'Hec est quedam profetia que fuit inventa': A Prophecy in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 372

Abstract

The majority of MS 372 in the Parker Library consists of a copy of Martin of Troppau’s Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum. The Chronicon, produced by Martin in three recensions between 1268 and his death in 1278, was a highly influential and common text in the later Middle Ages, and is known to survive in 484 European manuscripts, including eighty-three of English provenance.4 According to von den Brincken’s classificatory scheme of Chronicon manuscripts, MS 372 belongs to class III, as it retains Martin’s original system of facing sides devoted respectively to popes and emperors, but dispenses with his tabular page layout in which lines were employed to represent years. For the majority of the chronicle following the preface, the papal chronicle is on verso and the imperial on recto, though scribal error causes this to reverse after folio 45v, a mistake which also results in the partial or complete omission of entries on three emperors.