¹ A transcription of Grandisson's inscriptions and annotations in the Confessiones of Lambeth Palace MS 203 is found in Appendix A at the end of this paper. These two inscriptions appear on fols. 7r and 106r, at the beginning and end of the Confessiones respectively. Any additional transcriptions from this and other manuscripts follow the presentation conventions explained in that appendix. Translations from the Latin are in all cases my own. All references to and citations from the Confessiones are based upon the edition by Verheijen, Lucas, ed., Sancti Augustini: Confessionum Libri XIII, CCL 27 (Turnhout, 1981), and are followed by book, chapter, and line numbers. I have also consulted the new edition by O'Donnell, James J., ed., Augustine: Confessions, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1992), but the absence of line numbers in this edition makes it impractical for the precise references required in this paper.Google Scholar

The following abbreviations are employed throughout: BOUG = Steele, Margaret, Study of the Books Owned or Used by John Grandisson Bishop of Exeter (1327–1369) (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Oxford, 1994); BRUC = Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge to 1500 (Cambridge, 1963); BRUO = Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to 1500, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1957–59); DNB = Lee, Sidney and Stephen, Leslie, eds., Dictionary of National Biography (London, 1885–1900); and MLGB = Ker, N. R., Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, 2nd ed. (London, 1964). Volume numbers will be used as necessary.Google Scholar

I would like to thank Alastair Minnis, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Mark Vessey, Trish Baer, and Richard Emmerson for kindly reading and making helpful comments upon earlier drafts of this paper. I am also grateful to Margaret Steele, who responded to my inquiries with numerous ideas about Grandisson and his books; to Teresa Webber, who has generously shared her knowledge of manuscripts and their owners on several occasions; to Malcolm Parkes, who provided many helpful suggestions early on in my work; and to Jim Binns, who read through my edition of Grandisson's notes and assisted me with comments and criticisms. Finally, I would like to thank Melanie Barber, deputy librarian and archivist of Lambeth Palace Library, for granting me permission to quote extensively from Lambeth Palace MS 203.Google Scholar

suggest the sophisticated relationship which Grandisson enjoyed with the book now known as London, Lambeth Palace MS 203 — the earliest book with which we can connect this fourteenth-century scholar, bibliophile and spiritual guide.² They indicate Grandisson’ s efforts to improve and reshape a twelfth-century copy of the Confessiones for the use of a learned fourteenth-century reader, and they imply his wish for these improvements to benefit those of his cathedral community, those individuals within his spiritual cure. They are, in fact, a profoundly sophisticated manifestation of how Grandisson inscribed himself into this volume as both a student in France and a bishop in England; and inherent in their grammar are murmurs of the ways in which Augustine's autobiography was itself inscribed upon the developing character of Grandisson, This paper will attempt to explore these aspects of Grandisson’ s relationship with his copy of the Confessiones through an examination of his abundant annotations in the margins of Lambeth Palace MS 203. It hopes also to situate Grandisson among other fourteenth-century readers of Augustine's autobiography, suggesting both the representative and unique nature of Grandisson's reading.Google Scholar

² In her extensive study of Grandisson's many books, Margaret Steele points out that Lambeth Palace MS 203 is “Grandisson's earliest surviving acquisition” (BOUG, 21).Google Scholar

³ A fair amount has been written on Grandisson, but the most helpful sources for his life are: Horsfield, Robert Alan, “John de Grandisson, Bishop of Exeter, 1327–1369” (M.A. thesis, University of Leeds, 1966); Steele, BOUG; Oliver, George, Lives of the Bishops of Exeter and a History of the Cathedral (Exeter, 1861); Rose-Troup, Frances, Bishop Grandisson: Student and Art Lover (Plymouth, 1929); the preface of Hingeston-Randolph, F. C., ed., The Register of John Grandisson, Bishop of Exeter, AD 1327–1369, vol. 3 (London and Exeter, 1899), v–lxxviii; and Emden, BRUO, 800–801. The information on Grandisson's life presented in this paper is based upon these works.Google Scholar

⁴ Grandisson may have acquired his knowledge of Hebrew in Paris, along with the conviction that texts should be studied in their original form and language.Google Scholar

JOHN DE GRANDISSON Google Scholar

⁵ Also on the commission were William, Archbishop of Vienne, and Hugh, Bishop of Orleans.Google Scholar

⁶ As archdeacon of Nottingham (20 October 1326), he was granted permission by the pope to visit his archdeaconry by deputy for two years while studying at a university. Since he wrote a letter on 1 August 1328 to Master William de Excestre promising payment of debts incurred at Oxford “de tempore quo studentes eramus ibidem,” it seems most probable that this university was Oxford. The letter is cited in BRUO, 800.Google Scholar

⁷ Grandisson was put in possession of the temporalities of his see on 9 March 1328.Google Scholar

⁸ A list of manuscripts of the Confessiones associated with fourteenth-century individuals is included as Appendix B at the end of this paper: extant manuscripts appear in Section I and manuscripts listed in medieval catalogues in Section II. I hope in the near future to pursue a more detailed study of the many fourteenth-century English readers and readings of the Confessiones. For a complete list of the surviving medieval English manuscripts of the Confessiones, which includes information regarding their provenance and ownership, see Appendix A of my forthcoming D.Phil. dissertation: “Reading Augustine's Confessiones in England ca. 1066-ca. 1200” (University of York, England); for a similar list of copies of the Confessiones noted in medieval book lists, see Appendix B of that dissertation.Google Scholar

⁹ See the entry for Hereford Cathedral MS O.iv.8, a twelfth-century manuscript originally from Hereford, in Section I of Appendix B, where the relevant cautio inscriptions are transcribed (notes 134, 135). A number of very faint pencil responses to the Confessiones in MS O.iv.8 may in fact be the product of Berkeley's reading.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Buckingham's Confessiones head an enormous fourteenth-century collection of Augustine's works in Oxford, Merton College MS 1, on which see the entries in Sections I and II of Appendix B. A comparison of the marginal annotations in this volume to those in Oxford,Google Scholar

Bodleian Library MS Bodley 335, a manuscript given to Exeter Cathedral by Buckingham and possibly annotated by him as well as by Grandisson (see BOUG, 114), suggests that the annotations may be the work of Buckingham himself. Neither Staveley's nor Rede's copy of the autobiography has survived, but their associations with the text are recorded in the Merton and New College book lists: see the entries in Section II of Appendix B.Google Scholar

¹¹ Winchelsey's Confessiones have not survived, but are listed in a fourteenth-century Christ Church catalogue: see the entry in Section II of Appendix B.Google Scholar

¹² Tynmouth may have owned Cambridge, Pembroke College MS 135 (a late-thirteenth-century volume), and his hand could well be one of those among the various marginal notes of MS 135. This list of fourteenth-century secular readers of the Confessiones might also include the Cambridge master William Dyngeley (who owned Cambridge, Peterhouse MS 179) and Bishop Richard Flemying of Lincoln, but they are so late as to be better considered as fifteenth-century readers, and are thus excluded from this study (on their manuscripts, however, see the entries in Appendices A and B of Olson, “Augustine's Confessiones in England ca. 1066-ca. 1200”).Google Scholar

¹³ See I.35 of the early printed edition of Bradwardine's De Causa Dei edited by Savil, Henry, Thomae Bradwardini Archiepiscopi Olim Cantuariensis, De Causa Dei, Contra Pelagium, et de Virtute Causarum, ad suos Mertonenses, Libri Tres (London, 1618), and XIX.35 of the early printed edition of FitzRalph's Summa Domini Armacani edited by John Sudor, Ricardi Fitzralph Summa Domini Armacani in Questionibus Armenorum Nouiter Impressa et Correcta a Magistro Nostro Johanne Sudoris. Cum Aliquibus Sermonibus Eiusdem de Christi Dominio (Paris, 1512). FitzRalph in particular presents a confessio of self which deeply echoes the devotional style of the Confessiones. Google Scholar

