Lawlok — A Calendar of the Liber Niger and Liber Albus. 3 



of disquisitions of a logical and metaphysical character : those on the last two 

 membranes are mainly concerned with concrete and abstract ideas, and terms. 

 They appear to be fragments of another treatise which have been bound up 

 with the Liher Alhus proper." 



The Liber Niger of Christ Church is also a vellum book, the leaves of 

 which are 234 in number and measure about 27'5 by 18 cent. Its contents 

 for the most part differ in character from those of the companion volume. 

 It is true that there are in it many copies of charters and similar documents ; 

 but these are in almost all cases obviously later additions, written in the 

 margins and other spaces originally left vacant. The main contents are of 

 another sort. We have such texts as the Secretum Secretorum, ascribed to 

 Aristotle ; the French poem. Imago Mundi ; a History of our Lord, also in 

 French ; the legal tract called Fet a saver ; Ecclesiastical Tables such as might 

 more naturally be looked for in a service book or a martyrology, and a 

 corpus of statutes and kindred documents. These various compositions, 

 so diverse in subject, are written in different hands. And there is nothing 

 in the structure of the Liber Niger to forbid the supposition which naturally 

 occurs to one, that they had a separate existence before it came into being. 

 This is, in fact, certain in one case. For on ff. 79-88, which contain a series 

 of tables for ascertaining the dates of Easter and Septuagesima (JSTos. 44-46), 

 we j&nd an older pagination contemporary with the text, which proves that 

 these leaves once stood at the beginning of another volume. They form a 

 complete gathering in our MS. 



And with somewhat less confidence we may recognize elsewhere groups of 

 leaves which formerly belonged to other volumes. Thus, ff. 34-65 form a 

 group of four gatherings of eight. There are only two other gatherings of 

 eight in the volume. On f . 34 begins a History of our Lord in French, which 

 ends on f. 63. The remainder of f. 63 and the concluding leaves (ff. 64, 65), 

 no doubt originally blank, are occupied with an account of an embassy to 

 France in the year 1294, and copies of charters, the last of which is 

 incomplete, breaking off at the end of f. 65. These facts point to the 

 existence of a volume containing a Life of our Lord, followed by two 

 vacant leaves, and possibly by at least one gathering of which the first 

 page was also vacant. 



Next comes a tract entitled " Summa que vocatur Fet a Saver," also in 

 French (no. 37). It fills a gathering of eight (ff. 66-71, including two 

 unnumbered leaves), and nearly half of the following gathering of six 

 (ff. 72-77). It is followed immediately by a narrative of proceedings against 

 the Templars, the first part of which is in the same hand as the preceding 



[l*j 



