Lot 30

Missal, Use of Tours, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [Tours, end of the eleventh century]

Estimate

80,000 - 100,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

159 leaves, 290mm. by 195mm., wanting 19 leaves after fol.81 (with prayers of Ordinary of the Mass), 24 leaves after fol.88 (with the Propers running from Low Sunday up to the Third Sunday after Pentecost) and 49 leaves after fol.153 (with feasts for September to early December for the Proper of Saints), else complete, collation: i^{5 (wanting last leaf; a Calendar added to volume in fifteenth century), ii-xiv^{8, xv^{6, xvi^{11 (last wanting), xvii-xx}}}}^{8, xx^{1 (a singleton), conflicting sixteenth-, nineteenth-century and modern foliation (last followed here), double column, 32 lines in brown ink in a small and precise early gothic bookhand, one- and 2-line simple initials in red or pastel blue, music for the introit, gradual, offertory and communion prayers in diastemmatic neumes,} half-length portrait of a tonsured saint, four human faces and other geometric or foliate designs picked out in tiny delicate penwork within initials on fol.81rv, slight spreading to red ink of some rubrics and initials, some small scuffs and minor discolouration throughout, small areas cut from borders of fols.141 and 147, else in excellent condition, modern red leather over wooden boards with two straps}

Provenance

provenance

1. Evidently from the medieval library of St. Julian's, Tours: the smaller of the two scripts accompanying the music closely compares to that of BnF. lat.9434, a Missal made in St.Gatian's, Tours in the eleventh century (E.K. Rand, Survey of the Manuscripts of Tours, 1929, no.201). St. Julian appears prominently in capitals in the Litany, with a note indicating that his recitation is to be repeated (fol.85r), and prayers for the feast of the discovery of his head are found on fol.129v. The house was founded and dedicated to St. Maurice in 578, sacked by the Vikings in the ninth century, and rebuilt by Archbishop Théotolon (held office 932-945) and his sister Gersinde under Cluniac ideals. It was suppressed during the secularisation and in 1845 the town bought the abbey church. As noted in the previous lot, the libraries of Tours fell into disarray by the eighteenth century and were poorly kept, and the antiquary Bréquigny records that when he visited the town in the early eighteenth century he witnessed cartloads of manuscripts being dumped into the Loire on account of their damage by mildew. This may well explain the loss of a number of gatherings from this volume.

2. Seen by Abbé Jules Bonhomme, chaplain of Fort de l'Est, Paris in 1879: inscription on fol.1r; sale at Hôtel Drouot, 19 May 1976, lot 6.

3. Bergendal MS.46; bought by Joseph Pope from Kraus in August 1983: Bergendal catalogue no.46; Stoneman, 'Guide', pp.184-85; Pope, 'The Library', p.159; J. Pope, 'Missale Romanum', Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Newsletter 17, September 1994, pp.27-31, reprinted in Homiletic and Pastoral Review, March 1995, pp.30-31 and 48-52.

Catalogue Note

text

"MS 46 is a Missal for Tours which can be dated on script as c.1025. It is thus one of the earliest Missals, if not the very earliest Missal, extant, as we know the term" (Pope, 'The Library', p.6). It is a large and elegant Romanesque plenary Missal, combining the prayers from the Sacramentary, Lectionary and the Gradual, to which a Calendar has been added in the fifteenth century. The Temporal is from the first Sunday in Advent (fol.1r) to the twenty-second week after Pentecost, followed by masses for the sick and for nuptials (fol.120r); and the Sanctoral, from the feast of St. Stephen, 26 December (fol.122r) to that of St. Augustine, 28 August. The volume ends with masses for the dead, the priests and the people (fol.154r).

illumination

The striking line-drawings within the initials on fol.81rv are by a skilled and accomplished draughtsman, and are exceedingly early Continental examples of the art. While line-drawing was widely practised in Anglo-Saxon England, it only sporadically appeared in Continental scriptoria in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and these have usually been interpreted as evidence of direct English contact (see M. Holcomb, Pen and Parchment, Drawing in the Middle Ages, 2009, nos.16-20). Parallels to the figure of the tonsured saint with his gaze straight at the reader, detailed features and heavy, solid drapery are to be found in the Exultet roll, produced in Montecassino c.1060 (now Vatican, Lat.3784: illustrated in Pen and Parchment, fig.13), and in Ingelard's Miscellany, made in Paris in the mid eleventh century (now BnF ms.lat.12117: illustrated Pen and Parchment, p.84).