Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 133: Algorism. Thomas Gray, Scala Chronica
- Title:
- Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 133: Algorism. Thomas Gray, Scala Chronica
- Alternate Title:
- Algorismus. Scala Cronica
- Language:
- French, Middle (ca. 1400-1600), English, Middle (1100-1500), and Latin
- Extent:
- ff. 234 + 3
- Dimensions:
- 318 Height (mm) and 190 Width (mm)
- Approximate Date:
- [ca. 1300 - 1399]
- Provenance:
- On f. ir is a mark.
- Table of contents:
-
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- Algorism
- Scala Chronica
- Description:
- CCCC MS 133 contains the unique copy of Sir Thomas Gray's Anglo-Norman Scala Chronica, begun while its English author was awaiting ransom from Scottish captivity in 1355-1356 and completed some time after 1363, where the account ends. The work is a uniquely valuable source for the history of the troubled Anglo-Scottish border region and wider English politics of the mid-fourteenth century. The unique copy in this manuscript, probably dating to c. 1400, was made not long after the date of the original text's completion and, since the early fifteenth century, has been bound with a late fourteenth-century copy of the Algorism, a verse and prose treatise on mathematics in Anglo-Norman and English. The manuscript was almost certainly in the hands of Gerald FitzGerard, Earl of Kildare (d. 1534) and may have come to that family from a descendant of the work's original author. It was subsequently acquired by the historian John Bale (1495-1563), during his brief tenure as bishop of Ossory in 1552, and probably came to Parker from Bale's collection.