¹⁴ See Kane, George, ed., Piers Plowman: The A Version: Will's Visions of Piers Plowman and Do-Well, rev. ed. (London and Berkeley, 1988), XI.302–13 (where the A Text breaks off); idem and Talbot Donaldson, E., eds., Piers Plowman: The B Version: Will's Visions of Piers Plowman, Do-Well, Do-Better and Do-Best, rev. ed. (London and Berkeley, 1988), X.458–71; and Pearsall, Derek, ed., Piers Plowman by William Lang land: An Edition of the C-text (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1979), XI.288–98.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Robert Holcot owned Cambridge, University Library MS Kk.II.5, which contains a fourteenth-century copy of the Confessiones: see the entry in Section I of Appendix B, where the relevant inscription is transcribed in n. 131. Some of the rather sparse marginal annotations in this copy of the text may be the product of Holcot's hand, but since no other manuscript which belonged to Holcot has yet been identified, I have been unable to support this hypothesis with further evidence. On Holcot, see (in addition to the references in Appendix B) Smalley, Beryl, “Robert Holcot O.P.,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 26 (1956): 5–97, and eadem, English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1960), 133–202.Google Scholar

¹⁶ The Dentons owned Brasenose College MS 13 (a late-thirteenth-century manuscript), on which see the entry in Section I of Appendix B, where the relevant inscription is transcribed (note 139). The identity of the brothers Denton remains uncertain, but it is quite possible that one of them was the same person as the John de Denton, clerk, who gave a plot of ground to the Newcastle Augustinians in 1323, just eight years before the Droitwich convent was founded: see Roth, Francis, The English Austin Friars 1249–1538, vol. 2: Sources (New York, 1961), 105. The two main annotating hands in MS 13 may well represent their activities with the text. Although I have not concerned myself here with manuscripts that present only excerpts from the Confessiones, it is worth noting that the Augustinian friar John Erghome owned a volume which included “Exceptiones ex libris confessionum beati Augustini”: see Humphreys, K. W., The Friars’ Libraries (London, 1990), 13. On Erghome, see BRUO, 644.Google Scholar

¹⁷ As Humphreys's study of The Book Provisions of the Medieval Friars 1215–1400 (Amsterdam, 1964), suggests they would: see, for instance, 22–24.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Brother Willelmus is recorded as having borrowed “Augustinum de confessione,” a somewhat unusual but not unprecedented title for the autobiography: see the entry for Thorney Benedictine Abbey in Section II of Appendix B, and the explanation in n. 140 at the opening of that section regarding the interpretation and inclusion of medieval catalogue entries for the Confessiones. Google Scholar

¹⁹ The volume is now Cambridge, University Library MS Kk.II.21, an abbreviated fourteenth-century copy of the Confessiones, on which see the entry in Section I of Appendix B, where the relevant inscription is transcribed (n. 132); and see also Ker, , “Medieval Manuscripts from Norwich Cathedral Priory,” in Books, Collectors and Libraries: Studies in the Medieval Heritage (London and Ronceverte, 1985), 243–72, at 260. On Donewico see Joan Greatrex's entry in Biographical Register of the English Cathedral Priories of the Province of Canterbury ca. 1066–1540 (Oxford, 1997).Google Scholar

²⁰ See the entries for Durham Cathedral MS B.II.12 (a manuscript dating to the first half of the fourteenth century) in Sections I and II of Appendix B, where the ex procuratione inscription is transcribed (n. 133).Google Scholar

²¹ BL MS Royal 5.C.v (a late-thirteenth- or early-fourteenth-century manuscript) contains an inscription which records that the volume was obtained ex impetratione of John de Glynton: see the entry in Section I of Appendix B, where the inscription is transcribed (n. 136). A comparison with three other manuscripts associated with John de Glynton in the same way (BL MSS Royal 3.A.xv, 3.B.iii, and 8.G.v: see MLGB, 304) suggests that the hand correcting and annotating the Confessiones in MS Royal 5.C.v may well be Glynton's.Google Scholar

²² Grandisson's copy of the Confessiones in Lambeth Palace MS 203 is listed in both Sections I and II of Appendix B. The English manuscripts of the Confessiones do, of course, contain further evidence of fourteenth-century readership (BL MS Royal 5.B.xvi, an early-twelfth-century manuscript that contains notes almost certainly dating to the early fourteenth century, is an excellent example), but I have not yet been able to identify the individual fourteenth-century owners of these manuscripts (if indeed there were any), or the authors of their marginalia.Google Scholar

²³ I am fairly certain that Buckingham and Glynton have left their responses in the margins of their Confessiones, and it is quite possible that Holcot, Tynmouth, Berkeley, and the brothers Denton have as well.Google Scholar

²⁴ Virtually all of the English copies of the Confessiones dating from the late-eleventh to the mid-fifteenth century contain numerous marginal responses from their readers in one or more hands, thus suggesting that the Confessiones were for their medieval English readers a text to be encountered with mind engaged and pen in hand.Google Scholar

²⁵ BOUG, 138. Steele's study presents an overview of the numerous extant volumes that show signs of Grandisson's use (thirty-one that were definitely among Grandisson's personal collection, and another sixty-two that belonged to the Exeter Library during his episcopacy). The present study examines one manuscript, and so explores in greater detail the general trends Steele has discovered, adding new ideas to our knowledge of Grandisson's reading, particularly as it applies to Augustine's Confessiones and to Grandisson's formation.Google Scholar

²⁶ Grandisson's personal symbols as they appear in the margins of the Confessiones are represented in the transcription of his notes in Appendix A. For a discussion of the use of a personal symbol by the fifteenth-century author and scribe John Capgrave, see Lucas, Peter, “John Capgrave, O.S.A. (1393–1464), Scribe and ‘Publisher,’ ” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 5 (1969): 1–35.Google Scholar

²⁷ Discussions and examples of many of these trends in the various manuscripts associated with Grandisson can be found in BOUG.Google Scholar

²⁸ As Margaret Steele has informed me, the other texts that Grandisson annotated as much as the Confessiones are the De Civitate Dei and some of the histories to which he had access. His copy of the Confessiones is not unusual, however, for the extent of its annotation among the English manuscripts of that text. Examples of similarly, and often more extensively, annotated manuscripts of the Confessiones include Pembroke College MS 135 (associated with Tynmouth), Eton College MS 47 (a fifteenth-century volume), BL MS Royal 5.C.v (associated with Glynton), Brasenose College MS 13 (associated with the brothers Denton), Merton College MS 1 (associated with Buckingham), Oxford, University College MS 117 (a twelfth- and thirteenth-century manuscript), and Worcester Cathedral MS F.32 (a thirteenth-century collection). Some contain only one hand, while others present a mixture of various responses from different readers.Google Scholar

²⁹ The history of Grandisson's twelfth-century MS 203 prior to his ownership remains mysterious, although it is most likely that he purchased the volume secondhand while he was studying in Paris: see Steele's comments on another early acquisition of Grandisson's (BOUG, 28 and 82 n. 32); and see also the observations made about the secondhand book trade at the medieval University of Paris in Rouse, Mary A. and Rouse, Richard H., “The Book Trade at the University of Paris, ca. 1250-ca. 1350,” in Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts and Manuscripts (Notre Dame, Ind., 1991), 259–338. Grandisson's manuscript may have originally been a cathedral or monastic volume, as were so many copies of the Confessiones produced in the twelfth century.Google Scholar

³⁰ Jacques de Molai and Geoffrey de Charnay, the leaders of the Templars, were burned at the stake in Paris on 19 March 1314; Otho de Grandisson knew Jacques de Molai during the Crusades: see BOUG, 79 n. 11.Google Scholar

³¹ Fol. 118v: “@Ex synonomis beati ysidori hyspalensis episcopi: manu. J. de G. @Ego. J. de. G. scripsi hec dum studerem parisius.” The first sentence appears to be in Grandisson's “display script,” and the second in his “glossing hand.” For a description of Grandisson's three characteristic hands, see BOUG, 15–19. There are considerable overlaps in style among the three hands, though his “book hand” and “display script” tend to achieve a greater clarity than his less formal “glossing hand.” For the symbols associated with the transcription of Grandisson's annotations (like the @ mark above), see the presentation conventions at the beginning of Appendix A.Google Scholar

