Miscellany: Sermon outlines and themata. Moralium dogma philosophorum (England, 13th/14th century)
MS 203
This book has been at St John’s College for over 460 years
The Benefactors’ Book (MS 374) keeps a record of early book donations to the College, starting in the year of its foundation with the donations made by John White of Southwick (d. 1567). The first book listed (with the opening line Est filia melior) is still in the library as MS 203. Four originally separate manuscripts have been bound into this little volume: A commonplace book (fols 1-10), a series of 22 sermon outlines or themata (fols 11-24), 153 sermons (fols 25-225), and finally Moralium dogma philosophorum (fols 226-238). The book has been assembled rather haphazardly. The opening displayed is from the second manuscript, which is clearly smaller than the others. It is also the only section with any noteworthy decoration. An index for the second manuscript was added to the last page of the first manuscript (fol. 10v) in essentially the same script as the text of the first manuscript. It thus looks like these two manuscripts were put together in the early 14th century. When the remaining two manuscripts joined them is unclear.
For a long time, John White of Southwick was described as a brother of the College’s founder, Thomas White, but it is now believed that the relation was more distant. He donated a total of twenty-four books to St John’s College; unusually for the time, all of them were manuscripts. White was ‘a bibliophile gathering from diverse sources (perhaps especially suppressed monastic houses) a substantial personal collection’ (Hanna, p. xix). Eight of White’s gifts, including MS 203, previously belonged to the priory of Augustinian canons in Southwick. This is no coincidence, as John White himself was involved in the process of closing the priory. He must have liked what he had seen, because he not only evidently helped himself to the priory’s books, but he also took over the entire site with a lease in May 1538 before purchasing it outright in 1539 (The National Archives).
Further Resource
Descriptive catalogue record available at Medieval Manuscripts in Oxford Libraries