Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

To the fifteenth century is also to be assigned Gwysaney MS. 8, a breviary containing the Hours of the Blessed Mary, memorials of the saints including Thomas a Becket, the prayer of the Venerable Bede, the Penitential Psalms, Vigils of the Dead, Litanies of all the saints, and Commendations of Souls. This manuscript is distinguished by its elegant hand and its superb examples of the illuminator's art, including multicoloured full-page scenes and delicately-worked miniatures of episodes from the Scriptures. Gwysaney MS. 10 contains a fifteenth-century collection of prayers and devotional exercises. Gwysaney MS. 17, executed late in the same century, is another breviary containing lections, prayers, calendars of festivals, etc. And Gwysaney MS. 21 is a fifteenth-century commonplace book which was in the possession of 'Thomas ap William' in the late sixteenth century. The contents of Gwysaney MSS. 9 and 1 are of a legal nature. The latter belonged in the sixteenth century to Thomas Castell' of 'Stronde Inne'. It bears this piece of doggerel verse on f. 266: Cuius es? Castell' sum. Quid fers? Manifesto Registrum, Quod pronomen ei gratia celsa dei. Quid tibi restat plus? Brevium Naturaque cursus. Nam sic completus estque ?() Natura vetus. Que mundo tristi salvatorem peperisti Virgo per hunc natum Castell' nunc tolle reatum. The last of the Latin manuscripts of the fifteenth century is Gwysaney MS. 14, consisting of Ministers' Accounts of the Chamberlain of Chester for the counties of Chester, Flint, and Denbigh, 10 Henry IV--4 Henry V.56 Unfortunately, the top right-hand corner of the volume is severely mutilated with serious resultant loss of text. Among the Latin manuscripts of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, the following are worthy of mention: — A Planetary Calendar (Gwysaney MS. 26); a commonplace book of legal forms 57 (Gwysaney MS. 30); 'Turcarum Generalis Historia' by Walter Stonehouse, followed by notes on the parish church of Darfield, co. Yorks. (Gwysaney MS. 33); 'Verosimilia Historico-Prophetica de Rebus in Novissimo Die eventuris' (Gwysaney MS. 34), which appears to be a transcript of a printed book published in Christianstadt, Sweden, in 1627; extracts from Josephus and other Greek and Latin authors (Gwysaney MSS. 46, 47, 53); notes on a treatise on natural science by Daniel Sennertus (Gwysaney MS. 63); a commentary on the General Epistle of Jude (Gwysaney MS. 67), and a copy of Archbishop Ussher's version of Nennius's 'Historia Britonum' (Gwysaney MS. 68). Though pride of place in this survey has been given to manuscripts written in the Latin language, it must not be thought that the collection contains no manu- scripts of value written in Welsh and English. Perhaps the most interesting of the Welsh manuscripts is Gwysaney MS. 27,58 which contains the autograph re- vision of Richard Davies, bishop of St. Davids (1 561 -81), of the Pastoral Epistles of St. Paul to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. After the quarrel between himself and William Salesbury which brought to an end their joint design of translating