Robert Thornton and his Books

Essays examining the compiler and contents of two of the most important and significant extant late medieval manuscript collections.

Essays examining the compiler and contents of two of the most important and significant extant late medieval manuscript collections.

The Yorkshire landowner Robert Thornton (c.1397- c.1465) copied the contents of two important manuscripts, Lincoln Cathedral, MS 91 (the "Lincoln manuscript"), and London, British Library, MS Additional 31042 (the "London manuscript") in the middle decades of the fifteenth century. Viewed in combination, his books comprise a rare repository of varied English and Latin literary, religious and medical texts that survived the dissolution of the monasteries, when so many other medieval books were destroyed. Residing in the texts he copied and used are many indicators of what this gentleman scribe of the North Riding read, how he practised his religion, and what worldly values he held for himself and his family.
Because of the extraordinary nature of his collected texts - Middle English romances, alliterative verse (the alliterativeMorte Arthure only exists here), lyrics and treatises of religion ormedicine - editors and scholars have long been deeply interested in uncovering Thornton's habits as a private, amateur scribe. The essays collected here provide, for the first time, a sustained, focussed light on Thornton and hisbooks. They examine such matters as what Thornton as a scribe made, how he did it, and why he did it, placing him in a wider context and looking at the contents of the manuscripts.

Susanna Fein is Professor of Englishat Kent State University; Michael Johnston is an Assistant Professor of English at Purdue University.

Contributors: Julie Nelson Couch, Susanna Fein, Rosalind Field, Joel Fredell, Ralph Hanna, Michael Johnston, George R. Keiser, Julie Orlemanski, Mary Michele Poellinger, Dav Smith, Thorlac Turville-Petre.

Introduction: The Cheese and the Worms and Robert Thornton - Michael Johnston
The Contents of Robert Thornton's Manuscripts - Susanna Fein
Robert Thornton: Gentleman, Reader and Scribe - George R. Keiser
The Thornton Manuscripts and Book Production in York - Joel Fredell
The Text of the AlliterativeMorte Arthure: A Prolegomenon for a Future Edition - Ralph Hanna
The Text of the AlliterativeMorte Arthure: A Prolegomenon for a Future Edition - Thorlac Turville-Petre
'The rosselde spere to his herte rynnes': Religious Violence in the AlliterativeMorte Arthure and the Lincoln Thornton Manuscript - Mary Michele Poellinger
Constantinian Christianity in the London Thornton Manuscript: The Codicological and Linguistic Evidence of Thornton's Intentions - Michael Johnston
Apocryphal Romance in the London Thornton Manuscript - Julie Nelson Couch
Thornton's Remedies and Practices of Medical Reading - Julie Orlemanski
Afterword: Robert Thornton Country - Rosalind Field and Dav Smith
Bibliography