Index of Early Manuscripts at Oxford University


Balliol College

Manuscript Description
MS. 238A Domenico Bandini (d.1418), Fons memorabilium uniuersi, an encylopaedia in Latin, here in a set of five volumes possibly from an original six (lacking Part V Book i): made circa 1444-1448 for William Gray (d.1478), later Bishop of Ely, during his travels in Germany and Italy, and bequeathed with his library to Balliol College. The various scribes and illuminators, perhaps working largely at Cologne, display an international range of influences: Dutch, Italian, English, even Spanish. Illuminated initials and borders sometimes include Gray's coat of arms:
Part I, in the earlier hand of the Dutch scribe, Theodericus Werken of Abbenbroeck.
MS. 238B Domenico Bandini (d.1418), Fons memorabilium uniuersi, an encylopaedia in Latin, here in a set of five volumes possibly from an original six (lacking Part V Book i): made circa1444-1448 for William Gray (d.1478), later Bishop of Ely, during his travels in Germany and Italy, and bequeathed with his library to Balliol College. The various scribes and illuminators, perhaps working largely at Cologne, display an international range of influences: Dutch, Italian, English, even Spanish. Illuminated initials and borders sometimes include Gray's coat of arms:
Parts II (some leaves lost) and III, with a final colophon stating that its scribe Theodericus Werken began the work at Cologne in Dec. 1445 and finished it at Rome in Feb. 1448: physical changes from p. 159 (folio 80r) seem to mark the transitional point.
MS. 238C Domenico Bandini (d.1418), Fons memorabilium uniuersi, an encylopaedia in Latin, here in a set of five volumes possibly from an original six (lacking Part V Book i): made circa1444-1448 for William Gray (d.1478), later Bishop of Ely, during his travels in Germany and Italy, and bequeathed with his library to Balliol College. The various scribes and illuminators, perhaps working largely at Cologne, display an international range of influences: Dutch, Italian, English, even Spanish. Illuminated initials and borders sometimes include Gray's coat of arms:
Part IV, Books i-iv, in the hand of the Spanish(?) scribe, Laurentius Dyamas.
MS. 238D Domenico Bandini (d.1418), Fons memorabilium uniuersi, an encylopaedia in Latin, here in a set of five volumes possibly from an original six (lacking Part V Book i): made circa1444-1448 for William Gray (d.1478), later Bishop of Ely, during his travels in Germany and Italy, and bequeathed with his library to Balliol College. The various scribes and illuminators, perhaps working largely at Cologne, display an international range of influences: Dutch, Italian, English, even Spanish. Illuminated initials and borders sometimes include Gray's coat of arms:
Part IV, Books v-xii, in script showing humanistic influence, perhaps that of Gray's English companion Richard Bole, a Fellow of Balliol College.
MS. 238E Domenico Bandini (d.1418), Fons memorabilium uniuersi, an encylopaedia in Latin, here in a set of five volumes possibly from an original six (lacking Part V Book i): made circa1444-1448 for William Gray (d.1478), later Bishop of Ely, during his travels in Germany and Italy, and bequeathed with his library to Balliol College. The various scribes and illuminators, perhaps working largely at Cologne, display an international range of influences: Dutch, Italian, English, even Spanish. Illuminated initials and borders sometimes include Gray's coat of arms:
Part V Bks. ii-v, with marginal drawings apparently by its scribe, Laurentius Dyamas, who states in a final colophon that he was working for Gray.
MS. 350 Three independent manuscripts bound together: (folios 1-42) transcript, circa 1160-1170, of the part of Domesday Book relating to Herefordshire, in Latin; and copies of two well-known treatises on English law, (folios 43-72) 'Glanvill', in Latin, early 13th century, and (folios 73-170) 'Britton', in French, early 14th century.
MS. 353 Miscellany of Welsh verse and other materials in Welsh and Latin, in the hand of Sir John Prise, circa 1540-1550.
MS. 354 Richard Hill of London, commonplace-book in English, Latin and French, including transcripts of late medieval poems and carols, London annals, family memoranda, etc., first third of the 16th century.