³² Although Grandisson does not explicitly mention the Confessiones in his will (dated 13 September 1368 and proved on 25 July 1369; it is printed in Oliver, , Lives of the Bishops of Exeter, 444–52, and printed and translated in The Register of Grandisson, vol. 3, 1549–57 and 1511–23), they may well have gone into the cathedral collection at his death along with many other volumes. It is also likely, however, that he presented them to the cathedral library before his death, as he did, for instance, with his personal copies of the lectionary or legenda he had composed for his church. He gave these to the cathedral on 25 March 1366, and they still exist in the cathedral library as Exeter Cathedral MSS 3504 and 3505; they contain Grandisson's donation inscription, as well as corrections and marginal annotations in his hand (see BOUG, 189–90). Grandisson's reputed desire to reform the clergy of his cathedral might even suggest that he gave such a spiritually inspirational text as the Confessiones to the Exeter library quite early in his episcopacy, but it is also difficult to imagine him parting with a text that, as the following discussion hopes to reveal, was so important to him personally.Google Scholar

³³ Grandisson's exemplar for his corrections (the manuscript he calls “the book of Hugo of Saint Victor”) remains unidentified, though it is possible that it still survives. Wilmart, André, “La tradition des grands ouvrages de Saint Augustin,” Miscellanea Agostiniana 2 (Rome, 1931), 257–315, at 264, lists two manuscripts of the Confessiones — Paris, Arsenal MS 478 and BNF MS lat. 14293 — as having a St. Victor provenance. Although the second is a thirteenth-century text and thus too late to be Hugh's, the first of these is a twelfth-century manuscript and could conceivably have belonged to Hugh. As Margaret Steele has suggested, the convent of St. Victor and the Sorbonne are geographically close, and it is likely that Grandisson was studying at the Sorbonne. In addition, there is evidence that indicates that Grandisson may have acquired some letters of Anselm from the St. Victor Library (see BOUG, 53), and thus that he did indeed consult and copy volumes in that collection. Unfortunately, I have been unable either to travel to see Arsenal MS 478 or to obtain a microfilm of it, but I would not be surprised if a comparison of this manuscript with Grandisson's corrections revealed a relationship between the two.Google Scholar

³⁴ These corrections appear, for the most part, in Grandisson's “book hand,” with which Grandisson attempted to imitate the script of the original twelfth-century scribe. Grandisson's inscriptions in LP MS 203, on the other hand, are generally executed in his “display script” (though the one found at the end of the Confessiones is not), and his marginal annotations are usually written in his “glossing hand.” For another example of one scribe's using different scripts for different purposes, though in the fifteenth century, see Lucas, , “John Capgrave, Scribe and ‘Publisher,’ ” esp. 2–7.Google Scholar

³⁵ The citations are from Rouse, and Rouse, , “Correction and Emendation of Texts in the Fifteenth Century and the Autograph of the Opus Pads by ‘Oswaldus Anglicus,’ ” in Authentic Witnesses, 427–47, at 429. Their study explores the intense dedication to textual accuracy in northern Europe in the fifteenth century among certain religious groups, and particularly among the Carthusians as demonstrated by the Opus Pads. Google Scholar

³⁶ Although widely believed in the Middle Ages to have been written by Ambrose, the Pastorale or De Dignitate Sacerdotali is now known to be the work of Gilbert Silvester, an early-eleventh-century pope: see BOUG, 24.Google Scholar

³⁷ BOUG, 22. The second section of MS 203 dates to the fourteenth century and contains Flores from Gregory's Moralia in Job, with its Tabula, and a letter by Robert Grosseteste. For more detail on the contents of MS 203, see James, M. R. and Jenkins, C., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Lambeth Palace: The Medieval Manuscripts (Cambridge, 1932), 323–25; and BOUG, 21–28.Google Scholar

³⁸ An excellent example is found on fol. 100r of MS 203, where a section of missing text from the opening of XIII. 18 has been added in the margin in Grandisson's glossing hand.Google Scholar

³⁹ Kilwardby's Capitula or chapter summaries for the Confessiones have been traced in only one manuscript, BNF MS lat. 2117, dating to the last quarter of the thirteenth century; it is from this manuscript that I have derived my sense of Kilwardby's divisions. But the situation is complicated by the fact that Kilwardby's divisions for patristic texts were in most cases adaptations of earlier, probably twelfth-century but sometimes even earlier, divisions. Thus, since Kilwardby's divisions, apparent in MS lat. 2117, do differ slightly from those found both in Grandisson's text and in many of the medieval English copies of the Confessiones, it is possible that Grandisson and other English readers had access to the earlier divisions rather than to Kilwardby's. However, I have found no evidence to suggest the circulation of divisions similar to Grandisson's prior to Kilwardby's work, and Grandisson's Confessiones do in fact contain traces of a set of earlier chapter divisions that appear to have been deleted, presumably when Grandisson added his divisions. I therefore suspect that Grandisson's divisions are a version of Kilwardby's work, while those he replaced may represent an earlier, continental tradition that Kilwardby's divisions adapted. Furthermore, I believe that the differences in divisions among MS lat. 2117, Grandisson's text, and the English manuscripts of the Confessiones with similar divisions are probably the result of variations and errors occurring in the manuscript transmission of Kilwardby's divisions. It may be the case, of course, that the Capitula of MS lat. 2117 contain extensive errors or alterations and that they are therefore not an entirely reliable example of Kilwardby's work. But, since each manuscript of the Confessiones presents slight variations of division in comparison with the others, and all are very similar as a whole to the divisions presented by MS lat. 2117, I consider this last text to be reasonably reliable. I do believe, however, that it is a mistake to assume (as at BOUG, 95 n. 147) that the differences between Grandisson's divisions and those found in modern editions of the Confessiones are due to recopying errors, because Grandisson's divisions are far closer to those in both MS lat. 2117 and the medieval English copies of the text than to those in modern editions. Clearly Grandisson is using a tradition of chapter divisions that was well established in his own day, and that eventually developed into the modern divisions. For a more detailed discussion of Kilwardby's Concordantia, Tabula, and Capitula for the Confessiones, as indeed of Kilwardby's life and career, see Callus, Daniel A., “The Tabulae Super Originalia Patrum of Robert Kilwardby O.P.,” in Studia Mediaevalia in Honorem Admodum Reverendi Patris Raymundi Josephi Martin (Bruges, 1948), 243–70, and idem, “New Manuscripts of Kilwardby's Tabulae Super Originalia Patrum,” Dominican Studies 2 (1949): 38–45; and Sommer-Seckendorff, Ellen M. F., Studies in the Life of Robert Kilwardby O.P. (Rome, 1937). See also Appendix A of Olson, , “Augustine's Confessiones in England ca. 1066-ca. 1200,” for details of the divisions in individual manuscripts.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ It should be mentioned, however, that while the university environment of Paris would be the most natural place for Grandisson to have acquired Kilwardby's Tabula for the Confessiones, Malcolm Parkes has pointed out that “most of the surviving copies of Kilwardby's tabulae were produced in England”: see “The Provision of Books,” in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 2: Late Medieval Oxford , ed. Catto, J. I. and Evans, Ralph (Oxford, 1992), 407–83, at 445. In addition, the fact that Grandisson's donation inscription appears at the head of the Confessiones could suggest that the index was added after he had already planned to give (if not after he had already given) the volume to his cathedral community. On the other hand, it could imply that the Tabula was already missing its opening folios, and that Grandisson was simply placing his inscription on the first complete work in the volume. But Grandisson's habit of inscribing himself, his actions, and his responses at various points throughout MS 203, particularly at the beginning and end of certain works, suggests that he was instead emphasizing that it was the Confessiones in particular that he had labored in correcting and was now bestowing upon those in his spiritual cure. His special relationship with the Confessiones explored in this paper supports this understanding of the inscription and its position in the manuscript. His inscription at the head of the Confessiones does not, of course, exclude the possibility that he placed a similar inscription at the head of the manuscript as well, but such an inscription would now be lost.Google Scholar

