De Agricultura, or ‘On Farming’, was written by the Roman author Palladius around the late 4^th or early 5^th century AD. The full text consists of fourteen books, though this copy is missing the final book on the care of animals. After the first introductory book, the following twelve describe the farming year month by month. The text gives practical agricultural advice, such as when and how to sow different seeds, the best soil and atmosphere in which to plant, and how to construct a beehive.

At the end of each month’s description is a table in which the words Hora (hours) and Pedes (feet) are listed eleven times. The tables can be filled in to give the length of shadows for each hour of the day and thus together show the changing hours of daylight and darkness for each month. This was invaluable information for farmers, whose routine depended on the times of sunrise and sunset. In this copy, however, all of the tables except one (for April, fol. 22v) are blank. The manuscript is decorated with red initials and headings throughout. Its 16^th-century binding once incorporated three folios from an early medieval manuscript (MS40A). These were removed in the early 20^th century and are now kept separately.

De Agricultura was well known in the Middle Ages and an important source for the Opus Ruralium Commodorum, a popular farming manual written by Petrus de Crescentiis around 1305. The Fellows’ Library holds two 15^th-century copies of this text: MS12 and MS44.

 

Literature: Edward Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae in unum collecti, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 1697), p. 31, no. 1365; Dorothea Waley Singer, Catalogue of Latin and Vernacular Alchemical Manuscripts in Great Britain and Ireland, dating from before the XVI Century, vol. 2 (Brussels, 1931), p. 650, where it is listed as 14^th-century manuscript; Neil R. Ker and Alan J. Piper, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, Volume IV: Paisley–York (Oxford, 1969), p. 628; Paul Yeats-Edwards, Winchester College (Warden and Fellows’ Library) Medieval Manuscript Collection: Brief History and Catalogue (London, 1978), p. 9.

Provenance: Unknown, at Winchester College by 1634.

Location: Fellows’ Library