A Descriptive Analysis of Nijmegen, Universiteitsbibliotheek, HS 194, a Late Medieval English Manuscript at Nijmegen University Library

Abstract

HS 194, a late medieval manuscript in the collection of Nijmegen University Library, is relatively unknown to scholars of Middle English. The manuscript, a small and rather soberly decorated prayer book, contains a range of devotional material in English and in Latin, in some cases uniquely attested and hitherto unknown. An added attraction to Nijmegen 194 is the detailed record of post-medieval ownership notes, entered into the manuscript by several generations of a single family of owners. These family records enable the present-day user to trace the whereabouts of the manuscript from the mid-sixteenth century until the end of the nineteenth century. The manuscript is a composite whose contents are divided across eleven booklets. Analysis of the manuscript's layout, script and decoration, as well as indications from the book's contents, point towards a fifteenth-century English origin. The majority of booklets that make up Nijmegen 194 do not seem to be designed to accompany each other; the manuscript as a whole probably came into existence in the hands of the first identifiable sixteenth-century owners. We analyse the construction, script, decoration, date, provenance, ownership and contents of Nijmegen 194, in order to come to a better understanding of the composition and history of the manuscript.

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