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Manuscript Description
London, British Library MS Royal 18 C.XXII
 
Title:Confessio Amantis
Author:Gower
Contents:Confessio Amantis
Language:English and Latin
Date Range:1400-1425
Scribal Hands:
Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms.
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Dialect:County; Gowerian/Bucks (Scribe Delta, cf LP 6710)
Material:Parchment
No of Folios:One old parchment flyleaf + 206 folios
Pagination:Semi-modern foliation in pen, both recto and verso (repeats number of recto on verso of same leaf), 1-206.
Quiring:8
Catchwords:In the usual place, by scribe, underlined and initial washed with yellow.
Page Size:ca. 390 x 235
Frame:4 x vertical around two columns, 2 x horizontal enclosing top and bottom lines, ladders inside columns only; black ink.
Writing Space:270 x 168; 270 x 75 for each column
Incipits and Explicits:'Explicit liber Secundus' and 'Incipit Liber Tercius'.
Marginal Headings:Red Latin text, red indications of 'Confessor' or 'amantis' within columns but to right of lines of verse.
Running Titles:Red running titles, 'liber' on verso pages and for example 'Tercius' on rectos.
Borders:f1 has a bar border all around the page with bosses and foliage in blue, gold, green and pink. Similar treatment beginning each book, for example on f51 for the beginning of Book Three.
Historiated Initials:On f1 an 8-line blue initial with white cut-out highlighting, enclosing miniature of man in red, confessing(?) bowing? before another in white with blue hood (lover and confessor?), on gold ground with bosses.
Illuminated Initials:2-line gold initials on parti-coloured blue and pink grounds with white highlights, no sprays, as in many quires of Add 24194.
Flourished Initials:One-line blue initials with red penwork decoration.
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, King's Manor, York YO1 7EP