GLOSSED BOOK OF GENESIS, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum. [France, 12th century (middle); the pastedowns: France (Tours?), early 9th century]

GLOSSED BOOK OF GENESIS, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum

[France, 12th century (middle); the pastedowns: France (Tours?), early 9th century]

130 leaves, c. 275 × 175mm, the last blank, plus two 9th-century leaves used as pastedowns, COMPLETE, collation: 1–16⁸, 17², with contemporary quire signatures i–xvi, quires 1–6 pricked for up to 48 lines of gloss, but typically ruled for fewer, as required, the prefatory glosses in two columns, the rest in three, in quires 1–6 the biblical text is written in larger more formal pre-Gothic script and spread out such that each line of the biblical text is equivalent to four lines of gloss, with as few as 10 lines per page, in a narrow middle column with much wider columns of gloss to both sides, but from quire 7 onwards the pricking changes and the biblical text is in a wider column, with 15 lines per page (each therefore now equivalent to three lines of marginal gloss), and is closer in size to the marginal Gloss; the glosses sometimes only occupying one column, but often surrounding the biblical text on all four sides; decorated with an enlarged initial ‘I’(n principio) in red and brown at the beginning of Genesis, with vegetal buds, a reserved wavy line, and a central flower motif; a few natural flaws and minor blemishes but overall in exceptionally fine unrestored condition. In a CONTEMPORARY BINDING WITH 9TH-CENTURY PASTEDOWNS: sewn on three wide bands laced into thick wood boards with square edges, covered with undecorated skin in which an oval hole has been repaired with a sewn-in patch, the spine flat, with an intact tab at the head (that at the foot trimmed), with vestiges of two strap-and-pin fastenings, a rust-stain with nail-holes from the hasp of a chain-staple in the middle of the upper edge of the back board (the same position as found on the bindings of other manuscripts from Steinfeld); the pastedowns written in a single column (unusual for biblical manuscripts) of 26 lines, perhaps originally a bifolium, one leaf still pasted down, with its margins cropped, the other now partially lifted, preserving one margin but the text slightly cropped, and with the loss of the upper outer corner, probably damaged when the chain was removed from the binding; the spine with handwritten inscriptions, that at the top very worn but apparently ‘Genesis / cum / Glossa / margin. et in/terlineali / MS’, ‘N. 8’ lower down, and paper labels printed with the van Ess number ‘35’ and the Phillipps number ‘420’; in very fine unrestored condition, preserved in a fitted red cloth-covered box with gilt leather title-pieces on the spine.

PROVENANCE

1. THE PREMONSTRATENSIAN ABBEY OF STS MARY AND POTENTINUS, STEINFELD, south-west of Bonn, founded in the 10th century as a Benedictine House but joining the Premonstratensian Congregation in 1121: probably written in the decades immediately following this, to judge by the ruling in drypoint, the script, and the early form of the page-layout; their 12th-century ownership inscription has been excised but is recognisable from the surviving ascenders and marks of abbreviation by comparison with intact inscriptions in other Steinfeld manuscripts (about 50 manuscripts from the house survive, listed in Kramer, 1989): ‘L(i)b(er) s(anct)e Marie in Steinwelt’ (fol. 1v); also inscribed with their 18th-century shelfmark ‘Loc. 255 / N: 2’ (cf. Phillipps MS 396, sold in our rooms, 26 November 1975, lot 820, which has ‘Loc. 255 / N. 4’, and is in a binding like the present one, and Phillipps MS 416, now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Lyell 65, which has ‘Loc: 255 / N: 13’); the house was secularised in 1802 and its collections dispersed (panels of its stained glass in England form the basis of the M.R. James ghost story, ‘The Treasure of Abbot Thomas’); and within two decades this manuscript was owned by:
2. LEANDER VAN ESS (1772–1847), German collector and translator of the Bible, who owned at least 10 other manuscripts from Steinfeld Abbey: no. 35 (cf. spine-label) in his privately printed 1823 catalogue; his collection sold en bloc in 1824 to:
3. SIR THOMAS PHILLIPPS (1792–1872): his MS 420 (cf. spine label); by descent to his grandson Thomas Fitzroy Fenwick (1856–1938), and sold by his executors in 1945 as part of the residue of the Phillipps collection to:
4. W.H. Robinson, Ltd., i.e. the brothers Lionel (1897–1983) and Philip (1902–1991) Robinson, London booksellers; sold by The Robinson Trust in our rooms, 21 November 1972, lot 535, to:
5. WILLIAM FOYLE (1885–1963), owner of Foyle’s Book Shop; by descent to his daughter:
6. Christina Foyle (1911–1999): her posthumous sale at Christie’s, 11 July 2000, lot 8, bought by Quaritch, perhaps on behalf of:
7. The Boehlen Collection, Bern, MS 1113.

