Harley MS 2370

Contents:

ff. 1r-39v: Ars moriendi, beginning: ‘Cum de praesentis exilii miseria mortis transitus’; an added title inscription on f. 1r, written in a 16th-century hand, spuriously attributes the work to ‘Albertus Castellanus’. This may refer to Albertus de Castello, a Dominican friar, who edited religious books that were printed in Venice, but is not known to have published the Ars moriendi. His last known publication was the Liber sacerdotalis in 1523 [see Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 21 (Rome: Instituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1978), 642-44].

ff. 41r-131r: A Chronicle of England from the Creation until 1427, beginning: ‘Adam fuit quindecim annorum quando genuit Caym et sororem eius Calmanam’ [a text with a similar incipit features in Dublin, Trinity College, MS 516].

f. 131v: A Marian poem: 'Da michi dona tria sanctissima virgo Maria / Da spacium vite da divicias sine lite / Regnum celeste post mortem da manifeste'.

f. 131v: A list summing up the numbers of churches, villages, military tenants, and counties in England, beginning: ‘Ecclesiarum Anglie – xlvml xj’.

f. 131v: A proverb: ‘Si servis ut vis dabo quod volo non dabo quod vis / Ut volo si servis non dabo quod volo sed dabo quod vis’.

The manuscript contains various additions:

f. 1*v: Proverbs: ‘Ut satis vixerim nec anni nec dies faciunt sed animus'; ‘Feras non culpes quod immutare non vales’; added in the 15th or 16th century.

f. 1*v: A poem, beginning: ‘vive ut post vivas / vive diu sed vive deo’; added inthe 16th century.

f. 1*verso: A table of contents (partially erased): ‘In hoc libro continentur’; added in the 17th century

ff. 39v-41r: A letter from Lady Jane Grey [married name Dudley] (b. 1537-1554), proclaimed Queen of England, to her sister Katherine Seymour [née Grey] (b. ? 1540, d. 1568), countess of Hertford in 1554, entitled: ‘this exhortacyon was wreten by lady Jane dudley to her sister katherine the neight bef[or]e she suffred’; and beginning: ‘I have sent you, good suster K a boke: which althowgh it be not owtwardly trimmed with gold, yet inwardly it is more worth than precyows stones: it is the boke: dere sister of the law of the lord: it is his testament and last will which he bequethed unto us wretches, which shall lead you to the path of eternall ioye and if you with a good minde reade it and with an earnist dissyre folow it, shall bring you to an immortall and everlasting life’; added in a 16th-century hand and perhaps copied from a mid-16th-century publication of her letter (see references to the English Short Title Catalogue (STC) in the Bibliography).

f. 63r: The name of St Alban ('Alban[us]'), repeating a reference to the saint on the same page of the Chronicle of England, written in the lower margin by a 15th-century hand.

ff. 132r-133r: A Cisiojanus poem [mnemonic verses for the saints' feasts to be celebrated each month], beginning: ‘Cisio Jan ed epi lucianus et hil fe man mar sul’; added in the 15th or 16th century.

f. 133r: A saying attributed to Guido delle Colonne (fl. 13th century), De bello Troiano, ‘Prudens est qui novit aduersa mouit sustinere certamina et malorum ponderibus animum non submittit – Guido de columpna de bello troiano’; added in the 15th or 16th century.

f. 133r: A saying attributed to Pliny the Elder (b. 23/24, d. 79), ‘Divicie sunt regis potestas’; added in the 15th century.

f. 133v: A poem for the feast of St Paul (25 January) with prognostications for a year based on the weather on that day, beginning: 'Clara dies Pauli bona tempera denotat anni / Si nix vel pluvia designat tempora cara'; added in the 15th or 16th century.

f. 133v: Excerpt on the Holy Kinship (Anne’s trinubium) from Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea, beginning: ‘Anna solet dici tres concepisse marias’; added in the 15th or 16th century.

ff. 134r-135r: A prayer invoking the Cross against the plague, beginning: ‘O alma crux Christi salva nos a presenti angustia pestilencie que salvatrix nostra es per Jhesum Christum dominum nostrum Amen’; added in the 15th or 16th century.

f. 135r: Sayings: ‘Semper aliquid operis facito ne te diabolus inveniat otiosum’; ‘pena unius est timor alterius’; ‘In malevolam animam sapientia non intrat’; ‘stultum est in [...] statu vinere in quo non [...] mori’; added in the 15th or 16th century.

Decoration:

Initials in colours and gold with foliate feathering extending into the margins (ff. 1r, 41r). 1 initial in blue with red pen-flourishing (f. 98r). Coloured initials in red or blue. Capitals marked with red.