Western Manuscripts

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Lot 41
  • 41

Bible, in Latin, with the Prologues and Interpretation of Hebrew Names, manuscript on vellum

Estimate
7,000 - 10,000 GBP
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Description

442 leaves, 161mm. by 110mm., complete, collation: i-xii12, xiii10, xiv-xv12, xvi10, xvii2, xviii-xxvi12, xxvii15 [of 16, blank xvi cancelled], xxviii-xxxiii12, xxxiv11 [of 12, blank xii cancelled], xxxv-xxxvii12, xxxviii10, mostly with horizontal catchwords, double column, 48 lines, ruled in plummet, written-space 99mm. by 72mm., written in dark brown ink in an extremely small gothic bookhand, headings in red, capitals touched in red, running-titles and chapter numbers and initials in the Psalms and Interpretations in alternately red and blue, chapter numbers throughout in alternately red or blue with long penwork in the opposite colour, sometimes extending into firework sprays in lower margins in both colours, larger initials for many prologues similar, approximately 90 large decorated initials in red and blue with decorative penwork in both colours, some early additions in margins and on original blanks at end, some wear, some pages rubbed on the smooth side of the vellum with loss of ink, first leaf partly defective and repaired, fol.163 torn, other signs of use, eighteenth-century mottled calf, spine in compartments gilt, red morocco title label gilt, marbled endleaves, red edges, binding a bit loose, lower part of spine defective

Provenance

provenance

(1) Written in Italy; there are erased medieval inscriptions on fols.1r and 190r, the latter including the word “fratris”.  A partial scribbled inscription on fol.1r, seventeenth- or eighteenth-century, includes the words “ord[inis] S[anc]ti Franc[isci]”.

 

(2) Herbert Fleishhacker (1872-1957), San Francisco banker and philanthropist, bought in Venice in 1929 (receipt enclosed).

 

Catalogue Note

text

This is a standard thirteenth-century friar’s Bible, in the usual order, with the prologues ascribed to Saint Jerome and the Interpretation of Hebrew Names in the version beginning “Aas apprehendens”.  There are, however, two points of unusual interest.  The text includes the very rare books III-V of Ezra, between the Psalms and Proverbs (fols.191-202v), and the Interpretations are described here as having been copied from the exemplar of Cardinal Richard, “Expliciunt interpretationes facte ad exemplarium domini Riccardi Cardinalis” (fol.438r), which must be Richard, abbot of Monte Cassino (d.1263), created a cardinal in 1252.  On the last leaves are lists of readings for the Temporal.