Le livre nommé Discipline d'amour divine, in French, a mystical treatise on divine love composed for use by nuns, decorated manuscript on vellum and paper [France (perhaps Orleans), last decades of the fifteenth century]

Estimate

25,000 - 35,000 GBP

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Description

Vellum

128 leaves, 204mm. by 128mm., the outer and innermost bifolia of each gathering vellum, else paper, complete, collation: i^{8, ii-xi^{12, 29-32 lines in black ink of a number of fine and professional lettres batârdes, initials touched in yellow, chapter headings underlined in red, paragraph marks in red or blue, 2- to 3-line initials in simple red or blue, erased inscription at end of text, else in fine and outstanding condition, bound in eighteenth-century gilt-tooled red morocco (by Richard Wier, see below) over pasteboards, gilt edges}}

Provenance

One of only two recorded manuscripts of this popular treatise, perhaps a presentation copy from the author, bound for Count MacCarthy-Reagh

provenance

1. Perhaps a presentation copy by the anonymous author of the text: G. Hasenohr has recently established that this treatise was composed in the 1470s by an anonymous Celestine monk of the convent of Notre-Dame d'Ambert on the outskirts of Orleans ('La tradition du Miroir des simples âmes' in Comptes-rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 143, 1999, p.1349-50). Despite numerous printed editions only two manuscripts have come to light (the present one, and another in a French private collection in a compendium of prayers of unknown date). This manuscript must date to the author's lifetime or within a few years of his death, and is likely to have been produced in the convent in which he worked, perhaps under his supervision.

2. Count Justin MacCarthy-Reagh (1744-1811): in his distinctive binding by Richard Weir, the binder whom MacCarthy-Reagh brought out to Toulouse to work for him in the 1770s (see C. Ramsden, 'Richard Wier and Count MacCarthy-Reagh', The Book Collector 2, 1953). MacCarthy-Reagh was born in Ireland to the 10,000 acre estate of Springhouse, Co. Tipperary, described as 'the most considerable in the world', left Ireland in order to escape the penal laws against Catholics, and settled in the palatial Hôtel d'Espie, Toulouse. His vast book collections were dispersed in our rooms, 18 May 1789, and after his death by the Parisian bookseller De Bure in 1817, with another group appearing in Evans, 22 January 1817, where this volume was lot 229.

3. Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872); his MS.6742, acquired for him by Payne and Foss; his sale in our rooms, 30 November 1971, lot 512.

4. Kraus, Cat. 153, Bibliotheca Phillippica, 1979, no. 62.

Catalogue Note

text

This text contains a mystical treatise on divine love, drawing on the works of Richard of St-Victor, Bernard of Clairvaux, William of St-Thierry, and most importantly the fourteenth-century Miroir des simples âmes. Despite the poverty of manuscripts, it was printed three times in Paris in the sixteenth century (Regnault Chaudière in 1519 from a copy owned by "une bonne Vierge" doubtless a nun; Simon de Colines and Vincent Sertenas in 1538), and enjoyed its measure of both popularity and infamy.