⁴¹ See James, and Jenkins, , Catalogue of Manuscripts in Lambeth Palace, 324; and BOUG, 22.Google Scholar

⁴² Grandisson's Tabula is an alphabetical list of subjects in which the subject headings (which are repeated in the margins for easy reference) listed under each letter are alphabetized to at least the third character — a sophisticated layout for the time. In addition, the entries under each subject are listed according to the order in which the passages to which they refer appear in the Confessiones. The subject matters treated are various, though, as Callus writes of Kilwardby's indexing work, some “prominence is given to points dealing with theological or philosophical topics” (“Tabulae super Originalia,” 265). Sample subject headings include gaudium, incarnatio, ingenium, laus, lingua, manicheus, mater augustini, oratio, peccator, penitentia, sapientia, scolares, scriptura, temptatio, tempus, veritas, and voluntas. Each entry deals quite specifically with the subject under which it is listed, and can consist of anything from a couple of words to a short passage. The entries occasionally quote, but more often echo, Augustine's own words, and they appear to function primarily to define or suggest the ways in which the topics under consideration are used, explained, or demonstrated in the passages concerned. The entries thus serve not only to help the reader find certain key ideas and suggest the contexts in which those ideas appear in the text of the Confessiones, but also to interpret important passages and themes. The references to the text of the Confessiones come at the end of each entry, and are very precise, including book and chapter numbers, as well as, in most instances, references to smaller sections of chapters indicated by the letters a to g. These final divisions are to be mentally visualized by the reader when returning to the Confessiones, and make it very easy indeed to find the precise passage indicated. The system, which had its origins among the Dominicans of St. Jacques in Paris and the Cistercians of Ter Duien and Ter Doest, is very flexible and particularly effective in a manuscript culture where no two copies of a text are laid out identically. (See especially Rouse, R., “Cistercian Aids to Study in the Thirteenth Century,” Studies in Medieval Cistercian History II, Cistercian Studies 24 [1976], 123–34; Rouse, and Rouse, , “The Verbal Concordance to the Scriptures,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 44 [1974]: 5–30; “Statim inuenire: Schools, Preachers, and New Attitudes to the Page,” in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century , ed. Benson, Robert L. and Constable, Giles [Oxford, 1982], 201–25; and “The Development of Research Tools in the Thirteenth Century,” in Authentic Witnesses, 221–55.) In virtually every instance in which I have followed the reference of Grandisson's Tabula back to the text of the Confessiones, I have found a relevant passage exactly where the Tabula has indicated I should, demonstrating that Grandisson's chapter divisions correspond with the Tabula he appended to the text. The Tabula that Grandisson appends to the Flores Gregorii, though it is laid out very differently, uses the same seven-letter divisions for references to particular sections within chapters, but in this case the letters are repeated in the margins of the text for perfect clarity.Google Scholar

⁴³ Grandisson's Tabula is very close indeed to the entries for the Confessiones in Kilwardby's Concordantia as preserved in both BNF lat. 2117 (fols. 145r^a–238r^b) and Cambridge, Pembroke College MS 39 (fols. 1r–77v), where the concordance is identified as the “tabula domini Roberti de Kylwardby archiepi. Cant” (fol. 77v). It is also close to the entries in the Tabula for the Confessiones in Cambridge, Peterhouse MS 147 (fols. 145v^a–151r^b), though this Tabula uses a different system of organization. The Tabula for the Confessiones in Cambridge, Peterhouse MS 179 (fols. 60r^b–69v^a) is very different, for it mixes the entries of MS 147 with those of another Peterhouse manuscript (MS 262), which contains a wholly different Tabula for the Confessiones (fols. 34v^a–54r^b). Thus while none of the Tabulae in the three Peterhouse manuscripts (MSS 147, 179, and 262) identified by Callus as Kilwardby's work (“Tabulae super Originalia,” 267) should strictly be identified as Kilwardby's, MSS 147 and 179 are fine examples of how “scribes very often mixed one table with the other, adding or omitting several items” in the process (see Callus, , “Tabulae super Originalia,” 265).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ See his marginal and interlineal notes outlining the ten categories at fol. 30r, IV. 16.10–15, and his comments upon “Augustine's genius” in understanding the Categories so readily on his own (fol. 30r, IV. 16.7–8 and 29–30).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ See, for instance, his use of responsio at fol. 49v, VII.9.59–61, and recapitulatio at fol. 105r, XIII.32.1–3, as well as his frequent use of the word contra. A university habit of mind is also suggested by the fourteenth-century annotations in BL MS Royal 5.C.v, quite probably glossed by John de Glynton, for there the notes are frequently laid out in diagrammatic distinctiones. It is interesting that the annotator of the Confessiones in MS Royal 5.C.v also reveals a familiarity with Kilwardby's Tabula for the Confessiones: at III.8.45–46 he writes “peccatum est auersio ab vno vero. conuersio ad vnum falsum,” which is almost exactly the entry appearing for III.8 in Kilwardby's Tabula (cited below in the discussion of Grandisson's notes on spiritual regression through sin).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ At fol. 81v, XI. 1.5–6, where Augustine claims that, as he has said before, he writes for “the love of God's love” (“iam dixi et dicam: amore amoris tui facio istuc”), Grandisson refers the reader back to “the beginning of the second book,” where Augustine does indeed make the same claim: “amore amoris tui facio istuc” (II. 1.3).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ See, for instance, his use of a flower-like symbol to connect his comments at 1.13.10–16 (fol. 11v) about how teaching children the “fables of the poets” is like sacrificing them to demons with the passage at 1.17.12–14 (fol. 13r), where Augustine's argument supports Grandisson's point; and his use of a similar symbol at IX.11.13–16 (fol. 66v) and IX.13.32–33 (fol. 68r) to connect Augustine's parallel statements regarding the deathbed wishes of his mother.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ The retractatio for the Confessiones is included as a prologue to the autobiography in MS 203, as it is in virtually all of the medieval English copies of the text, and Grandisson certainly made use of it while reading the text, for he is very specific about these references to the Retractationes. In IV.6, for instance, he notes not only that Augustine “retracts” his words about his friend's death, but also that he “excuses himself” in the retractatio because he used the word “perhaps” (fol. 26v, IV.6.23–26). The second retractatio occurs at fol. 105r (XIII.32.5–7), and Grandisson's note here is linked to the capitulum ({) which appears back in the retractatio prologue on fol. 7r at the very point (II.6.17) where Augustine comments on this passage of the Confessiones. All references to the Retractationes are to Almut Mutzenbecher, ed., Sancti Augustini: Retractationum Libri II, CCL 57 (Turnhout, 1984), and are followed by book, chapter, and line numbers.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ The notes at fol. 8r, 1.4 and 5, are good examples, as are those at fol. 14v, II.2.21–23, fol. 31r, V.2.9–11, fol. 46v, VII.4.17–21, and fol. 65r, IX.8.64–67, but Grandisson's glosses on the nature of God are spread throughout the text of the Confessiones. Google Scholar

⁵⁰ See, for instance, the note that precedes the Confessiones on fol. 6v, and the corresponding gloss at the top of fol. 86v (in Book XI), as well as the notes at fol. 9r, I.6.57–59 and fol. 85v, XI.20.11–13.Google Scholar

⁵¹ See especially the notes at fols. 58r-59v, VIII.9–11.Google Scholar

⁵² Fol. 110v: “@Aut error est scriptoris; vel difficultas dictantis. aut ignorantia legentis. Ego. J. Ex. inscius; non bene intelligo.” The note is written in Grandisson's “display script.” Google Scholar

