MEMORIALS OF
FATHER AUGUSTINE BAKER , O.S.B. (1575-1641 ). INTRODUCTORY
NOTE .
The texts concerning Father Augustine Baker, which are here for the first time printed, are taken from a manuscript book which is now in the Bibliothèque Mazarineat Paris, but belonged before the Revolution to the English Benedictine nuns of the Priory of our Lady of Good Hope in that city. The manuscript is no . 1755 in the Mazarine collection. It is written on paper, measures 239 by 175 millimetres, and has 243 leaves . Its title is : Quadrilogus , or a Collection of Four Treatises concerning the Life and Writings of the Venerable Father , Fa. Augustin Baker , Preist of the Holy Order of S. Benedict, Congregationis Anglicanae . The four treatises are: ( 1) . Fr. Baker's rhymes and unfinishedautobiography, ff. 1-52 ; (2). Fr. Leander Prichard's Life of Fr. Baker, ff. 54-143 ; (3) . Fr. Serenus Cressy's Life of Fr. Baker, ff. 144-210; (4). Fr. Peter Salvin's account of Fr. Baker, ff. 211-243 . Of these four items only the first two are printed here, i.e., ff. 1-143 of the manuscript. The texts are not autographs , but copies made at the Paris convent towards the end of the seventeenth century. is possible to determine from the handwriting that two of the copyists were : Dame Maura Wytham ( d. 1700) , who wrote the first 60 leaves of the MS., and Dame Mechtilde Tempest ( d . 1722), who wrote ff. 130210, and 217-243 . For three of the treatises ( i.e. , all except Cressy) the Mazarine MS . preserves the only text that is known, and these treatises have been lost to view for more than a century. The credit of their re-discovery belongs to Dom Ursmer Berlière , of Maredsous Abbey, who drew my attention in 1927 to the existence of the manuscript. In editing the texts have preserved the old spelling, but have resolved all contracted forms, except such as are still commonly used. The old punctuation is both excessive and erratic ; this have modified, though with the greatest care to avoid any alteration of the sense. The text has been arranged in numbered paragraphs . That will suffice for a descriptionof the source of these old memorials of Fr. Baker and of the character of this edition. For the rest, the items themselves contain much information regarding their origin and the occasion of their writing, and more information is given in the notes which accompany them . We would only add , in summary, that the date of the rhymes is 1636, of the autobiography the winter of 1637-8 , and of Prichard's Life the year 1643 or thereabouts. But some readers of these old documents , not already acquainted with their subject matter , may find the story difficult to follow without further guidance . For their sake we take leave to refer to three books
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* NowA established at Colwich Abbey, Stafford . See C.R.S. vii, 334-431.