Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Descriptions of Individual Manuscripts
- Manuscripts in the United Kingdom
- Manuscripts in Continental Europe
- Manuscripts in the United States of America
- Appendix I Summary List of Manuscripts, with date, lines missing, other contents and note of Macaulay’s classification; with Fragments (brief descriptions) and Extracts listed at the end
- Appendix II Manuscript Sigla used by Macaulay, in alphabetical order
- Appendix III Gower’s Latin Addenda to the Confessio and other pieces, not by Gower, that appear in Confessio Manuscripts
- Works Cited
- Index of Manuscripts
- General Index
- Volumes Already Published
- PlateSection
5 - Cambridge, St John’s College, MS B.12
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2024
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Descriptions of Individual Manuscripts
- Manuscripts in the United Kingdom
- Manuscripts in Continental Europe
- Manuscripts in the United States of America
- Appendix I Summary List of Manuscripts, with date, lines missing, other contents and note of Macaulay’s classification; with Fragments (brief descriptions) and Extracts listed at the end
- Appendix II Manuscript Sigla used by Macaulay, in alphabetical order
- Appendix III Gower’s Latin Addenda to the Confessio and other pieces, not by Gower, that appear in Confessio Manuscripts
- Works Cited
- Index of Manuscripts
- General Index
- Volumes Already Published
- PlateSection
Summary
Confessio Amantis, with ‘Explicit iste liber’, ‘Quam cinxere freta’, ‘Quia unusquisque’
Possible provincial origin, s.xv, first quarter
Contents
1
(fols 1ra–214rb) Confessio Amantis
Torpor ebes sensus scola parua, etc. (6 lines of Latin verse) Of hem þat written ous to fore < > Oure ioie may ben endeles
Prologue (fol. 1ra); Book I (fol. 8rb); Book II (fol. 29va); Book III (fol. 52va); Book IV (fol. 70va); Book V (fol. 94va), lacks two leaves, with text of V.57–213 and 1615–1770; Book VI (fol. 143ra); Book VII begins at fol. 159ra, though Book VI ends at the bottom of 158vb with ‘Explicit liber sextus’ and catchword ‘Incipit liber septimus’, which is repeated at the top of 159ra; Book VIII (fol. 194ra).
Lines 631–814 are missing from Book I, without loss of leaf, showing that the MS from which it was copied, which here must have lost a leaf, had exactly forty-six lines per column, as in many fine early MSS.
Collated by Macaulay, sigil J, Type Ia, but text very close to MS Fairfax 3 (Macaulay [ed.], Works, II.cxxxix–cxl).
For further information about the following Latin and French addenda that Gower caused to be added to MSS of the Confessio, see Appendix III.
2
(fol. 214rb) ‘Explicit iste liber’
Explicit iste liber < > stet pagina grata Britannis
Four-line version, without couplet addressing Henry, earl of Derby.
Macaulay (ed.), Works, III.478.
3
(fol. 214rb) ‘Quam cinxere freta’
Quam cinxere freta < > stat sine meta
With prose rubric, ‘Epistola super huius operis’
Macaulay (ed.), Works, III.479.
4
(fol. 214rb–214va) ‘Quia unusquisque’
Quia unusquisque < > specialiter intitulatur
Earlier version, with favourable treatment of Richard II.
Macaulay (ed.), Works, III.479–80, IV.360.
Illustration
The space of three lines following Prol. 578 at the bottom of fol. 4vb may have been intended for a miniature, suggests Griffiths (‘The Poem and its Pictures’, 176 n. 8; 177), since a space of the same size is found at the same point in BL, MS Egerton 913 (and also a normal-sized miniature, completed, in Cambridge UL, MS Mm.2.21). But, coincidence apart, it is an exceptionally small space for a miniature.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021