Lot 54

Thomas Britonis (the Breton), Sermones de Communi Sanctorum, in Latin and French, decorated manuscript on vellum [northern France, second half of the thirteenth century]

Estimate

6,000 - 8,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

228 leaves (plus an original endleaf at back), 180mm. by 130mm., perhaps wanting a few leaves from last gathering, else complete, collation: i-xxviii^{8, xxix^{3 (all singletons), xxx^{1 (attached to endleaf), double column, 29-31 lines in black ink in an excellent early gothic hand, capitals touched in red, quotations underlined in red, rubrics in red, paragraph marks in red or blue, 2-line initials in red or dark blue, two 4-line initials in red and blue on fols.13v and 208r,}}} large initial 'P' (7-line) in same on fol.1r, with tail extending down border three-quarters of page, scribal colophon at end of text "Hic est scriptus qui scripsit [sit] benedictus" in highly ornate red and blue capitals, some cockling, else excellent condition, plain wooden boards with a tooled leather spine

Provenance

1. Most probably the Augustinian priory of SS. Peter and Paul, Séez, northern France: fifteenth-century inscription on fol.227v, "De conventu Sagiensi".

2. Seminaire de Séez, most probably transferred to them at the time of the Revolution: their inkstamp on fol.1r; sold by them to Librairie Scheler, Paris, in 1955.

3. Bergendal MS.120; bought by Joseph Pope from Les Enluminures in October 1996: Bergendal catalogue no.120

Catalogue Note

text

The author appears to have been a Franciscan friar who composed these texts in the 1260s. His sermons were popular and appear on three Parisian stationers' lists of 1275, 1286 and 1304, offering them in peciae. J.B. Schneyer records all ninety-nine sermons given here (Lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters, 1974; but wrongly ascribes them to the English Dominican Thomas de Lisle). He lists twenty manuscripts, many of them fragmentary (vol. v, p.670), and de Ricci lists no copy in North America (neither the Census nor the Supplement).

This is a notably early copy of the text, most probably from the life of the author or soon after, and is of some significant textual importance. It is apparently unique in that many of its Latin incipits are accompanied by Anglo-Norman proverbs (for example, on fol.208r, for the feast In consecrationi Virginis, this manuscript follows the standard incipit, "Qui habet sponsam, sponsus est" with "Dicitur vulgariter et verum est: Bien est asenee, qui bien est mariee"). The proverbs are marked in pencil with an 'F' in the manuscript. These additions confirm the Anglo-Norman provenance of the text and its early circulation there.