MS. Paris:—Bibl. Nat. 3222, fol. 133b-158b: it is anonymous in this MS., but is attributed to Roger Conway by Bale, MS. Seld. sup. 64, fol. 157b, and Tanner, Bibl. 197. The same MS. contains the Replicationes of Armachanus against this work, ff. 159 sqq.
Quaestiones tres de Christi paupertate et dominio temporali. Inc. ‘Questio est hic de mendicitate;’ or ‘Utrum Christus hominum perfectissimus.’
MS. Vienna:—Bibl. Palat. 4127, f. 249-269 (sec. xv).
Wadding (Script. p. 212) gives the second incipit and says: ‘Habeo MSS.’ These may be now in some Italian library; perhaps in the Franciscan Convent at Rome, or MS. Vatican 3740, ‘Tractatus diversorum super quaestione de paupertate Christi et Apostolorum’ (Montfaucon, p. 110).
Simon Tunstede, de Tunstude, or Donstede, is said by Bale to have entered the Order at Norwich, where, according to Blomefield, he afterwards became Warden of the Franciscan Convent[1513]. He was Regent Master of the Friars Minors at Oxford in 1351[1514], and according to contemporary evidence was ‘skilled in music and in the seven liberal arts[1515].’ He wrote on the Meteorics of Aristotle[1516], and made some alterations in the horologe called Albion, invented in 1326 by Richard of Wallingford, Abbat of St. Albans, and in the book which the Abbat wrote about his invention[1517]. He became twenty-third Provincial Minister in succession to Roger Conway about 1360[1518]. He was buried among the Poor Clares of Brusyard in Suffolk[1519]; Bale and Pits mention 1369 as the year of his death.
A work on music, Quatuor principalia musicae, or De musica continua et discreta, cum Diagrammatibus, has been erroneously ascribed to Tunstede[1520]; it was composed by a Minorite during Tunstede’s regency at Oxford, and perhaps under his supervision.
MSS. London:—Brit. Mus. Addit. 8866 (sec. xiv).
Oxford:—Bodleian; Digby 90 (sec. xiv); Bodley 515 (= 2185) (sec. xv).
Printed in E. de Coussemaker’s Auctores de Musica, &c. Paris 1876.