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Add MS 22556

Record Id:

040-002096522

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

032-002096514

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000122.0x000036

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Add MS 22556

Title:

?Geoffrey the Grammarian, Promptorium parvulorum

Scope & Content:

The manuscript contains an imperfect copy of the Promptorium parvulorum, a fifteenth-century English-Latin dictionary.

Several other manuscript copies survive: British Library, Harley MS 221, Harley MS 2274 (fragment) and Add MS 37789 (with the Medulla grammaticae); 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' (missing in this copy), 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).

For a detailed explanation of the organisation of the Promptorium parvulorum, see: Stein, English Dictionary (1985), pp. 94-101.

The contents are as follows:

ff. 1r-2v: letter, mounted on guards: Albert Way to S.W. Singer, 19 January 1858.

ff. 3r-3v: single leaf, mounted on guards: transcription of the first part of the prologue by a nineteenth-century hand, with some notes.

f. 4r: blank.

f. 4v: monogram and ownership inscription.

ff. 5r-9v: fragmentary leaves, containing entries beginning with 'B'.

ff. 10r-22r: 'C'.

ff. 22r-28v: 'D'.

ff. 28v-31r: 'E'.

ff. 31r-40v: 'F'.

ff. 40v-48r: 'G'.

ff. 48r-54r: 'H'.

ff. 54r-56r: 'I'.

ff. 56r-58v: 'K'.

ff. 58v-63r: 'L'.

ff. 63r-68v: 'M'.

ff. 69r-70v: 'N'.

ff. 70v-73v: 'O'.

ff. 73v-82v: 'P'.

ff. 82v-83r: 'Q'.

ff. 83r-89v: 'R'.

ff. 89v-102r: 'S'.

ff. 102r-110v: 'T'.

Decoration:

Gaps left at the beginnings of sections for three-line initials.

Doodles in pen of a rabbit/hare, squirrel, a dog's head, a man's face, a man with a staff and book (f. 110v).

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Additional Manuscripts

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002096514
040-002096522

Is part of:

Add MS 22549-22566 : Samuel Weller Singer Manuscripts

Add MS 22556 : ?Geoffrey the Grammarian, Promptorium parvulorum

Hierarchy:

032-002096514[0008]/040-002096522

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Add MS 22549-22566

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

Parchment codex

Digitised Content:

Languages:

English, Middle
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1440

End Date:

1499

Date Range:

15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Parchment.

Dimensions: 255/260 x 175/180 mm (text space: 195/210 x 135/145 mm).

Foliation: ff. 110. Folios 1-2 comprise a letter from Albert Way to S.W. Singer, dated 19 January 1858, mounted on a guard. Folio 3 is a single leaf of notes in Latin on Harley MS 221, another copy of the Promptorium, mounted on a guard. Folio 4 is modern paper endleaf, blank but for a monogram and name on the verso. Folios 5-9 are fragments of leaves of the Promptorium. (Plus two unfoliated modern paper endleaves at the beginning, and five at the end).

Collation: i-ii⁸ (ff. 10-25), iii⁸ (ff. 26-33; 2nd leaf, f. 27, almost completely cut away, with loss of text), iv-vi⁸(ff. 34-57), vii^8-1 (ff. 58-64; 2nd leaf after f. 58 missing), viii-ix⁶ (ff. 65-76), x⁸ (ff. 77-84), xi^8-1 (ff. 85-91; 6th leaf after f. 89 missing), xii-xiii⁸ (ff. 92-107), xiv^three (ff. 108-110).

Note: Quire i contains quire signatures 'C i'-'C iv', indicating the loss of two quires, probably of 8 leaves each, at the beginning of the volume (except for some fragmentary remains, ff. 5-9). A whole quire, probably of 8 leaves, is missing between quires xi and xii (between ff. 91 and 92).

Script: Gothic cursive (Anglicana formata).

Binding: British Museum in-house.

Custodial History:

Origin: Norfolk (assigned on the basis of linguistic evidence, see: LALME (1986), I, p. 100).

Provenance:

'Sum Iohannies Saulfi': John Saulfe, inscribed with his name, 16th-century (f. 110v).

Samuel Weller Singer (b. 1783, d. 1858), bookseller and literary scholar. Owned by him in 1858 (ff. 1r-2v): his sale, 3 August 1858, lot 177: note by Sir Frederic Madden (f. ii recto).

Purchased on behalf of the British Museum at Sotheby's by William Boone for £12: Sale Catalogues, 'Singer 1858-60', p. 32).

Publications:

Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years MDCCCLIV-MDCCCLX (London: by order of the Trustees, 1875), p. 672.

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].

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].

DeWitt T. Starnes, Renaissance Dictionaries: English-Latin and Latin-English (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1954), pp. 3-19, 25, 28-29, 31, 39, 42, 47, 51, 132, 136, 138, 154, 165, 222, 234, 328, 341-44, 365n., 367n., 379n., 380n..

Gabriele Stein, The English Dictionary Before Cawdrey, Lexicographia, 9 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1985), pp. 91-106.

A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English, ed. by Angus McIntosh and others, 4 vols (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1986), I: General Introduction, Index of Sources, Dot Maps, p. 100.

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), 358-371 (p. 363).

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).

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Boone, William, of Thomas and William Boone booksellers of London, fl 1815-1870
Geoffrey the Grammarian, lexicographer, grammarian and monk, fl 1440
Saulfe, John
Singer, Samuel Weller, bookseller and literary scholar, 1783-1858

Related Material:

From the Catalogue of Additions (1875):

'PROMPTORIUM Parvulorum: an English-Latin Dictionary. Imperfect; and the first five remaining leaves in fragments. The first word is "Bowntevousnesse," and the first complete leaf begins with "Candelere." It ends abruptly with "Tryin a truthe be doom. Discerno nis," etc. At the beginning is inserted a note addressed to the owner, Samuel Weller Singer, by Albert Way [editor of the "Promptorium" for the Camden Soc.]; dat. Wonham Manor, Reigate, 19 Jan. 1858, f. 1. Vellum; XVth cent. At the end is written "Sum Johanni Saulfi." Small Folio.'