- s. ix2
The second part of the paper considers the dissemination of the Dionysiac computus in the insular world. The main witness is MS Digby 63 of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Written in its present from in AD 867, the manuscript includes various blocks of computistical material derived from earlier sources. They include a dossier with the letters of Dionysius Exiguus and others on the computation of Easter. The dossier ends with the prologue and preface to the cycles of Felix of Squillace (AD 616).
Certain palaeographical traits betray the Roman provenance of the Dionysiac dossier. While it is not possible to establish a definite date for the arrival of the Dionysiac collection in England, there is a strong possibility that the dossier was sent from Rome in the time of Pope Vitalian (AD 672-76) in the context of his support for the Dionysiac computus and its adoption in Rome.
Two folios (foliated 124 and 127) that were originally part of Rawlinson B 512, where they were two of the leaves to have stood between what is now ff. 6 and 7. The fragments contain a part of the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick.
- s. xv/xvi
Oxford almanac for 1703, to which Edward Lhuyd has added an Irish grammar, a prosody in Irish and Latin and a few minor items, probably during his tour through Ireland.
- 1703
- Edward Lhuyd
Two leaves, now in Dublin, Trinity College, MS 1436, which formerly belonged to the Book of the White Earl (see Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 610, ff. 59–72 + 123–146). It contains a part of the Dinnshenchas Érenn, covering ten places in Ireland.
- 1453 x 1454
A paper manuscript containing copies of 33 saints’ Lives from the Codex Insulensis. It was written in 1627 by John Goolde, guardian of the Franciscan friary in Cashel, whose exemplar is thought to have been Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson 505 (itself a copy from Rawl. 485). The copy was intended for John Colgan and his Franciscan associates.
- 1627
- John Goolde [friar and scribe]
A purely hypothetical ‘very ancient book in the British language’ (quendam Brittanici sermonis librum uetustissimum) containing a history of the deeds of the kings of Britain, from Brutus to Cadwalladr, which Geoffrey of Monmouth alleges to have rendered into Latin when writing his Historia regum Britanniae, a work known for its audacious originality. Geoffrey mentions it in the preface to this work, where he claims to have received the book from Walter, archdeacon of Oxford. Whatever his source material may have been, or Walter’s role in supplying it, the claim that so much of this was written in the vernacular and contained in a single volume (implicitly, to which few would have access) is commonly regarded as a spurious appeal to authority.
13th-century English manuscript containing Latin Lives of St Martin (by Sulpicius Severus), St Nicholas of Myra (by John the Deacon), St Edmund of Canterbury and St Margaret, De inventione sanctae Crucis, and Lives St Agatha, St Brendan (Navigatio) and St Brigit (by Lawrence of Durham).
- s. xiii2
