Title: Wycliffe's translation of the New Testament.

Item No.: MS Lich 10.

Date: c. 1410.

Language: Middle English.

Codicology: Written in iron gall ink on vellum. Text is written in two columns. Decorated initials begin prologues and chapters. Manicules (pointing hands) appear on folios 75r and 85r.

Foliation: 124 Bi-folios + iv (added later).

Dimensions: Binding: (L) 282 mm x (W) 227 mm; Spine: 44 mm; Folio: (L) 270 mm x (W) 207 mm.

Provenance: Bequeathed to Lichfield Cathedral by Ernest Richard Orlando Bridgeman, Prebendary of Flixton and Rector of Blymhill (57 years). It reached Lichfield Cathedral Libarary by 1941. In the 1970s, the manuscript was overlooked by Conrad Lindberg and not included when he updated Forshall and Madden. The manuscript was first included in a scholarly listing of Wycliffe texts by Mary Dove in her The First English Bible, published in 2007.

Scholarship: Benedikt Sigurđur Benedikz completed the only scholarly work on this New Testament, examining the devotional poem written in the open space on folio 124v, at the end of the Book of Revelations (I am working to locate a copy of this publication).

References:

Dove, Mary. The First English Bible: The Text and Context of the Wycliffite Versions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Forshall, Josiah and Frederic Madden. The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal Books in the Earliest English Versions, Made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and His Followers. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1850.