3 - The catalogue

Summary

MS Ashmole 1517

Origin: England

Date: 15th century, first quarter

Paper leaves containing a list of passages missing from the lectionary, gospels and epistles (see below) and their transcripts from some other manuscript in Elias Ashmole's hand. The leaves are pasted to the second paper flyleaf at the beginning and paginated 1–23 in the original hand and 1–27 in a modern hand.

Text

[item 1 occupies quire I]

1. (fols. 1r–5v) Table of lections, imperfect at the beginning because of the loss of one leaf, starting at Wednesday of the second week after the octave of Epiphany. Includes the temporal and commemorations only, which suggests that the table may have been originally preceded by a calendar-lectionary (see MS Selden Supra 51 and ‘Liturgical materials’ in the Introduction). The entries consist of the name of the liturgical occasion in red, abbreviated reference to a book and chapter of the Bible, an indexing letter in red, the opening words of a reading, ‘ende’ in red, the closing words of a reading and double strokes in red. The entries for OT readings are also accompanied by letters and numbers in the margins in red, used to identify the readings in the OT lectionary (see below). Larger initials with penwork at Ash Wednesday and Ascension. Commemorations are in the following order: Our Lady, Trinity, Holy Ghost, cross, angels, salus populi, brothers and sisters, peace, clear weather, rain, in time of battles, ‘a priest for hym silf ’, pestilence of beasts, pilgrims, sinners, sick, dead and weddings. At the end: ‘te lokeris in tis kalender be riЗt wel war: for he shal not fynde alle te bigynnyngis of te lessuns of te olde lawe acorde wit te kalender for bi ordyaunce of te chirche: ter is sett to te bigynnyngis of many lessuns more & oter wyse tan it is in te bible & tat is drawun vndir wit a stryk of reed ynke & it is not in te kalender. for it is not so in te text & also it is in te same maner of manye of te endingis of to lessuns’.