The Fragment of Earl Rivers’ Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers in London, British Library, Add. 60577

A study of the fragment of Earl Rivers' Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers that gives some important clues about the textual transmission of the work from printed to manuscript form.

This article investigates the fragment of Earl Rivers’s Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers extant in London, British Library MS Add. 60577, a miscellany of religious and moral texts produced in Winchester in the second half of the fifteenth century. Although it contains only the chapter on Hermes, it is important as it is the result of a careful re-elaboration of the source made by the copyist. Moreover, contrary to what is believed, the text does not derive from Caxton's 1477 edition, but it contains variants that can be ascribed to only one other witness, contained in London, British Library, MS Add. 22718. The relationship between these two texts suggests the existence of a branch of the tradition of the Dicts unnoticed by scholars.