Medieval Manuscripts in Cambridge Libraries: Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 215

Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae, translated into Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer

Introduction: At some point in the 1380s, Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340—1400), better known now as a poet, translated into English prose a work of late classical Latin, De Consolatione Philosophiae ('On the consolation of Philosophy') by Boethius (c. 480—c.524). This Latin work influenced Chaucer's poems, notably his Troilus and Criseyde, and Chaucer's translation, known as Boece, was used by many English readers and writers for over a century. Cambridge’s libraries hold three manuscript copies of Chaucer's translation. For instance, in Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii.3.21, Boethius's Latin alternates with Chaucer's English, written in a different size of script on pages ruled to allow that. The scribe supplies learned Latin glosses by Nicholas Trevet and William of Aragon between the lines and in the margins, which are wide enough to invite readers to comment further. Two of Chaucer's delightful short lyrics based on Boethius’s work are included too. By contrast, the copy digitised here, preserved at Pembroke College, is less monumental and less complex in its apparatus for readers. The materials are plain, with some leaves recycled after being ruled for a different project (e.g. the unused ruling at the foot of ff. 26r, 28v). Chaucer's English prose forms a simple and small block on each page. Only the first few words of the Latin, between one and four lines, appear before each section in English, as a cue to where one might find the original in another book. Simple blue initials with red tracery mark each English section or Latin excerpt. The margins are narrow. At an unknown moment in time, the manuscript has lost its final third, after f. 73v (in book IV, prose 5). This copy, though, prompted some keen reading and new writing. In the margins, a later reader added eight notes in a small, jerky handwriting and rudimentary Latin, and this awkward handwriting is recognisable as that of one William Worcester (1415—1483/85). Worcester was secretary to the war veteran and landowner Sir John Fastolf (1380—1459), but alongside that he was a keen scholar and an author, producing a translation of Cicero's De senectute ('Of Old Age') and a political treatise of his own, The Boke of Noblesse. We can identify Worcester's handwriting because there survive twenty-three autograph letters by him, forty-one by others to whom Worcester was amanuensis, twenty-four manuscripts annotated by him and seven miscellanies he annotated and compiled, among them this copy of Boece here digitised (and Cambridge, University Library, MS Add. 7870). It is often possible to link Worcester's annotations with his notebooks and new writing, and that is also true of his notes on Chaucer’s Boece. First, there is Worcester’s Latin notebook, now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 210, which he kept between 1478 and 1480. In it, he transcribed some passages of Boethius's original Latin (book IV, metre 3 and prose 3), and he seems to have read the original with the help of Chaucer's translation, just as one might use a parallel text, for he highlights those passages on ff. 66r-66v in the manuscript of Boece here digitised (Compare p. 391 of John Harvey’s printed edition of his notebook, called his Itineraries.) Then, Worcester's reading fed directly into his political treatise The Boke of Noblesse. In that, he borrowed a description of classical heroes whose valour should inspire us (book IV, metre 7). Vexingly, his copy of Boece has lost this passage in the work's final third (as said), so we cannot know whether he annotated them in this manuscript. But the wording in The Boke of Noblesse is notably close to that of Chaucer in Boece (for instance, borrowing a description of how Hercules 'byrafte' the lion of his skin). We might think of it less as plagiarism than as a creative writer's prerogative to reuse and remix what he read, a typical element of fifteenth-century literature which was often grounded in such compilation. Finally, beyond vivid examples, Worcester's reading of Boece dovetailed in less direct ways with the underpinning ideas of The Boke of Noblesse. In the manuscript here digitised, Worcester added four marginalia to a passage of book I, prose 4, about Boethius's service of the common good or what Chaucer calls the 'commune profite' (ff. 6r, 7r [twice], 8r), a translation of Latin res publica (the origin of the word 'republic'). Serving the common good is one of the main topics of The Boke of Noblesse, and Worcester gathered exhortations to serve the common good from many works he read. But in The Boke he shifts from the term 'comyn wele' to Chaucer's term 'comyn profit' from Boece (as Worcester spells it) just after citing as one model for public service 'Boecius' and his 'grete lofe had alway to the cite of Rome' ('his great love always had for the city of Rome'). This humble copy of Boece, then, exemplifies the growing willingness of English readers in the 1400s, after Chaucer's example, to read classical literature and learned works of all kinds in translation. It exemplifies their growing interest in the common good or res publica - what Chaucer is the first in English, in Boece, to dub as the 'commune profite'. And it exemplifies the way that readers of the 1400s and following centuries did what Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine once called 'studying for action', reading with pen in hand, making notes that would provoke new writing or indeed political activity of their own. Any book, however plain, can be revolutionary for readers in this way. (I thank Dr Catherine Nall for allowing me to draw on forthcoming edition of The Boke of Noblesse.) Daniel Wakelin| Jeremy Griffiths Professor of Medieval English Palaeography| Faculty of English, University of Oxford

1r-73v

De consolatione philosophiae (Middle English translation) Boethius Geoffrey Chaucer (trl)

Language(s): Middle English, with Latin

Rubric: 1r: Iste opus est translatum per Chawcere armigerum Ricardi Regis secundi

Incipit: 1r: Carmina qui quondam studeo florente peregi flebilis

Incipit: 1r: Allas I wepynge am constreyned to bygynnen

Explicit: 73v: Ne semeþ it noʒt to entrechaunge stoundes of knowyng as who seiþe ne schal it not ⟨[...]⟩ deuyne presence||

A quire is lost after f. 72v, creating a gap from 4 metr. 5, 1, 15 to 5 prosa 6, 1.

