n his History of the Abbey. But the said
catalogue makes no mention of the Commentary of Jerome, which fills 323
out of the 358 leaves of our book. A serious obstacle, it will be said,
to an identification; yet a long series of observations, too long to be
set out here, has led me to the conclusion that our Peterborough
catalogue makes a practice of not entering the main contents of the
volumes, but only the short subsidiary tracts, which might else escape
notice. And without much hesitation I put down the book before me as a
relic of the Peterborough Library.

Somewhat higher up stands a very stout book bound in old patterned
paper. The material of it is paper too, the language is Greek, and the
contents, for the most part, Canons of Councils. There are two hands in
it; one is perhaps of the fourteenth century, the other is of the early
part of the fifteenth. This latter is the writing of one Michael Doukas,
who tells us that he was employed as a scribe by Brother John of Ragusa,
who held some position at a Church Council, unnamed. There were two
Johns of Ragusa, it seems, both Dominicans, one of whom figured at the
Council of Constance in 1413, the other at that of Basle in 1433. The
latter must be the right one, for there are still Greek MSS. at Basle
which belonged to the Dominicans of that city, and were bequeathed by
the second John at his death in 1442.

The book is important, because the first thing in it is the only copy of
a treatise ascribed to St. Athanasius, called a Synopsis of Holy
Scripture. This treatise was printed first in 1600 by an editor named
Felckmann, and no MS. of it has been used or known since. Where did
Felckmann find it? In a MS. which belonged to Pierre Nevelet, procured
for him (the editor) by Bongars, a distinguished scholar of Orleans.
Now, the Eton book has in it a whole series of names of owners, some
erased, but decipherable. The earliest seems to be Joannes Gastius, who
in 1550 gave it to Johannes Hernogius (as I doubtfully read it). Then
come Petrus Neveletus and his son, I(saac) N(icolas) Neveletus.
Evidently, then, we have here the MS. which Felckmann used, and we
arrive at some date after 1600. In 1665 or 1685 Daniel Mauclerc, Doctor
of Law, living at Vitry le Francois, is the owner. He leaves France (the
family were Huguenots), and brings the book to Holland. His son Jacques,
Doctor of Medicine, has it in 1700, in England; his nephew, John Henry
Mauclerc, also M.D., succeeds t