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Received: Thu, 27 Sep 2012 12:17:53 PM EDT
From: The Medieval Review <[log in to unmask]>
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Subject: TMR 12.09.35 Hanna and Turville-Petre, The Wollaton Medieval
Manuscripts (Coleman)
Hanna, Ralph, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. <i>The Wollaton
Medieval Manuscripts: Texts, Owners & Readers</i>. York: York
Medieval Press, 2010. Pp. xi, 146. $90. ISBN: 1903153344, ISBN-13:
9781903153345.
Reviewed by Joyce Coleman
University of Oklahoma
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The Wollaton manuscripts are of major importance for multiple
reasons. They comprise items crucial in widely different areas of
study, from Anglo-Saxon book-history (leaves of a Ceolfrith Bible)
through English art history (the Wollaton Antiphonal), devotional
history (a single leaf from the unique English life of St. Zita),
and romance studies (the unique copy of the <i>Roman de
Silence</i>). As the largest surviving library of a late-medieval
English gentry family, the collection--most of it housed at the
University of Nottingham Library--opens a window on book-ownership
patterns of the fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries. And thanks
to the extensive family archive surviving in the associated
Middleton Collection, also held at Nottingham, scholars are able to
situate the family's book acquisitions within a complex web of
professional and kinship relations.
The present volume combines essays on the collectors and some of
the most important manuscripts with catalogues giving full details
of "Wollaton" materials currently held at Nottingham or elsewhere.
The preface explains the institutional history and sometimes
confusing nomenclature of this complex set of books and fragments.
The material was assembled by the Willoughby family, resident from
the late fifteenth century at Wollaton (Notts.). Sir Thomas
Willoughby (d. 1729) became the first Baron Middleton, taking the
name from another family manor. In 1925, the eleventh Lord
Middleton sold off hundreds of printed books and a few manuscripts.
From 1947, most of the remaining Willoughby manuscripts and
archives were placed on deposit at the University of Nottingham
Library, as the Middleton Collection. A 2003 grant by the Heritage
Lottery Fund enabled the library to purchase and conserve eight
manuscripts, two fragments, and forty-two early printed books from
the Middleton Collection; it is this material that is now known as
the Wollaton Library Collection. The research project inspired by
this acquisition and resulting in the present book was led by Prof.
Turville-Petre and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research
Council.
In the first essay, "The History of a Family Collection," Hanna and
Turville-Petre trace the Willoughbys from the fourteenth to the
sixteenth century, noting the known or possible points at which
various books came into the family. The Willoughbys' fortune was
founded on the law, with father and son justices, both named
Richard, establishing the family estate at Willoughby-on-the-Wolds
(Notts.). From the early fourteenth century survive fragments of
legal texts that must have been read to pieces over the years. The
death of Hugh Willoughby in 1448 left his second wife with a life-
interest in Willoughby-on-the-Wolds. As a result, Richard (d.
1471), Hugh's heir by his first wife, took up residence in the
family manor at Wollaton. This move led to one of the family's
first, and most notable, manuscript acquisitions: the Wollaton
Antiphonal (Nott. 250), obtained by Richard for use in his new
family church, St. Leonard's. The manuscript came from the estate
of Sir Thomas Chaworth (d. 1459), along with a copy of John
Trevisa's <i>On the Properties of Things</i> and a now-lost English
translation of Guillaume de Deguilleville's <i>Pèlerinage de la vie
humaine</i>.
The bulk of the family's manuscripts seem to be associated with
Richard's nephew and eventual heir, Henry Willoughby (d. 1528), and
with Henry's offspring. Many or most of these "acquisitions" are
older manuscripts that entered the collection at this time via
marriage or other interactions. Among the interesting books are
copies of the <i>Estoire del Saint Graal</i> (early thirteenth
century); Robert of Gretham's <i>Mirur</i> (later thirteenth
century); John Trevisa's <i>Polychronicon</i> (c. 1420); John
Gower's <i>Confessio Amantis</i> (c. 1420s); John Lydgate's <i>Fall
of Princes</i> (late fifteenth century); and a volume containing
the <i>Speculum vitae</i> and <i>The Lay Folk's Catechism</i>
(early fifteenth century).
