| Description | Four leaves (2 bifolia) from an illuminated manuscript copy of Gower's Confessio Amantis, parchment. The text is the B version and is part of Book V, as identified by the page headings "Liber" (verso, preceded by a gold paraph) and "Quint[us]" (recto, preceded by a blue paraph). Text begins from "Wher of may wel be iustifyed that thei may nought be defied..." on f.1r and ends with "And of Ninus king of Assire I rede how that in his Empire..." on f.4v.
Main body text in black in a small Gothic script of high quality in two columns of 48 lines each, orginal line rulings visible. With alternating blue/red and gold/purple pen-flourished decorated capitals, each a single line in height. There are two larger illuminated capitals: a 2-line T on f.2r in gold on a blue background and a 5-line "Y" (thorn) on f.4v in gold on a blue and yellow(?) background with blue pen flourishes.
With marginal annotations/gloss in Latin in the same hand marked by alternating blue and gold paraphs. Also some faint marginal annotations on f.1r/v which seem to refer to the text but have been partially erased. Pencil numbers 1-4 appear in the top right corner of each folio, probably 20th century. A medieval arabic f.4(?) is marked in pen at the bottom right corner of f.3r. |
| AdminHistory | Confessio Amantis, late 14th-century poem by John Gower . The Confessio (begun about 1386) runs to some 33,000 lines in octosyllabic couplets and takes the form of a collection of exemplary tales of love placed within the framework of a lover's confession to a priest of Venus. The priest, Genius, instructs the poet, Amans, in the art of both courtly and Christian love. The stories are chiefly adapted from classical and medieval sources and are told with a tenderness and the restrained narrative art that constitute Gower's main appeal today. Many classical myths (especially those deriving from Ovid's Metamorphoses) make the first of their numerous appearances in English literature in the Confessio .
John Gower (c1330-1408) squire, and poet in the tradition of courtly love and moral allegory. He was a contemporary and friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. His major works were "Speculum Meditantis", a French poem on vice and virtue, "Vox Clamantis", a Latin elegaic poem, and "Confessio Amantis", in English. The first version of "Confessio Amantis" was composed c1383 at the request of Richard II, to whom it was dedicated, although the dedication was made to Henry of Lancaster (afterwards Henry IV) for the second version, c1393. "Confessio Amantis" was first published by Caxton in 1483.
The scribe of this manuscript is identified by the Late Medieval English Scribes project as the Trevisa-Gower Scribe. |
| CustodialHistory | The leaves belonged to Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), baronet, an antiquary and bibliophile whose collection included c60,000 manuscripts of various kinds, some relating to the administration of Swiss towns. Various manuscripts were sold after Sir Thomas's death, some to the German government, and were dispersed to several libraries. Formerly Phillipps MS 22914. Annotated on folio 1r: MS 501. A label on the front cover bears the number 496. |
| PublnNote | For this text, cf G C Macaulay, "John Gower's English Works", vol i (Early English Text Society, Extra Series, no 81, 1900), which mentions this fragment (p clxvi), although the author had not seen it. See also http://www.medievalscribes.com/index.php?browse=manuscripts&id=301&navlocation=London&navlibrary=University College Library, Special Collections&nav=off for an alternative description by the Medieval Scribes Project, which identifies this scribe as the Trevisa-Gower Scribe. |