William of Nottingham (d. 1336) was a lector to the Franciscans in Oxford in the early 14^th century and served as the Minister Provincial of England from c. 1316–30. This manuscript contains his commentary on the ‘Harmony’ (Unum ex quatuor) of Clement of Llanthony (active mid-12^th century), an apparatus for comparing and harmonising the texts of the four gospels. The commentary became a standard gospel harmony in the 14^th century, and continued to be used and copied in the 15^th.

This manuscript appears to have been commissioned by the College in 1436–37, and made under the supervision of Richard Julyan, Second Master until 1424 and a resident of Gloucester in the 1430s. Julyan was instrumental in obtaining for Winchester a four-volume set of Clement’s own commentary on the gospels (MS 17), which was copied in Gloucester and sent to Winchester between 1433 and 1437. Among the accounts detailing this purchase, and recording payments to Julyan, is a reference to fifty-nine quires of ‘veleme’ obtained at Bristol. It seems almost certain that this entry refers not to Clement’s commentary, but to the present manuscript, which consisted originally of fifty-nine quires.

The main text (fols 28r–302v) is divided into twelve parts, corresponding with the twelve parts of the ‘Harmony’. Before this is another text on the four gospels (fols 1–25v) followed by an incomplete set of canon tables (fols 26–27v). The manuscript ends with an index to the main text that is lavishly illuminated and rubricated. Throughout the text were illuminated initials, decorated with acanthus-like patterns in orange, blue, green and pink. The manuscript is heavily mutilated, and many of the initials have been cut out. While the text was almost certainly copied at Llanthony Secunda along with MS17, it was illuminated in Winchester.

 

Literature: Edward Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae in unum collecti, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 1697), p. 31, no. 1343; Walter Oakeshott, ‘Winchester College Library Before 1750’, The Library, vol. IX, no. 1 (1954), pp. 1–16, 15, n.1; Neil R. Ker and Alan J. Piper, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, Volume IV: Paisley–York (Oxford, 1969), pp. 617–18; Paul Yeats-Edwards, Winchester College (Warden and Fellows’ Library) Medieval Manuscript Collection: Brief History and Catalogue (London, 1978), p. 6; James M. W. Willoughby, The Libraries of Collegiate Churches, Vol. 2 (London, 2013), p. 615.

Provenance: Probably commissioned by Winchester College, 1436–37.

Location: Fellows’ Library