Western Medieval Manuscripts : Byzantine and patristic miscellany

Western Medieval Manuscripts

<p style='text-align: justify;'>This manuscript, copied in the late 17th century, contains a <i>Byzantine and patristic miscellany</i> of excerpts and brief texts, predominantly Christian works but including some secular texts. It forms part of a two-volume set, of which the other is MS Dd.6.18, copied by the same hand. That volume contains Byzantine religious texts, with a particular interest in Church organisation. Here the focus is on theology, including scriptural commentaries and works concerning heresies and doctrinal disagreements between East and West, along with historical, geographical and scientific works.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Much of the manuscript is divided into two columns, of which one contains the text and the other notes on it, primarily recording interventions intended to correct the reading in the exemplar manuscript. Where the text is in a single column, these appear at the foot of the page. The person responsible for copying it was probably one R. Ray, the scholar at Trinity College whose ownership note, dated to 1693 and identical to a note in Dd.6.18, appears on <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(3);return false;'>f. i recto</a>. This Ray currently remains unidentified, and no such person appears among the Fellows listed in Hugh MacLeod Innes, <i>Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge</i> (Cambridge 1941). He may have been a relative of John Ray (or Wray), a notable scholar and Fellow of Trinity in the mid-17th century.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Dr Christopher Wright</p>