[The festial of English sermons]
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Type of record: Archive
Title: [The festial of English sermons]
Other titles: Festial; Liber Festialis
Classmark: BC MS 502
Creator(s): Mirk, John (fl. 1403?)(Author)
Publication city: [England]
Date(s): [ca. 1450-1500]
Language: English, Middle (1100-1500)
Size and medium: 1 v. (ii, 138, ii leaves) (1 column, ff. 1-116: 28-36 lines, ff. 117-138: 17-23 lines; frame-ruled with a hard point)
Persistent link: https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/118290
Collection group(s): Medieval Manuscripts
Description
Several leaves missing and damaged, getting more fragmentary towards the end.
2-line initials and highlighting in red, with occational pointing hands in the margins, throughout the Festial.
A type B copy (cf. Wakelin), with the sermons arranged in temporale and sanctorale sequences.
Festial written in secretary with anglicana e, g and r. Sequentiale written in late 15th-century mixture of anglicana and secretary.
Principal contents: ff. 1r-116v The Festial of John Mirk; ff. 117r-138v Sequentiale, with partial interlinear gloss in English.
Purchased for the Brotherton Collection from M. Breslauer, 4 June 1958.
See for a fuller description: N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) pp. 70-71. See also: M. F. Wakelin, 'The Manuscripts of John Mirk's Festial', in: Leeds Studies in English, N.S. i (1967), pp. 93-119, and O. S. Pickering and S. Powell, The Index of Middle English Prose, Handlist VI (1989) pp. 12-26. The sermons are edited in M. F. Wakelin, 'An Edition of John Mirk's Festial as it is contained in the Brotherton Collection MS', unpublished University of Leeds M.A. thesis, 1960.
Features
Bindings
20th-century binding of pig skin, by Katherine Adams, for £6. 3s.
Provenance
Late 15th-century (?) ownership inscription on f. 90r: 'Henry Chicetor (?) ous thes boke'. Late 15th-century (?) inscription amongst scribbles on f. 33v reads: 'Explicit liber quod Iohn Slareffe' (?). A modern typed note states that on 17 May 1913 the manuscript was bought by Wilfred Merton from Bertram Dobell, of Tunbridge Wells, for 16s.
Access and usage
Access
This collection is fully accessible and not subject to protection under the Data Protection Act