Corpus Christi College : Charters, Letters, Bulls, Liturgical Texts, Poetry in Latin, Anglo-Norman and Old French

Corpus Christi College

<p style='text-align: justify;'>Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 405 (hereafter CCCC MS 405) is a complex composite manuscript formed from several originally separate booklets, some of which exhibit signs of originating from the same source, or having been brought together relatively soon after their creation, due to the appearance of annotations by the same scribe in more than one part. With the exception of the parchment and paper endleaves (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(3);return false;'>a</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(5);return false;'>i</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(7);return false;'>ii</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(511);return false;'>b</a>), the majority of the present codex was owned by (and probably brought together by) the community of the Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem at Waterford in Ireland by the middle of the fourteenth century at the latest. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The medieval sections of the manuscript date from the 13th and 14th centuries and contain a wide variety of textual material, including liturgical forms, charters and legal customs, calendars, poems, and treatises on virtue and vice. The manuscript contains texts in both Latin and variants of medieval French, with linguistic divisions largely conforming to the genres of the texts, i.e., legal and liturgical material in Latin, and poems in medieval French. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Although CCCC MS 405 is a composite volume - and one that has suffered evident losses, particularly in the latter part of the codex - it is apparent that at least two scribes worked on more than one part of the manuscript. CCCC MS 405 'Scribe 1' writes a heavy textualis with long horizontal serifs and wedges on his ascenders and seems to have been responsible for ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(14);return false;'>3v-5v</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(93);return false;'>43r-92r</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(261);return false;'>127r-230v</a>. CCCC MS 405 'Scribe 2' writes a neat late protogothic / early textualis and was responsible for ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(24);return false;'>8v-10r</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(257);return false;'>125r-127r</a> and ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(469);return false;'>231r-245r</a>. This detail about the recurring scribes does not seem to have been discussed in scholarship before, and would benefit from further research in order to better understand the complex construction and use of this volume. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>CCCC MS 405 became part of the Parker Library collection through the bequest of Archbishop Matthew Parker, a former Master of the College who amassed a large collection of manuscripts in the latter years of his life. MS 405 bears evidence of the interest of Parker and his circle in the book: folio <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(7);return false;'>ii recto</a> contains a selective list of the contents of the volume on an inserted paper leaf in a 16th-century hand found in several other Parker Library manuscripts with no prior shared provenance, indicating that the list was added by Parker or one of his circle while making a study of the manuscripts collected for Parker's research on the history of Christianity and ecclesiastical practices in the British Isles.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Dr Sarah Gilbert<br /> Project Cataloguer for the Curious Cures in Cambridge Libraries Project<br /> Cambridge University Library</p>