Add MS 38666

POEM ON CHURCH FESTIVALS, intended (see prologue, f. 5) as a Life of Christ; written in alternate rhyme, arranged mostly in quatrains. Beg. "Ihesu þat born was of a may In amendement of mankynde Deyde and rose the thridde day The deuelus bond to vnbynde." Ends "Haue we þat hope with outen were And we shulle peree hit as did he Of oure lyfe be clene & clere And with hym in þat blisse be." Colophon, "Nunc scripsi al this: Pro Christo da michi my seruys." The poem falls into the following sections: (I) Prologue. f. 5; (2) The Incarnation and Birth of Christ (beg. "We reden of to and fourty 3ere Of Ottoman pe Emperoure"). f. 5 b ; (3) The Circumcision. f. 25 b; (4) Epiphany. f. 31 ; (5) The Purification of the Virgin. f. 42 ; (6) The Holy Innocents and Herod. f. 60 ; (7) Septuagesima. f. 69; (8) Sexagesima. f. 73; (9) Quinquagesima. f. 76 b; (10) Quadragesima. f. 81 b; (11) The Emberfasts. f. 87 b ; (l2) A section entitled "De diuersis datis" in Harley MS. 2250 (see below) and dealing with Tiberius, Ovid, and the Temptation, Cleansing of the Temple and other incidents in the life of Christ. f. 94 b ; (13) The Passion, and the stories of Pilate and Judas Iscariot. f. 99 b ; (14) The Resurrection. f. 130 b; (15) The Greater and the Lesser Litanies. f. 149 ; (16) The Ascension. f. 158 b. Other copies of the poem with dialectal differences occur in Harley MSS. 3909 and 2250 (see Ward, Cat. of Romances, ii, pp. 690, 738, and C. Horstmann, Altengl. Legenden, Paderborn, 1875, p. xxxviii), but all the MSS. are more or less defective. The present MS. alone contains the prologue. Nearly the whole of the work has been adapted from the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine. In one or two passages, however, independent sources appear to have been used, e.g. Petrus Comestor's Historia Scholastica on f. 5b, Martinus Polonus on f. 94 b, and Gregory the Great, Homily XVI-on Quadragesima on f. 96 b. Vellum; ff. 178. 9 in. x 5 ³/₄ in. xv cent. Gatherings (beg. f. 5) of 12 leaves (last^l ?). On f. 174, one of the fly-leaves, there is a short, poem (7 x 8 lines) giving a conversation between a clerk and a husbandman on love and woman, beg. "As I cowth walke be cause of recreacion"; with the alternate refrains "Quia amore langueo" and "Turn vp hyr halter and let hyr goe." For religious poems with the former refrain, see Political, Beligious and.Love Poems, edited by F. J. Furnivall (Early Eng. Text Soc., no. 15), p. 177; see also Add. MS. 37049, f. 25 b and Harley MS. 1706, f. 9 b. The flyleaves, of which ff. 1, 2 and 178 were fastened down on the original covers, have been taken from two other MSS., of which one (see f. 4) belonged to Durham Cathedral, and the other (see f. 178 b) to Merton College, Oxford. In the inscription on f. 4 "Liber Sancti Cuthberti Dunelmi; in quo continentur iii libri Prosperi de vita contemplatiua et actiua," the note of ownership is of the 13th, the rest of the 14th cent. At the foot of f. 178 b, which in addition to a l5th cent. note of ownership by Merton College, has accounts of the weight and cost of the bells of St. Bride's Major, dioc. Llandaff, and of Merton College, there are two notes "32 quaterniones et dimidium sunt in hoc libro preter psalterium et kalendarium" and "24 quaterniones et ii folia sunt in hoc libro preter psalterium et kalendarium." After the account of the Merton College bells, but in a different hand, is written "Empte fuerunt Campane prescripte anno domini M^oCCCC^moXXVII^o." Various scribblings occur, including "Iste liber pertinet ad Ihoannem Balye" (f. 3), "Iste liber constat Stephanus Stanley" (f. 3 b), "Pray ffor y^e sole of Thomas Smyth" (f. 176), "thys boke ys Thome Choche [?]" on f. 176 b, and "my lady Da. . . do3ter (?) to Sir Rychard Payne" on f. 178. Belonged to Sir Anthony Cope, Bart., of Bramshill Park, co. Southt., described in Historical Manuscripts Commission, App. to 3rd Report, p. 243 (Sotheby's sale-cat., 4 Mar. 1913, lot 117).