⁵³ As Steele, BOUG, 15, points out, in those books Grandisson acquired before becoming a bishop he wrote “Ego Johannes de Grandissono” or “J. de G,” but in those he obtained after he was bishop of Exeter he wrote “J. de G. Exon” or “J. Ex.” It is an intriguing change to which I will have occasion to return later in this paper.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Steele has made the interesting observation that while the copy of the Planctus has not been checked and corrected against an exemplar and does break off before it is complete, its quality is nevertheless good and the variations it presents “probably do not impede understanding” (BOUG, 25 and 80 n.13).Google Scholar

⁵⁵ There is a particularly good account of this resisted visitation in The Register of Grandisson, vol. 3, xxxii–xxxv.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ On these points, see BOUG, 15–19.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ The dating of Grandisson's hand is particularly complicated when only a nota mark appears, since one letter is very little to judge by, though sometimes ink color can be helpful.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ As Steele points out, Grandisson's display script “appears in cathedral books (or books he gave to the cathedral) more than in his own personal collection” (BOUG, 17); and as Lucas, , “John Capgrave, Scribe and ‘Publisher,’ ” demonstrates, both marginal glosses and choice of script can reflect the intended audience of a manuscript.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ See BOUG, 25–26.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ BOUG, 27, where she also suggests that Grandisson may have had the letter copied onto blank folios at the end of the manuscript at a later date.Google Scholar

⁶¹ See his notes beside Augustine's explanation of how Manichaean doctrine is like imaginary or dream food, which drains him dry instead of nourishing his spirit (fol. 20v, III.6.25–26), and beside Augustine's description of how Faustus was known for his wide and excellent learning (fol. 31r, V.3.8–9).Google Scholar

⁶² See the notes at fol. 32r, V.4.10–11, where Augustine speaks of how he who has faith has everything, even if he lacks knowledge; fol. 32v, V.5.23–24, where Augustine reports that even those doctrinal errors that can be detrimental are forgiven in the infancy of faith; fol. 59r, VIII. 10.62–63, where Augustine speaks of the conflicting demands of eternal and temporal goods on the soul, which is thereby “pulled apart” (“discerpitur”); and fol. 102v, XIII.23.27–28, where Augustine points out that even the spiritual man cannot judge the eternal fate of “the troubled people of this world” (“turbidi huius saeculi populi”).Google Scholar

⁶³ See fol. 59v, VIII.11.31–32. The matter of continence as presented in the Confessiones in fact receives considerable attention from the young Grandisson as well: see, for instance, the notes highlighting II.3.37–40 (fol. 15v), VI. 11.51–52 (fol. 43v), and VI.14.14–17 (fol. 44r), as well as the doodle at X.29.4–30.2 (fol. 75v).Google Scholar

⁶⁴ BOUG, 10 and 275.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ In his Retractationes, Augustine writes: “Confessionum mearum libri tredecim et de malis et de bonis meis deum laudant iustum et bonum, atque in eum excitant humanum intellectum et affectum” (II.6.2–4).Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Although I do not intend to evoke any particular theoretical position in using the term “self-fashioning” here, it will nonetheless bring to mind studies like Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago and London, 1980), for some readers. Certainly there are aspects of Greenblatt's work with which this study of Grandisson finds affinities: thus, considering Grandisson in light of the “governing conditions” that Greenblatt sees as “common to most instances of self-fashioning” (9–10), one can perceive that the fourteenth-century bishop does indeed fashion himself in relation to a “power or authority” external to himself, namely the text of the Confessiones (though I am not sure that I would call his relationship with the text one of pure “submission”), and, indeed, that his self-fashioning, at least as it exists for us today, does take place “in language.” However, unlike the figures Greenblatt studies, Grandisson had a title, a family tradition, and thus a sense of personal identity, though perhaps an identity partially displaced by his position as the second son. In addition, I do not believe that he could be said to fashion himself in response to a threatening alien or hostile force (which could only be the world), for Grandisson's perception of worldly matters, though somewhat distant at times and focused primarily on his diocese, was never so negative; his turn from worldly concerns, though more striking than that of many of his contemporary bishops, was never so complete. Therefore, although Greenblatt's theory and language are informative and can enhance the richness of similar terms used here, it is in no way definitive. Such definitive theoretical principles as do lie behind this paper reside in the simple fact that texts shape the lives of individuals and communities (as Brian Stock's work on “textual communities” has shown us: The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries [Princeton, 1983]; see especially 88–92), as surely as the lives of individuals and communities shape texts. Grandisson's annotations for the Confessiones provide us with ideal material through which to explore this phenomenon of the linguistic human creature.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ There is a great deal of evidence to suggest Grandisson's lifelong love for and promotion of learning. He strengthened and founded collegiate institutions, the most notable of these being the collegiate foundation for the Church of St. Mary Ottery, established by Grandisson in 1337. He appointed capable individuals to oversee the education of grammar school boys in his diocese, and encouraged, permitted, and financially enabled his clergy to attend universities in England and abroad. In the first twelve years of his bishopric in Exeter, for instance, he granted candidates (many of whom were already priests and masters) 360 licenses for study under the constitution Cum ex eo of Boniface VIII, thus ensuring that these scholars were supported financially: see BOUG, 8 and 270. He also supported and promoted such famous and talented scholars as Richard FitzRalph, whom he consecrated as archbishop of Armagh in 1347, and Thomas Buckingham, who became the chancellor of Exeter Cathedral on 25 March 1346 (both, perhaps more than coincidentally, contemporary readers of the Confessiones). Indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that there were lively theological debates at the Exeter Cathedral school involving Buckingham and perhaps FitzRalph as well: see Pantin, W. A., The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 1955), 113–15; Courtenay, William J., Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England (Princeton, 1987), 132; and Chenu, Marie-Dominique, “Les ‘Quaestiones’ de Thomas de Buckingham,” in Studia Mediaevalia, 229–41. As we might expect, Grandisson also made consistent efforts throughout his life to obtain and produce books for his cathedral library and ensure their accuracy and accessibility: Steele's study of the Exeter Cathedral books, which reveal evidence of Grandisson's use, shows how he worked to correct, organize, divide, index, and generally clarify many of the volumes in the cathedral library (BOUG, 97–137). Finally, he bestowed the numerous books that he himself owned upon various individuals and communities, bequeathing an unusually large number to his cathedral church at his death in 1369. On this final point, see the lists in BRUO, 801, and the detailed study of Grandisson's books in BOUG. In addition to the Exeter Cathedral library, he gave books to the collegiate churches at Ottery, Crediton, and Bosham, the Exeter Dominican convent, and Exeter College, Oxford.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Grandisson's glosses on these matters are far too numerous to list here, but the interested reader will find all such notes transcribed in Appendix A at the end of this paper.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Fol. 10v, I.9.29–30, where Augustine's text reads: “peccabamus tamen minus scribendo aut legendo aut cogitando de litteris.” Grandisson gleans his comment from Augustine's words, but leaves out the third aspect of study which Augustine claims children neglect, thinking about their letters. It is easy to imagine that this is a problem which the thoughtful Grandisson might have been at a loss to comprehend.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Additional topics might have been cited and explored as examples of this pattern — chastity or continence, a topic to which we have already seen the mature bishop responding, comes to mind as particularly worthy — but a desire to demonstrate certain trends rather than to provide a survey of Grandisson's notes as a whole has inclined me to select only two topics for examination. On this and other points argued in this paper, further analysis of Grandisson's notes as a whole would reward the interested reader.Google Scholar

⁷¹ See Oliver, , Lives of the Bishops of Exeter, 84, who explains how in his ordinal Grandisson “insists that in the recital of the psalms, hymns, and other portions of the service, in vain will the tongue labour if the heart prayeth not; that what air or wind is to the fire, devotion is to words uttered in the sanctuary.” Google Scholar

⁷² See The Register of Grandisson, vol. 3, xxviii and xxxi, where the problems and Grandisson's corrective measures are described in detail. A similar pattern is evident in Grandisson's behavior towards those of high social status, for we know that “he was no respecter of persons” (see The Register of Grandisson, vol. 3, 1, where Grandisson's behavior towards noble individuals is discussed) and it is possible that this attitude can be traced back to his reading of the Confessiones, for he leaves a note “against the acceptance of persons” beside a relevant passage of that text (fol. 55r, VIII.4.11–13).Google Scholar

