Papers by Margaret Connolly
Medical History, Mar 14, 2016
This article examines a fifteenth-century remedy book, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson c. 299... more This article examines a fifteenth-century remedy book, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson c. 299, and describes its collection of 314 medieval medical prescriptions. The recipes are organised broadly from head to toe, and often several remedies are offered for the same complaint. Some individual recipes are transcribed with modern English translations. The few non-recipe texts are also noted. The difference between a remedy book and a leechbook is explained, and this manuscript is situated in relation to other known examples of late medieval medical anthologies. The particular feature that distinguishes Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson c. 299 from other similar volumes is the evidence that it continued to be used during the sixteenth century. This usage was of two kinds. Firstly, the London lawyer who owned it not only inscribed his name but annotated the original recipe collection in various ways, providing finding-aids that made it much more user-friendly. Secondly, he, and other members of his family, added another forty-three recipes to the original collection (some examples of these are also transcribed). These two layers of engagement with the manuscript are interrogated in detail in order to reveal what ailments may have troubled this family most, and to judge how much faith they placed in the old remedies contained in this old book. It is argued that the knowledge preserved in medieval books enjoyed a longevity that extended beyond the period of the manuscript book, and that manuscripts were read and valued long after the advent of printing.
The scribe John Shirley copied many short Middle English poems, includings everal by Geoffrey Cha... more The scribe John Shirley copied many short Middle English poems, includings everal by Geoffrey Chaucer, and is often either the earliest or the only copyist to provide authorship ascriptions. Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.20 uniquely preservest he single stanza known as 'Adam Scriveyn'.Sincethe identification of Adam Pinkhurst as the scribe of the Hengwrt and Ellesmeremanuscriptsofthe Canterbury Tales,these seven lines of verse, and Shirley'sc laim that they are addressed to Chaucer's 'own scribe',h avereceived renewed critical attention, and Shirley'sreliability has again been questioned. This essay reassesses Shirley'sChaucerian ascriptions, paying close attention to the Trinity manuscript and its later reception. Adam scriveyn, if ever it thee bifalle Boece or Troylus for to wryten newe, Under thy longlokkes thou most havethe scalle, [scaly skin disease] But after my makyng thow wryte more trewe; So ofte adayeImot thy werk renewe, It to correcte and eke to rubbe and scrape, And al is thorugh thy negligence and rape. [haste] (Benson (ed.) 1987:650) Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-NC-ND 4.0
The Mediaeval Journal, Jul 1, 2018
Editing and Interpretation of Middle English Texts, 2018
Library, Sep 1, 2016
The recent publication by Peter Lucas and Angela Lucas of a catalogue of the medieval manuscripts... more The recent publication by Peter Lucas and Angela Lucas of a catalogue of the medieval manuscripts in the Russell Library at St Patrick's College, Maynooth (now part of the National University of Ireland), has brought this small collection to wider notice. 1 The catalogue is generously illustrated and offers extended descriptions of the sixteen manuscripts, three singleleaf fragments, and a number of manuscript fragments recovered from the bindings of printed books. The descriptions are extremely detailed and might be considered exhaustive, but codicological research is often a cumulative process, and there are always new discoveries to be made, sometimes, as in this instance, serendipitously. In their description of MS RB29, a paper manuscript of the second half of the fifteenth century that contains a compilation of papal decretals and other works, Lucas and Lucas note one instance of an inscription, 'Scheuez', described by them as signed with 'a notarial flourish'. 2 They tentatively interpret this as evidence of a French owner or commissioner of the manuscript, a 'Maître Chevet'. 3 Possibly this also influenced their attribution of the manuscript's origins to
Library, Sep 1, 2017
MS 19. 2. 1) is the largest and most important of the surviving early collections of Middle Engli... more MS 19. 2. 1) is the largest and most important of the surviving early collections of Middle English texts, produced probably in the 1330s or 1340s in London. 1 Its subsequent history before the middle of the eighteenth century has remained wholly undocumented. But there is a body of evidence, previously unexamined, that offers some insight into its history between its original completion and its presentation to the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh in 1744. As it is preserved now in the National Library of Scotland the Auchinleck manuscript comprises 331 leaves. 2 It is clear that it originally contained an indeterminable number of additional leaves before the present start of the manuscript, which begins partway through the item that has the contemporary number 'vi'. There are also substantial internal losses after the present Quire 38, and also after Quire 48, although the extent of the losses in both these cases cannot be precisely established. 3 2 There are additional losses that can be more precisely identified. All of Quires 15 and 40 have been removed (some parts of Quire 40 survive elsewhere: see below). 4 There are identifiable losses from within the surviving quires. Thus, a number of bifolia have been removed: one from Quire 47 (leaves 3.6), two each from Quire 3 (leaves 3.6, 4.5), Quire 41 (leaves 3.6, 4.5), and three from Quire 48 (leaves 2.7, 3.6, 4.5), a total of sixteen leaves. In addition, a number of single leaves have been excised. These fall into two categories. For fourteen of these stubs remain: for fols 6a, 24a, 35, 37, 48, 61a, [72a], 84a, [107a], 118a/2, 120a, 256a, 262a, 299a. 5 A number of other single leaves have been removed without stubs being left: the first four of Quire 1, the final leaf of Quire 25, leaf 6 of Quire 27, the first leaf of Quire 36, leaf 7 from Quire 41 and the final leaf from Quire 52, a further nine leaves. The leaves in all of these categories, including all of Quires 15 and 40 amount in total to identifiable losses of 57 leaves. 