Text ends imperfectly at 5 prose 6, l. 122: lower half of f. 73 torn out.

Hanna and Lawler, in Benson (1987), 395-460, 1003-19, 1151-60.

Machan (2008)

Physical Description

Secundo Folio: 2r: and derked

Form: codex

Support: Parchment (FHHF)

Extent: Codex: ii + 3 + 73 + 1 + ii leaves. 230 × 145 mm.

Foliation:

21st-century foliation:

[a-b] + i-iii + 1-73, 73a + 74 + [c-d]

Numbering in pencil.

Collation

Quires of 12 leaves, with one whole quire missing between Quires 6 and 7.

Quires 1-6¹² (ff. 1-72)
Quire 7^12-11 (f. 73: 2nd-12th leaves missing)

1-6¹² 7^12-11 (2-12 missing)

Leaf signatures written in blue crayon in the lower right-hand corner of the recto side of the leaves.

Catchwords, framed.

Condition

Dark stains on f. 22r. The lower half of f. 73 and all but a small scrap of f. 73a have been torn out.

Layout

160-170 × 95 mm. Single columns of 31 lines, frame ruling only in crayon, written below top line.

Hand(s)

Anglicana formata, written by a single scribe.

Decoration

At the opening of the text, a six-line geometric initial in red and blue, with infill and marginal flourishing in red, and rectilinear borders in red and blue along the upper and left-hand margin (f. 1r).

Two- or three-line initials in blue, with infill and marginal flourishing in red.

Paraph marks in red.

Additions

Pen trials in a tiny hand on f. ii recto.

Occasional marginal annotations in Latin (see Provenance for further details).

i verso: 'B^o 9': unidentified shelfmark, or abbreviation for 'Boethius'?

Binding

19th-/20th-century binding.

No evidence of earlier or medieval bindings survives, however remnants of the pastedowns and endleaves that preceded and followed the core of the manuscript are preserved. A quire of originally four leaves preceded the manuscript, of which only three survive: 1st leaf (f. i was formerly the front pastedown, now lifted; 4th leaf, after f. iii, excised, probably blank. A single similar leaf, plus a small scrap of another, also perhaps originally of a quire of four, survive at the end. Folio 74 was formerly the rear pastedown, now lifted.

History

Origin: Late 14th century. ; England.

R.M. Thomson (2022) gives the origin of the manuscript as 's. midlands'; not in LALME; source unclear.

Provenance and Acquisition

A rubric and marginal annotations by the hand of William Worcester [Botoner] (1415-1480x1485) (ff. 1r, 6r-8r, 61r).

Note on the contents by a late 15th-century hand: 'boicius de consolacione philosophie dictus genere pons' (the last word added by another) (f. 74r).

An armorial shield sketched faintly in pencil, of uncertain date and not yet identified: bend with three rosettes and cadency mark/crescent moon in upper dexter (f. 74r).

First noted as part of the collection of Pembroke College by H. Schenkl, Bibliotheca Patrum Latinorum Britannica, II/2 (Vienna, 1898), p. 5.

Additional Information

Record Sources

This catalogue entry draws on the description provided by Rodney M. Thomson, A descriptive catalogue of the medieval manuscripts of Pembroke College, Cambridge (2022) (used here by kind permission of the author).

Availability

Researchers should note that Pembroke College's western European medieval manuscripts are housed at Cambridge University Library. Scholars who wish to consult Pembroke College manuscripts should contact the Special Collections Reading Room to arrange their visit; all University Library admissions procedures will apply. For information on eligibility and admissions procedures, see Joining the Library. For further enquiries, and to confirm the availability of the manuscript, please contact the Special Collections Reading Room.

Bibliography

A descriptive catalogue of the manuscripts in the library of Pembroke College, Cambridge, James, M.R. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1905)

A catalogue of Chaucer manuscripts, Seymour, M.C. (Aldershot, 1: Works before the Canterbury Tales, Scolar Press, 1995)

The Consolation tradition and the text of Chaucer's <hi rend="italics">Boece</hi> Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Machan, Tim William (91, 1, 31-50, 1997)

William Worcester reads Chaucer's <hi rend="italics">Boece</hi> Journal of the Early Book Society, Wakelin, Daniel (5, 2002)

Manuscripts in the library of Pembroke College, Cambridge and the Fitzwilliam Museum Index of Middle English prose, Rand, Kari Anne (Woodbridge, Brewer, 2006)

Humanism, reading, and English literature, 1430-1530, Wakelin, Daniel (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007, 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199215881.001.0001)

A descriptive catalogue of the medieval manuscripts of Pembroke College, Cambridge, Thomson, Rodney M. (Cambridge, D.S. Brewer, 2022)

Funding of Cataloguing

Anstruther Trust (digitisation)

Digital Images

Cambridge Digital Library

Abbreviations

View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.

Medieval Manuscripts in Cambridge Libraries

Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 215

Contents