Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Charles Fairfax Murray MS 17
Astrological and medical texts
Contents
Language(s): Middle English and Latin, with some Middle French
Features a prologue and twelve chapters of astrological advice on finding lost objects. The text proper begins on f. 2r. An explicit has been added on the empty space of an erased name that was part of the original explicit: ‘Explicit feliciter’.
Full transcription, as in Rand (2006), p. 80 [see also for other copies].
Full transcription; copied by a 16th-century hand, which also copied the next item.
Full transcription; copied by a 16th-century hand, which also copied the next item.
Full transcription, as in Rand (2006), p. 80. Added in the late 15th or early 16th century.
Copied by the same hand that copied ff. 31r-34r.
Not in N/IMEV or DIMEV.
A later hand has added the explicit: ‘Explicit feliciter’.
Full transcription, as in Rand (2006), p. 81. The rubric has been left unifnished.
Copied by the same hand that copied ff. 31r-34r.
Thirty-five English and six Latin recipes. Copied by the same hand that copied ff. 31r-34r.
See Rand (2006), p. 82 for a full transcription. The text ends with the added explicit: ‘explicit feliciter’.
The text explains how one case use vervain to catch fish, to determine whether a woman is a virgin, become invisible (which can only be countered with holy water), discover the identity of a thief, and become invulnerable to enemies.
Below the text, another hand has started a note: ‘Here John ssodayne [?]’.
The text begins with a drawing of the Sphere of Pythagoras, below which two coats of arms have been added with the inscriptions: ‘Duces lancastre’ and ‘Johannes de amis[ley]’. The latter may have been added in the 16th or 17th century.
Begins with a nativity chart and ends with a table, entitled ‘Tabula terminorum’.
Full transcription, as in Rand (2006), p. 82. Added in the early 16th century.
The page has been cropped, causing loss of text.
The recipes are headed ‘To make gresse pouder al serpyntyne’ and ‘Corne pouder’.
Copied by the same hand that copied ff. 31r-34r.
Full transcription, as in Rand (2006), p. 83. Added in the early 16th century.
Full transcription, as in Rand (2006), p. 83. Added in the early 16th century. The name ‘Peter’ has been written next to the rubric by a different hand.
The collection includes nine recipes ‘ffor the ffrensch pockes’ (syphilis), and one for treating ‘all maner hurtes olde or newe’.
The text is largely faded.
The text is partially faded.
Physical Description
20th-century foliation:
[a], i + ii-iii + 1-86 + iv, [b]
Numbering in pencil in the upper right-hand corner of the rectos. Folios [a] and [b] are unfoliated lifted pastedowns consisting of translucent paper. Folios i and iv are translucent paper leaves. Folios ii and iii are paper flyleaves. Folio [ii]a is an unfoliated paper pastedown on f. ii. Flyleaves [a], [iia], and [b] are unfoliated in the manuscript but have been allocated letters and numbers for referencing purposes in this electronic catalogue record.16th- or 17th-century pagination:
1-71, 78, 79, 72-75, 78-169
Numbering in brown ink at the center of the upper margins of all rectos and versos (excluding flyleaves, which have not been numbered in the pagination sequence).Collation
- Quires 1-68 (ff. 1-48)
- Quire 710+1 (ff. 49-59: 11th leaf, f. 59, inserted)
- Quire 8-98 (ff. 60-75)
- Quire 1012-3+1 (ff. 76-86: 6th-7th leaves, after f. 80, and one other leaf cancelled; and one parchment leaf, f. 81, added to the stub of the cancelled 7th leaf)
1-68 710+1 (11th inserted) 8-98 1012 (6th-7th and one other leaf cancelled; and one parchment leaf added to the stub of 7th)
Catchwords in brown frames written on the right lower corner of the last verso of Quires 2 and 6 (i.e. ff. 16v and 48v.Layout
105-110 × 75-90 mm. Ruled in brown ink, frame only, with occasional line ruling. Single columns. 13-19 lines to the page, written below top line.
Hand(s)
A scribe working in a cursive script with bâtarde [bastarda] features copied ff. 1r-29v and 41r-59v.
Various scribes working in cursive scripts with both anglicana and secretary features (although to varying degrees, and some have stronger anglicana features) copied ff. 30r-40v, 59v-76v, 79r-81v, and 82v-86v.
A scribe working in a cursive anglicana script copied ff. 77r-78v, and 82r.
Decoration
Astrological diagrams (nativity charts) drawn in brown or red ink on ff. 8r, 55r, and 79r.
Sphere of Pythagoras drawn in dark ink on f. 77r, accompanied by drawings of two coats of arms in dark ink and higlighted in yellow ink.
Large (1 line) plain red initials.
Headings, incipits explicits, and display script, written in red ink; arabic numerals and astrological symbols drawn in red ink.
Horizontal bars with knotwork motifs in dark ink occur between sections or at the end of texts to mark textual divisions on f. 26r and f. 59v.
Paraphs in red ink.
Underlining in red ink throughout.
Additions
A table listing the manuscript's contents, by a 17th-century hand on f. iii recto.
A printed description of the manuscript's contents on a folded piece of paper, pasted onto f. ii recto.
Quire signatures ('1-10') 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
16th-century dark brown leather over (?) pasteboards, gold-tooled, with oval medallions of strapwork design on both covers; the spine with three raised bands, gold-tooled, and with gold-stamped flowers. Red-speckled fore-, head, and tail edges.
Binding height: 155 mm; width: 110 mm; depth: 30 mm.
History
Provenance and Acquisition
One of the manuscripts of Bertram Ashburnham (1797-1878) , 4th Earl of Ashburnham: was ‘Asburnham Appendix 121’; see the third pastedown on f. [a] verso: ‘From the Library of the Earl of Ashburnham Appendix N. o LXXI May 1897’, with the added inscription: ‘Sold 1899 (69)’, referring to the sale of his library by Sotheby's on 1 May 1899, where this manuscript was lot 69 (see Catalogue of a portion of the collection of manuscripts known as the "Appendix", from whose printed catalogue the descriptions are taken [...] Which will by sold by auction, by Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge [...] the 1st day of May, 1899 (Dryden press, J. Davy and sons, 1899), p. 40 [Lost 69].) .
Owned by Charles Fairfax Murray (1849–1919) , artist and art connoisseur: his ownership is indicated by a paper pastedown with his printed ex libris on f. [a] verso: ‘From the Library of Ch: Fairfax Murray’, with the added handwritten note ‘17’; the same page also features a donation bookplate, which states that the manuscript was presented to the Fitzwilliam Museum by him in 1905.
Acquired by the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1905: as indicated by a donation bookplate on [a] verso: ‘Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge [MS CFM 17] Presented by [Charles Fairfax Murray - 1905]’.
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
-
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)
Manuscripts in the Library of Pembroke College, Cambridge and the Fitzwilliam Museum
Index of Middle English Prose, Rand, Kari Anne (Woodbridge, Brewer, 2006)
Funding of Cataloguing
Wellcome
Digital Images
Abbreviations
View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.
