Middle English Manuscripts : Pricke of Conscience; Wycliffe commentary on the Lord's Prayer

Middle English Manuscripts

Known as the Corser Manuscript after one of its previous owners, this volume contains two works: the first is a manuscript copy of the Pricke of Conscience; and the second is an exposition on the Lord's Prayer attributed to John Wycliffe. The Pricke of Conscience is divided into 8 books with additions in Latin prose and English verse. Also contained in the manuscript, on folios <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(11);return false;'>1r</a> and <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(142);return false;'>66v</a>, are badly defaced accounts relating to payments to a certain Stanlou by parishes of the diocese of Vannes in Brittany. <p style='text-align: justify;'>(1) 'The myȝt off þe fadur almyȝti ... þt for ous fouched saff to henge.' Ed. Richard Morris, The pricke of conscience (see Bibliography below). For this version in eight instead of seven parts, much as in Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 60, see K.D. Bülbring in Englische Studien, xxiii (1897), pp. 23-8, and H.E. Allen, Writings of Richard Rolle (1927), pp. 388-93. The two points at which the largest amounts of Latin and English are interpolated into the text are: between lines 192 and 193, 440 lines of English verse interspersed with Latin prose (folios <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(14);return false;'>2v-7v</a>); between lines 6894 and 6895, Latin prose (folios <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(87);return false;'>39r-41v</a>, <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(101);return false;'>46r-48v</a>) and 563 lines of English verse interspersed with Latin tags and longer pieces of Latin (folios <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(92);return false;'>41v-46v</a>). After line 9474 come 112 lines of English verse (folio <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(131);return false;'>61r</a>, col. b, line 19 to folio <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(132);return false;'>61v</a> col. b, line 41), most of them taken from lines 6346-6401, which do not occur in their usual place after folio <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(83);return false;'>37r</a>, col. a, line 3. Part 8 begins in this section (folio <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(131);return false;'>61r</a>, col. b, line 29) 'Nou off þe viii part...'. At the end (folio <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(134);return false;'>62v</a>) is a note in Latin: 'Hoc nomen consciencia componitur ab hoc preposicione... agendorum et non etc'.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>(2) folios <a dir='auto' href='' onclick='store.loadPage(135);return false;'>63r-65v</a>, Exposition on the Lord's Prayer attributed to John Wycliffe, 'Sith the pater noster ys the beste preyer þat is... blisse and ioye with him with outen ende Amen.' W.W. Shirley, A catalogue of the original works of John Wyclif (1865), English 64. Thomas Arnold (ed.), Select English works of John Wyclif (1869-71), vol. 3, pp. 98-110. Cf. English MS 85 , item (2).</p>