Volume 1

Catalogue of romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum.

  • British Museum. Department of Manuscripts
Date:
1883-1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Catalogue of romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    245/984 (page 221)
    prucleuci§. Non erat alter in clero sine in populo. cui tot uobiles famnlarentur. quos mansueta pietas ipsius et benigna largitas in obsequium suura. alliciebat, Cui cum satisfacere pre- eligissem . prophetias transtuli et ei cum huiusmodi litteris direxi.” The epistle to Bishop Alexander begins: “ Coegit me alexander liucolniensis presul nobilitatis tu§ dilectio prophetias Merlini de Britannico in latinum transferre antequam historiam perarassem quani de gestis regum britannorum inceperam.” It ends: “ Quoniam ergo placuit ut Gaufridus Monemotensis fistulam suam in hoc uaticinio sonaret. modulationibus suis fauere non diffugias. et si quid inordinate siue uiciose protulerit ferula camenarum in rectum aduertas concentum.” f. 23 b. The book of Prophecies then follows, beginning: “ Sedente itaque vortigerno.” In the modern printed editions, this prologue and the epistle form chapters i. and ii., and the book of Prophecies forms the remaining chapters (iii. and iv.) of book vii. The birth of King Arthur is described at f. 33 b; and his career and death at ff. 31 b-41 b (printed in the modern editions as book viii. chap, xix., xx. and from book ix. to book xi. chap. ii.). The work ends, after relating the death of Cadwalader on the 20th April 689, and the stand made against the Saxons by- Ivor and Ini, with the following paragraph : “ Eeges autem eorum qui ab illo tempore in Gwaliis successerunt. caradoco Lancar- bauensi contemporaneo meo in materiam scribendi permitto. Eeges uero Saxonum . willelmo Malmesburiensi . et Henrico Hvntendvnensi quos de Eegibus Britonum tacere iubeo. cum non habeant librum ilium Britannic! sermonis. quern walterus Oxenefordensis archidiaconus ex Britannia aduexit. quern de historia eorum uaraciter §ditum in honore predictorum principum hoc modo in latinum sermonem transferre curavi.” f. 46 b. First published (from four Parisian MSS.) by Josse Bade, of Asch, near Brussels, under the title of Britanniae utriusque requm et principum origo et gesta insignia ab Galfrido monemutensi . . traducta, et ab Ascentio cura et impendio magistri Ivonis Cavellati in lucem edita, in nine books (Paris, 1508), 4to.; and republished in 1517. The next edition (in 12 books, the Prophecies being the seventh) appeared at fif. 1-92 of a collection edited by Jerome Commelin of Douay, entitled, Berum Britanniearum . . . Scriptores vetustiores, Heidelberg, 1587, folio, Commelin having collated the edition of “ Ascensius,” with a MS. belonging to