Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/463

 1922 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 455 the latter's name in two manuscripts at Merton College, Oxford, 301 and 309. An interesting example of the origin of a false attribution is furnished by 4 A. xiii. This contains in art. 1-4 biblical commentaries and in art. 5 the Dragmaticon of William of Conches. 1 The authorship is not given ; but a fifteenth-century table of contents assigned ' Wodeford ' as the author of the commentaries and ' Willelmus ' to that of the last article. Hence Bale combined the two names and attributed the whole to William Woodford, the opponent of Wycliffe. 2 As William of Conches lived in the twelfth century and the manuscript is of the thirteenth to fourteenth century, it is plain, as the authors point out, that there is no question of the well-known William Woodford. The intricate problems raised by the numerous canonical collections and abridgements are ably treated, 3 though for the earlier ranges more use might perhaps have been made of the important work of M. Paul Fournier. The Summa Brevis, a thirteenth- century manual, of which there are here several copies, has been ascribed to William de Monte, or de Montibus, of Leicester, chancellor of Lincoln, 4 and also to Kichard Grant or Wethershed, archbishop of Canterbury, 5 who is likewise known as de Montibus (10 B. ii, art. 5) : the claim of the former, it is observed, is excluded by the fact that he is quoted in the work (4 B. viii, art. 7). The mistake is partly explained by a correction in 13 A. xiv, art. 7. But almost every page illustrates the minute care with which the manuscripts have been examined. Thus, to take a couple of instances from the later part of the catalogue : under 11 D. iv, we have criticism of Hinschius's edition of the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals ; under 12 E. xi, art. 1, notes on the text of Geoffrey Vinsauf's Nova Poetria ; under 13 A. xii, on a variant redaction of Ralph Niger's chronicle. We add a few desultory notes on points which have occurred to us in reading the catalogue. 8 E. iv, a manuscript of c. 1200, contains a copy of Ennodius unknown to the latest editors of his works, Hartel (Vienna, 1882) and Vogel (Berlin. 1885). After this are ' other letters (45), real or fictitious, the source of which is unidentified. Most of the names contained might belong to Italy in the sixth century.' They, in fact, belong to the end of the fourth, for they include, with a few omissions, book v. 72-8, 91-8, and book vi. 1-19, 21, 22, 24-32, of the letters of Symmachus, as numbered in Otto Seeck's edition. 8 1 B. vii, a famous eighth-century copy of the Vulgate Gospels, is traced to an exem- plar brought by Abbot Hadrian ' who accompanied Archbishop Theodore to England in 668 ' (he did not in fact cross the Channel until some time later), and in this way its Neapolitan features are explained. It should have been noticed that the Rev. John Chapman in his Notes on the early History of tfie Vulgate Gospels (1908) contests the association with Hadrian because he finds nothing to connect the book with Canter- bury, and argues with great learning that its original was brought to Northumbria from Capua. If this be so, the same provenance may explain the Neapolitan features 1 The date of publication of this work is given, under 12 F. x, as 1597 instead of 1567. 2 Index Brit. Script, pp. 153f. 3 In 2 A. ii, art. 40, the opening word of Clement V's decretal Exivi de paradiso has been omitted by the transcriber of the manuscript ; and in 11 C. xi, art. 3, the famous decretal of Nicholas III is made to begin Exit qui seminal instead of Exiit. 1 Bale, Index Brit. Script, p. 131. Cf. ibid. p. 363. 8 For this reference we are indebted to the kindness of Professor Stuart Jones.