Confessio Amantis, a small paper MS, imperfect, with virtually none of the Latin apparatus, but with unique versions in English of some of it, the Latin verses appearing uniquely on folio 125r.

s.xv, mid to third quarter

Contents

(fols 1ra–182vb) Confessio Amantis, Prol. 170 to VIII.3082*

Prologue (fol. 1ra) incomplete, beginning with Prol. 170, due to loss of two leaves (one blank) at the front of the volume, and wanting one leaf after fol. 2, with text of Prol. 541–725; Book I (fol. 4vb with the initial Latin gloss) wants a leaf after fol. 4, with text of I.1–168); Book II (fol. 23ra) wants a leaf after fol. 32, with text of II.1749–1927; Book III (fol. 42rb); Book IV (fol. 58ra); Book V (fol. 80ra) wants a leaf after fol. 91, with text of V.2199–2366; Book VI (fol. 125ra); Book VII (fol. 138vb); Book VIII (fol. 169ra) wants three leaves after fol. 181, with text of VIII.2505–2893. The outer half of fol. 182 is torn away, so that only the beginnings of lines in column a on fol. 182r and the ends of lines in column b on fol. 182v remain; thus only the last thirty-two lines of the first recension of the poem (VIII.3083*–3114*) would have appeared on a leaf now lost.

Text (sigil Ash): Ic. The MS is described by Macaulay (ed., Works, II.cli–ii), but only occasionally collated.

Illustration

There are no miniatures, but the scribe’s effort to begin books at the top of the column and to leave a picture-sized space there (Books V, VI, VII, VIII) suggests an exemplar in which such features were present, with or without pictures. See Drimmer, The Art of Allusion, 90.

Decoration

English glosses are in red ink in the text-column. Marginal speech-markers, in English, ‘conff’ and ‘louer’, are written by the scribe in red ink but squeezed in at end of the line where the speaker begins. The longer speechmarkers, such as ‘Opponit confessor’, are occasionally paraphrased, e.g.