[AQUAVILLA, Nicolas De, [with] WIMBLEDON, Thomas].

This handsome English manuscript contains texts by likely two medieval English authors, one in Middle English; it has a fine English noble provenance, and has been unseen by scholarship since the 1960s; the Middle English text survives in only sixteen manuscripts, all in institutional ownership, and only one outside the British Isles.

Provenance:

1. Most probably written for an English ecclesiastic or theology scholar, in the opening years of the fifteenth century. Among the surviving manuscripts of the Redde Racionem, the text here shows a close affinity (perhaps sharing a common exemplar) with British Library, Additional MS. 37677, an early fifteenth-century manuscript including texts in a Midland dialect once in the library of the archdeaconry of Huntingdon, and the present manuscript may be of Midland or East Anglian origin. Wherever this book survived the Middle Ages, it was almost certainly entered private hands during the dissolution of the monasteries.

2. The library of Lord Tollemache at Helmingham Hall; in their armorial binding and with the classmark “L.J.II.2” (the ‘2’ later cancelled in pencil, and replaced by “B3”) on front pastedown; most probably acquired by Sir Lionel Tollemache, 1st Baronet, c. 1600; sold Sotheby’s, 14 June 1965, lot 20.

3. Quaritch, cat. 869 (1966), listed without number on back cover of catalogue (with the texts ascribed there to John Quintin, who later edited the first text, and ‘Robert’ Wimbledon).

Text:

Both texts here were composed by authors who were eclipsed by the popularity of their own works, and especially little is known about Nicolaus de Aquavilla. He was a Franciscan preacher of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, and probably died c. 1317. His ‘surname’ was interpreted as referring to Hacqueville or Deauville, giving him a Norman or French origin, but most recently the late Richard Sharpe observed that some manuscripts give his surname as ‘Waterton’, indicating he was English (R. Sharpe, A Handlist of the Latin Writers of Great Britain and Ireland Before 1540, Brepols, 1997, p. 383, Sharpe notes this epithet can be found in Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS. 263 and Lincoln Cathedral, MS. 215). Johannes Baptist Schneyer listed some 56 manuscripts (Repertorium der lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters: fur die Zeit von 1150-1350, 1969-90, IV:189-95), scattered across European institutional libraries, of which 27 are in the United Kingdom (against 17 French, 7 German, 2 Italian and single copies in Belgium and Sweden), supporting the author’s English origin. To those listed by Schneyer, Sharpe added three more (Dublin, Trinity College, MS. 204; Lincoln Cathedral, MS. 59; and Oxford, Christ Church, MS. 91), all from the British Isles.

The first text here (ff. 1-124r) opens with the quotation: “Hora est iam nos de sompno surgere etc.”, from Romans 13, and the opening words of the first sermon: “In ista totali epistola monet nos apostolus …”. The text ends “… Ad illa gaudia eterna perducat nos ihesus christus Amen”. The identification of the author of the ‘tractatus’ as “Nycholaus de aque villa” by a contemporary hand at the end of the second text, must refer to the initial one, added by an owner or user who overlooked that it contained two separate works.

The Redde Racionem (ff. 124r-137) has been variously ascribed to two English divines with the surname ‘Wimbledon’. W.W. Shirley, following a small number of the manuscripts, identified him as R. Wimbledon, expanding this to ‘Richard’, or ‘Robert’ as in the Quaritch catalogue (A Catalogue of the Original Works of John Wycliff, Oxford, 1865, p. 55). The author had, in fact, already been noted by Henry Saville (d. 1622) in his catalogue (now British Library, Additional MS. 35214, fol. 30v) as Thomas Wimbledon (with variants as ‘Tho.’, and ‘Thome’), and this is supported by the majority of the manuscripts, including some crucial early witnesses (see L. R. Mooney, Index of Middle English Prose, Handlist XI, p. 12; I. Kemp Knight, Wimbledon’s Sermon: Redde Rationem villicationis tue: a Middle English Sermon of the Fourteenth Century, Pittsburgh, PA., 1967, p. 43). The text is catalogued in the Index of Printed Middle English Prose, as no. 560, and has been edited twice from single manuscripts: by K.F. Sundén, A famous Middle English Sermon (Ms. Hatton 57. Bod. Lib.) Preached at St. Paul’s Cross, London, on Quinquagesima Sunday, 1388, Göteborg, 1925, and Nancy H. Owen, ‘Thomas Wimbledon’s Sermon: Redde racionem villicacionis Ave’, Mediaeval Studies, 28, 1966, pp. 176-97; and most recently from a collation of the Cambridge, Corpus Christi College copy with the majority of the known manuscripts by I. Knight, 1967 (that publication based on her PhD., including the present manuscript as her ‘H2’ and examined by her in Helmingham Hall before sale).

