Magdalene College : Medical and culinary recipes

Magdalene College

<p style='text-align: justify;'>This manuscript contains a large collection of medical and culinary recipes in Middle English. It also contains a compilation of selections from the instruction manual in Middle English prose and verse that was known as the <i>The Book of Hawking, Hunting, and Blasing of Arms</i> or <i>The Boke of St Albans</i>. This work was first printed by the so-called Schoolmaster Printer at St Albans in 1486. This print includes a treatise on hunting (<i>The manere of huntynge for all manere of bestys</i>) that partly takes the form of an instruction from a 'Dame' to her 'child' and associates it with a 'Dam Julyans Barnes' in its colophon: "Explicit Dam Julyans Barnes in her boke of huntyng.". Pepys MS 1047 does not contain materials from this hunting treatise but a selection from additional materials that follow it in the 1486 print of <i>The Boke of St Albans</i>. Although these additional materials are not associated with 'Dam Julyans Barnes', Pepys MS 1047 does refer to her at the end of one of its texts (see f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(14);return false;'>5v</a>: 'Explicit Julyan Barne'). This makes Pepys MS 1047 one of two manuscript copies from <i>The Boke of St Albans</i> to ascribe (part of) its contents to this female author; the other manuscript is <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='http://searcharchives-beta.bl.uk/permalink/f/ja42l1/IAMS040-002048171'>London, British Library, Harley MS 2340</a> [see Boffey (2004)].</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>A copy of the 1486 edition at Cambridge University Library contains annotations by William Burton (1575–1645), historian of Leicestershire, who calls 'Dam Julyans Barnes' the work's author and identifies her as 'Lady Julian Berners', the daughter of Sir James Berners, of Berners Roding, in Essex, and prioress of the Benedictine nunnery of Sopwell, situated a stone's throw away from St Albans. However, there are no sources to corroborate this identification. Moreover, it is unknown what involvement 'Dam Julyans Barnes' had with the work: instead of an author, she may have been an owner, commissioner, or copyist as well [see Boffey (2004)].</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Dr Clarck Drieshen<br /> Project Cataloguer<br /> Cambridge University Library</p>