Fragments as history: Magdalen College Oxford MS Lat. 143 and the Augustinian hermit friars

This paper begins with a close examination of the manuscript books and copying practices of a fifteenth-century cleric in Winchester diocese, William de Lacuna (died c. 1474), whose books were early accessions to the library of Magdalen College Oxford. It details a group of historical annals Lacuna included, arguing first that one of these, a Speculum institucionis ordinum et officiorum ecclesie, otherwise extant in multiple witnesses from continental Europe (transcribed in the appendix), documents both a shared interest in the alleged early origins and priority of the order of the Augustinian Hermit Friars and the efficacy of annalistic fragments in promoting their version of history. This Speculum owes much to Franciscan and Augustinian texts produced in fourteenth-century Erfurt, where Henry of Friemar and other chroniclers of the Augustinian hermit order had worked. The other key text Lacuna copied in this group of annals is then shown to be a condensed version of Friemar’s treatise on the origins of his order, previously unrecognized evidence for the reception of Friemar’s work. The paper ends by considering the reasons for copying these texts in Winchester in the later fifteenth century