Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 261
Collection of plague tracts
Contents
Language(s): Middle English and Latin
Invokes St Sebastian, St Anthony, and the Tau cross, for protection against the plague.
Physical Description
20th-century foliation:
[i]-[ii] + 1-32 + [iii]-[iv]
Folios [i]-[ii] and [iii]-[iv] are modern translucent paper flyleaves. Numbering in pencil in the upper right-hand corner of the rectos.Collation
- Quires 1-48 (ff. 1-32)
1-48
Catchwords written in the lower right corners of the last versos of quires.Layout
115 × 85 mm. Ruled in red ink, frame and line ruling. Single columns. 25 lines to the page, written below top line.
Hand(s)
Folios 1r-32v copied by a single hand in a Bâtarde script.
Decoration
One full scatter border, including flovers, portcullises, a dragon and greyhound, in colours on a yellow (imitation gold) ground on f. 1r.
Partial scatter borders, including flowers and portcullises in colours on yellow (imitation gold) grounds, on ff. 9v, 19r, 20r, 23v [also featuring a dragon and greyhound], and 30v.
One large (6 lines) blue initial 'S' with the Beaufort painted in colours painted over, in a frame with a yellow (imitation gold) ground that is continuous with the full scatter border on the same page (f. 1r).
Large (3 to 6 lines) blue and red initials with foliate motifs drawn with white sprays on the letters and large flowers in colours inside the letters, in frames and on coloured grounds that are continuous with the partial scatter borders on the same page (ff. 9v, 19r, 20r, 23v and 30v [featuring a rose surmounted by a crown]).
Line-fillers of framed blue foliate motifs on red grounds with streaks of yellow (imitation gold) throughout.
Large (2 lines) framed initials in pale blue and blue on red grounds with streaks of yellow (imitation gold) throughout.
Introductions and headings written in red ink throughout.
Small (1 line) initials highlighted with yellow throughout.
Blue paraphs in frames with red grounds throughout.
Underlining of text in red ink.
Additions
Quire signatures ('1-4') in the bottom right-hand corner of the recto side of the first leaf of each quire, written in pencil by a hand of the 20th century.
Binding
Modern (late 20th-/early 21st-century) plain white leather binding over wooden boards; four raised bands on the spine with red sewing thread. Red speckled fore, top, and tail edges.
Binding height: 210 mm; width: 155 mm; depth: 25 mm.
Former 19th-/20th-century binding, comprising parchment over pasteboards. 'St Catharines Hall . Cambridge' written in pencil on the front pastedown; '32 ff. Dec. 21. 08. H.A.C.' written in pencil on the rear pastedown.
History
Provenance and Acquisition
Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509) , Countess of Richmond and Derby: probably made for her after the accession of Henry VII (r. 1485-1509), her son, as indicated by the presence of the Beaufort coat of arms that she bore inside the decorative initial on f. 1r: France modern and England quarterly within a bordure compony argent and azure. Additionally, the Beaufort badge, a portcullis, appears four times in the full border, together with the dragon gules and greyhound argent that were used as heraldic supporters by Henry VII. The Beaufort Portcullis repeatedly occurs in the partial borders, as well as the dragon and greyhound that feature again in the partial border on f. 23v (see Wormald and Giles (1982), pp. 195-96). The Red Rose of Lancaster surmounted by a crown features inside a large decorated initial on f. 30v. As Urquhart (1986) has observed, the daisies ('marguerites') painted in the manuscript's borders also refer to Margaret Beaufort.
Purchased by the Fitzwilliam Museum from Maggs Bros. in 1902.
Additional Information
Record Sources
Availability
Visitors to the Fitzwilliam Museum who wish to consult Collection material are required to apply to the Museum in advance of their visit. For information on eligibility and admission procedures see: Fitzwilliam Museum: Study Room.
Bibliography
-
Review of 'Dorothea Waley Singer and Annie Anderson, Catalogue of Latin and Vernacular
Plague
Texts in Great Britain and Eire in manuscripts written before the sixteenth century.
