Abstract

Much to the surprise of most scholars of English literature, the Biblioteca Capitolare in Vercelli (Italy), renowned for holding the famous Vercelli Book with Old English poetry, also contains a fifteenth-century prayer book with three specimens of Middle English. This paper offers a brief description of the history, physical make-up, and contents of MS Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare CCXXV together with diplomatic transcripts of the English texts: an indulgence, a poem to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and a devotional prayer to Jesus. The manuscript was probably produced in the north of England, but the later Paris provenance of the book could suggest that it influenced the compilation of early printed versions of the Speculum Spiritualium or the Sarum Prymer, printed there in the early sixteenth century for the English market.

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