Poems and Carols (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 302)

Composed from 1425–1431, MS Douce 32 is otherwise known as the Audelay manuscript after its author John the Blind Audelay, a chaplain who served Lord Richard Lestrange in Shropshire. Nearly all of what is known of Audelay comes from this Middle English witness, which is unusually insistent in naming its author. Audelay repeatedly describes himself as “deaf, sick, and blind,” and thus reliant on his two scribes, probably monks at Haughmond Abbey. This codex edition, the first to present Audeley’s complete corpus, is organized into four sections: a miscellany of texts titled The Counsel of Conscience which thematizes the practice of penance; Salutations, which directs worship to holy women; Carols, which impart orthodox doctrine in Audelay’s distinctive seven-line stanza; and the Meditative Close, which confronts mankind’s mortality. Included are well-known titles like Solomon and Marcolf, the carol Dread of Death, and excerpts from Richard Rolle’s Form of Living.