Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Tuesday 7 September 2021

More on the Bristol Merlin


In the past week The Guardian has had two articles about the identification of what has become known as the Bristol Merlin, about which I posted in Merlin manuscript recovered in Bristol

These additional articles give a translation of part of the text which has been recovered as well as pictures of one of the paste-downs.

The discovery may well affect Arthurian studies in that they might possibly indicate another thirteenth century Vulgate source for Malory in his composition of the Morte d’Arthur in the later fifteenth century


There is also an account of the discovery from Medievalists.net which recapitulates the already published story of the finding of the fragments but adds more about the contents of the text. This article can be read at Manuscript fragments of the Merlin legend now published


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