Welsh Journals

sermone xvi°\ but I have not been able to identify it further. The rich list of contents of Gwysaney MS. 19 is brought to a close with sixteen books of the 'Moralia' of Pope Gregory the Great on the Book of Job, beginning with the epistle 'Dudum te frater beatissime' and ending a little abruptly at 'ad fetorem putredinis anhelat. Explicit'. At the end of the manuscript, the scribe has added this caution, which all writers would do well to take to heart: 'Coram quo, de quo, quid, ubi, cui, quomodo, quando Dicas, prevideas, ne male peniteas.' The fifteenth century is the best represented of all in the Gwysaney Collection as far as the number of manuscripts and the variety of their contents are concerned. Fragments of Gregory the Great's 'Homilies on Ezekiel' have already been men- tioned (Gwysaney MS. 28). Two of the fifteenth-century manuscripts also contain texts of homilies. One is Gwysaney MS. 22, which conceals under the vague title 'Homilies MS' a copy of the series of forty homilies of Pope Gregory the Great on the Gospels, followed by his 'Sermo de mortalitate ad populum in basilica beati Johannis appellata Constantiniana', and a homily of the Venerable Bede printed by Migne52 as Homily 23 of the First Book of the Homilies of Bede. The other, Gwysaney MS. 13, again hiding under the title 'Old Homilies MS. contains the 'Sermones super Evangelia' or 'Sermones Dominicales', a series of fifty-three sermons or homilies composed in the late fourteenth century by Philip Repington or Repyngdon (d. 1424). Repington53, who may have been Welsh by birth, was made chancellor of the university of Oxford in 1397, and was bishop of Lincoln from 1404 until he resigned the bishopric in 1410. Another well-known writer who also had connections with Lincoln at an earlier period, and whose work is represented in the Gwysaney Collection, is Robert Grosseteste,54 bishop of Lincoln 1235-53. Gwysaney MS. 16 contains a fifteenth-century copy of his commentary on the 'Posterior Analytics' of Aristotle. A note in red ink on f. 61v records the sale of this manuscript by 'Sir' John Ashby to 'Sir' John Hychecok for two shillings and sixpence. After the Explicit of the treatise occur the words 'Hic finit colni sentencia nobilis ensis'. Comparison with the catalogue entry for Bodl. Digb. MS. 207, another manuscript of the same work, shows that the correct reading is 'Lin finit colni sentencia nobilis ensis', in which Lincolniensis, a designation frequently applied to Grosseteste, has been split up. Gwysaney MS. 12 is described in both the 1740 and the 1778 catalogues as 'Liber Antiquus de Mendacio', a quite inadequate title derived, it would appear, from one of the sub-headings of the work it contains. The name of its author is not known. Beginning 'Si diligitis me, mandata mea servate', the composition is described by Dr. A. G. Little55 as 'Summa clericorum de vitiis, confessione, etc.' The unknown writer explains in the introductory chapter that he proposes to divide his essay into two parts (. in duas partes dividam). In the first, he deals with the fall of humanity from grace (de culpa et lapsu in miseriam); in the second with the opportunity for salvation (de venia adepta per penitentiam); and he likens his treatise to a lamp lighting man's way through the darkness (huic toto libello lucerne nomen impono).