Marcus of Regensberg, Visio Tondali, Ludolf von Sudheim's Reise ins Heilige Land (an itinerary of the Holy Land) and other texts, in Latin, Dutch and German, decorated manuscript on paper [Netherlands, fifteenth century]

Estimate

60,000 - 80,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

221 leaves, 208mm. by 150mm., apparently complete, foliated 4-225 in modern pencil (followed here), single column, c.30 lines in brown ink in a series of hybrida and neat cursive hands, written space 150mm. by 90mm., capitals touched in red, biblical quotations underlined in red, rubrics and 2- to 3-line initials in red (with empty spaces for these or larger decorations on fols.31v-47v, 194r-216r and 154r), eight contemporary white leather indexing tags with their exposed ends tied into button-like knots (one wanting), some water damage to bottom of first few leaves and whole of last leaves (skilfully restored; with fols.204-25 with silk overlaid), else excellent condition with wide and clean margins, modern binding of half-tawed leather and wood, remains of two clasps

Provenance

provenance

1. Rev. A.D. Wagner (1824-1902) of Brighton, from his considerable private library of 12,000 volumes: his stamp in ink on fol.4r.

2. Rev. Cecil Deedes (1843-1921), prebendary and librarian of Chicester Cathedral: his note pasted to inside front board recording his acquisition of the volume at the sale of Wagner's library in June 1902.

3. Edward Croft-Murray (1907-80), former Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum: his ex libris added below Deedes' name.

4. Maggs, Cat.1167 (1993), no.10.

Catalogue Note

text

The Visio Tondali (fols.21v-34v) by Marcus of Regensburg is a report of the dark and disturbing vision of an Irish knight named Tnugdalus (with variants Tundalus or Tondolus as here) who fell asleep for three days and was led by an angel through the delights of Heaven and the fierce torments of Hell. It was written by a twelfth-century monk from Cork in the Irish Schottenkloster of Regensburg. He states that he heard the vision from the knight himself, and translated it from Irish at the request of the abbess of Regensburg. The volume here continues with another twelfth-century Irish legend, that of the Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii (fols.35r-47v) by 'H' (traditionally identified as Henricus) de Saltrey, which tells of the descent of the knight, Owein, into Purgatory through a pit in Lough Derg, in Co. Donegal.

Fols.145r-84v contain Ludolf von Sudheim's Reise ins Heilige Land in Middle Low German, an itinerary to the Holy Land and Jerusalem, written by a rector of a church in the diocese of Paderborn, who visited the Holy Land in 1336-41, returning to write this account of his journey in 1350. His survey encompasses Constantinople (fol.146r), Alexandria (fol.157v), Tripoli (fol.158r), Beruit (fol.158v: Beruth), Mount Carmel (fol.165v), Sinai (fol.168v-72v, with a short note in Latin on the pyramids), Hebron (fol.172v), Bethlehem (fol.173r), Jerusalem (fol.174v), Calvary (fol.171r) and the Holy Sepulchre (fol.177v). Ivar von Staplemohr traced eight manuscripts of the text in Middle Low German (Ludolfs von Sudheim Reise ins Heilige Land, 1937: pp.21-53; not including the present copy). None of these are definitively older than the fifteenth century, and following the sale of the Donaueschingen manuscript to the state of Baden Württemberg in 1993, no other remains in private hands.

There are also a number of religious texts in the volume, opening with the first book of the Imitatio Christi (fols.4r-21r) by the German mystic Thomas à Kempis (c.1380-1471). He studied at and near Deventer in Holland in the community founded by Geert De Groote (1340-84) as a member of the community of the Brothers of Common Life, who took no vows and were forbidden to receive charity, and whose collective lives were focussed on contemplative meditation, preaching and physical labour (notably that of the scriptorium). Thomas was later admitted to the Canons Regular of Windesheim near Zwolle, where he proved himself a gifted and prolific scribe and author. This text was first disseminated anonymously in 1418, and then with his name attached from at least 1441, and has become one of the fundamental manuals of devotion in the history of Christianity. This is followed by the popular medieval Latin poem the Visio Philiberti, a dispute between the body and the soul in which the soul reproaches the body because it has caused its damnation (fols.194r-97r); two versions of Johannes Gobius' De spiritu Guidonis (fols.47v-658r and 216r-25r), a narrative about an apparition of the ghost of Guido de Corvo of Avignon on 26 December 1323; the legend of the mythical tenth-century bishop Udo of Magdeburg (fol.58r-62r), famous for his immoral and wild-living, who heard a celestial voice bellow out the pun on his name, "Cessa de ludo quia lusisti satis Udo" (Udo, stop fooling about, for you have fooled about enough'); some mediations on the life of Christ in Dutch (fols.63r-114v); an account of the seven signs associated with the passion and death of Christ (fols.115v-17v); Pseudo-Bede, Meditationes de passione Christi (fols.118r-28r); Bonaventura, Lignum Vitae (fols.128v-44v); Pseudo-Anselm's dialogue with the Virgin (fol.185r-93v), with a Dutch translation on fols.197r-215v; and the opening of a short work on penitence, opening "Si quis positus in ultima ..." (fol.225r).