⁷³ Grandisson appears to have had a good deal more sympathy for the sins of childhood than many medieval readers. He does not, for instance, comment upon the Augustinian assertion that it is the “weakness of the infantile members [that] is innocent, not the spirit of the infants” (“imbecillitas membrorum infantilium innocens est, non animus infantium:” I.7.19–20), a passage that almost invariably draws the attention and what appears to be the approval of medieval English annotators of the text.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Grandisson again notes how “great evils come out of evil society” (with “mala societate” underlined for emphasis) in Book VI when Augustine describes how Alypius is dragged to the gladiatorial shows by his acquaintances (fol. 41r, 8.1–9).Google Scholar

⁷⁵ The note appears at fol. 64v, IX.8.56–60, where Augustine is describing his mother's behavior as a child and the correction she received from an angry servant. Grandisson's feelings against “evil society” are, however, nicely balanced with a very positive view of friendship at its best: see, for instance, his marginal notes on fol. 27r in response to IV.8 and 9.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ See the notes at fols. 21v and 22r, III.8.2–5.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ See the notes at fol. 76v, X.31.67–72, and fol. 78r, X.35.15–17.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Under the subject-heading peccator, for instance, the following entries (among many others) are listed in the Tabula (fol. 2v^b): “peccator recedit longe a deo” (“the sinner recedes far from God”), “qualiter defluit a deo” (“how he flows away from God”), “per peccatum est auersio ab uno uero et conuersio ad unum falsum” (“through sin is the aversion from the true one and the conversion to the false one”: this is the entry used by the annotator of BL MS Royal 5.C.v, mentioned above), and “peccatores sunt turpes et offendunt in deum et sunt longe a deo et a seipsis” (“sinners are foul and they knock against God and are far from God and from themselves”).Google Scholar

⁷⁹ See, for instance, his note at VIII. 10.2–3, which draws attention to the “error of some” — that is, someone else, not me — “regarding to will and not to will” (fol. 58v).Google Scholar

⁸⁰ BOUG, 152, and see 175 n. 49 for some examples of these annotations beyond the Confessiones. Google Scholar

⁸¹ The site of Grandisson's grave might also suggest an ongoing but successful struggle with pride, for Grandisson was buried in a plain tomb, separated from the rest of the cathedral and apart from the graves of other bishops, in a tiny chapel to the side of the great west door: see Orme, Nicholas, Exeter Cathedral as It Was 1050–1550 (Exeter, 1986), 22–23, for a map showing the location of the Grandisson chantry.Google Scholar

⁸² See the notes at fol. 79r, X.36.31–32, fol. 79v, X.37.27–31, and fol. 80r, X.38.6–9.Google Scholar

⁸³ See Isidore's, Synonyma de Lamentatione Animae Peccatricis, PL 83.833.26–835.34.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ “Discute conscientiam tuam; intende mentem tuam; Examina te. Loquatur cor tuum considera meritum tuum; Iuste flagellaris; iusto dei iudicio iudicaris” (fol. 118v, 835.34).Google Scholar

⁸⁵ BOUG, 25.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ The point is made by Steele, BOUG, 26.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ It is interesting that the St. Victor manuscript, which may have belonged to Hugh of St. Victor (Arsenal MS 478), also contains a collection of works dedicated to matters of self-exploration, internal progress, and personal devotion: a Liber Sancti Augustini de penitentia, an Oratio de primo libro Soliloquiorum and a book De predestinatione sanctorum, as well as the Liber Confessionum (see Martin, Henry, Catalogue des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque de L'Arsenal [Paris, 1885], 330). If this is the “book of Hugo of Saint Victor” from which Grandisson obtained his corrections and alternate readings, then it, too, could have influenced the way in which he would have read his Confessiones, and indeed the whole of MS 203.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ See, for instance, The Register of Grandisson, vol. 3, lii, where the case of the partially blind man, John le Skynnere, is discussed.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Grandisson places two nota marks beside Ponticianus's conversion narrative at the point where the man who is in the process of converting to ascetic Christianity claims “but the friend of God, if I want, behold, I am now made” (“amicus autem dei, si uoluero, ecce nunc fio:” fol. 57r, VIII.6.65–66).Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Although the opening folios of the Tabula for the Confessiones and thus the entries for conversio are missing in LP MS 203, judging from the entries for conversio extant in Kilwardby's Concordantia in BNF MS lat. 2117, the complete Tabula would have provided Grandisson with further incentive to delve into the theme of spiritual conversion in Augustine's autobiography.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Since the tenth chapter of Book VII and its journey into the Christian self is the section of the Confessiones upon which much of the extensive Cistercian use of Augustine's autobiography in the twelfth century focuses, it is intriguing to reflect upon the potential influence of the Cistercian Jacques Fournier, under whom Grandisson studied, upon Grandisson's reading of the Confessiones. James de Berkeley, Grandisson's predecessor as bishop of Exeter who pledged Hereford Cathedral MS O.iv,8, was also educated (though as a child) by Cistercians: see BRUO, 174, and Gardner, Elizabeth J., “The English Nobility and Monastic Education, ca. 1100–1500,” in The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey, ed. Blair, John and Golding, Brian (Oxford, 1996), 80–94, at 85–86 and 92. I discuss the reception of the Confessiones among English Cistercian readers of the twelfth century in “Augustine's Confessiones in England ca. 1066-ca. 1200.” It is worth noting here that when faced with such mystical passages as those in VII. 10 of the Confessiones, medieval annotators often (as Grandisson has here) resorted to the almost speechless excitement of repeated notae or similar marks.Google Scholar

⁹² See the notes at fols. 57v-59v, VIII.8.4–11.15; the quotation is taken from the note at fol. 58v, VIII.9.15–17, where “partly to will” and “partly not to will” is defined as a “certain sickness of the spirit.” Google Scholar

⁹³ The emotional nature of spiritual experience is also emphasized in Grandisson's glosses to the last two chapters of Book III, in which Monnica experiences a prophetic dream about Augustine's future condition, and receives the advice of an unnamed bishop on the same issue. Grandisson writes of her devout “weeping” and her “dream,” and records how the bishop predicts that “the son of her tears cannot perish” (fol. 23r-v, 11.1–12.22).Google Scholar

⁹⁴ Unlike many readers, both medieval and modern, Grandisson does not seem to have considered Augustine's reading of Cicero's Hortensius in III.4 as his first conversion experience in the Confessiones; or, at least, he does not annotate that event.Google Scholar

⁹⁵ Grandisson reveals his interest in baptism elsewhere in the Confessiones by leaving two nota marks at fol. 11r (in I.11), where Augustine discusses his deferred baptism as a child, and a note “regarding baptism” at fol. 101r, XIII.21.4–5.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ On the way in which the young Augustine develops internally through the progressively more profound reading and interpretation of written texts and oral narratives in the Confessiones, see Olson, , “The Textual Self: Autobiographical Self-Expression in Augustine's Confessiones” (M.A. thesis, University of Victoria, 1993). See also Brian Stock's recent study of the role of reading in the Confessiones in Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1996), esp. 21–121. Several other recent academic works have acknowledged the importance of textual or linguistic experiences in Augustine's development in the Confessiones: references to these can be found in the notes and bibliography of Olson and Stock.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ See, for instance, the notes at XII.20.2–5 and 21.1–3 (fol. 92v), 25.8–14 (fol. 94r), and 31.6–7 (fol. 96r).Google Scholar

