Bookhands of the Middle Ages: VI. Medieval Manuscripts: Leaves and Binding Fragments

Author/Editor
Quaritch, Bernard

Title
Bookhands of the Middle Ages: VI. Medieval Manuscripts: Leaves and Binding Fragments

Published
Quaritch, Bernard. "Bookhands of the Middle Ages: VI. Medieval Manuscripts: Leaves and Binding Fragments." : Bernard Quaritch, Ltd., 2000

Review
One of the more intriguing recent developments in the study of the text of CA was the unexpected reappearance a couple of years ago of one of the seventeen missing leaves of the "Stafford" MS (Huntington Library Ellesmere 26.A.17). First announced in Quaritch catalog 1270 (pp. 37-40, including a color photograph of the recto), the leaf was acquired by Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya of Keio University, and Takamiya and Edwards have now provided a fuller description of the leaf, including a transcription. The sixth of the MS's missing leaves, it originally stood between ff. 68 and 69 of the present pagination, and contained lines 2351-2530 of Book 4. It has been cropped on the inner edge and at the bottom for use in the binding of a smaller book, with the result that about a quarter to a third of each line of text is now missing in the first column of the recto, a few letters are lost in about half the lines in the second column of the verso, and ten lines of text have been cut away at the bottom of each column. Whatever Latin marginalia there might have been have also disappeared. The leaf has also suffered some wearing and abrasion, particularly on the verso, so that several words are now rather indistinct. On the whole, though, it is exactly what one expects of Stafford: a clean, nearly error-free text that follows almost letter for letter that of the Fairfax MS which served as Macaulay's base. I'm sorry to have to note, in that regard, that Edwards' and Takamiya's transcription contains a few errors: 2360 e MS boe; 2362 vv. 4 experetuata MS [p]erpetuata (the authors have mistaken the descender of an f in the preceding line for an abbreviation stroke); 2370 whilome MS whilom; 2396 Than MS Cham; 2408 Pantules MS Pantulf; ffrigidisses MS ffrigidilles; 2420 physique MS physique; 2439 ons MS ous; 2440 labourerer MS labourrer; 2443 mankind MS mankinde; 2444 boke MS bokes; 2449 metal MS metall; 2461 eke MS ek; 2485

Date
2000

Gower Subjects
Manuscripts and Textual Studies
Confessio Amantis