6 Some of the bifolia that have been removed from the manuscript survive elsewhere: Edinburgh University Library MS 218: this comprises two bifolia: fols 4.5 from Quire 3 (parts of Adam and Eve) and fols 2.7, from Quire 48 (parts of Richard Coeur de Lyon). 7 4 These matters are set out clearly in diagrammatic form in Pearsall and Cunningham, The Auchinleck Manuscript, pp. [xii-xiii]. St Andrews University Library, msPR2065.R4 (ms1034), one complete bifolium of Richard Coeur de Lyon from Quire 48 (4.5); 8 and msPR2065.A15 (ms1400 and ms1401), two parts of the same bifolium from King Alexander from Quire 40 (4.5). 9 University of London, Senate House Library MS 593: a substantial portion of a bifolium of King Alexander (3.6) from Quire 40. 10 These bifolia contribute most clearly to an understanding of the history of Auchinleck after its completion. 11 Their existence as separate bifolia is only explicable if, at some point in its history, the manuscript had been disbound. It seems likely (but not absolutely certain) that all the single leaves that lack stubs were also cut out at a point when the manuscript was disbound: if the manuscript was disbound it would be possible to simply cut along the gutter and leave no trace of a stub. Conversely, the existence of stubs for a number of single leaves that have been excised suggests that such leaves may have been cut out at a point when Auchinleck was bound. The proposition is not wholly secure, but cutting single leaves from a bound manuscript would inevitably leave stubs of some kind. The fourteen stubs in Auchinleck vary considerably in width: the narrowest, fols 24a, 107a, and 299a, are cut so closely that they contain no traces of text, whereas the 8
Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Apr 1, 2021
Brepols Publishers eBooks, 2013
Boydell & Brewer eBooks, May 17, 2019
The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain
The Catholic Historical Review, 2013
John Mirk's Festial. Edited from British Library MS Cotton Claudius A.II. Edited by Susan Pow... more John Mirk's Festial. Edited from British Library MS Cotton Claudius A.II. Edited by Susan Powell. 2 vols. [Early English Text Society, Original] S[eries] 334 and 335.] (New York: Oxford University Press. 2009 and 2011. Vol. 1: Pp. cxlv, 188; $130.00; ISBN 978-0-19-957849-8. Vol. 2: Pp. 189-690; $135.00; ISBN 978-0-19-959037-7.)A first-rate edition of a medieval sermon collection is a blessing for historians, and all the more so when the collection in question is John Mirk's Festial. Mirk, an Augustinian canon at Lilleshall Abbey in Shropshire, compiled this vernacular collection in the late 1380s or 1390s, explaining in his prologue that he designed it for clergy who did not have enough books or education to teach their parishioners about all the major feasts in the church calendar, as they were supposed to do. The market for such a preaching aid must have been enormous and long-lasting, for the Festial became one of the great best-sellers of its era. It survives, as a whole or in part, in more than three-In dozen fifteenth-century manuscripts and was printed more than twenty times between 1483 and 1532. Priests who used the book may often have supplemented it with other sources, of course, but it is reasonable to infer from its long popularity that the Festial exerted a formative influence on the preaching in English parish churches for several generations before the Reformation.Susan Powell's edition of the Festial reproduces the contents and order of the earliest and most authoritative of the extant manuscripts. Besides the prologue and a brief opening prayer, the text has seventy-four chapters, sixty-seven of which are sermons for particular days in the Sarum calendar, running from Advent and St. Andrew (Nov. 30) to St. Katherine (Nov. 25). The occasions covered include the major feasts of Christ and the Virgin Mary, several dozen widely venerated saints and two local Shrewsbury ones (Alkmund and Winifrede), All Saints, and All Souls, plus Rogation Days, Ember Days, and all the Sundays from Septuagesima to the end of Lent. The last seven chapters are more miscellaneous in character: sermons for the dedication of a church, a marriage, and a burial, notes on the rules for burial in holy ground, advice on teaching the Ave Maria, an additional Marian miracle story, and a sermon that expounds the Paternoster.Before Powell's edition, the Festial had been edited in modern times only by Theodor Erbe, who published a bare-bones version of the text CMirk's Festial: A Collection of Homilies, EETS E.S. 96, London, 1905) and died shortly thereafter, without completing the introduction and notes he had planned for a second volume. Powell's handling of the medieval text itself is more reliable than Erbe's, and she supplements it with vast amounts of additional information. …
ARUNDEL 197 is a curious manuscript. Dating from the third quarter of the fifteenth century, it i... more ARUNDEL 197 is a curious manuscript. Dating from the third quarter of the fifteenth century, it is a small volume of seventy-three folios, measuring 192 x 132 mm, very plain, without decoration, and showing no signs of ownership from the medieval period. The volume once belonged to Henry Howard, Duke of Norfolk, as the ink stamp on f. ir indicates (see fig. i), but nothing is otherwise known of its provenance or history. The material it contains is entirely devotional in nature, consisting of two longer texts and a collection of shorter pieces as outlined below.
Manuscript and Print in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain, 2019
The Chaucer Review, 1994
Gaunt was a powerful magnate; he was also closely related to the king, but despite the reference ... more Gaunt was a powerful magnate; he was also closely related to the king, but despite the reference at the end of the poem, might not properly be termed a king himself. 4 Chaucer's use of the term" knight" is therefore more appropriate, and of course also reflects the ...
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Papers by Margaret Connolly