Bodleian Library

Manuscript Description
MS. Auct. D. 2. 16 Latin Gospels with beast-headed evangelist portraits made at Landévennec, Brittany, late 9th or early 10th century, supplemented in the 11th century with conventional portraits in the style of Northern France or Flanders; given by bishop Leofric, d.1072, to Exeter Cathedral, where lists of lands, relics, etc., in Old English were incorporated at the start.
MS. Auct. F. 2.13 Terence's Comedies, in Latin, with Romanesque drawings comprising the latest version of the Late Antique cycle of scene-illustrations, St. Albans Abbey, mid 12th century. The first of the four artists (folios 2v-17v) is identifiable as 'The Master of the Apocrypha Drawings' in the Winchester Bible. The illustrations for Andria V.1-2 at folio 28r-v are missing in the Carolingian witnesses.
MS. Auct. F. 4. 32 'St. Dunstan's Classbook': Eutyches, with Old Breton glosses, 9th century; Homily on the Invention of the Cross in Old English, 11th century; 'Liber Commonei' and Ovid's Ars amatoria, Bk. I, Wales, 9th century; additions related to St. Dunstan, Glastonbury, 10th century.
MS. Barocci 131 Miscellany of Greek classical and Byzantine texts, some unique or rare, by Michael Psellus and many others, on paper, 3rd quarter of the 13th century.
MS. Bodl. 219 The Creation of the World, 'the first day of play' from an otherwise lost cycle in Cornish, with marginal summary in English, in the unique later manuscript written out by William Jordan, 1611.
MS. Bodl. 264 (folios 3r-208r) The Romance of Alexander in French verse, with miniatures illustrating legends of Alexander the Great and with marginal scenes of everyday life, by the Flemish illuminator Jehan de Grise and his workshop, 1338-1344; with two sections added in England circa 1400, (folios 209r-215v, with folio 1r) Alexander and Dindimus (Alexander Fragment B) in Middle English verse, with coarser miniatures, and (folios 218r-271v, with folio 2v) Marco Polo, Li Livres du Graunt Caam, in French prose, with miniatures by Johannes and his school.
MS. Bodl. 572 'Codex Oxoniensis Posterior', a miscellany of booklets, mostly in Latin but including glosses etc. in Cornish, Welsh and Old English, 9th and 10th centuries with 11th-century additions, later belonging at least in part to St. Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury.
MS. Bodl. 579 'The Leofric Missal', 9th-11th centuries.
MS. Bodl. 791 The Cornish Ordinalia, a trilogy of plays on the Creation, Passion of Christ and Resurrection, in Cornish verse, with Latin stage directions and diagrams: the unique surviving medieval manuscript, 1st half of the 15th century.
MS. Bodl. 842 Latin treatises on musical theory, some unique, including works by Theinred of Dover and Franco of Cologne, in an English manuscript bought in 1477 by a Cistercian monk of Byland Abbey, Yorkshire, but possibly early enough to have been recorded at York in 1372.
MS. Digby 23 (Pt 1) Part 1, Plato, Timaeus, in the Latin translation of Calcidius, with diagrams and glosses, French, 1st half of the 12th century. Part 1 bequeathed, perhaps already bound with Part 2, to Osney Abbey near Oxford by Master Henry of Langley, d.1263(?).
MS. Digby 23 (Pt 2) Part 2, La Chanson de Roland, in Anglo-Norman, 12th century, ? 2nd quarter. Part 1 bequeathed, perhaps already bound with Part 2, to Osney Abbey near Oxford by Master Henry of Langley, d.1263(?).
MS. Digby 35 Synodal statutes in Latin, issued in 1287 by Peter Quivel, Bishop of Exeter 1280-1291, in a copy of the first half of the 15th century.
MS. Digby 36 Latin texts on the Life, Translation, Miracles, etc., of St. Gilbert of Sempringham (d.1189), adapted from his process of canonization (1201-1202), in a mid 15th-century English copy for devotional use with illuminated initials and borders.
MS. Digby 76 Roger Bacon and others, Latin works on science and mathematics, assembled from several 13th-century booklets of which the last (folios 110-122) is partly of palimpsest parchment. Marginal annotations by John Dee, who bought the volume in 1556 from John Leland's library; owned in the 1620s by Sir Robert Cotton.
MS. Digby 78 Giovanni Boccaccio, De mulieribus claris, in Latin, written out by Frater Bartholomeus de Gardinis of Bologna, late 14th century.
MS. Digby 83 Opusculum de ratione spere, an anonymous Latin compilation on astronomy, geography and astrology in four books, incorporating excerpts from Hyginus, Isidore, etc.; with diagrams, maps, and drawings of constellations and Zodiac signs, English, mid 12th century.
MS. Digby 84 Albertus Magnus, De causis et processu uniuersitatis a prima causa, a Latin metaphysical treatise, in an English copy of the 15th century, with penwork initials.
MS. Digby 89 John Thwing of Bridlington, Versus prophetiales, with the Latin commentary assigned to John Ergome, late 14th century(?).
MS. Digby 90 Quattuor principalia musicae, a Latin prose work of musical theory composed by an anonymous Franciscan at Oxford in 1351, in a copy presented to the Franciscan convent there in 1388.
MS. Digby 93 Astronomical texts, in Latin but including translations from the Arabic, primarily an English compilation of the 15th century, preceded (folios 1-8) by an earlier quire of smaller format belonging to Oxford Franciscans of the mid 14th century.
MS. Digby 94 Leonardo Bruni Aretino, De primo bello Punico libri duo, in Italian translation, written in the 3rd quarter of the 15th century, perhaps at Florence or Rome, in a script which blends humanistic and mercantile styles.
MS. Digby 96 Godwin of Sarum, Meditationes, presented as a Latin commentary on the Beatitudes: the unique surviving manuscript, English, 12th century.
MS. Digby 117 Institutio ad logicam: the second of a three-volume set of academic disputations in Latin, of which the last (MS. Digby 118, folio 426r) appears to be signed by the Jesuit Antonio Mangilio (1576-1644) and dated Rome 1609.
MS. Digby 133 The 'Digby Plays': the unique copies made in the early 16th century of three late medieval plays in English verse, (folios 37r-50v) The Conversion of St. Paul, (folios 95r-145r) Mary Magdalen, and (folios 146r-157v, dated 1512) Candlemas Day and the Killing of the Children of Israel, with (folios 158r-169v) the first half of the morality play Wisdom, late 15th century. The plays, not uniformly written, are bound with other miscellaneous booklets of the 16th to early 17th centuries, including (folios 51r-60v) some astronomical texts and horoscopes in the hand of Simon Forman (1552-1611).
