Berlin Latin Quarto 387, 12th century, 51 fols. Attention was called to it by Birkenmajer in the publication noted below. It has many slips of copyists and is regarded by him as neither the original nor a direct copy thereof. For the MS to be written in the twelfth century this would require a very rapid multiplication and dissemination of Daniel’s treatise which was at the earliest not composed until after 1175.
The remaining MSS have not hitherto been noted by writers on Daniel:
CUL 1935 (Kk. I. 1), 13th century, small folio, fols. 98r-105r (and not to 115r, as stated in the MSS catalogue, which gives Daniel Morley as the author, but De creatione mundi as the title). From rotographs of fols. 98r-v, 100r, and 105r, I judge that this copy is almost identical with Arundel 377 but somewhat less legible and accurate.
Oriel 7, 14th century folio, fols. 194v-196v (191-193, according to Coxe), extracts from De philosophia Danielis, opening, “Nos qui mistice.”... They are immediately preceded by extracts from “Adelardi Bathoniensis ... de decisionibus naturalibus.”
Corpus Christi 263, early 17thI’ll sp century, fols. 166v-67r, “Ex Daniele de Merlai” (or, “Merlac,” according to Coxe) “alias Morley in lib. de superioribus et inferioribus primo De creationis Mundi.” This MS is one of the notebooks of Brian Twyne, the Elizabethan antiquary, written in his own hand.
Twyne perhaps made his extracts from Arundel 377, for immediately after them he gives extracts “from William of Conches who is together with Daniel Merlai in our library,” and in Arundel 377 Daniel’s work is immediately followed by that of William of Conches. Moreover, of the Selden MSS which are now in the Bodleian, Supra 72 was once owned by Lord “William Howarde” who died in 1640, while Supra 77 is marked “Arundel,” referring presumably to Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, who died in 1646, and Supra 79 consists of astronomical and astrological treatises copied by Brian Twyne. If MSS which once belonged to the Arundel collection and to Twyne have thus passed somehow into the Selden collection and are found listed there in close proximity to one another, it is at least tempting to conjecture that the MS containing Daniel’s treatise, followed by that of William of Conches, which Twyne says was once “in our library,” somehow became Arundel 377.
BN 6415 does not contain De philosophia Danielis, as stated by C. Jourdain (1838) p. 101; Jourdain, however, regarded Adelard of Bath as the author of De philosophia Danielis, and BN 6415 does contain Adelard’s Questiones naturales.
Balliol 96, 15th century, a commentary upon Aristotle’s eight books of Physics in the form of questions and preceded by a prologue, “Expliciunt questiones super 8 libros phisicorum compilate a domino Marlo magistro in artibus Tholose ac canonico de Timsey.” This does not seem to be a work by Daniel of Morley; a cursory examination revealed no reason for thinking that domino Marlo should read Daniele Merlai, or that Tholose should be Tholeto.
I have not examined two MSS at Queen’s College, Oxford, Reg. lxxi; lxxiv, 4) containing pedigrees of the Morlay or Morley family which may possibly throw some light upon Daniel’s identity.
All the printing that has been done of Daniel’s treatise has been based upon Arundel 377. J. O. Halliwell, Rara Mathematica, 1839, and Thomas Wright, Biographia Literaria, London, 1846, II, 227-30, printed the preface and other brief extracts for the first time.