This short manuscript is structured around eight questions on the four elements: 1. de humore aeris; 2. de gelu et quando humor cadens congelatur; 3. de tonitruo; 4. de terre motu; 5. de stellis que fiunt in aere; 6. de ventis; 7. de motu oceani; and 8. de pestilential. The end of the manuscript states that it is a reflection on the writings of ‘R B ordinis minorum’, and the text has been falsely attributed to the medieval philosopher Roger Bacon (c. 1219–92) in the past. No other copy of this work is known. The manuscript is written in the hand of William Moryn, a cleric who gave a selection of dominantly scientific manuscripts and printed books to the Fellows’ Library in 1543. This includes MSS50A and 50B and 50D, with which this text was previously bound.

 

Literature: Andrew George Little, Roger Bacon Essays: Contributed by various writers on the occasion of the commemoration of the seventh centenary of his birth (Oxford, 1914), pp. 410–11, no. 46; Palémon Glorieux, Répertoire des maîtres en théologie de Paris au XIIIe siècle, Volume 2 (Paris, 1933), p. 71; Neil R. Ker and Alan J. Piper, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, Volume IV: Paisley–York (Oxford, 1969), pp. 634–35; Paul Yeats-Edwards, Winchester College (Warden and Fellows’ Library) Medieval Manuscript Collection: Brief History and Catalogue (London, 1978), p. 11; Olga Weijers and Monica B. Calma, Le travail intellectuel à la Faculté des arts de Paris: textes et maîtres (ca. 1200-1500) (Turnhout, 2011), p. 236; Silvia Donati, ‘Pseudoepigrapha in the Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi ? The Commentaries on the Physics and on the Metaphysics’, in Jacques Verger et Olga Weijers (eds), Les débuts de l’enseignement universitaire à Paris (1200-1245 environ) (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 155–56, no. 7; 164, no. 35; James M. W. Willoughby, The Libraries of Collegiate Churches, Vol. 2 (London, 2013), p. 813.

Provenance: Bequest of William Moryn, 1543.

Location: Fellows’ Library