Confessio Amantis, with ‘Explicit iste liber’, ‘Quam cinxere freta’, ‘Quia unusquisque’

Possible provincial origin, s.xv, first quarter

Contents

1

(fols 1ra–214rb) Confessio Amantis

Prologue (fol. 1ra); Book I (fol. 8rb); Book II (fol. 29va); Book III (fol. 52va); Book IV (fol. 70va); Book V (fol. 94va), lacks two leaves, with text of V.57–213 and 1615–1770; Book VI (fol. 143ra); Book VII begins at fol. 159ra, though Book VI ends at the bottom of 158vb with ‘Explicit liber sextus’ and catchword ‘Incipit liber septimus’, which is repeated at the top of 159ra; Book VIII (fol. 194ra).

Lines 631–814 are missing from Book I, without loss of leaf, showing that the MS from which it was copied, which here must have lost a leaf, had exactly forty-six lines per column, as in many fine early MSS.

Collated by Macaulay, sigil J, Type Ia, but text very close to MS Fairfax 3 (Macaulay [ed.], Works, II.cxxxix–cxl).

For further information about the following Latin and French addenda that Gower caused to be added to MSS of the Confessio, see Appendix III.

2

(fol. 214rb) ‘Explicit iste liber’

3

(fol. 214rb) ‘Quam cinxere freta’

4

(fol. 214rb–214va) ‘Quia unusquisque’

Illustration

The space of three lines following Prol. 578 at the bottom of fol. 4vb may have been intended for a miniature, suggests Griffiths (‘The Poem and its Pictures’, 176 n. 8; 177), since a space of the same size is found at the same point in BL, MS Egerton 913 (and also a normal-sized miniature, completed, in Cambridge UL, MS Mm.2.21). But, coincidence apart, it is an exceptionally small space for a miniature.