Lost Manuscript
Babel MS 25
The fragments identified to date all come from a relatively short work and presumably sat within a larger volume, perhaps a copy of the ars medicinae known as Articella. The glossing of the text, clarifying the meaning, suggests that this was a copy intended for practical purposes. It may not have been consider useful for very long, however: the doodled coats-of-arms added to H.b.25 ii suggests that in the fourteenth century at least one owner was not concentrating on the text.Three bifolia survive, which, judging from the text they provide, come from two separate quires.
Textual information
Palaeography
Material information
Section headings are rubricated.
Dimensions
History and further information
The dismantling can be dated with some precision: that the bifolia come from separate quires demonstrates it must have pulled apart at the binder’s and the binder can be named as George Chastelaine, who worked in Oxford, with these bindings date from between 1502 and his death in 1513.
On the Articella generally, see Cornelius O’Boyle, Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Copies of the Ars Medicine (Cambridge, 1998), a listing which does not include fragments.
