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English Manuscripts in the Vatican Library

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Grace Frank
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Extract

For the benefit of scholars who may conceive the idea of examining the Vatican collections in the hope of discovering hitherto unsignalled English manuscripts, it may be well to report upon the slender harvest reaped by those who have preceded them. Unfortunately, although the older Vatican catalogues, often incomplete and unreliable as they are, promise rich gleanings to the bold—and patient—the fruits thus far collected in the field of English literature seem hardly worth the labour expended in gathering them.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 40 , Issue 1: American Bibliography for 1924 , March 1925 , pp. 98 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1925

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References

1 Under Samuel Morland, F. R. S., the Elder, the catalogue of the British Museum lists “A Specimen of a Dictionary English and Latin, compil'd by the late S. Morland, as propos'd to be publish'd by his son, S. Morland, London 1723.” What relation this may bear to the dictionary made for Queen Christina I am unable to say.

2 Cf. this study for a description of the MS. It may be added that the MS is of parchment and that the pages average 29.8 × 19.5 cm., written in single columns each containing between 45 and 49 lines. There are 177 folios. (The MS has been accurately paged by the Vatican authorities since Mr. Bannister saw it, hence his references and those in the old catalogues are not all reliable.) The handwritings seem to belong to the fifteenth century; some are more careful than others, but on the whole the MS is written in a hurried style with many abbreviations and a general crowding of the text. The English words are sometimes, but not always, underscored; occasionally beside them in the margin is written A ng.

Mr. Bannister's study also mentions various MSS having English glosses or notes. To these may be added Pal. lat. 1963 which has a few English marginalia.

3 Cf. Register of Middle English Religious and Didactic Verse, I, 522; II, 6, 422.

4 This fact doubtless accounts for the catalog's ascription of the work to Nicolaus de Hannapes, who is responsible for the last part of the MS only. At the bottom of fol. 104r the name Holkote occurs, but I have been unable to dentify the following sermons as Robert Holkote's work.