A Previously Unrecorded Fragment of the Middle English Short Metrical Chronicle in Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica M199

Abstract

This article presents an edition of a fragment of the Middle English Short Metrical Chronicle found in Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam, MS M199 (henceforth BPH M199). BPH M199 is an alchemical miscellany probably compiled in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. It mainly contains alchemical prose and verse tracts in English and Latin, but it also includes treatises on magic, a condensed and reworked version of the verse dialogue Sidrak and Bokkus and the fragment of the Short Metrical Chronicle (henceforth Chronicle). To my knowledge, this is a previously unrecorded fragment of the Chronicle. Since the Chronicle has received a great deal of attention in previous scholarship, it is important to make the version of BPH M199 available to scholars interested in the Chronicle. BPH M199 demonstrates that the Chronicle continued to be copied in the early Modern period, and the manuscript provides insights into the reception and interpretation of the text in this period. I will contextualize the BPH M199 fragment by discussing the characteristics of the manuscript, by considering the possible reasons for the appearance of the Chronicle in BPH M199, and by collating the fragment with the other known versions of the Chronicle.