Feeling Like Saints: Lollard Writings after Wyclif

Appendix A

317  Appendix A Brief Descriptions of Frequently Cited Manuscripts These descriptions provide a list of contents for selected manuscripts frequently cited in Feeling Like Saints: Lollard Writings after Wyclif. I have worked extensively with each of these manuscripts, but I also rely on previous descriptions as cited below. Cambridge, Sidney Sussex, MS 74 181 parchment folios,an estimated 16 folios now missing. Foliation is medieval , and inaccurate, but will be followed here. 1) fols. 3r–142v: Sermon cycle of fifty-four sermons, beginning at Whitsun and ending with the octave of the Ascension. Except in two cases (Trinity 5 and 6; the first inferred from other copies though the folios are missing) the protheme gospel sermons are taking from the English Wycliffite Sermons, set 1.1 The version here is not an autograph but a copy; but this is the earliest extant version of a cycle that appears in toned-down or excerpted form in other, later 1. See Hudson,EWS, 1:115–22,Spencer, “Fortunes of a Lollard Sermon-Cycle,”English Preaching , 269–320, Ernest William Talbert, “A Fifteenth-Century Lollard Sermon Cycle,” Studies in English 19 (1939): 5–30. 318 APPENDIX A manuscripts. Anne Hudson and Helen Spencer have studied these relations in detail. Altogether, the evidence suggests that the cycle later circulated both as a whole, and in pieces. Even if the remaining copies and derivatives of the cycle are far fewer than those of the EWS, still, it is clear that the sermons in this manuscript survived and were read across the fifteenth century, though in a much more piecemeal and adventitious way than the EWS.2 2) fols. 143r–166v: Þ e Pater Noster of Richard Ermyte. Commentary on the Pater Noster addressed to “his dere sister in God.” Edited from Westminster School 3 by Aarts, who reports Sidney Sussex 74’s copy is very close to that in Westminster School 3 but with more errors.3 IPMEP 150. 3) fols. 168r–79r: Redde racionem villiacionis tue. Thomas Wimbledon’s sermon on the three estates. Appears in eighteen manuscripts, many with lollard affiliations. There are four editions, three published and one a thesis. After the Reformation the text gained a reputation as a lollard tract.4 IPMEP 560. 4) fols. 181r–189v: Commentary on the Ten Commandments. A version of what Jefferson labels DI, a mainstream commentary from which the heterodox version she edits was derived. This copy of DI has an idiosyncratic prologue, is modified into two parts, and shares with three other DI copies additional material on the obligation of the preacher to preach and the congregation to listen.5 IPMEP 48. 5) fols. 189v–191v: Commentary on the Ave Maria, Matthew, 204–8, from Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 296, with variants 2. Related texts: Oxford, Bodleian Library Bodley 95 contains the bulk of the cycle (Septuagesima through Lent 3 are missing),but in every case excises all or nearly all of the gospel sermon drawn from EWS. There is also considerable abridgement, and uneven expurgation and bowdlerization. The ordering of sermons is adjusted to begin at Advent. Parts of three of these sermons, and parts of five other sermons that appear later in the MS, appear as a group of eight in a manuscript of the Middle English Mirror, a translation of Robert of Gretham’s Mirror, Manchester, John Rylands Library MS English 109. London, British Library MS Royal 18 B, xxiii (edited as Middle English Sermons by W. O. Ross) contains a more thoroughly expurgated version of Trinity 5, 6, and 7; of these only Trinity 5 includes the gospel sermon protheme, Trinity 6 and 7 two remove it. Royal 18 B, xxiii also includes some content from Sidney Sussex 74, Advent 1, 2, and 3 in its sermons 18, 19, and 20. The same three sermons are also found in Shrewsbury School, MS 3. One of the sermons, from the first Sunday after Easter,appears in a late fifteenth century sermon collection derived from Mirk’s Festial, Oxford,Bodleian Library Bodl. e Museo 180. These relationships are very fully explored in Spencer, “Fortunes of a Lollard Sermon-Cycle.” 3. Pater Noster of Richard Ermyte, ed. Aarts, xxiv and xxvii. 4. Alexandra Walsham, “Inventing the Lollard Past:The Afterlife of a Medieval Sermon in Early Modern England,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 58 (2007): 628–55. 5. Jefferson, “An Edition of the Ten Commandments Commentary,” 1:cxliii–cxliv. APPENDIX A...