Lot 102

Usuardus, Martyrology, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [France (Limoges), last decades of fifteenth century]

Estimate

4,000 - 6,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

83 leaves (plus an original pastedown at back of volume), 367mm. by 245mm., wanting single leaves after fols.3 and 70, and a few leaves from the end, else complete, collation: i^{5 (vi wanting, now replaced with modern blank), ii-iii^{6, iv-vi^{8, vii^{6, viii-x^{8, xi^{7 (of 8, i wanting), xii^{5 (last a singleton), single column, 27 lines in black ink in a fine angular late gothic hand, rubrics in red, 2- to 3-line initials in red and blue, one large initial (7-line) in blue on fol.6r, some small spots, smudges and minor areas of discoloration, split in first leaf repaired with tape, part of margin of fol.3 cut away, else excellent condition with wide and clean margins, marbled endleaves, late nineteenth-century gilt-tooled leather over pasteboards}}}}}}}

Provenance

provenance

1. The Franciscan priory of St. Martial, Limoges: their repeated ex libris in a number of fifteenth-century hands on the back pastedown, "Fratrum minorum Lemovicensis", and with continuations of the text to include two former bishops of Limoges, SS. Asclepius and Martial. The convent was founded in 1221, among the very first wave of Franciscan expansion, within the lifetime of St. Francis himself, and this book evidently remained in use by the community throughout the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries when records of the community were added to fols.2r, 4r and 83rv (the last an apparent leaf from a fifteenth-century chronicle of the house bound into this volume).

2. William Carr (1863-1925): his armorial bookplate, bought on 21 September 1903 for £9 from W. Ridler of Oxford Street, London; by descent to Brigadier General William Greenwood Carr (1901-82), D.S.O. and Bar; his sale in our rooms, 7 December 1982, lot 80, to Alan Thomas.

3. Bergendal MS.67; bought by Joseph Pope from Thomas in November 1984: Bergendal catalogue no.67; Stoneman, 'Guide', p.192.

Catalogue Note

text

The martyrology of Usuardus is one of the liturgical foundation stones of the Carolingian renaissance. As the author records in his opening words (here fol.6r), the text was composed for Charlemagne's grandson, Charles the Bald (823-77), almost certainly at his instigation: "Domino regum piissimo Karolo Augusto, Usuardus indignus sacerdos ac monachus perhenem in Christo coronam". The author was a Benedictine monk of St. Germain des Prés in Paris, and it is widely accepted that he must have been a member of the scholarly group which Charles gathered around him at his court. He most probably died c.875.

It is a magisterial work, building on the works of Jerome and a Lyonese recension of Bede to adapt and abridge Archbishop Ado of Vienne's vast and unwieldy Martyrologium for practical liturgical use. It was widely disseminated throughout Carolingian Europe and all extant Roman martyrologies trace their ancestry back to the text. Henri Quentin records a large number of manuscripts of the text, including some 40 in the Parisian libraries and a further 23 in the British Library, and his list is far from complete (Martyrologes historiques, 1908, pp. 675-7).