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Add MS 37789
- Record Id:
- 040-002054225
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002054220
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000984.0x000121
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 37789
- Title:
- ?Geoffrey the Grammarian, Promptorium parvulorum; Medulla grammaticae
- Scope & Content:
-
The manuscript contains an imperfect copy of the Promptorium parvulorum, a fifteenth-century English-Latin dictionary, followed by an imperfect copy of the Medulla grammaticae, an earlier fifteenth-century Latin-English dictionary.
Promptorium parvulorum:
Several other manuscript copies of the Promptorium survive: British Library, Add MS 22556 (imperfect), Harley MS 221, Harley MS 2274 (fragment); Cambridge, Emmanuel College, 321.7.71 (two leaves, used as pastedowns in a printed book); Cambridge, King's College, MS 8 (used by Albert Way for his edition); Winchester Cathedral, MS 15 (used by A.L. Mayhew for his edition).
According to the 'preambulum', the Promptorium was compiled by a Dominican friar of King's Lynn, Norfolk, in 1440. The compiler described himself as a recluse, and perhaps resided in the anchorage attached to the Dominican house.
The Promptorium has subsequently been attributed to 'Geoffrey the Grammarian', based on an annotation in a copy of Richard Pynson's printed edition of 1499 in Cambridge University Library. John Bale attributed the Medulla grammaticae to the same name (see: Bale, Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytannie (Basle: Johannes Herbst ('apud Ioannem Oporinum'), 1557), p. 631). The two texts are often confused.
The main sources of the Promptorium, mentioned by the author in his prologue, are as follows:
- John of Genoa ('Balbus', 'the Stammerer'), Catholicon;
- Hugutio of Pisa, Liber derivationem and Rosarium;
- William Brito (no work is listed by the compiler, but probably the Expositiones vocabulorum Bibliae);
- --- of Merevale ('Mirivalensis'), Campus florum (recorded by Bale as if it were the Campus florum of Thomas Waleys);
- John of Garland, Dictionarius, Commentarius, De mysteriis ecclesiae and Distigium;
- Liber merarii;
- Robert Kilwardby (no work is listed by the compiler, but perhaps De ortu scientiarum);
- Alexander Nequam (no work is listed by the compiler, but perhaps De nominibus utensilium).
Various others, not listed in the prologue, are cited within the entries themselves; see Mayhew, The 'Promptorium Parvulorum' (1908), pp. xxiv-xxvi.
The entries are arranged in rough alphabetical order, but with 'nomina' (nouns, but also adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections) listed first within a section, followed by 'verba' (verbs).
In this manuscript, the opening of each section (A, B, C, etc) and of the part within it containing the 'verba' are signified by an initial. In the upper margin, a capital letter (A, B, C, etc) and 'nomina' or 'verba', all in red ink, denote the section and sub-section found on each page. Sub-headings that provide the second letter within the alphabetical list of entries (Ab, Ac, Ad, etc) are located in the margins. Each headword is rubricated by underlining in red ink.
For a detailed explanation of the organisation of the Promptorium parvulorum, see: Stein, English Dictionary (1985), pp. 94-101.
Medulla grammaticae:
Several other manuscript copies of the Medulla grammaticae survive: British Library, Add MS 24640, Add MS 33534, Add MS 62080, Harley MS 1000, Harley MS 1738, Harley MS 2181, Harley MS 2257, Harley MS 2270; Bristol, University Library, MS DM 1 (fragment), MS DM 14; Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys MS 2002; Cambridge, St John's College, MS C.22 (72); Canterbury, Cathedral Library, MS D.2; Downside Abbey, MS 26540; Gloucester, Diocesan Record Office, MS 31 (fragment); Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 88, MS 111; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Holkham Misc. MS 39, Rawlinson MS C.101, Rawlinson MS D.913 (fragment); Oxford, Brasenose College, MS UB S.2.87-88 (fragment); Shrewsbury School, MS 16; Stonyhurst College, MS 15 (A.1.10).
Six other lost or unlocated copies are noted by McCarren, 'Bristol University MS DM 1', Traditio, 48 (1993), p. 224.
The author of the Medulla grammaticae is not known. The text is often confused with the Promptorium parvulorum, not least because of the inclusion of 'Medulla grammaticae' as an alternative title in early printed editions of the Promptorium. As a result, authorship of the Medulla is often mistakenly attributed to Geoffrey the Grammarian: for example, annotations in Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 88, assign Geoffrey's name, plus the otherwise unattested surname of Starkey, to the contents.