Hanna and Turville-Petre do a bravura job of tracking down marginal
inscriptions and reconstructing potential provenances. The most
elaborate exploration concerns the early fourteenth-century
collection of romances and fabliaux that includes the only
surviving text of <i>Silence</i> (WLC/LM/6). An inscription by a
Madame de Laval suggests that the manuscript was looted from the
Laval château when it was sacked in 1428 by John Talbot, later earl
of Shrewsbury. Alternate speculative provenances travel via Talbot
himself (in which case LM/6 becomes a source for the famous
Shrewsbury Manuscript (London, British Library Royal 15 E.vi), a
collection of romances and other texts presented to Margaret of
Anjou in 1445); or through a Sir Thomas Rempston who was one of
Laval's sackers and can be connected to "John Bertram de Thorp
Kilton," whose signature also appears in LM/6 and whose niece
married Sir Robert Harbottel, whose great-grandson married Jane
Willoughby, Henry's oldest daughter. Q.E.D.? One can only bow one's
head in wonder at the amount of prosopographical effort involved in
such painstaking, and indubitably plausible, reconstructions.
Chapter 2, "Sir Thomas Chaworth's Books," by Gavin Cole and Thorlac
Turville-Petre, reviews the books associated with this "intimate
friend" (26) of Richard Willoughby. Along with the antiphonal and
other books, noted above, which Richard obtained from Chaworth's
estate on his death in 1459, Thomas' will also shows that he owned
copies of John Lydgate's <i>Life of St. Alban and St. Amphibal</i>,
Henry Suso's <i>Orlogium Sapiencie</i> (Seven Points of True
Wisdom), and Ralph Higden's <i>Polychronicon</i>--none of which has
been securely identified with surviving manuscripts. Nonetheless,
these bequests reveal "a close-knit group of the county elite,
united by joint interests and ties of friendship and kinship"--or,
as Chaworth phrased it, by the "grete cordiall affeccion that he
hath in thaym before alle other creatures" (29).
The close and productive links between the Chaworth and Willoughby
families are further demonstrated in Alixe Bovey's contribution,
"The Wollaton Antiphonal: Kinship and Commemoration." Most likely
made c. 1430 for use in the Chaworths' private chapel at Wiverton
manor (Notts.), the manuscript is one of only two surviving
illustrated English antiphonals. It includes twenty-three
historiated initials but is most noted for its borders. A special
artist was brought in for these, to create elaborate heraldic
displays involving seven different families, from those of Chaworth
and his wife Isabella of Aylesbury through favored ancestors on
both sides. The most exuberant page is folio 246v, Psalm 109, where
the border explodes with coats of arms, helmets, crests, banners,
and bugle-blowers. (A partial digitization of the Wollaton
Antiphonal is available at
www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/exhibitions/w
ollaton/home.aspx.)
In "Two French Manuscripts: WLC/LM/6 and WLC/LM/7," Alison Stones
brings her art-historical expertise to bear on two manuscripts
featuring vernacular romance. LM/6 is significant for the history
of art, Stones claims, "since its 83 illustrations are without
antecedent among vernacular manuscripts in French" (42). Such
assertions of course depend on the date assigned to the codex, and
Stones argues that the accepted dating of the late thirteenth
century should be replaced with the one favored by earlier
scholars, the first quarter of the thirteenth century.
Stones' rationale for moving LM/6's date to the century's first
quarter is not clear. An extensive comparison of LM/6 to the two
earliest illuminated manuscripts containing parts of the prose
Vulgate Cycle (Modena, Bibl. Estense, E 39 and Rennes, Bibl. mun.
255) establishes basically that all three contain French romances,
have multiple illuminations, use bestiary creatures for some
illustrations, and have text written "above top line," i.e., above
the top guideline on the page. The differences seem at least as
significant: LM/6 contains poetry not prose, is a miscellany not a
single-text or –cycle manuscript, and has miniatures rather than
historiated initials; its pages are in a different format and there
is no suggestion of a common origin. As Stones notes, although Rennes
and Modena "offer some analogies for WLC/LM/6, neither is
stylistically comparable" (45). On the face of it, the comparison
does not seem enough to justify placing LM/6 before 1325, nor does
Stones engage with other relevant issues, such as the dating of the
anthology's texts.
