Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Page 284

270
Ian McDougall
as a reminder of the work which remains to be done on this important
collection, I wish to examine briefly the three leaves catalogued as Acc.
7c, Hs. 94, which MGA identified as remnants of a medieval homiliary
of an unknown type.
Acc. 7c, Hs. 94 consists of 3 leaves, one bifolium and a single leaf,
formerly used as covers for two apparently unrelated Amamagnaean
manuscripts. The bifolium (lr-2v) was used to cover AM 142 4to; the
single leaf (3r-v) was used as the outer binding of AM 145 8vo. The
written space on each side measures roughly 24 x 16.5 cm. The third
leaf is now slightly smaller than the bifolium, and of a slightly darker
colour, evidently the result of shrinkage due to poorer preservation of
the leaf after it was separated from the rest of the manuscript from
which it was removed. Each side is ruled in pencil into two columns of
22 lines, and the same hånd is used in all three leaves. The text is writ-
ten in a formal English Gothic book-hand of the late thirteenth or early
fourteenth century, specifically in a variety known as littera textualis
prescissa formata, or textualis sine pedibus, so named because in this
script as many minims as possible end horizontally on the base-line
without a curving stroke to the right, in a deliberate attempt to imitate a
straight pen script.5 Aside from the characteristic bottoms of the minim
strokes “without feet”, this English hånd typically makes use of a serif
to the head of a minim stroke wherever the scribe elects to “dot” an i,
and a slightly lighter version of the same serif to close g. The second
stroke of h ends slightly below the line with a serif curving to the left.
There is a characteristic angular compression of the bow of round b and
d. The scribe makes use of both round and straight forms of d, both
short and round forms of r, and both round and tall forms of 5. The tall
s is formed with a protruding wedge at its shoulder ( f ). The letter x is
occasionally crossed (x, e.g. 3ra exinanitwr). The scribe almost always
uses the Caroline sign for et (represented in the transcript supplied in
the appendix as “&”, see e.g. Ira,2,3,8; lrb,9; lvb,4; 2ra,9,22; 2va,9;
2vb,4,5,18,20; 3rb,2; 3vb,5,9,ll), although on one occasion (3ra,20) he
substitutes the barred z-form of the same sign (represented in the tran-
script as “■*”). The only rubric (2rb,l-2) is in red. Most initials are plain,
5 For a description of this script, and a comparable sample from BL MS. Royal 2B.VII,
296v (written in London or East Anglia, c. 1310-20), see Brown 1990, 82 and 83, plate
28.1 am grateful to Virginia Brown for advice about this variety of English Gothic.