Confessio Amantis, at least eighteen leaves missing.

Written and decorated at a major provincial centre (i.e. not London), c. 1440.

NB This description is derived from that provided by Christopher de Hamel for the sale at Sotheby’s in 1983. The MS has not been examined by the authors.

Contents

(fols 1–163) Confessio Amantis, Prol. 1053–VIII.2799.

NB The foliation used in the present description (there is none in the MS) does not count missing leaves.

Six leaves lost before fol. 1, with Prol. 1–1052, the Prologue itself beginning on fol. 1ra in the middle of the Latin gloss preceding line 1053, ‘arion nuper citharista’, and continuing with 1053–88end; Book I begins at the bottom of the same column (fol. 1ra) with the Latin verse-heading, continuing on fol. 1rb; Book II (fol. 20r); Book III (fol. 39r); Book IV (fol. 54v) lacks nine leaves before fol. 59, with IV.820–2490; Book V (fol. 65v); Book VI (fol. 106v) lacks one leaf before fol. 119, with VI.2367–2440end and VII.1–88; Book VII (fol. 119r) begins at VII.89; Book VIII (fol. 148v) breaks of at line 2799, fol. 163v, having lost at least two leaves after fol. 163, with VIII.2800–3114*, and possibly further leaves containing Latin concluding material.

Text: collated, but not fully, by Macaulay (sigil Y), who assigns the MS tentatively to his recension Ib (Macaulay [ed.], Works, II.cxliii).

Illustration

Spaces are left on fol. 2rb (a twelve-line space at the foot of the second column) and on fol. 2va (a fifteen-line space after the Latin verse-heading at the top of the column), before and after the Latin lines following I.202, apparently for two miniatures. Either would have been a usual place for the customary picture of the Lover and Genius, but the first space might have been left so that a significant new section of text (and a picture) could stand at the head of a new column and page. See Griffiths, ‘The Poem and its Pictures’, 176, n. 6.