Royal MS 20 A XV

LIVRE des Enseignemens moraux. This title is on the 18th cent. binding, but seems to be of no authority. Casley calls it Les Essais morales (sic), and the 1542 inventory describes it simply as 'Liber in Gallica lingua qui inscribitur Initium sapientiae est timor domini'. Contents:-

1. Moral aphorisms by a father to his son under the headings Initium sapientie timor domini, De mesure, De compaignie, Du saige du trayteur et du fol, De orgueil, De humilite, De paix. Beg. 'Le commencement de sapience est doubter dieu'; ends 'parler raisonnablement, aler simplement'. f. 1.

2. 'De quatre manieres de vertus': a translation, without comment and different from that in 20 A. XII, of Pseudo-Seneca, De quattuor virtutibus. Followed by a sort of preface, 'La requeste de cellui qui fist ce present liure'. A similar compilation is apparently in a Paris MS., Bibl. Ste. Geneviève, no. 2879, f. 88. Text beg. 'Quatre manieres de vertus sont diuisees par les sentences'; ends 'condempner a soy mauuaise peresce'. The 'Requeste' beg. 'Biau filz Je tay mis en petites parolles ces enseignemens'; ends 'que tu croyes aucunes choses non certaines. Explicit'. f. 11.

On the fly-leaf (f. 21) in a 16th century hand are four epitaphs in Latin elegiac verse (quatrains, except the second, a distich) on one William Fisher, perhaps their author. Beg.' Sancte Wilelme tuo piscator nomine spero'.

Vellum; ff. 21. 91/2 in. x 67/8 in. Latter half of XV cent. Gatherings (beg. f. 2) of 8 leaves (last⁴). Sec. fol. 'pour vaine'. Illuminated initials, the first with ivy-leaf extension. Joined initials H R of Henry VII or VIII. Old larire numbering 66; old Royal press-mark 'no. 506' (Westm. invent, of 1542, Add. MS. 25469, f. 31); not identified in cat. of 1666; not in CMA.