Edition from MS Harley 2247, and MS Royal 18 B XXV
Susan Powell (ed.) (1981)
MSS Harley and Royal represent a late fifteenth-century homily collection consisting of a revised version of Mark’s Festial augmented with temporale sermons from other sources. The edition presents the first seven temporale sermons of the collection. Three of these are revised Festial sermons, while another three have been found in similar form in three other manuscripts, Cambridge U.L. Gg 6.16 (which, though imperfect, probably represents the collection used to augment the Festial revision), and the Dominical collection preserved in the sister manuscripts, Gloucester Cath. Lib. 22, and Lincoln, Dean and Chapter Lib. 50. The text of the Harley manuscript is accompanied by an apparatus of the variant readings of the Royal manuscript while the texts of the Cambridge, Gloucester, or Festial manuscripts, where relevant, are displayed on the facing pages (the Lincoln manuscript being used only to supply important variants). The Notes include commentary on both subject-matter and text, and the Introduction contains a description of the manuscripts involved, a discussion of their inter-relationships, and, in particular, a study of the revisions made in the Festial for the new compilation.