File NLW MS 22873B. - Rule of the Third Order of St Francis,

The English version of the Rule of the Third Order of St Francis 'for the Brethren and Susters of the order of Penitentis' (ff. 2-15v). The Latin version was first composed in 1221. The text is printed from this MS by W. W. Seton, Two Fifteenth-century Franciscan Rules, Early English Text Society, OS, 148 (1914). An identical text was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1510 (STC 19596), see W. Marx, The Index of Middle English Prose. Handlist XIV (Cambridge, 1999), p. 18. Written in good bastard secretary script. Added, contemporarily, in similar script, on ff. 15v-17: 'Beatus Franciscus. De tercio eciam ordine. Beatus Franciscus produxit multos flores ', an account of notable members of the Third Order, including those canonized and beatified, also printed by Seton, pp. 55-7. This text derives from the twenty-seventh sermon of Bernardine de Bustis, Rosarium sermonum predicabilium; the sermon cannot date from before c. 1475. On ff. 18-19, indication of the prayers to be said at matins and compline (corresponding to the instructions in chapter 11 of the Rule), with facing full-page miniatures; those for the five intervening hours are missing, no doubt cut out for the sake of their miniatures. Three full-page miniatures survive, of mediocre quality, in arched frames with borders of foliage and flowers: on f. 1v, St Francis receiving the stigmata; f. 17v, the arrest of Jesus in the garden; and f. 18v, Christ before Pilate. There are illuminated initials, that for the added text on f. 15v with good marginal floriation. Folios 9v and 15v are reproduced by Seton.