Abstract:
Ashmole 61 contains five popular romances: Sir Isumbras,
The Earl of Tolouse, Libeus Disconeus, Sir Cleges, and Sir Orfeo.
These are compiled with 38 preaching, teaching and entertaining verse
texts. This thesis examines the practice, purpose and personality of
Rate, a scribal editor working around 1480-1500. Chapter 1 provides a
full palaeographical description of the manuscript, with discussion of
the often perplexing features of its make-up. Chapter 2 examines the
nature and purpose of Rate's scribal editing. Chapter 3 suggests the
possible identity of the scribe and his social background. Chapter 4
provides information in tabular and note form on the manuscript
context of each item. In volume two, all 43 texts are transcribed,
with editorial notes and pertinent collations, ending with a critical
survey and the bibliography. The study explores the
creative-destructive function of a medieval scribe, demonstrating how
a deliberate policy of adaptation in Ashmole 61 is at work, undermined
by a lack of expertise in assimilating changes. Variants have been
attributed to Rate only if consistent with modes of omission, addition
and alteration that are well-attested throughout the manuscript as a
whole. The texts themselves are re-shaped in order to express family
unity and piety on the one hand, and on the other a strong
anti-Semitic devotion to the Passion of Christ in the cult of the Five
Wounds, which provides a significant interpretation of Rate's sketches
of fish, roses, hexafoil and shield. Since the scribal dialect was
localized in North-East Leicestershire, the combination of the scribal
editing, the devotional bias and the curious sketches, suggests links
with the Corpus Christi Guild of Leicester, and with medieval
pilgrimage. Far from being a "minstrel's storybook", the manuscript
was either the library of a devout, literate merchant, or, with
slightly more evidence, the handbook of a family chaplain.
