England.- Opening leaf from a copy of the Memoriale Presbiterorum Parochialium, an English penitential manual, manuscript on vellum, text in Latin, single leaf, text in double column of 57 lines of late medieval English bookhand, rubrics, paraph marks and running titles in red, spaces left for initials, recovered from reuse in a later binding and hence with small wormholes, scuffs, small stains and remnants of paper adhering to reverse, overall in good condition, 293 by 196mm, England, [fifteenth century (most probably first half)].

*** This text opens at the head of the recto here with the incipit: “Incipit memoriale presb[ite]rorum parochialium a diver[si]s doctoribus tractatum sub brevitate extractum”, and the opening words: “[C]um animaduerterem quamplurimos presbiteros parochiales graviter errare in vis...”. The text was a penitential and confessional manual, composed in the mid-fourteenth century as a practical manual for the English priesthood. The author is uncertain, but has been identified by Michael Haren as an influential cleric, named William Doune, who served as an official of John Grandisson, bishop of Exeter, who was in turn the mentor of Richard FitzRalph, later archbishop of Armagh (see Haren, Sin and Society in Fourteenth-Century England: A Study of the Memoriale Presbiterorum, 2000).

It is of significant rarity in manuscript, with Michael Haren listing only five extant manuscripts, all in institutional ownership: (i) Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 148 (this the earliest witness, dated to the mid-fourteenth century); (ii) London, Westminster Diocesan Archives, MS. H. 38; (iii) Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Selden Supra 39; (iv) London, British Library, MS. Harley 3120; and (v) Cambridge University Library, MS. Mm. v. 33; but not including this newly-discovered witness.