Lot 13

Psalter and Canticles, with an alphabet, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [west-central Germany (probably Trier), c.1200]

Estimate

20,000 - 30,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

137 leaves, 175mm. by 125mm., wanting a single folio from first gathering (containing the December leaf from the Calendar and perhaps a frontispiece), else complete, collation: i^{6, ii-xv^{8, xvi^{7 (last cancelled in early fifteenth century, and the following leaves late medieval replacements), xvii^{8, xviii^{4, main text ruled for 20 lines of an elegant early gothic bookhand in black and brown ink, rubrics in red, one-line initials in red or blue, 2-line initials in same with elaborate scrolling penwork to contrast,}}}}} nine large initials in burnished gold angular geometric designs (fols.23v, 34r, 43v, 44r, 54v, 67r, 77r, 79v, 90r), on blue, green, red and pink grounds within coloured frames, with extensions in the margin (those on fols.23v, 44r, 79v and 90r with green church spires atop their border panels), half-page initial 'B' (80mm. high) in red and blue interweaving bands terminating in stylised acanthus-leaves, on gold ground within a soft green frame, with two lines of ornamental capitals in red and blue, slight smudges and some minor discolouration throughout, else in fine and presentable condition, sixteenth-century tooled brown leather over wooden boards, two brass clasps

Provenance

provenance

1. Written and illuminated c.1200, most probably for use in the diocese of Trier.

2. St. Alban's Charterhouse, Trier: an erased early fifteenth-century ownership inscription at base of fol.7r: "Iste liber est domus sancti Albani prope Trever ordinis cartu[iensis]", and similar seventeenth-century inscriptions on fol.137r. This community of contemplative hermits was founded in 1331/35 by Archbishop Baldwin of Luxembourg (1285-1354), brother of Emperor Henry VII. The house became both an eigenkloster for the Luxembourg dynasty and one of the principal cultural centres in the Moselle valley. It was suppressed in 1794. Krämer lists some 218 manuscripts from the library (Handschriftenerbe des Deutschen Mittelalters, 1989, pp.782-6; not including the present one), which are overwhelmingly fourteenth- and fifteenth-century in date. The eight early manuscripts (three twelfth-century: Brussels, Bib. Royale MS.445; Trier Stadtsbibl. MSS. 1159/1382 and 1382/145; and five thirteenth-century: Cambridge, MA., library of W.W. Gunn: de Ricci II, 2307; London, British Library Addit. 31828 and Harley 2584; Trier Stadtsbibl. MSS. 240/1379 and 424/1920) form a tight-knit group of saints' lives, biblical paraphrases, sermons, liturgical books and a single early Christian history, and with the present Psalter may well be among the books that the founding hermits brought with them to form the earliest library of the community. The book predates the community's foundation by over a century. The late twelfth century saw the dawn of secular book-ownership and aristocratic literacy in Germany, and it may have already been a family heirloom when it entered the charterhouse. The alphabet on fol.122r lends support to this, as an addition found mainly in private prayer books or primers, presumably to help an owner learn to read. B. Wolpe traces 5 manuscripts with similar alphabets ('Florilegium alphabeticum: alphabets in medieval manuscripts' in Calligraphy and palaeography: essays presented to Alfred Fairbank, 1965, pp. 69-74), but none as old as the present manuscript.

In the fifteenth century, the Calendar was adapted for use by the community (in particular St. Alban, 22 June, underlined in red, and the note at the end of November that in 1474 the Feast of the Virgin was celebrated for the first time) and the entire Litany skilfully erased and overwritten. The final two gatherings were added at the same date and supply the canticles and readings for various feastdays.

3. René Etienne, his nineteenth-century bookplate inside front board, with a note that the manuscript was bought in Metz.

4. Acquired by the present owner at an auction in Bolbec in October 1974.

Catalogue Note

text

This a fine example of an illuminated Romanesque book. The text comprises the Psalms 1-150 (fols.7r-114r) with the canticles, "Confitebor tibi ..." (fol.114r), "Exultavit cor meum ..." (fol.115r), "Cantemus domino gloriose ..." (fol.115v), "Domine audiui auditionem ..." (fol.116v), "Audite celi que ..." (fol.117v), "Benedicite omnia ..." (fol.120r), "Te exaltatus in ..." (fol.120v), "Benedictus dominus deus ..." (fol.121v), followed by an alphabet (fol.122r; see above), the canticles "Magnificat anima mea ..." (fol.122v), "Nunc dimitis ..." and "Quicumque uult salus ..." (both fol.123r) and a Litany (fol.124v), followed by the gatherings added in the fifteenth century (see above).