Western Manuscripts and Miniatures

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Lot 49
  • 49

Psalter with canticles and the Office of the Dead, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [England (probably Oxford), third quarter of the thirteenth century]

Estimate
6,000 - 8,000 GBP
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Description

  • Vellum
255 leaves, 95mm. by 65mm., complete, collation: i6, ii-xix12, xx4, xxi8, xxii12, xxiii9 (last probably a singleton), single column, 17 lines in brown ink in two early gothic bookhands, rubrics in red, paragraph marks in red or blue, versal initials in same, 2-line initials in blue with red penwork tracery, eleven large initials (3- to 9-line) in same, numerous sixteenth- or seventeenth-century marginalia indicating continued use, some slight thumbing to edges of leaves throughout, Calendar leaves once water-damaged and now repaired with gauze and reattached to volume (hence difficult to read in places), edges slightly trimmed, overall fair to good condition, modern black morocco over paste boards

Provenance

provenance

1. Most probably written and illuminated for a patron in the vicinity of Oxford: St. Frideswide in Calendar (in red for main feast day on 19 October, and in black for the translation on 12 February), and Litany (fol.210v). Additions to Calendar by an early owner recording the Battle of Lewes in May 1264, when Henry III was taken prisoner by Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, and the Battle of Evesham when Simon de Montfort was defeated by the royal armies under Prince Edward in 1265, perhaps suggesting the volume was once owned by a supporter of his. There is a later obit of Magister Rodolphus Rudd, d.30 June 1557.

2. H. L. Bradfer-Lawrence (1887-1965); his MS.13 (P.M. Giles in Trans. Cambr. Bibl. Soc. VI, 1972-6, p.89, no.13); sale in our rooms, 7 December 1982, lot 45, to Lathrop Harper.

3. Bergendal MS.29: Bergendal catalogue no.29; Stoneman, 'Guide', p.178.

Catalogue Note

text

The volume includes: a Calendar (fol.1r); the 150 Psalms of David (fol.7r); followed by the nine canticles, the Te Deum (fol.205v), the Magnificat (fol.209r), the Athanasian Creed (fol.209v), a Litany (fol.212v) and the Office of the Dead (fol.218r).