MS 223, Cathedral Library, Salisbury, Great Britain
Texts available:
Confessio of St Patrick
Incipit: Incipit Confessio Sancti patrici. episcopi XVI kl aprili.
Explicit: explicit Liber primus
Epistola of St Patrick
Incipit: Incipit Secundus.
Explicit: None
About the manuscript:
The common ancestor of the English manuscript witnesses seems to have originated on the continent, which is suggested by several lives of saints with affiliation to the area of north-eastern France and Belgium. Some examples are the lives of Fursa (C, G), Gertrude (F), and Amand (C, G, F) in these manuscripts.
The two medieval manuscript witnesses from the Salisbury Cathedral library have closely connected histories. There current catalogue numbers are 221 and 223. Both manuscripts seem to have originated from the Salisbury scriptorium. Bieler remarked that the script of the manuscript is English and 'resembles certain Salisbury hands' (p. 10). The manuscripts were loaned to the Oxford library between 1652 and 1655 and not returned until 1985 (Webber, p. 40). In the Bodleian Library in Oxford they were in the Fell collection as manuscripts Fell 3 and Fell 4. White gave these manuscripts the sigla F3 (Ms 223) and F4 (Ms 221), while Bieler changed the sigla to F (Ms 223) and G (Ms 221).
- L. Bieler, Libri epistolarum sancti Patricii episcopi: part I. introduction and text (Irish Manuscripts Commission (Series), Dublin, 1952).
- F. Fischer and A. Harvey, Saint Patrick’s Confessio HyperText Stack (2011) (http://www.confessio.ie/).
- P. Freeman, A transcription of the Latin writings of St. Patrick from seven medieval manuscripts), (Dublin, Paris, London, Rouen, Aaras, Salisbury) (Hors serie, Lewiston, N.Y, 2008).
- T. Webber, Scribes and scholars at Salisbury Cathedral, c. 1075-c. 1125 (Oxford historical monographs, Oxford, New York, 1992), p. 40.
- Bodleian Library, A summary catalogue of Western manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Oxford, 1937), pp 1211–2.