No sources are explicitly mentioned in the Medulla, however comparative studies have indicated several likely candidates: glossae collectae from the Bible and Classical texts, the vocabulary (class glossary) or nominale, and medieval Summae and encyclopaedia, such as Huguccio of Pisa's Liber deriuationem and Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae.
In this manuscript, the opening of each section (A, B, C, etc) is denoted by an initial. Sub-headings that provide the second letter within the alphabetical list of entries ('A ante b', 'A ante c', etc) are located in the upper margins, written in red ink. Each headword is rubricated by a red line drawn through the opening letter.
The contents of the manuscript are as follows:
ff. 1r-83v: ?Geoffrey the Grammarian, Promptorium pravulorum, comprising:
- f. 1r: The 'preambulum' or prologue.
- ff. 1r- 4v: 'A'.
- ff. 4v-9v: 'B'.
- ff. 9v-17r: 'C'.
- ff. 17r-20r: 'D'.
- ff. 20r-21v: 'E'.
- ff. 21v-26r: 'F'.
- ff. 26r-30r: 'G'.
- ff. 30r-32v: 'H'.
- ff. 32v-34r: 'I'.
- ff. 34r-35r: 'K'.
- ff. 35r-38v: 'L'.
- ff. 38v-41r: 'M'.
- ff. 41r-42v: 'N'.
- ff. 42v-44v: 'O'.
- ff. 44v-50v: 'P'.
- ff. 50v-51v: 'Q'.
- ff. 51v-55v: 'R'.
- ff. 55v-69v: 'S'.
- ff. 69v-75v: 'T'.
- ff. 75v-76v: 'U/V'.
- ff. 77r-83r: 'W'.
- f. 83r: 'Þ'.
- ff. 83r-83v: 'Ȝ'.
ff. 84r-174v: Medulla grammaticae, comprising:
- f. 84r: prologue.
- ff. 84r-96r: 'A'.
- ff. 96v-99v: 'B'.
- ff. 99v-112r: 'C'.
- ff. 112v-117v: 'D'.
- ff. 117v-122r: 'E'.
- ff. 122v-126v: 'F'.
- ff. 127r-129v: stubs of almost completely missing leaves, containing fragmentary letters from 'G'.
- ff. 130r-131v: 'H'.
- f. 131v: entries from the beginning of 'I'.
- ff. 132r-132v: entries from the end of 'H'.
- ff. 132v-137v: 'I'.
- f. 137v: 'K'.
- ff. 137v-141v: 'L'.
- ff. 141v-146v: 'M'.
- ff. 146v-148v: 'N'.
- ff. 148v-151v: 'O'.
- ff. 152r-160v: 'P'.
- ff. 161r-161v: 'Q'.
- ff. 161v-164r: 'R'.
- ff. 164v-173v: 'S'.
- ff. 173v-174v: 'T'.
Decoration:
Initials in red, in outline (ff. 1r-84r).
Initials in red (ff. 85r-174v).
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002054220
040-002054225 - Is part of:
- Add MS 37785-37790 : Belonged to William Amhurst Tyssen-Amherst, Baron Amherst of Hackney, forming Part of the second portion of his library, sold…
Add MS 37789 : ?Geoffrey the Grammarian, Promptorium parvulorum; Medulla grammaticae - Hierarchy:
- 032-002054220[0005]/040-002054225
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Add MS 37785-37790
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
Paper codex
- Digitised Content:
- Languages:
- English, Middle
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1460
- End Date:
- 1499
- Date Range:
- Late 15th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Paper.
Dimensions: 290 x 205/210 mm (text space: 215/220 x 150 mm).
Foliation: ff. i + 174. Folio i is a bookplate pasted onto the front inside cover. Plus two modern unfoliated paper endleaves at the front and three at the back.
Collation: The leaves do not survive in quires, but are mounted individually on guards. Catchwords are present, which may enable some recontruction of the original quire structure, however comparison with editions of the texts indicates that leaves are missing at intervals throughout the volume.
Catchwords are present on the following leaves: ff. 7v, 19v, 41v, 53v, 65v, 77v, 89v, 100v, 101v, 113v, 124v, 136v.
The incidence of the catchwords, and the presence of quire signatures on ff. 20-25, 31-36, 43-47, and elsewhere, indicates that the volume originally consisted of at least 15 regular quires (and almost certainly more) of twelve leaves each.
Script: Gothic cursive (Anglicana).