MS. Douce 195 Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung, Le Roman de la Rose, in a manuscript made for Louise of Savoy, mother of Francis I, with many miniatures in the style of Robinet Testard, French, late 15th century.
MS. Douce d. 6 Tristan romances in Anglo-Norman verse, with other short texts: (folios 1r-12v) the longest surviving fragment of Thomas's Tristan (lines 1269-3086), (folios 12v-19r) the unique copy of the Folie Tristan d'Oxford, etc., in an English manuscript of the mid or later 13th century.
MS. Fr. d. 16 Two fragments from Thomas's Tristan, in Anglo-Norman verse, folios 4r-10v (lines 54-941 in 1998 edn. by S. Gregory) and 11r-17r (lines 2316-3143), with further badly rubbed material on folio 17v, from a manuscript written in England or France in the later 12th or early 13th century: known as the 'Sneyd' fragments after an earlier owner.
MS. Gr. class. b. 1 (P)/1-12 PHerc.118: fragments of a Greek philosophical(?) text, in a roll buried and carbonized in the library of a villa at Hercuaneum in A.D. 79 at the eruption of Vesuvius. After the villa's excavation in 1752, this roll was given to Oxford University by the Prince of Wales in 1810, and unrolled at Naples, 1883-1884.
MS. Gr. th. f. 1 Greek Menologion with Byzantine miniatures, badly flaking, made for Demetrios I Palaiologos, despot of Thessalonike 1322-circa1340: a pictorial calendar of saints arranged by their feast-days from September to August, preceded (folios 1v-6r) by a full-page cycle for the Great Feasts of scenes from the Lives of Christ and the Virgin, and followed (folios 54v-55r) by a cycle for St. Demetrios.
MS. Ir. e. 4 Verses and tales in Irish, transcribed 1799-1819.
MS. Ir. e. 6 Irish history and genealogy, 18th century.
MS. Junius 11 'The Cædmon Manuscript': parts of Genesis, Exodus and Daniel in Old English verse, illustrated with Anglo-Saxon drawings, circa1000.
MS. Laud Misc. 610 A 15th-century miscellany of prose and verse texts in Irish and Latin, assembled mostly in 1453 and 1454 in Carrick, Pottlerath and elsewhere for Edmund Butler (d.1464). The two main scribes copied out earlier materials including genealogies and legends, partly from the Saltair of Cashel (now lost), and also incorporated (folios 59r-72r, 123r-146v) 'The Book of the White Earl', which had been made with finely decorated initials between 1410 and 1452 for Edmund's uncle James Butler, 4th earl of Ormond (d.1452).
MS. Laud Misc. 615 Poems in Irish ascribed to or about St. Columba (Colum Cille), first half of the 16th century.
MS. Rawl. B. 467 Welsh medicine, 14th-15th centuries.
MS. Rawl. B. 475 A narrative in Irish on the Norman conquest of Ireland, based on an English version of Giraldus Cambrensis' Expugnatio Hibernica, with (pp. 105-128) medieval and early modern poems in Irish, early 17th century.
MS. Rawl. B. 488 Annals of Tigernach, etc., Irish, 14th-17th centuries.
MS. Rawl. B. 489 Annals of Ulster, early 16th century.
MS. Rawl. B. 498 Partial Register of charters of the Priory and Hospital of St. John the Baptist without the New Gate, Dublin ['Palmer's Hospital'], of the Order of Fratres Cruciferi, comprising documents of circa1187-1347 arranged by localities and transcribed soon after 1363; with additions including a drawing of the Crucifixion, circa1400 (folio 211r), and documents up to 1486.
MS. Rawl. B. 499 Extract of deeds of the Augustinian Abbey of St. Thomas the Martyr (Thomas Court), Dublin, covering lands held in provinces other than Leinster, copied by William Copinger of Cork, with calligraphic strapwork initials, AD 1526.
MS. Rawl. B. 501 Registrum de Kilmainham: Chapter Acts in Latin of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem at their chief house of Kilmainham, near Dublin, under the Grand Prior Roger Outlawe, 1321-1339, transcribed in English style with flourished (sometimes figurative) initials, Ireland, circa1340, and supplemented under Outlawe's successors, 1341-1349.
MS. Rawl. B. 502 Miscellany of texts in Irish and Latin in two main parts, (folios 1-12) Irish World-Chronicle, late 11th or early 12th century, and (folios 19-89, with decorative initials) genealogies, legal texts and many short pieces in verse and prose including materials on Irish saints and kings, second quarter of the 12th century, with (folios 13-18, 90-103) paper leaves added by Sir James Ware with transcripts made in the 1640s of documents relating to Ireland. Folios 105-171, further blank leaves of Ware's time, are not reproduced here.
MS. Rawl. B. 503 'The Annals of Inisfallen', a chronicle in Latin and Irish of world and Irish history from a Munster viewpoint, first transcribed in the late 11th century (to 1092) perhaps at Emly, Co. Tipperary, but supplemented by many later hands up to the 15th century, probably at the island monastery of Inisfallen, Killarney.
MS. Rawl. B. 506 Irish genealogy, topography and law, 14th century.
MS. Rawl. B. 512 Miscellany of prose and verse in Irish and Latin, including stories about St. Patrick, St. Brigit and other Irish saints, 15th and early 16th centuries, made up of five originally separate parts now somewhat disordered.
MS. Rawl. B. 514 Manus O'Donnell's Irish Life of St. Colum Cille, mid 16th century.
MS. Rawl. Q. e. 20 Life of St. Basil, in Old English, first half of the 11th century: one blackened fragment retrieved from the fire of the Cotton Library in 1731 and given by Browne Willis to Thomas Hearne, from a volume of Saints' Lives of which over fifty other fragments survive in London, British Library, Cotton MS. Otho B. X.
MS. Arch. Selden B. 26 Miscellany of five separate manuscripts, all of English origin and bound together circa1660, comprising: in Latin and Middle English, (folios 3-33) 'The Selden Carol Book', polyphonic music including (folio 17v) The Agincourt Song, 2nd quarter of the 15th century; in Latin, (folio 34) one leaf of Gregory's Pastoral Care, 8th century, and two 15th-century items, (folios 35-94) Wycliffite tracts by John Tissington and others, and (folios 95-102) a Calendar, with tables for 1459-1476, etc.; and in English, (folios 103-134) William Cartwright, The Royall Slave, a play performed at Oxford in 1636.
MS. Selden Supra 57 Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung, Le Roman de la Rose, in an illustrated copy dated in a half-erased inscription at folio 153v, Paris 1348.