Thomas Wimbledon appears to have been a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, a haven for heretical sentiments in fourteenth-century England (Wyclif had been a minor fellow there), who forged a reputation as a virtuoso preacher (however, see V. O’Mara, ‘Thinking Afresh about Thomas Wimbledon’s Paul’s Cross Sermon of c. 1387’, in Leeds Studies in English, n.s. XLI, 2010, p. 160). The sermon recorded here was preached at the famous outdoor pulpit, Paul’s Cross (a stone pulpit in the grounds of Old St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, from where most of the changes of the Reformation were announced – its site now marked by an inscribed stone), on Quinquagesima Sunday, 1387 or 1388. Based on Luke 16.2, it is apocalyptic in tone, an uncompromising dissection of the vices of English society and an urgent call to its listeners to amend their lives. It urges them to repent and prepare for vengeance, Judgement Day and the end of the world, also offering a sharp criticism of all traditional three estates of society: clergy, nobility and labourers. As O’Mara notes, the number of surviving manuscripts and printings and the dialectical range that the text survives in (“ranging from Somerset to Lincolnshire and from Essex to Northamptonshire”: O’Mara, 2010, pp. 156-57), shows this to have been an extremely popular and well-known text (in her words: the “single most famous Middle English sermon”). It was sometime attributed to Wyclif himself.

It survives now in sixteen manuscripts, plus four in Latin (perhaps translated into Latin from Middle English: see O’Mara, 2010, p. 162). All are in institutional ownership, and only one, that formerly Sir Thomas Phillipps, MS. 11,929, and sold by Sotheby’s in 1895, and now Huntingdon Library, HM 502, is outside the United Kingdom. The present codex is the sole copy likely to ever appear on the market. The manuscripts are listed and described by Knight, and added to by A. Walsham, ‘Inventing the Lollard Past: The Afterlife of a Medieval Sermon in Early Modern England’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 58:4, 2007, pp. 628-55, specifically pp. 628-9, n. 1, and O’Mara, 2010, pp. 155-171. These manuscripts, arranged in approximate chronological order, are:

i. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 357: the text in a fourteenth-century section of this sammelband;
ii. British Library, MS. Add. 37677: early fifteenth century;
iii. the present manuscript: Helmingham Hall, MS. LJ II 2 (Walsham notes a reproduction in British Library, microfilm RP 13): dated c. 1400.
iv. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Engl. th. f. 39: dated 1400;
v. Dublin, Trinity College, MS. 155 (formerly MS C. 5. 7): c. 1400;
vi. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Hatton 57: early fifteenth century, dated by Sund.n after 1400;
vii. Huntington Library, CA., MS. HM 502 (once Sir Thomas Phillipps, MS. 11,929): early fifteenth century;
viii. British Library, MS. Harley 2398: first half of the fifteenth century, perhaps c. 1425;
ix. Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys MS 2125: fifteenth century;
x. British Library, MS. Royal 18 A xvii: fifteenth century;
xi. British Library, MS Royal 18 B xxiii: mid-fifteenth century;
xii. Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College, MS. 74: fifteenth century;
xiii. Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. B. 14. 38: fifteenth century;
xiv. Oxford, University College, MS. 97: fifteenth century;
xv. Leeds, Brotherton collection, MS. 501: fifteenth century;
xvi. Durham University, Hunter MS. 15/2 (a fragmentary witness);

In addition, an abridged version survives in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS e Museo 180, Gloucester Cathedral Library, MS. 22 and Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS. 50, and the Latin manuscripts are: Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 334; Cambridge University Library, MS Ii 3.8; British Library, MS. Harley 331; and Oxford, Trinity College, MS. 42. Numerous printings were also made in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries (see Knight, 1967, pp. 22-26, and O’ Mara, 2010, pp. 169-170).

The present manuscript is among the earliest witnesses to the text, and may be of importance for its history. It was included in Knight’s survey and textual collation, but she notes only the existence of a close relationship with the slightly later British Library, Additional MS. 37677, suggesting a common exemplar, but without significant further comment (Knight, 1967, pp. 30-31). No two manuscripts are identical, and it is to be hoped that the present manuscript, now having come to light, will play an important role in future scholarship.

The text here opens: “Mi dere freendis ȝe schulen understonde …”, and ends “… to whom be worshipe & glorie into worldis of worldis Amen”.