Binding: British Museum in-house.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Norfolk (see: Beadle, 'Prolegomena' (1991), p. 107). The section containing the Promptorium parvulorum (and perhaps the rest of the manuscript) was copied/owned by John Brooke, who frequently inscribed his name in the margins (for example, ff. 1r, 7v, 9v, 10r, 12r, 14r, etc) and who included the following colophon at the end of the Promptorium: 'Brooke owyt þis Boke hoso wyssly loke' (f. 84r).
Provenance:
John Brooke: inscribed with his name, late 15th century (ff. 1r, 7v, 9v, etc).
Thomas Wade: inscribed with his name, late 15th century (ff. 76v, 165v).
Thomas Podd: inscribed with his name, late 15th century (f. 165v).
Henry Sherbrooke: inscribed with his name, 17th/18th century (f. 10v).
Richard Heber (b. 1774, d. 1833), book collector: his sale, 10 February 1836, lot 1360.
Sir Thomas Phillipps (b. 1792, d. 1872), baronet, book-collector: inscribed with his number 'Phillipps MSS 8306'; his sale, 1897, lot 618.
William Amhurst Tyssen-Amherst (b. 1835, d. 1909), first Baron Amherst of Hackney, book-collector: armorial bookplate (folio i) pasted onto front inside cover; MS 46 in his collection (see de Ricci, Hand-list (1906), p. 265): his sale, Sotheby's, London, 24 March 1909, lot 760.
Purchased by the British Museum at Amherst sale, 1909 (note on recto of second front endleaf).
- Publications:
-
Promptorium parvulorum sive clericorum: Lexicon Anglo-Latinum Princeps, auctore Galfrido Grammatico Dicto e predicatoribus Lenne episcopi, Northfolcensi..., ed. by Albert Way, Works of the Camden Society, 25, 54, 89, 3 vols (London: Camden Society, 1843-65) [on the text].
Seymour de Ricci, A hand-list of a collection of books and manuscripts belonging to the Right Hon. Lord Amherst of Hackney at Didlington Hall, Norfolk (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1906), p. 265.
The 'Promptorium parvulorum': The First English-Latin Dictionary, edited from the manuscript in the Chapter Library at Winchester, with introduction, notes, and glossaries, ed. by A.L. Mayhew, Early English Text Society, Extra Series, 102 (London: Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1908) [on the text].
Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years MDCCCCVI-MDCCCCX (London: printed for the Trustees, 1912), pp. 152-53.
Peter Haworth, 'The First Latin-English Dictionary: A Bristol University Manuscript', Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 45 (1923), 253-75, pls I-II [on the text].
DeWitt T. Starnes, Renaissance Dictionaries: English-Latin and Latin-English (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1954), pp. 3-19, 24-37, 39, 42, 47, 51, 129, 132, 135-36, 138, 154, 165, 222, 234, 328, 341-44, 365n., 367n., 368n., 379n., 380n..
Gabriele Stein, 'The English Dictionary in the 15th Century', in Logos Semantikos: Studia Linguistica in Honorem Eugenio Coseriu, 1921-1981, ed. by Horst Geckeler and others, 5 vols (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1981), I: Historia de la Filosofía de Lenguaje y de la Lingüística, ed. by Jürgen Trabant, pp. 313-22 (pp. 314-18).
Gabriele Stein, The English Dictionary before Cawdrey, Lexicographica, 9 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1985), pp. 74-106.
Linda Voigts and Frank Stubbings, 'Promptorium parvulorum: Manuscript Fragments at Emmanuel College and their Relation to Pynson's Editio Princeps', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 9 (1989), 358-71 (pp. 363-64).
Richard Beadle, 'Prolegomena to a Literary Geography of Late Medieval Norfolk', in Regionalism in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts: Essays Celebrating the Publication of 'A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English', ed. by Felicity Riddy, York Manuscripts Conference Proceedings, 2 (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1991), pp. 89-108 (p. 107).
Vincent P. McCarren, 'Bristol University MS DM 1: A Fragment of the Medulla Grammatice: An Edition', Traditio: Studies in Ancient and Medieval History, Thought and Religion, 48 (1993), 173-235 (p. 221).
Vincent P. McCarren, 'The Gloucester Manuscripts of the Medulla grammatice: An Edition', Journal of Medieval Latin, 10 (2000), 338-401 (pp. 344-45).
Vincent P. McCarren, 'Linguistic Problems within the Tradition of the 15th Century Glossary Medulla Grammatice', Bulletin du Cange: Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi, 60 (2002), 235-60 (pp. 235, 237).
