John Mirk's Festial: Edited from British Library MS Cotton Claudius A.II, Volume II

Abstract

The Festial, as the most frequently circulated orthodox English sermon collection of the Middle Ages, presents a particularly difficult task for the editor. There are two recensions, and there is also a comprehensive revision and expansion in four extant manuscripts. The first recension (Group A) presents a complex pattern of copying and re-copying over a long period of time in a variety of different places - inevitably, many intervening manuscripts have been lost (twelve survive). The second recension (Group B) presents a much more stable text (eight manuscripts). In addition, there are twenty partial manuscripts and manuscripts with just a few Festial excerpts, some adapted for different contexts from Mirk’s original. This is the first edition since Theodor Erbe's EETS ES 96 edition of 1905 (based on only 6 MSS), of which only Part I was published. It is the result of a consideration of all the known manuscripts and consists of Introduction, Text, Explanatory Notes, Select Glossary, Glossary of Proper Names, and five Appendices.

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