TEXT

(fols. 1v–129v) Genesis, with prefatory, marginal and interlinear glosses: the first prefatory gloss is ‘AUG(ustinus). In narratione rerum gestarum …’ (Stegmüller, Repertorium biblicum, IX, 1977, no. 11781.26), other named authorities are Bede, Alcuin, Jerome, and Gregory; the first marginal gloss is ‘Mistice. In principio … Eos scilicet, qui celestis imagines portaverunt …’ (Stegmüller, no. 11781.35), and the first interlinear one is ‘Temporis. vel ante creaturas …’ (Stegmüller, no. 11781.38).

The Gloss on some books of the Bible was the work of Anselm and Ralph of Laon and others, and of other books, probably including Genesis, of Gilbert – known as ‘the Universal’ for his all-encompassing knowledge – who was a canon of Auxerre by c.1120, became bishop of London in 1128 and died in 1134. The early transmission of the text is unclear, but by the middle of the 12th century it was being disseminated from Paris, and became central to the teaching of the university: ‘the Gloss was the definitive reference edition of the Bible. It could be found in every good institutional library, secular or monastic. There it remained, and there it was consulted through the generations: by Aquinas, by Wyclif and by Martin Lurther’ (Froehlich & Gibson, 1992, p. xi). Good introductions to the text are provided by Margaret Gibson (1992) and Lesley Smith (2009), and to the manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel (1984).

PASTEDOWNS

(front) Haggai 2:11–19 (‘In vicesima et quarta … corda vestra ex die’)

(back) Zachariah 6:4–7:11 (‘et dixi ad ang[elum’] … adgravaverunt ne audirent’)

The front pastedown appears to be a recto, in which case the rest of Haggai and beginning of Zacharias should be on the verso, which suggests that the pastedowns were originally a bifolium, with one other bifolium between them in the parent volume. Jean Gribomont (1920–1986), the Benedictine scholar, studied the text in 1983 and concluded that it is the version of Alcuin of York, completed around 800 when he was abbot of St Martin, Tours, for Charlemagne. The script has been compared to that of Tours, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 10, an Octateuch probably ‘written probably at Tours’ according to E.A. Lowe, and dated by him ‘saec. VIlI–IX’ (Lowe, 1953); and the leaf added to the Ashburnham Pentateuch in the early 9th century (Paris, BnF, MS n.a.l. 2334; on which see Rand, 1929).

REFERENCES

Sammlung und Verzeichnis handschriftlicher Bücher … welche besitzt Leander van Ess Theol. Doctor, vorhin Professor und Pfarrer in Marburg (Darmstadt 1823) (‘gut geschrieben, viel gebraucht, doch gut erhalten’).

Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum in Bibliotheca D. Thomæ Phillipps, Bart. (Privately printed in parts, from 1837; reprinted with an introduction by A.N.L. Munby, 2001), p. 5 no. 420.

H. Schenkl, Bibliotheca patrum latinorum Britannica, I.2: Die Phillips’sche Bibliothek in Cheltenham (Vienna, 1892), p. 17 no. 1023 (MS 420).

E.K. Rand, A Survey of the Manuscripts of Tours (Cambridge, MA, 1929), p. 82, pl. II.

E.A. Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores: A Palaeographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts Prior to the Ninth Century, VI (Oxford, 1953), no. 837.

P. Bloch, ‘Das Steinfeld-Missale’, Aachener Kunstblätter, 22 (1961), pp. 37–60 (describing ten 12th- and early 13th-century Steinfeld MSS at pp. 45–47).

Sotheby & Co, Bibliotheca Phillippica: Medieval Manuscripts: New Series: Seventh Part: Catalogue of Manuscripts on Vellum, Paper and Papyrus of the 3rd Century B.C. to the 17th Century A.D. from the Collection Formed by Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872): The Property of the Trustees of the Robinson Trust, 21 November 1972, lot 535, pl. 6 (fol. 3r).

C.R.F. de Hamel, Glossed Books of the Bible and the Origins of the Paris Booktrade (Woodbridge, 1984).

S. Krämer, Handschriftenerbe des deutschen Mittelalters, II (Munich, 1989), pp. 738 (Verbleib unbekannt).

M.T. Gibson, ‘The Place of the Glossa Ordinaria in Medieval Exegesis’, in Ad Litteram: Authoritive Texts and Their Medieval Readers, ed. by M.D. Jordan and K. Emery (Notre Dame, 1992), pp. 1–27.

K. Froehlich and M.T. Gibson, Biblia Latina Cum Glossa Ordinaria: Introduction to the Facsimile Reprint of the Editio Princeps Adolph Rusch of Strasburg 1480/81 (Turnhout, 1992).

Christie’s, The Library of William Foyle, Part I: Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, 11 July 2000, lot 8, and three full-page col. ills.

L. Smith, The Glossa Ordinaria: The Making of a Medieval Bible Commentary (Leiden, 2009).