Reiko Takeda, 'Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS O.5.4: A Fifteenth-Century Pedagogical Dictionary?', in Historical Dictionaries and Historical Dictionary Research: Papers from the International Conference on Historical Lexicography and Lexicology, at the University of Leicester, 2002, ed. by Julie Coleman and Anne McDermott, Lexicographia, Series Maior, 123 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2004), pp. 11-18 (pp. 11, 13-14, 17).
Vincent P. McCarren and others, 'A Prolegomenon to the Stonyhurst Medulla: An Edition of the Letter "A"', Bulletin du Cange, 65 (2007), 45-116 [on the text].
Florent Tremblay, A Medieval English-Latin Dictionary: Based on a Set of Unpublished 15th Century Manuscripts [of the] 'Medulla Grammaticae' / 'Marrow of Grammar' kept in the British Museum (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2009) [on the text].
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)
- Names:
- Broke, John, Late 15th century
Geoffrey the Grammarian, lexicographer, grammarian and monk, fl 1440
Heber, Richard, book collector, 1773-1833
Phillipps, Thomas, 1st Baronet, collector of books and manuscripts, 1792-1872,
see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000083446892
Podd, Thomas
Sherbrooke, Henry, son of Richard Sherbrooke
Wade, Thomas, of Add MS 37789 - Related Material:
-
From the Catalogue of Additions (1912):
'PROMPTORIUM Parvulorum and MedullaGrammaticae: English- Latin and Latin-English dictionaries. The MS. was used by Albert Way for his edition of the Promptorium (Camden Soc. 1843-1865) and is described in his preface (vol. iii.), pp. xl, liv. Contents: 1. "Libellus qui dicitur promptorius paruulorum secundum wlgarem modum loquendi orientalium Anglorum": the work of Galfridus, called Grammaticus, a Dominican anchoret of Lynn, co. Norf. As compared with the Winchester MS. used by the Rev. A. L. Mayhew for his Early Engl. Text Soc. edition (extra ser., 1908), the text perhaps represents an earlier recension. It has e.g. blanks for the rendering of some words, such as "hunnyng" (f. 31 b, col. i.), which the Winchester MS translates on the authority of an unknown "Levsay," and the Winchester "Rand or Radyl Ranulphus, non Radulphus, Rafe" looks like an express correction of the " Ranulphus uel Radulphus" of the present MS. (f. 51 b, col. ii.). Preface beg. "Cernentibus sollicite clericorum condiciones." The list of authorities is not given. Text beg. "Abacke or bacward: retro, retrorsum, aduerbia sunt." A few additions are made in a nearly contemporary hand. Colophon, "Explicit liber dictus promtorius (etc.) quod Brooke owyt pis booke hoso wyssly loke." f. 1.
2. "Medulla grammatice": a Latin-English dictionary attributed, on somewhat slight evidence, to the same author as art. 1. Not printed. The work published under this name by Pynson (1499) is the Promptorium. For the MSS. see Way, op. cit. iii. pp. l-liv. The first MS. mentioned by Way is now Add. MS. 33534. Imperfect by loss of one leaf after f. 119, mutilation of ff. 127-129 and loss at the end. Preface beg. "Hec est regula generalis pro toto libro," and text "Alma: id eat uirgo abscondita." Breaks off "Ticio, -onis, a brond of fyre." f. 84.
Paper; ff. i. + 174. xv. cent. 11 in. x 8 in. See. fol. "akyr of lond." The name of Broke (Johannes Broke, f. 65 b) occurs frequently as owner (perhaps also as scribe?), also the names of Thomas Wade (ff. 76 b, 165 b) and (f. 165 b) Thomas Podd (?). In a 17th cent. hand if; the name of Henry Sherbrooke (f. 10b). Afterwards the MS. belonged to Richard Heber (sale-cat. 1836, lot 1360) and Sir Thomas Phillippis (Phillipps MS. 8306, sale-cat. 1897, lot 618); Amherst sale, lot 760. Old oak boards, rebacked.'
Further information:
Scribes: J. Broke, (?): 15th cent.
Bindings ENGLISH: Oak boards: 15th cent.
includes:
- f. 1 Galfridus Grammaticus: Promptorium Parvulorum: 15th cent.
- f. 1 Dictionaries: Promptorium Parvulorum: 15th cent.: English-Latin.
- ff. 76 b, 165 b Thomas Wade: Scribbling: 15th cent.
- f. 84 Galfridus Grammaticus: Medulla Grammaticae, attributed to: 15th cent.
- f. 84 Dictionaries: Medulla grammaticae, Latin-English: 15th cent.
- f. 165b Thomas Podd: Scribbling: 15th cent.