Manuscript Description Scotland, Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates' MS 18.1.7. | |
| Title: | Mirrour of the Blessed Life |
| Author: | Nicholas Love |
| Contents: | Mirrour of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ |
| Language: | Middle English |
| Datable: | post 1409 |
| Scribal Hands: | Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms. |
| Dialect: | S.W. Midlands |
| Material: | parchment |
| No of Folios: | ii + 162 + ii |
| Pagination: | modern pencil foliation upper outer corners recto, counting older flyleaves ruled but blank, 4 at front and 2 at back. |
| Quiring: | quires of 8 |
| Signatures: | begin with '+.i' on folio 6, 'a.i' on folio 16 |
| Catchwords: | by each scribe in his portion, centred under second column, in portions by Scribe A and occasionally by Scribe B with a brown ink parallelogram around, often redrawn with red ink |
| Page Size: | 318 x 213 mm |
| Frame: | frame in red ink, two columns and narrow column in outer margin for glosses, 6 horizontals enclosing top and bottom lines and running titles |
| Writing Space: | 212 x 142 mm in two columns, each c. 64 mm wide |
| Incipits and Explicits: | rubric by scribes |
| Borders: | red, orange, blue, green, pink and illuminated gold |
| Historiated Initials: | e.g. folio 9r, pink lion's or grotesque's head inside letter |
| Illuminated Initials: | blue, green, pink on illuminated ground, white highlighting |
| Miniatures: | full-page, e.g., folio 5v |
| Paragraph Marks: | alternating blue with red flourishing and gold with dark blue flourishing |
| Further Information: | J.J. Griffiths says in his description of the Tokyo, Waseda MS of Love's Mirrour, that the Register of the Skinners Company (Guildhall 31692) up to 22 Henry VI (1443-1444) is also by this scribe, ff 2-19 (1441) and sporadically thereafter to 1443-1444. See also Griffiths in Eng/MSS Studies 5 (1995), 214-219. [for illust. of f4 see Robinson, Dated and Datable London, Plate 116] For Griffiths see Nicholas LOve at Waseda: Proceedings of the International Conference, 20-26 July 1995, ed. S. Oguro et al. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997): 172-172. Note: Gilte Legende composed 1438 so Takamiya 45 must have been written after 1438. See also J.J.G. Alexander, 'William Abell, 'Lymnour' and 15th Century English Illumination' notes that the same artist did NLS Advocates' 18.1.7 (Nicholas Love), Manchester Rylands Eng. 1 (Troy Book), and Bodl. Laud Misc. 733 (Chronicle of England to Henry V). |