Lot 33

Book of Hours, Use of Sarum, in Latin and French, illuminated manuscript on vellum

Estimate

8,000 - 12,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

122 leaves, 189mm. by 136mm., perhaps wanting a calendar at beginning and wanting also a leaf at beginning, a few leaves from the body of the text and two leaves at end, collation: i^{7, ii^{6, iii^{5 (wanting iv), vi^{8, vii^{6 (missing middle bifolium), viii- xviii^{8, xix^{2 (wanting last 2 leaves) catchwords often in penwork cartouches, written space 135mm. by 94mm., single column, 15 lines in black and brown ink in two sizes of an English Gothic bookhand, rubrics in red, numerous one- and 3-line initials in alternate blue and red throughout, the larger with penwork tracery and infill to contrast (some smudged),}}}}}}}seventeen large decorated initials in blue, red or green with white penwork tracery and fleshy acanthus-leaf sprigs and flowers in contrasting colours, all on burnished gold grounds, with three-quarter or full text-frames of coloured and burnished gold bars terminating in acanthus-leaf and single-pen-line foliage with flower buds, leaves and bezants (fols. 6v, 16v, 17v, 19v, 21v, 23v, 25v, 45v, 77v, 89v, 91v, 93r, 94r, 98r, 99r, 101r, 102v; those on 89v and 91v with infill erased, that on 101r smudged), a few erasures from the text (see below), some contemporary additions and later pen-trials, else in good condition, early sixteenth-century calf over wooden boards, upper board blind-stamped with a panel containing the arms of Henry VIII (Weale R.127; Oldham HE.3), lower board with arms of Catharine of Aragon (Weale R.128; Oldham HE.4), remnants of clasps, small cut to upper part of spine, else strong in binding, in blue half-morocco slipcase

Provenance

provenance

1. Written and illuminated for a patron c. 1420, most probably in the vicinity of London.

2. 'John Mariat', who names himself in the late sixteenth-century inscription on fol. 29v, in alternate lines of Latin and Middle English: Iste liber pertinet, bere yt well in mynde / ad me Johannem Mariat, bothe curtis & kynde / a vincula doloris, Ihesu hym brynge, ad vitam eternam, at ys laste ende. His smudged signature appears at the head of fol. 13v, and devotional verses are added in the same hand at the head of fols. 22-3. He is perhaps to be identified with John Marriott, father of the lawyer and reputed gourmet William Marriott (born c. 1590), whose large family lived at Ashton Hall in Northamptonshire from 1540 onwards.

2. Revd. William Maskell (1814-90), Roman Catholic convert, ecclesiastical antiquary and a notable collector of English liturgical books, who published his Monumenta ritualia ecclesiae Anglicanae in 1846, the year before the acquisition of this manuscript; his dated signature on inner front board, with notes, and a page of his notes loosely inserted in the manuscript. His library of printed books was acquired by Panizzi for the British Museum, and Maskell separately sold a number of manuscripts to the Museum: British Library Addit. 17,001 (a fifteenth-century Gradual of the Use of Sarum), 17,010 (a fifteenth-century Book of Hours in Middle English) and 22,010 (a fifteenth-century Italian Book of Hours); subsequently presenting them with Addit. 19,792 (Litany and prayers of English use, dated 1632) as a gift.

3. Sold in our rooms, 13 July 1909, lot 278; subsequently Leighton, cat., 1910, no. 153,

4. Lt. Col. W. Moss of Sonning-on-Thames (1876-1915); his sale in these rooms, 2 March 1937, lot 835,

5. Dr Eli Moschowitz (1879-1964) of New York; his sale in these rooms, 7 December 1964, lot 172,

6. And in these rooms 12 July 1971, lot 64, to Alan Thomas; and from him to the present owner.

Catalogue Note

text

The volume contains the Hours of the Virgin, with Matins (fol. 1v; wanting a single leaf from the beginning), Lauds (6v), Prime (16v; a leaf excised from end), Terce (17v), Sext (19v), None (21v), Vespers (23v), Compline (25v), the Penitential Psalms (30r, a leaf wanting at beginning); a Litany (36v) with SS. Cuthberte, Swithune and Etheldreda among others; the Office of the Dead (45v); Commendatio animarum (76v); the Hours of the Cross, with Matins (88v), Lauds (90v), Prime (92r), Terce (93r), Sext (98r), None (99r), Vespers (100r), Compline (101v); Salutations of the Five Wounds (104r); The Fourteen Indulgences of Pope John XII (112r), and various prayers.

This volume is an example of the recusant tradition. It was written in the early decades of the fifteenth century and was bound in the initial part of the reign of Henry VIII. In the following years the book was adapted to Protestant use on a number of occasions. In compliance with the decree of 9 June 1535, which abolished Papal authority in England, the petition in the litany asking for the intercession of the saints in the protection of the pope (fol. 41r) was erased, as was the 9-line rubric on fol. 112r which once identified the beginning of the apocryphal prayers of Pope John XII (also found in a Book of Hours now Copenhagen, Kung. Bib. Thott. 542, 4°, Use of Cambrai, 1590-1600); and following the ban of November 1538 on the mention or depiction of St. Thomas Becket, his name was erased from the litany here (fol. 38r) and his entry in the Memoriae Sanctorum struck through and scored with a knife (14r).

decoration

The decoration of this manuscript is English workmanship of c. 1420, of most probably London origin. In colouring and the prominent vines and foliage within the large letters the initials closely resemble a Psalter produced at much the same date (now Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, MS. 17), but close comparison might also be made to the foliage of a combined Hours and Psalter from the early fifteenth-century (now Glasgow University Library, MS. Hunter 268: N. Thorp, The Glory of the Page, 1987, no. 37 and J. Young & P.H. Aitken, Catalogue of the MSS in the Library of the Hunterian Museum, 1908, pp. 214-16). The vines which begin inside the bar frame and then gracefully curve into the border have the appearance of the style of the late 14th century, some decades before the production of this book, and yet the leaves with tips that curl around on themselves towards the reader (such as the outermost extensions of the foliage in the bas-de-page on fol. 17v) and the use of the bold oranges and greens are at the forefront of the innovations of c. 1410-20. Much about the book suggests quality, and even the smaller initials with their dazzlingly burnished gold bodies set on and enclosing soft pastel grounds with flowing organic buds, are visually striking.