⁹⁸ On these spiritales, see Teske, Roland J., “ ‘Homo Spiritualis’ in the Confessions of St. Augustine,” in Augustine: From Rhetor to Theologian , ed. McWilliam, Joanne et al. (Waterloo, Ontario, 1992), 67–76. Teske attempts to define exactly who Augustine means when he uses the term spiritales (and by implication ministri) in these chapters and throughout the Confessiones, concluding that the spiritales are not necessarily officiating clergy, but primarily faithful members of the Church (converts) who also possess a neoplatonic spiritual understanding of God. While it is tempting to think of Grandisson's including himself among such Christian intellectuals, his notes in these chapters appear to focus upon the ideas of personal spiritual renewal in a more apostolic sense and pastoral responsibility in a more conventional vein.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ Such devotional use of Augustine's autobiography is far from unprecedented in the Middle Ages: numerous examples of similar English uses of the text are introduced and discussed in Olson, , “Augustine's Confessiones in England ca. 1066-ca. 1200.” In the fourteenth century, FitzRalph, for instance, uses the devotional model of the Confessiones in composing the autobiographical prayer appended to the end of his Summa Domini Armacani, 19.35: it opens with the words “Tibi laus tibi gloria tibi gratiarum actio iesu pijssime iesu potentissime iesu dulcissime” (quoted from the edition of 1512).Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ XI.1.2–5: “Cur ergo tibi tot rerum narrationes digero? Non utique ut per me noueris ea, sed affectum meum excito in te et eorum, qui haec legunt, ut dicamus omnes: magnus dominus et laudabilis ualde.” See also II.3.8–10: “Et ut quid hoc? Vt uidelicet ego et quisquis haec legit cogitemus, de quam profundo clamandum sit ad te.” Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Fol. 68v, X.2.8–11: “Neque id ago uerbis carnis et uocibus, sed uerbis animae et clamore cogitationis, quem nouit auris tua. Cum enim malus sum, nihil est aliud confiteri tibi quam displicere mihi; cum uero pius, nihil est aliud confiteri tibi quam hoc non tribuere mihi.” Google Scholar

¹⁰² As Margaret Steele informs me, Grandisson arranged spiritual retreats for his own devout mother and her ladies, and appears to have identified with Augustine's feelings for his mother.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ Grandisson even reveals a special and very human concern with Augustine's claims that rewards are rightly due to preachers of God's Word: see the notes at fols. 103v-104r, XIII.25–26.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ See BOUG, 24.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁵ Fol. 107r: “|Nota quod honor et dignitas episcopalis incomparabiliter excellit regiam dignitatem et quamcumque aliam.” Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ It is an intriguing thought that readerly goals similar to Grandisson's may have lain behind the original twelfth-century compilation of MS 203, containing the Confessiones, the Pastorale and the Planctus. Google Scholar

¹⁰⁷ I am reminded here of Greenblatt's observation that “the power to impose a shape upon oneself is an aspect of the more general power to control identity — that of others at least as often as one's own” (Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 1) — for fashioning oneself as a successful bishop necessarily involves shaping the identity of others.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ We do not know, of course, whether Grandisson was promised a bishopric long before he gained the see of Exeter, though he certainly could have been. Given his family and education, he must have been reasonably certain that such an elevated position would one day be his, particularly if he made every effort to plan for that eventuality.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ The marking of these and other passages for personal reasons does not, of course, negate the potential for didactic intentions on Grandisson's part or for influential effects upon future readers of MS 203.Google Scholar

¹¹⁰ This means, however, that Grandisson's self-fashioning takes place in imitation of a man, a human bishop, one of his own kind, despite the warning of Augustine's text and his own annotation in this regard at fol. 102r, XIII.22.16–18.Google Scholar

¹¹¹ John de Grandisson, 19.Google Scholar

¹¹² The idea that Grandisson learned how to read ethically in a Christian sense from his early encounters with the Confessiones corresponds rather nicely with Stock's theory that Augustine's presentation of himself as a reader in the Confessiones, along with his explorations of philosophical, psychological, and literary issues in his other works, “gave birth to the West's first developed theory of reading” (Augustine the Reader, 1).Google Scholar

¹¹³ See I.35 of the De Causa Dei, and XIX.35 of the Summa Domini Armacani. Google Scholar

¹¹⁴ Cambridge, University Library MS Kk.II.21, fol. 103v^b: “hic narrat confessiones suas supra exemplum. vt alii ita agant.” Google Scholar

¹¹⁵ Retractationes II.6.7–8: “a primo usque ad decimum de me scripti sunt.” Google Scholar

¹¹⁶ Fol. 93v, IX.9.50–51: “hic de viro patre augustini nota quod tandem fuit conuersus ad fidem.” Google Scholar

¹¹⁷ Fol. 13v^a, III.4.6–7: “de conuersione augustini;” fol. 47v^b, VIII.2.55–56: “de conuersione victorini;” and fol. 54r^a, VIII.12.32: “Conuertitur augustinus perfecte etiam et alypius.” Google Scholar

¹¹⁸ Fol. 49r^a, VIII.5.1–2: “wanting Augustine to convert, Saint Simplicianus brought forth an example about the profession by Victorinus after [he was] converted” (“Sanctus simplicianus volens augustinum convertere intulit exemplum de victorino professione post conuerso …”: the remainder of the note is very faint and unclear). Examples of fourteenth-century annotators of the Confessiones who read with an eye for many of the issues which concerned Grandisson are in fact numerous: beyond the topics of conversion, sin, prayer, and textual encounters mentioned above, the Manichees, Ambrose, Monnica, learning, confession, and the human will come to mind as matters which draw much contemporary attention.Google Scholar

¹¹⁹ Brown, Peter, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), 173–74, makes a very similar point: “Augustine regarded a man's past as very much alive in his present: men were different from each other precisely because their wills were made different by the sum total of unique, past experiences.” Google Scholar

¹²⁰ The change from John de Grandisson to John de Exeter could, of course, be seen as an indication of self-canceling, as a demonstration of how “self-fashioning always involves some experience of threat, some effacement or undermining, some loss of self” (Greenblatt, , Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 9). Similar ideas have been offered in the process of explaining Augustine's conversion in the Confessiones as a “trangression of his identity by the word of another” (Vance, Eugene, “Augustine's Confessions and the Grammar of Selfhood,” Genre 6 [1973]: 1–28, at 21; and see also the excellent discussion of Vance's and other theories of conversion in Harpham, Geoffrey Galt, “Conversion and the Language of Autobiography,” in Studies in Autobiography , ed. Olney, James [New York and Oxford, 1988], 42–50, at 47–48). I suspect that for Grandisson, however, who could in any case have used his family name whenever he wished (in the Sanctoral he gave to his community, for instance, he combined the two names, writing “Ego J. de. G. Ex.” [fol. 1r]), neither the change of name nor the internal transformation lying behind it would have constituted a loss; rather, he would have seen the change as a gain (suggested by the intials “G. Ex.” together in the above example), a personal spiritual gain surely, but also the gain of a new, larger, and more expansive family tied together by the bonds of faith. Joining this family — indeed, leading this family — would not negate John de Grandisson for him, just as the bishop of Exeter does not scrape the name John de Grandisson from the end of the Confessiones, or even add his tiny “J. Ex.” to that inscription as he did above the Planctus where his “Ego” stood without identification; but it would naturally have caused him to set a priority and often choose his episcopal identity over his more worldly one. Through all of these subtle transformations, however, it should not be forgotten that it is the unchanging personal name of John which comes first, an indication of the constancy of the essential individual even at the heart of an ever-changing Augustinian interiority.Google Scholar

¹²¹ I am reminded here of Abbot Aelred of Rievaulx and his deathbed gift to his Cistercian community of the Confessiones which had so profoundly affected his life and shaped his writings: see Powicke, F. M., ed. and trans., Walter Daniel: Vita Ailredi Abbatis Rievallensis: The Life of Ailred of Rievaulx (London, 1950), chap. 51. The way in which the Confessiones acted as a guide and model for Aelred's monastic life and writings of spiritual guidance is explored at length in Olson, , “Augustine's Confessiones in England ca. 1066-ca. 1200.” Google Scholar

