts in their possession continuously since the middle ages, and Gloucester, Lichfield, Peterborough and Southwell Minster, whose early libraries were largely dispersed at the dissolution or during the Civil War and whose present libraries are modern foundations. Also included are manuscripts on deposit in Record Offices in Gloucester and Leicester, the private collections on deposit in...

Archbishop Laud was Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1629-1641, during which period he donated over twelve thousand manuscripts to the Bodleian Library. Only a small minority of these contain Middle English prose, but they cover a wide spectrum. Religious works include eight copies of the Wycliffite New Testament, one unrecorded by printed authorities, Wycliffite sermons, writings by Rolle and Hilton, Wimbledon and Lavynham, a unique collection of Kentish dialect sermons, Disce Mori, and copies of many other popular anonymous treatises, some previously unnoted. Among the secular...

Major religious works among the fifty-five manuscripts indexed in this handlist include a thirteenth-century copy of the Ancrene Riwle, Rolle's Forme of Living and the English translation of his Emendatio vitae, the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ, Mirk's Festial, the Pilgrimage of the Soul, the Seven Points of True Love and Everlasting Wisdom and the apparently unique English translation of the Wycliffite Rosarium theologie. Medical writing is also well represented, with a number of extensive compilations which also contain medical recipes. Uroscopy texts include the Practica urinarum and the...

Two very different collections are surveyed in this volume. The manuscripts of Pembroke College, Cambridge are typical of a medieval foundation. Its core of books is a working library of that period, representing the interests and needs of its Fellows, very often given or bequeathed by them to the College. The collection was substantially enlarged in 1599 through the gift by William Smart of Ipswich of a large number of manuscripts which until the Reformation had belonged to the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds. By contrast the emphasis of the Fitzwilliam Museum collection is to a great extent art...

'The Index of Middle English Prose' is an international collaborative project which will ultimately locate, identify and record all extant Middle English prose texts composed between c.1200 and c.1500, in both manuscript and printed form in medieval and post-medieval versions. The first step towards this goal has been this series of 'Handlists', each recording the holdings of a major library or group of libraries. Compiled by scholars, 'Handlists' include detailed descriptions of each prose item with identifications, categorisations and full bibliographical data. Every 'Handlist' will also...

More than 700 manuscripts reflect Ashmole's life-long passions: heraldryand the sciences of his day: astrology, alchemy, geomancy, medicine;well over 100 contain items in Middle English. There are manuscriptsof great interest, such as the Ashmole Bestiary, but the importantitems in Middle English are no less noteworthy. Here we find the uniquecopy of an English translation of Bernard of Gordon's Lilium medicinae; a codex, Ashmole 59, entirely in the hand of John Shirley; a Wycliffite Bible and a copy of the Pore Caytif. Along with many anonymous pieces of popular astrology, there is an...

'The Index of Middle English Prose' will ultimately locate, identify and record all extant Middle English prose texts composed between c.1200 and c.1500. The initial volumes, the 'Handlists' give descriptions of each item in a particular collection, with identification, categorisation, and full bibliographical data. This volume examines libraries in Scandinavia containing Middle English prose texts: the Royal Library of Copenhagen, Denmark, the Royal Library of Stockholm, theUniversity Library of Uppsala, Sweden, and the Sch yen Collection in Oslo, Norway. An extensive collection of...

The great scholar and palaeographer Sir Frederic Madden (1801-73) was Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum (as it then was) when most of the items in this 'Handlist' were acquired. The manuscripts here represented, from the still expanding Additional collection, provide examples of almost every kind of Middle English prose composition. Many of the items in this 'Handlist' are well known, but some have been previously overlooked and a surprising number remain unedited.

The Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, contains the largest collection of medieval manuscripts of any college in Great Britain, and one of the most important collections in the world. The subjects contained therein cover the whole range of topics usual to medieval manuscripts, with the single bias being that the majority were produced in Britain. Particularly noteworthy are Wycliffite translations of the Bible, sermons, and Wycliffite tracts; three manuscripts containing Nicholas Love's 'Mirror of the Blessed Lif of Ihesu Crist'; and major collections of devotional texts. Trinity is also...

The Index of Middle English Proseis an international collaborative project which will ultimately locate, identify and record all extant Middle English prose texts composed between c.1200 and c.1500, in both manuscript and printed form in medieval and post-medieval versions. The first step towards this goal has been this series of Handlists, each recording the holdings of a major library or group of libraries. Compiled by scholars, Handlistsinclude detailed descriptions of each prose item with identifications, categorisations and full bibliographical data. Every Handlistwill also contain a...