Bodleian MS. Eng. poet. a. 1 (Vernon Manuscript), Folio 265r, showing blue columbine flowers, a praying figure in a religious habit and the image of God the Father with Christ on the cross in the interlace that decorates the initial and frames.
Written in the dialect spoken in the English West Midlands around 1400, the Vernon Manuscript (Bodleian Library MS. Eng. poet. a. 1) is considered "the biggest and most important surviving late medieval English manuscript."[2]
Remarkably, it contains 370 poetry and prose texts on moral or religious subjects, has over 700 pages and weighs 22 kilograms (49 pounds). In length it is two and a half times as long as Tolstoy's War and Peace.
Among the contents of the Vernon manuscript are the Vernon sequence of moralizing lyrics, a unique Arthurian Grail romance (Joseph of Arimathia), a text of the alliterative Pistill of Susan, one of the earliest copies of Piers Plowman (A-text), the Speculum Vitae in rhyming couplets and, among some notable prose, a recension of the Ancrene Riwle, an early copy of Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection and important versions of Richard Rolle's epistles, besides some of his other outstanding devotional poems. The English of the two scribes, coming from the central West Midlands, is also of great interest.
The Bodleian Library website offers a virtual exhibition catalogue on the Vernon Manuscript, divided into ten themes: Materials, Contents, Illustration, Decoration, Script, Assembly, Language, Luxury Manuscripts, Owners and Readers, and Vernon in the Digital Age, at this link.