¹²² The fact that two copies of the Confessiones were already in the Exeter library when Grandisson gave his Confessiones (as the inventories of both 1327 and 1506 demonstrate: see Oliver, , Lives of the Bishops of Exeter, 302, 372, and 373) suggests that the community did not need the text itself, and therefore supports the notion that Grandisson was particularly giving his community his specially annotated version of the Confessiones and thus his reading of and self-writing in the tradition of that autobiography. One of the two additional Exeter copies of the Confessiones survives as Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 815, a late-eleventh-century manuscript. On both manuscripts, see the entries in Appendices A and B of Olson, , “Augustine's Confessiones in England ca. 1066-ca. 1200.” Google Scholar

¹²³ The note reads “{Solum non facile ridere” and appears at fol. 18r, II.9.6–7. I believe that it is the work of a twelfth-century reader, and it stands as a rather fascinating lone comment upon the text of the Confessiones. Google Scholar

¹²⁴ In her analysis of Grandisson's hand and scripts, Steele claims that Grandisson may have written “more temporary notes in crayon or pencil which, being in a different medium, are often harder to identify” (BOUG, 18). Folio 100r sports an example of a correction appearing in both pencil and ink, both apparently in the same hand, which the ink note reveals as Grandisson's. Thus Grandisson's way of entering (at least some of) his corrections and emendations in two stages — first in rough pencil, then in final ink — is clarified.Google Scholar

¹²⁵ This abbreviated word is extremely unclear in the manuscript, and could possibly read “Omnia” rather than “Que”; either works well with the sense of the annotation as a whole, but the one chosen for the transcription seems slightly more likely.Google Scholar

¹²⁶ Although it is tempting to emend this word to the more common “saltem,” the manuscript clearly reads “saltim,” which does make sense in the context of the annotation as a whole, so I have retained the manuscript reading.Google Scholar

¹²⁷ Although Grandisson's abbreviation indicates that this word should be quod, I suspect that an a has been omitted (or perhaps lost) above the q and that the word should read quam; I have thus emended it to the latter.Google Scholar

¹²⁸ Although Grandisson's abbreviation does not indicate an m at the end of qua, quam seems to make better sense here, so I have added the necessary m. Google Scholar

¹²⁹ This handlist includes only those manuscripts which can be linked with identified or named fourteenth-century individuals, and does not include manuscripts which contain (or appear to have contained) only brief excerpts from the Confessiones, though one of the manuscripts I list (Cambridge, University Library MS Kk.II.21) does present an abbreviated version of the text. For a complete list of extant English manuscripts of the Confessiones and of manuscripts listed in medieval English catalogues, see Appendices A and B of Olson, , “Augustine's Confessiones in England ca. 1066-ca. 1200.” Google Scholar

The information collected in this list has been obtained from three general sources: 1.) Firsthand consultation of the manuscripts, which could not have taken place were it not for the kindness of the many librarians and library assistants who allowed me access to their collections, supplied microfilms, answered queries, and assisted with my research in so many immeasurable ways. 2.) Published manuscript catalogues and studies far too numerous to list here (though they are listed in the “Manuscript Catalogues and Related Works Section” of the Bibliography for Olson, , “Augustine's Confessiones in England ca. 1066-ca. 1200,” and a few appear in the separate entries below). The following works have been particularly helpful: Ker, MLGB; Römer, Franz, Die handschriftliche Überlieferung der Werke des heiligen Augustinus, vol. 2: Great Britain and Ireland, parts 1 and 2 (Vienna, 1970 and 1972); Watson, Andrew G., Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, Supplement to the Second Edition (London, 1987); and the many excellent manuscript catalogues compiled by M. R. James. 3.) Personal correspondence and/or conversations with many individuals, including: Michelle Brown, Caroline Dalton, Joan Greatrex, Martin Kauffmann, Malcolm Parkes, Alan Piper, Jayne Ringrose, Margaret Steele, Patricia Stirnemann, Rodney Thomson, and Teresa Webber.Google Scholar

¹³⁰ Fol. 1v of University Library MS Kk.II.5 bears the inscription: “Iste liber fuit quondam fratris Roberti de Holcote cuius anime propitius esto Christe.” Google Scholar

¹³¹ The flyleaf of University Library MS Kk.II.21 bears the inscription “Liber fratris Roberti de Donewico,” and fol. 3r bears the name “Roberti de donewic.” Google Scholar

¹³² An inscription on fol. lv contains the information that the volume was the “Liber sancti Cuthberti. ex procuratione fratris Johannis de Beuerl’ monachi dunelmensis.” Google Scholar

¹³³ Fol. 109v of Hereford O.iv.8 bears the following cautio note: “Cautio magistri Jacobi de Berkelay exposita pro questionibus super i Sententiarum secundum Petrum Tarant.” Google Scholar

¹³⁴ On fol. 110v a second cautio note appears, though parts of it have been rubbed away: “… … … …. et magistri Symonis …. exposita in cista comitisse de varvike die Iouis proxima sequente festum beati gregorii anno domini m° ccc° viii pro xx sol et habet duo suplementa s vnam bibliam paruam coopertam in coreo albo et librum beati augustini coopertum librum logicalium s. veterem logicam et nouam in vno volumine.” The words “et magistri Symonis” appear to be in a hand different from the rest of the inscription though contemporary with it.Google Scholar

¹³⁵ An inscription on fol. 1v of MS Royal 5.C.v records that the volume was the “liber de domo de Sempringham ex impetratione Johannis de Glynton Canonici dicte domus.” Google Scholar

¹³⁶ Grandisson signs and dates his corrections and annotations for the Confessiones on fol. 106r of Lambeth Palace MS 203: “@Hucusque; ego. J. de Grandissono correxi. et non vltra; secundum librum hugonis de sancto victore. ab eo ut dicebatur correctum; dum studerem parisius. Anno domini. M°. ccc°. xiiii°. quando templarii combusti sunt./ proximo anno, post concilium viennense.” MS 203 is not of English origin.Google Scholar

¹³⁷ Grandisson records his donation of the volume to his cathedral library on fol. 7r of Lambeth Palace MS 203: “Damus ecclesie nostre Exon; quia multum laborauimus in corigendo parisius. Manu. J. Ex.” Google Scholar

¹³⁸ Ker's MLGB index card (in the Bodleian Library) for Brasenose MS 13 records an inscription on fol. iii verso of this manuscript which reads: “Iste est liber [fratruum] Johannis [Dentone senioris et iunioris ordinis] sancti augustini conuentu [Wichie],” with the passages in square brackets (and indeed much of the inscription) now illegible in the manuscript due to the application of a reagent.Google Scholar

¹³⁹ The “medieval” period is here considered to end ca. 1500, and later book lists are generally not included. In compiling this list I have consulted the publications which present transcriptions of the medieval lists rather than the manuscripts themselves. I have aimed to list only complete (or nearly complete) copies of the Confessiones, but this is sometimes difficult to determine from the medieval catalogues due to the variations which occur in the methods of recording the Confessiones. As a general rule, I have excluded those entries that definitely refer to excerpts only, but have tended to include entries that may potentially describe a complete or abbreviated copy of the text (for example, Augustinus de confessione, which, based upon the evidence of the surviving manuscripts, like the fourteenth-century copy belonging to Durham Cathedral listed below, can indeed refer to the complete text). Considerable ambiguity remains here, however, since it is entirely possible that descriptions like exceptiones or excerpta do refer to abbreviated and perhaps almost complete versions of the text; but as the inclusion of some would mean the inclusion of all, such entries have not been listed here. It is also difficult at times to determine whether the work listed is indeed by Augustine, so ambiguous cases have been dealt with as follows: listings for the confessiones (plural), even without an association with Augustine's name, have been included, but a reference like de confessione has been included only if it occurs along with Augustine's name. Far too many medieval works on confession existed to allow the inclusion of such entries when they stand alone, though it is certainly possible that they do refer to Augustine's work.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁰ The fact that the catalogue entry here records Tynmouth's manuscript as containing the De Trinitate makes the identification of Tynmouth's gift as the extant Pembroke College MS 135 uncertain, for the De Trinitate is not the first, but the second major work in MS 135. It is not improbable, however, that the two are one and the same manuscript.Google Scholar