Tydorel and Sir Gowther

PMLA ◽  
1905 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florence Leftwich Ravenel
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Marie De France ◽  
English Version ◽  
National Library ◽  
Breton Lay ◽  
The Devil

Attention has often been called to the extraordinary parallelism which exists between Sir Gowther, a fifteenth century English version of Robert the Devil, and the so-called Breton Lay of Tydorel. The latter is one of five anonymous romances published by Gaston Paris according to the manuscript in the National Library, which includes also the lays of Marie de France.

King Robert of Sicily: A New Manuscript

PMLA ◽  
1963 ◽  
Vol 78 (5) ◽  
pp. 453-458
Author(s):  
Lillian Herlands Hornstein
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle English ◽  
English Version ◽  
Almost All

The verse romance King Robert of Sicily (King Roberd of Cisyle) is the Middle English version of a well-known legend about The Proud King Humiliated (Deposed)—an arrogant and boastful king whose throne is taken over by an angel-substitute until the beggared monarch learns proper humility. Told of the Emperor Jovinian in the Latin Gesta Romanorum, the story had also appeared in other contexts in almost all the vernacular languages of Europe before the end of the fifteenth century. The tale must have been especially appealing to the English, to judge from the number of extant manuscripts heretofore known, nine manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This paper calls attention to still another manuscript, folio 2 of BM Additional MS. 34801. It has, strangely enough, never been noticed, although its existence was recorded in a catalogue over sixty years ago.

The Savior, the Woman, and the Head of the Dragon in the Caput Masses and Motet

2006 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 537-630 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNE WALTERS ROBERTSON
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Immaculate Conception ◽  
Genesis 3 ◽  
Johannes Ockeghem ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Masses ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Lasting Influence

Abstract God's dramatic curse of Adam, Eve, and the serpent, as recorded in Genesis 3:14–15, contains a theological ambiguity that played out in the visual arts, literature, and, as this article contends, music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Translations of this passage leave in doubt whether a male, a female, or both, will defeat sin by crushing Satan's head (“caput”). This issue lies at the heart of the three Caput masses by an anonymous Englishman, Johannes Ockeghem, and Jacob Obrecht, and the Caput Motet for the Virgin by Richard Hygons from the Eton Choirbook. Fifteenth-century discussions of the roles of Christ and Mary in confronting sin, often called the “head of the dragon,” help unravel the meaning of these works. The Caput masses are Christ-focused and emphasize the Savior or one of his surrogates suppressing the beast's head, as seen in illumination, rubric, and canon found in the masses. Folklorically based rituals and concepts of liturgical time are similarly built around the idea of the temporary reign of the Devil, who is ultimately trodden down by Christ. Hygons's motet appears after celebration of the Immaculate Conception was authorized in the late fifteenth century. This feast proclaimed Mary's conquest of sin through her own trampling on the dragon; the motet stresses Marian elements of the Caput theology, especially the contrast between the Virgin's spotlessness and Eve's corruption. Features of the Caput tradition mirror topics discussed in astrological and astronomical treatises and suggest that the composer of the original Caput Mass may also have been an astronomer. The disappearance of the Caput tradition signals its lasting influence through its progeny, which rise up in yet another renowned family of polyphonic masses. Together, the Caput masses and motet encompass the multifaceted doctrine of Redemption from the late middle ages under one highly symbolic Caput rubric.

III The Letter-Book of Thomas Bentham, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield

1979 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 113-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary O'Day ◽  
Joel Berlatsky
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
National Library ◽  
Rare Books

The letter-book of Thomas Bentham, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield (1560–79), is to be found in National Library of Wales MS. 4919D. The volume was purchased in May 1923, being one of some 500 volumes sold by Captain Ivor McClure on his removal from London to Malvern. Mr (later Sir) John Ballinger travelled up to London to examine the library on behalf of the National Library of Wales. Personal letters between the Librarian, Mr Ballinger, and Captain McClure survive for this period but provide no clue as to the origins of the library in general or of this volume in particular. The correspondence, moreover, does not indicate how the sale was made. The National Library of Wales Librarian's Report to the half yearly meeting of the court of Governors, held on 30 October 1923, makes no mention whatsoever of this purchase. It is known that at least three other rare books were bought from the same collection—a seventeenth-century Ethiopia psalter; the Divinae Institutiones of Lactantius (Latin, fifteenth century); and Roman Inscribed and Sculptured Stones (nineteenth century).

