Re-emerged in 1979, after four centuries of oblivion, MS Additional 60577, also known as the Winchester Anthology, is an interesting collection of didactic and scientific late-medieval literature, including also some love lyrics, medical recipes, a lapidarium, astrological notes, short pedagogic poems, a verse sermon in Middle English, and Benedict Burgh’s Secreta secretorum, as well as a unique English translation of the first book of Petrarch’s Secretum. The compilation of this volume began around 1478, as testified by a note on the colophon of f. 107v, but the last texts were added as late as the mid-sixteenth century. However, the earliest part of the collection constitutes a self-standing group, and is associated fairly clearly with William Wayneflete (c. 1394-1486), Headmaster of Winchester College from 1429 to 1441-2, Provost of Eton during the 1440s, Chancellor of England from 1456 to 1460, Founder of both Magdalen Hall and Magdalen College, Oxford, and Bishop of Winchester from 1447 until his death. The hypothesis advanced by the scholars who first examined this manuscript anthology, Edward Wilson and Iain Fenlon, is that this section of the codex had been put together as part of a didactic program for Winchester College, but so far very little analysis has been undertaken, and a considerable number of texts, extant only in this codex, remains unedited and un-analysed. In the present paper I would like to analyse the scientific texts in the collection, noting their role in a didactic program, and thus shedding some light on the rationale behind school curricula in late medieval England.
British Library, MS Additional 60577: The Role of Translation in a Scientific and Didactic Collection
Petrina Alessandra
2018
Abstract
Re-emerged in 1979, after four centuries of oblivion, MS Additional 60577, also known as the Winchester Anthology, is an interesting collection of didactic and scientific late-medieval literature, including also some love lyrics, medical recipes, a lapidarium, astrological notes, short pedagogic poems, a verse sermon in Middle English, and Benedict Burgh’s Secreta secretorum, as well as a unique English translation of the first book of Petrarch’s Secretum. The compilation of this volume began around 1478, as testified by a note on the colophon of f. 107v, but the last texts were added as late as the mid-sixteenth century. However, the earliest part of the collection constitutes a self-standing group, and is associated fairly clearly with William Wayneflete (c. 1394-1486), Headmaster of Winchester College from 1429 to 1441-2, Provost of Eton during the 1440s, Chancellor of England from 1456 to 1460, Founder of both Magdalen Hall and Magdalen College, Oxford, and Bishop of Winchester from 1447 until his death. The hypothesis advanced by the scholars who first examined this manuscript anthology, Edward Wilson and Iain Fenlon, is that this section of the codex had been put together as part of a didactic program for Winchester College, but so far very little analysis has been undertaken, and a considerable number of texts, extant only in this codex, remains unedited and un-analysed. In the present paper I would like to analyse the scientific texts in the collection, noting their role in a didactic program, and thus shedding some light on the rationale behind school curricula in late medieval England.
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