Paris, Académic
Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences, London, William Heinemann Medical Books Ltd.,
1951. (Collection de
travaux de l'Académie Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences, no. 5). Pp. xii+280.
10s. 6d.' The Library, 5th series, Ker, N. R. (7, 1, 64-65, 1952)
A descriptive catalogue of the additional illuminated manuscripts in the Fitzwilliam
Museum
acquired between 1895 and 1979 (excluding the McClean Collection), Wormald, FrancisGiles, Phyllis M. (Cambridge, 1, Cambridge University Press, 1982)
Fifteenth century literary culture with particular reference to the patterns of patronage,
focussing on the patronage of the Stafford family during the fifteenth century, Urquhart, Elizabeth Ann (Sheffield, 1985)
Lady Margaret Beaufort and Her Books The Library, 6th series, Powell, Susan (20, 3, 197–240, 1998)
Women's healthcare in the medieval West: texts and contexts Collected studies, Green, Monica H. (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2000)
The "Canutus" Tract : in Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, MS 261, Bjørnestøl, Kirstin (Oslo, 2005)
Manuscripts in the Library of Pembroke College, Cambridge and the Fitzwilliam Museum
Index of Middle English Prose, Rand, Kari Anne (Woodbridge, Brewer, 2006)
A Previously Unnoticed Fragment of John of Burgundy’s Plague Tract and Some Connected
Pest
Regimens Notes and Queries, Rand, Kari Anne (53, 3, 295-297, 2006)
Manuscripts for Henry VII, his household and family The Cambridge illuminations: the
conference papers, Scott, Kathleen L. (London, 279-286, Harvey Miller, 2007)
“Termes of Phisik”: Reading Between Literary and Medical Discourses in Geoffrey Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales and John Lydgate’s Dietar, Morrissey, Jake Walsh (Montreal, 2011)
Thornton’s Remedies and the Practices of Medical Reading Robert Thornton and His Books:
Essays on the Lincoln and London Thornton Manuscripts, Orlemanski, Julie (Woodbridge, 235-255, York Medieval Press in association with
Boydell, 2014)
Searching for Emotional Communities in Late Medieval England Emotions and Social Change:
Historical and Sociological Perspectives Routledge Studies in Social and Political
Thought Book, Raine, Melissa (London, 89, 65-81, Routledge, 2014)
Alchemy, Medicine, and Commercial Book Production: A Codicological and Linguistic
Study of the
Voigts-Sloane Manuscript Group Texts and Transitions, Honkapohja, Alpo (Turnhout, 9, Brepols, 2017)
From Diseased Bodies to Disordered Bodies Politic: Rereading Medical Writing on the
Plague in
England and France, 14th–18th Centuries, Jones, Lori (Ottawa, 2017)
Book Owner: Margaret Beaufort, countess of Richmond and Derby Books of Duchesses:
Mapping Women Book Owners, 1350-1550, Kaplan, S. C.Watson, Sarah Wilma (2020, https://booksofduchesses.com/owners/Margaret
Beaufort, countess of Richmond and Derby)
Visualizing Household Health: Medieval Women, Art, and Knowledge in the Régime du
corps, Borland, Jennifer (University Park, PA, Penn State University Press, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271091495)
Tracing the Early Modern John of Burgundy Genre in English Medical Writing, 1500–1820:
Sociocultural Contexts of Production and Use Studies in English Language, Honkapohja, Alpo (Cambridge, 68-88, Cambridge University Press, 2022)
Patterns of Plague Changing Ideas about Plague in England and France, 1348–1750, Jones, Lori (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022)
The Middle English Book: Scribes and Readers, 1350-1500 The Middle English Book: Scribes
and
Readers, 1350-1500, Johnston, Michael (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2023)
Common Style and the Bourgeois Ethos in John Lydgate's Dietary Form and Power in Medieval
and Early Modern Literature: A Book for James Simpson, Cowdery, Taylor (223-238, 2024)
Funding of Cataloguing
Wellcome
Digital Images
Abbreviations
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