Stylistic similarities leads Stones next to compare LM/6 to some late
twelfth-century psalters made in northern France and to a chansonnier
traditionally dated to the end of the thirteenth century and
attributed to Padua or Treviso but that Stones suggests could be
redated and resituated. Stones' wide knowledge of medieval
illumination has allowed her to raise a number of interesting
connections for LM/6, but none seems determinative, and the basis
for dating it to the first quarter of the thirteenth century
remains weak. Stones also compares LM/7, an incomplete,
unillustrated copy of the <i>Estoire del Saint Graal</i>, to Rennes
255 (which also contains the <i>Estoire</i>), and dates it
similarly to c. 1220.
An appendix (49-56) gives the folio number and a short description
of each miniature in LM/6, a feature that provides valuable
information to students of this fascinating manuscript. The
reproduction of twelve miniatures and one full page in color, and
of two full pages in black and white, is equally appreciated. (One
hopes that Nottingham will in due course make digitized images of
all the pictures available online.)
Derek Pearsall adds the Wollaton <i>Confessio</i> to his ongoing
catalogue of <i>Confessio Amantis</i> manuscripts in "The Wollaton
Hall Gower Manuscript (WLC/LM/8) Considered in the Context of Other
Manuscripts of the <i>Confessio Amantis</i>." Signed at one point
"by me Henry Wylloughbye" (f. 16), LM/8 is "a grand manuscript of a
familiar kind"; like eleven other similar manuscripts, all dated c.
1415-30, it has two forty-six-line columns on parchment. Its single
scribe shaped the page according to a "meticulously planned
<i>ordinatio</i> and programme of decoration and illustration"
(59). In this case, unfortunately, the decoration and illustration
were never completed.
Rob Lutton takes on the religious life of the Willoughby family, as
reflected in their books and documents. In "Vice, Virtue and
Contemplation: The Willoughbys' Religious Books and Devotional
Interests," the most significant manuscripts are LM/4 (late
thirteenth century), which contains the <i>Manuel des péchés</i>
and the only surviving complete text of Gretham's <i>Mirur</i>; and
LM/9 (early fifteenth century), which contains the <i>Speculum
vitae</i> and Gaytryge's <i>Lay Folks' Catechism</i>. Lutton
adeptly interprets sparse marginal notations (such as "Na"
indicating a "narrativa" or exemplum in the <i>Manuel</i>) for
evidence of reception. Together, he notes, the contents of LM/4 and
LM/9 "represent some of the most important texts and defining
moments in the vernacular dissemination of confessional, patristic,
biblical, and catechetic material in late medieval England" (75).
Lutton's examination of Willoughby bequests, inscriptions on items
of plate and jewelry, and other clues further indicates the
family's piety.
The last article, "Minding and Mending: Issues in Curating the
Medieval Manuscripts," by Dorothy Johnston, focuses on the Wollaton
Antiphonal, repair of which had begun before Nottingham acquired
the Wollaton Library Collection. Decisions made for the Antiphonal
were applied in due course to WLC manuscripts, namely to keep
intervention "to the minimum necessary to stabilise [the
manuscripts'] condition and repair what was immediately
vulnerable." This approach--due to financial constraints,
presumably, although Johnston does not say as much--leaves the
volumes "in a very fragile state" that restricts access (85).
Johnston closes by looking to digitization as the way to ensure
future access.
The catalogue section, also supplied by Hanna and Turville-Petre,
covers the Wollaton Library Collection, "Associated Manuscripts,"
"Additional Medieval Manuscripts in the Middleton Collection,"
"Dispersed Manuscripts," and "The Willoughby Early Printed Books."
The volume is generously illustrated, with forty-eight images,
including twenty-eight color plates.
Those interested in the Wollaton manuscripts should also be aware
of the websites associated with the project. At
www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsan dspecialcollections/index.aspx,
one can click on "Learning Resources" to find "Wives, Widows and
Wimples: Women in the University of Nottingham's Medieval
Collections." The site uses Willoughby manuscripts and documents to
illustrate topics such as "Nature or Nurture," "Marriage," and
"Education and Accomplishments." It includes a timeline that places
many of the manuscripts in their historical and social context.
Under "Research Guidance," back at the homepage, one can find
several useful teaching resources also using Willoughby material,
including "Medieval Books," "Reading and Understanding Medieval
Documents" (which offers an interactive paleography tutorial), and
"Caring for the Collections."
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