scholarly journals Here Comes Moshiach: Humor in the Miniatures Depicting Messiah at the Seder in the “Hileq and Bileq Haggadah” (Second Half of Fifteenth-century, South Germany)

2021 ◽  
pp. 12-30
Author(s):  
Dilshat Harman ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
National Library ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
The Subject

The subject of this article is an illustrated sheet from the Hileq and Bileq Haggadah (Paris, National Library of France, Ms Hébreu 1333, 2nd half of the 15th century) – fol. 24v. It depicts characters watching the arrival of the Mashiach and a man with a jug pouring liquid on the Maschiach and the person meeting him. Having examined these miniatures in the context of the iconography of the coming of the Mashiach to the Seder, prevailing by that time in Ashkenaz, I come to the conclusion that they bear evidence of how humor could be used in the ritual of waiting for the Mashiach during the 15th century Passover celebration. Textual sources of the 16th–17th centuries describe it as extremely serious, but the humorous nature of the images suggests that in the context of the Passover celebration, there were a number of possibilities for its perception and experience. The comic elements of the miniature actualize the arrival of the Mashiach for the audience, involving them in the image and are an example of a specifically Jewish approach to the use of humor for pedagogical purposes.

V.—The Sege of Troye

PMLA ◽  
1907 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-200
Author(s):  
Nathaniel E. Griffin
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
English Version ◽  
Confessio Amantis ◽  
Trojan War

The hitherto unpublished English version of the Trojan war entitled The Sege of Troye exists in the unique Oxford ms., Rawlinson D 82. The Sege of Troye occupies second position in the manuscript, being preceded by a brief prose redaction of Statius’Thebaid and followed by an extract from Gower's Confessio Amantis. The version in question is an anonymous prose text of the fifteenth century, written in the Southern dialect. The story, which is told in simple, almost naive, language, and in a brisk, lively fashion, opens with the Argonautic Expedition and ends with the Destruction of Troy.

Doubting Witchcraft: Theologians, Jurists, Inquisitors during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 203-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Duni
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
The World ◽  
Heated Debate ◽  
The Witch ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Radical Attack ◽  
Specific Contribution

The theory of diabolical witchcraft attracted serious doubts from its first formulation early in the fifteenth century. This essay focuses on the writings of a few lay jurists and lawyers who rejected the witch-hunters’ claim that witchcraft was made possible by the Devil's ability to operate physically in the world, and argued instead that such acts as consorting sexually with demons, or being carried through the air to the Sabbat, were visions and dreams produced by the Devil. In this heated debate, both doubters and believers frequently crossed their respective disciplinary boundaries as they sought to prove their point. The essay analyses the works of lawyers who confuted the witch-hunters’ interpretation of key biblical passages, using them to demonstrate that witchcraft was physically impossible, and that believing otherwise was unsound from both a legal and a religious point of view. It argues that their specific contribution was notable both for its content, as a particularly radical attack on demonological theories, and in itself, as an explicit challenge to ecclesiastical hegemony in the discourse on metaphysics. It concludes that their doubts had a significant, if belated, impact on the Roman Inquisition's policy vis-à-vis witchcraft.

Two Lists of Fifteenth-Century Feasts in the Diocese of Hereford

1983 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 584-590
Author(s):  
David Thomson
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Bodleian Library ◽  
English Version ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Parish Priests

Manuscript Douce 103 in the Bodleian Library is one. of three manuscripts compiled in the late fifteenth century by a priest of Hereford diocese, the others being MSS Douce 60 and Douce 108. The manuscripts contain elementary grammatical texts such as an English version of Donatus's Ars minor, with rearrangements and expositions of hymns, psalms, canticles and sequences (often using material peculiar to the Hereford Use in this country, and showing a particular interest in St Anne and the Virgin), and copies of John Mirk's Festial and Instructions for Parish Priests. A note in the hand of this compiler on fo. 228v of MS 60 may give some clue as to his identity;

scholarly journals Tradycja rękopiśmienna Kroniki dwudziestu czterech generałów Zakonu Braci Mniejszych na ziemiach polskich – nowe rękopisy