Corpus Christi College

Manuscript Description
MS. 122 'The Corpus Irish Gospels', 12th century.
MS. 157 John of Worcester, Chronicle of world and English history, in Latin, with tinted and painted drawings at pp. 77b (Crucifixion) and 382-383 (Visions of Henry I): the chief manuscript, comprising a fair copy up to AD 1128, with (pp. 379-96) the annals for 1128-1131 rewritten and continued to 1140 by a third hand, probably John himself, at Worcester Cathedral Priory.
MS. 197 Rule of St. Benedict, in Latin and Old English, later 10th century, with additions relating to Bury St. Edmunds.
MS. 198 Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, London(?), early 15th century; decoration unfinished, retaining the scribe's instructions.
MS. 201 Piers Plowman, 'B' text, late 14th century.
MS. 209 Works of St. Augustine, Life of St. Olaf of Norway, and texts on the foundations of the Cistercian Order and of Fountains Abbey, Yorkshire, copied and bound there in the late 12th century, the original binding protected by a sealskin chemise.
MS. 255A First two items of MS. 255, extracted from the main volume and bound together. Folios 1-3, Paul the Deacon, Homiliary, first three leaves only: verse dedication, Epistola generalis of Charlemagne, prologue and start of chapter-list, in display capitals and Caroline minuscule, 9th century. Folios 4-17, Joachim of Fiore, Figurae, made in Southern Italy, Cosenza(?), early 13th century.
MS. 279B Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, in the Old English translation, early 11th century, leaves lost at beginning and end; formerly MS. 279 Part 2, until bound separately in 1992.
MS. 282 'The Corpus Irish Missal', 12th century.

