David Laing, eminent historian, antiquary and bibliographer, was the second son of the Edinburgh bookseller William Laing (1764-1832) and his wife Helen Kirk, and was born on 20 April 1793. He was educated at the Canongate Grammar School and later on attended Greek classes at the University of Edinburgh. At the age of fourteen, he became apprenticed to his father who, at the time, was the only bookseller in Edinburgh dealing in foreign literature. Laing was able, occasionally, to travel abroad in search of rare or curious books. In 1821, he became a partner in his father's business and throughout his life he was an avid collector of manuscripts and rescued many from destruction. The first published work of his own was Auctarium Bibliothecae Edinburgenae sive Catalogus Librorum quos Gulielmus Drummondus ab Hawthornden D.D.Q. Anno 1627 (1815). Among other works, Laing also reprinted Thomas Craig's Epithalamium on the marriage of Darnley and Mary Stuart (1821). When Sir Walter Scott founded the Bannatyne Club in 1823 for the printing of material and tracts relating to Scottish history and literature, Laing - a friend of Scott's - became Secretary of the Club and chief organiser until its dissolution in the 1860s. Laing was also associated with the Abbotsford Club, the Spalding Club, and the Wodrow Society, each of which had been set up for the publication of manuscripts and for the revival of old texts. When the keepership of the Advocates' Library fell vacant in 1818, Laing was a candidate but was not elected. He became Keeper of the Library to the Society of Writers to Her Majesty's Signet, a post which he occupied from 1837 until his death. On his appointment to the post, he gave up his business as a bookseller and disposed of the stock in a public sale. Laing died at Portobello, in Edinburgh, on 18 October 1878.
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This manuscript dates from the first half of the 15th century, and is a collection of didactic, pastoral, and meditative devotional treatises, as well as some fragments of works by late 14th-century English theologian, John Wycliffe. Generally, devotional texts were an important element of medieval piety, as they provided guidance for individuals to deepen their faith through study, meditation and prayer. This volume is perhaps best described as a medieval instructional manual....
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This manuscript contains 92 sermons in several different hands.A title on f. 1r reads: Incipiunt Sermones Provinciales. Dominica prima in Adventu Domini. The text starts on f. 1r with the following opening words: Hora est jam nos de sompno surgere. Est triplex sompnus ignorantie. And ends on f. 106v with the following words: salientes magnas foveas uno [?] ...
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A 15th century autograph manuscript (the author of the work is also the scribe of the manuscript) from the Carthusian Charterhouse at Erfurt. The author and scribe is Johannes de Indagine, who was a Carthusian monk and prior connected to Erfurt Charterhouse and other Carthusian houses in Germany in the fifteenth century. The manuscript includes a collection of commentaries on parts of the bible, including Paul's letters, the Song of Songs, and other parts of the old and new testaments....
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The manuscript contains the text of a commentary to Petrarch's Triumph of Fame written by Jacopo Bracciolini and published for the first time in 1475. The Triumphs (Trionfi in Italian) are a series of allegorical poems written in vernacular Italian by the poet Francesco Petrarca (1304 - 1374). They take their title from the Roman tradition of the triumph, the spectacular procession in which the...
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This Scottish manuscript contains a collection of texts about Scottish law. The first part of this manuscript (ff. 1-129) appears to have been written around the beginning of the last quarter of the 15th century; the rest (ff. 130-335) seems to have been written in 1496 (see Custodial History). The contents are as follows:ff. 1r-87r: Reportium (Index) to the volumeff. 89r-117v: Miscellaneous collection of lawsff. 118r-124v:...
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This major text contained in this manuscript is Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae, one of the most important texts of the Middle Ages, which was probably originally written around the start of the 7th century. It is accompanied by other related works in this manuscript, which dates from the 12th or 13th century and was probably made in Lucelle, France. The contents are as follows:ff. 1r-144v: Etymologiae by Isidore...
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Contains four texts in the same hand.ff. 1r-16v: Satires by Persiusff. 17r-28v: Ars Poetica by Horaceff. 29r-85r:Satires Book I and II by Horaceff. 85v-124r: Epistles Book I and II by HoraceThe texts will be described separately under the folios and titles listed above. ...
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Contains nine texts bound together, in different hands.Of note, the endpaper at the beginning of the manuscript is an interesting fragment from an Antiphoner of the 9th or 10th century. The other endpaper is a textual fragment too, although from later that the 9th/10th centuries.ff. 1r-8v: Bull of Pope Honorius III to Saint Francis and the brothers of the Orderff. 9r-13r: Bull of Pope Gregory IXff. 14r-50r: Bull of Pope Nicholas III from 1279,...
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MS 197 contains all six of the comedies by Roman playwright Terence.Andrea: ff. 1r-21v. Starts with the line [N]atus in excelsis tectis cartaginis alteEunuchus: ff. 22r-45v. Starts with the line [T]errentii affri incipit eunucus acta ludis megallensibusHeauton Timorumenos: ff. 45v-68r. The play starts with the line ...
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Contains six medical texts, and recipes inserted at a later date. The whole volume is written by the hand of Robert of Sherburn, with the exception of the recipes, written by Francis Cox.ff. 1v-2v: A Tabula to the volume, in the hand of Robert of Sherburn, and an ilustration of a physician and patient (described under 'Scope and Contents-Illumination').Ff. 3r-37r, ff. 41r-44r: 'Expositio cum questionibus super textu Rasis in...
