12 - Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 257 (P2)

Summary

This paper manuscript was written later in the fifteenth century than Pembroke College 199. It contains seventy-one de tempore sermons written in two columns in one hand of mixed Anglicana and Secretary features. These are followed by copies of three more sermons by the French Dominican Guilelmus de Malliaco (died c. 1300), written in single columns in a late fifteenth-century Secretary hand, and a treatise on the Eucharist in the layout and script of the first hand. On the front flyleaf appears a list of the sermons, in scripts that correspond to those of the main text.

Of the seventy-one sermons, the first sixty-eight form a regular de tempore cycle from 1 Advent to Corpus Christi, while three added sermons (69–71) deal with the Passion (including Chambron's Good Friday sermon Quare rubrum found elsewhere). Many Sundays and major feasts have two or even three sermons, and their themata are taken from either the day's gospel or the epistle. Twenty sermons are addressed to Reuerendi, including one to Reuerendi magistri, while five contain the address form Karissimi (one of them has both). In the sermons shared with P1, the scribe of P2 frequently omits the address form Reuerendi mei, though conversely, in one case (P2–35) he has added it.

As already mentioned, P2 shares fourteen pieces with sermon cycle (2) of P1. In addition to sharing a number of sermons, both collections have two identical major features.