Jesus College

Manuscript Description
MS. 15 Welsh gramatical texts, 16th century.
MS. 16 Welsh Dictionary, with Latin and some English equivalents, a fair copy with later additions, all in the hand of the compiler, Henry Salesbury (1561-?1637).
MS. 20 Welsh poetry, genealogy,etc., 14th century.
MS. 22 Welsh kalendar and medicine, 15th century.
MS. 28 Part 1, 'Dares Phrygius' on the fall of Troy, in Welsh (first pages darkened by acid corrosion), and Part 2, the Brut Tysilio, a Welsh text which is probably a late reworking of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae: both transcribed from Jesus College MS. 61 by Hugh Jones, Underkeeper of the Ashmolean Museum, in 1695.
MS. 57 Laws of Hywel Dda, in Welsh, circa1400.
MS. 88 Welsh poetry, 18th century.
MS. 111 'The Red Book of Hergest', Welsh, after 1382.
MS. 119 'The Book of the Anchorite', Welsh, 1346.

Magdalen College

Manuscript Description
MS. Gr. 2 Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, De caelesti hierarchia, etc., with scholia, Constantinople, 14th century.
MS. Gr. 7 Part of a Greek manuscript containing the Pauline Epistles with the prefatory matter of Euthalius and the catenae of patristic excerpts attributed to Oecumenius, late 10th to early 11th centuries, restored and extended in the 12th century.
MS. Gr. 8 Basil the Great [attrib.], Commentary on Isaiah, 16th century.
MS. Gr. 9 Greek New Testament, Psalms and Canticles, with illuminated headpieces and initials, Constantinople, 3rd quarter of the 12th century, with additions up to the end of the 14th century including a note relating to Epiros.
MS. Gr. 12 Technical works by Heron of Alexandria, Aristides Quintilianus and Johannes Pediasimos, with diagrams, later 16th century.
MS. Gr. 13 Texts on music theory by Manuel Bryennius and Porphyry, with diagrams, later 16th century.
MS. Gr. 14 Military texts, on machines, artillery, siegecraft and tactics, by Athenaeus Mechanicus, etc., with coloured diagrams, 16th century.
MS. Gr. 15 Aristotle, De interpretatione, with commentary of Michael Psellus, South Italy [Terra d'Otranto], late 13th and late 15th centuries.

Merton College

Manuscript Description
MS. 160 Hildegard of Bingen, Sciuias siue Visiones ac reuelationes: prophetic visions in Latin, without decoration, German(?), late 12th or early 13th century.
MS. 248 Sermons and other texts collected by John Sheppey OSB, Bishop of Rochester (d.1360), mostly in Latin, including his own sermons in the form of fables, sermons by contemporary Oxford preachers incorporating items of Middle English verse, and excerpts, notes and tables concerning classical and later writers, 13th and 14th centuries. Given to Merton College by William Rede, d.1385.
MS. 249 13th-century miscellany, probably all of English origin, including (folios 1r-10v) Philip of Thaon, Bestiary in Anglo-Norman verse, illustrated with drawings, (folios 76r-78v) a calendar with added notes of events and obits, and Latin works by Gregory I, Maurice of Sully, Innocent III, etc. Given to Merton College by William Rede, d.1385.
MS. 315 Eusebius/Jerome, Chronicon, 9th century.

St. John's College

Manuscript Description
MS. 28 Two Anglo-Saxon manuscripts containing Latin texts, bound early together: folios 1-4, 7, 78-81, Martyrdoms of Saints Peter and Paul, in Caroline script, mid 10th century, with original and added drawings; folios 5-6, 8-77, Gregory I, De cura pastorali, in square Anglo-Saxon minuscule, turn of the 10th/11th centuries.
MS. 154 Ælfric, Grammar, etc., in Latin and Old English, early 11th century, from Durham.

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