Meetings with a Remarkable Manuscript: A Study of a Late Medieval Collection of Latin Sermons

The first chapter of the following thesis is an extensive description of the physical attributes of our manuscript, without consideration of its textual contents. It begins with a short history of the codex, including my hypothesis of how it ended up in our library. I then describe the physical characteristics of the cover and binding, illustrating how the book is held together. Next I describe the details of the quires and pages, focusing on the dimensions, ruling, and pagination, as well as the physical defects such as rips and missing pages. I also discuss the materials used for the parchment and ink. I then describe the various handwritings used in the text, paying attention to abbreviation patterns. In each of these sections, I make particular note of patterns that occur as well as exceptions to those patterns. The second chapter is focused on the contents of the text. I begin with a discussion of the scholarship on sermon literature and sermon collections, drawing distinctions between random and systematic collections, as well as modern and ancient sermons. Using this scholarship, I categorize our collection, using relevant patterns of marginalia to break down the organization of the manuscript. I then discuss the structure of the sermons themselves, illustrating the actual content of the individual sermons, before offering a few thoughts on the wide variety of marginalia in this item. In the third chapter, I present my transcription and translation of two of the sermons. Finally, in a short conclusion, I synthesize the inferences I have drawn about the manuscript in each of the previous chapters, and make substantive claims about its date and place of authorship, its author, and its intended use.