Parergon

Written in the 1380s, John Mirk’s sermon-cycle had most of its impact much later: it underwent considerable excerpting and two re-workings, and was printed twenty-three times, making it for a while the most widely circulated Middle English text. It then suffered a near-total eclipse from the Reformation until Erbe’s edition of 1905, of which only Volume i (text and glossarial index) appeared, owing to his death in World War I. [End Page 262]

Susan Powell has made Claudius A.II her base manuscript, for reasons she sets out in her detailed analysis of it. The choice is almost inevitable, as this is by far the earliest copy, and uniquely preserves much in the way of original-looking forms and lexis; but it is also a difficult choice, as Claudius gives the text in five heterogeneous sections (four hands, one including an unmistakable change of exemplar), some nearer the original than others, and all but two of them having significant affinities with the post-Mirk ‘Group B’ recension. Erbe’s edition, based on what Powell’s investigations have shown to be the second-best surviving copy, provides a more homogeneous text, and offers readings likely to be closer to what Mirk wrote, although in the sections in Powell’s hand D (about three-fifths of the whole) the two editions seldom diverge markedly.

This is a critical best-text edition, sparingly emended through comparison with the other manuscripts, and preserving a wide assortment of scribal oddities, though with modern punctuation and capitalization and silently expanded abbreviations. While Section 3 of the Introduction gives a lucid overview of the Festial’s complex transmission, there are no descriptions or datings of any of the manuscripts, other than Claudius. It might have been made clear that the ‘Instructions for Parish Priests’ (ed. Young) listed in the Bibliography is not the separate work by Mirk discussed under that title in the Introduction, but a component (28. in this volume) of the Festial itself.When Volume II appears, containing the remainder of the text, notes, glossary, and the sample collations on which Powell’s views on manuscript relationships are based, a lively medieval work whose influence continued into early modern times will be available in a scholarly form.