Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 61, fol. 1v
Language: English (Southeast Midland)
Manuscript date: ca. 1420
Chaucer wrote his “book of Troilus” about 1381–6; it survives in 16 manuscripts and the same number of fragments; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 61 is one of the earliest manuscripts. Only two others and an early Caxton print of the poem have illuminations, but the Corpus Christi College manuscript’s full-page illumination is much … Read the rest
Friars
The mendicant orders first arrived in England in the thirteenth century and the number of adherents rapidly grew. Two of the four principal orders – the Friars Preachers (Dominicans or Black Friars) and the Friars Minor (Franciscans or Grey Friars) – quickly became integral in the life of universities and commercial centers in the country, the Franciscans producing the remarkable theologians Roger Bacon, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, … Read the rest
Benedictine
Rule Monastic orders existed in Ireland and Wales in the fifth century, first arrived in England in the sixth and seventh centuries, and in the eighth century the Rule of St. Benedict (480–ca. 550), Benedict’s set of codes for behavior, also came to be known in the British Isles. Receiving additional impetus after 1066 and then again with the arrival of orders of canons and friars in the twelfth … Read the rest