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 185-210
Author(s):  
Paulina Pludra-Żuk
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
National Library ◽  
Textual Tradition ◽  
Historical Literature ◽  
Northern Group ◽  
State Of Research

The article presents the state of research on the Franciscan Chronicle of the Twenty-Four Generals, composed during the second half of the fourteenth century by the Minister General of Aquitaine Arnald of Sarrano. The author pays particular attention the textual tradition, supplementing the information concerning the sixteen medieval copies of the chronicle hitherto discussed in the historical literature, with the presentation of further two manuscripts, both of which are of Polish provenance. These manuscripts, preserved at the Polish National Library in Warsaw (call nos.: BOZ 1114 and BN 8084), came into being towards the end of the fifteenth century, respectively in the Observantist monasteries of Koło and Sambor. A complete codicological description is furnished with analyses of text variations, which demonstrate that both the copies in question belong to the so called „northern” group, composed chiefly of manuscripts from Halle, Lviv, Vienna, and the copy preserved in the Bibliothèque Municipale in Strasbourg, but executed in Cracow. The presented evidence also demonstrates that the chronicle was popular among the Observantists, who in Poland were known as the Bernardines.

scholarly journals Dating and Historical Context of a Greek Manuscript Containing Palaiologoi Emperors’ Portraits (Paris. gr. 1783)

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-95
Author(s):  
Marina A. Kurysheva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
National Library ◽  
Greek Manuscript ◽  
Joseph Ii ◽  
The Church

This article puts forward a new later dating of the Greek manuscript BnF, Paris. gr. 1783 kept in the National Library of France and containing portraits of emperors of the Palaiologoi dynasty. The manuscript contains important texts related to the Constantinople period of court history and culture. Historiographers used to date the manuscript to the fifteenth century according to the portrait of Patriarch Joseph II (†1439), a famous participant of the Ferraro-Florence Council, which can be seen in the Italian fresco paintings of the fifteenth century. Meanwhile, the study of the manuscript’s palaeographical features shows that it was written by an anonymous scribe from Crete who worked in Venice and Rome for Italian humanists in the middle — third quarter of the sixteenth century. The handwriting of the famous Cretan calligrapher, employee of Francis I’s library in Fontainebleau Angelus Vergecius, as well as some other scribes associated with him was typologically close to the handwriting of the main scribe of the manuscript. Analogies to this handwriting can also be seen in the handwriting of Manuel Provataris, another famous scribe of the epoch, a Cretan Greek from Rethymno, employee and copyist of the Vatican Library. The new palaeographic dating of the Paris. gr. 1783 manuscript changes the date of creation of portrait drawings of the Byzantine emperors of the Palaiologoi dynasty and Patriarch Joseph II. Also, it is important to change the dating of all texts contained in the manuscript including such important texts as one of the three lists of imperial tombs of the Church of Sts. Apostles in Constantinople, as well the list of the offices of the Byzantine court. The Paris. gr. 1783 manuscript should be excluded from the circle of Late Byzantine booklore and attributed to post-Byzantine book heritage.

scholarly journals Eine Überlieferung der Paulusbriefe um das Jahr 800 aus dem Kloster Mondsee

Fragmentology ◽  
10.24446/6w4n ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 115-140
Author(s):  
Larissa Rasinger
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
National Library ◽  
Binding Material ◽  
Pauline Epistles ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Textual Traditions

In the fifteenth century a ca.-800 copy of the Pauline epistles was cut up in the Austrian Benedictine monastery of Mondsee and reused as binding material. Most of the fragments were detached in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and are today kept in the Austrian National Library as Cod. Ser. n. 2065, but some are still in situ in their host volumes. The large number of surviving pieces –211 in all – enabled a reconstruction of not only 95 former (partial) leaves, but also of the quire structure of the former manuscript. These reconstructions rely on codicological observations as well as comparisons with other surviving witnesses of the same textual traditions, such as München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 9544.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document