Gregory the Great, Homilies on Ezekiel, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [north-eastern Germany (Huysburg Abbey, near Halberstadt), dated 1466]

106 leaves (plus two modern vellum flyleaves at each end), 370mm. by 260mm., complete, occasional catchwords, collation: i-x¹⁰, xi⁶, 43 lines, written space 285mm. by 190mm., written in a gothic bookhand, capitals stroked in red, rubrics and paragraph marks in red, small initials in plain red, one small initial in gold on a light pink ground in a blue illusionistic profile frame (fol.1r), 20 large puzzle initials in red and blue with red pen-flourishing (fols.4r, 8r, 11r, 13v, 16r, 20r, 24v, 30r, 35v, 42r, 46v, 56v, 59v, 64v, 68v, 73r, 78r, 83r, 87v, 93r), one similar but smaller initial at beginning of index (fol.98v), two large historiated initials on burnished gold grounds in illusionistic profile frames enclosing St. Gregory writing (fol.1r) and an Angel holding a measuring rod (Ezekiel 40:3; fol.51v), a few annotations in the margins and some original faults in the vellum with original repairs often encircled in red, silver and lead white of illuminated initials oxidised, else in outstanding condition, nineteenth-century brown leather binding by W. Pratt (stamped in upper corner on recto of first flyleaf; and presumably William Pitt Pratt, who worked in London from 1823 to 1838), tooled with floral panels and chevrons, some scratches and bumps to corners

(1) This large and elegant manuscript records at the end of the main text (fol.98r) and in a fuller colophon at the end of its index (fol.106r) that it was written in 1466 for the monks of Huysburg Abbey (monasterio huysborch) under the abbacy of Theodoric.  Huysburg was a Benedictine monastery situated on the Huy, a mountainous area near Halberstadt in Germany. The abbey was suppressed in 1804 during the secularisation, when its buildings and estates passed to the Prussian State and its library dispersed. Krämer, Handschriftenerbe des deutschen Mittelalters, I, 1989, pp.369-70, lists another 44 manuscripts from this library, but omits the present manuscript.

(2) Joseph Lilly (1804-70), bookseller of Covent Garden; his sale of 1863.

(3) William Bragge (1823-84), of Birmingham: his sale in our rooms, 7 June 1876, lot 178.

(4) ‘A.S.R.’ of Philadelphia: his inscription dated 25 December 1905 (perhaps recording a Christmas present) on front flyleaf.

text

By any measure Gregory the Great (540-604) was a titan of the early Church. He held office as pope from 590 to 604, acted as patron and the driving force behind St. Augustine’s conversion of the English and establishment of Canterbury as the principal see of England, and was an energetic architect and reformer of the Church. He transformed ecclesiastical administration and monastic practises and composed both practical works such as his Liber Pastoralis and scriptural commentaries. From the latter spring, in seed at least, almost all the leading principles of later Catholicism. His youth was spent during the years of the final collapse of the Roman Empire in the West and the Barbarian occupation of the capital by Totila the Goth, and much of Gregory’s work has a tinge of sadness for the steady crumbling away of Western society. The present work was composed in 592-3, while the Lombards besieged Rome. It was presumably intended for public preaching to entreat God for divine aid and to raise the spirits of the terrified citizens. He died in 604 and was buried in St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome.

This work was fundamental to monastic life, and contains some of the author’s most profound mystical teachings. This is a large and handsome copy, evidently prepared at significant expense by the abbey.