Informally produced miscellanies originating in late twelfth- and thirteenth-century Britain constitute an under-exploited resource for the study of medieval literate society. Often written by a number of scribes over a period of time, these books can be particularly difficult to date or localize, although it seems that – in the main – they were produced within religious communities and most often small houses or dependent cells. Their script, layout and production are all of fairly modest standards, and they seem to have been practical books, for those whose access to more extensive textual resources may have been limited. What the manuscripts lack in elegance of presentation, though, they more than make up for in their rich variety of devotional and doctrinal contents, which point to a wide range of practical uses including, but not limited to, preaching. Within this group, the two manuscripts to be considered here, London, British Library, MS Harley 524 and Maidstone Museum, MS A.13, are relatively unusual in including material in French among their primarily Latin contents. This essay endeavours to show that the multilingual contents of these anthologies shed new light on the transmission of pastoral literature in the vibrant devotional culture of the thirteenth century.

British Library, MS Harley 524 is a collection of hundreds of short texts on devotional, moral and liturgical topics. It was written in England by a number of mid-thirteenth century scribes, whose textura hands are – while not poor – at least informal in execution.