Lot 31
  • 31

Compendium of early medieval Christian writers, including Gregory the Great, Dialogi, and Gennadius of Marseilles, De ecclesiasticis dogmatibus, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [north-eastern France (perhaps Lorraine or Alsace), eleventh century]

Estimate
40,000 - 60,000 GBP
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Description

  • Vellum
206 leaves, 265mm. by 180mm., complete as originally written (with a page of text wanting between fols.25 and 26, perhaps the result of a scribal error or a faulty and smaller exemplar), collation: i-iii8, iv6, v-xxvi8, single column, 23-29 lines in brown ink in three early gothic bookhands, capitals touched in red, rubrics in red, one-line initials in brown or red touched in contrasting colour, 2- to 3-line initials in red, that on fol.100r with ornate penwork flourishes, that on fol.132v enclosing a line-drawn winking man's head, large initial 'Q' (6-line) in red with foliage infill on fol.1r, three other large initials (4- to 6-line) with cruder flourishes and infill of dots (fols.162v, 166r, 200r), slightly trimmed at outer extremities, bottom of fol.62 with contemporary repair, now fallen away with slight loss to last line of text, first leaf slightly discoloured, small stains, wormed at back, blank margins cut away from fols.98, 103, 108, 125, 143, 169, 171, 173-4, 183 and 205, else good and presentable condition, modern red leather over heavy and probably early wooden boards

Provenance

provenence

1. Written and decorated in a Benedictine monastery in north-eastern France in the eleventh century: "Sancti Benedicti eximii patris nostri" in hand of main rubricator on fol.19v.

2. Evidently from the library of the monastery of St-Michel sur Meurthe, outside Saint DiƩ, in Lorraine: eighteenth-century ex libris on fol.1r, "Benedictinorum S.Michaelis in Lotaringia"; with a thirteenth-century copy of a land grant for a church in Aivicort (probably nearby Avricourt) at the end of the text on fol. 206v.

3. Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872); his MS.4493; acquired in Nuremberg by Longman for Phillipps; bought by the Robinsons with the residue of the collection in 1947, and thence privately to Kraus in 1977; his cat.153, no.6.

4. Bergendal MS.55; bought by Joseph Pope from Kraus in January 1983: Bergendal catalogue no.55; Stoneman, 'Guide', p.188.

Catalogue Note

text

This is a classic Romanesque copy of the Dialogues of Gregory the Great (c.540-604). The text was probably written in 593, three years after its author's elevation to the papacy, and sets out its subject matter as "the life and miracles of the Italian Fathers and the eternity of souls", in particular that of St. Benedict, Gregory's near-contemporary. It is composed in the form of a dialogue between Gregory and Peter the Deacon, and offers an unparalleled picture of religious life in Italy during the tumultuous sixth century. This saw the final collapse of the power structures of the ancient world and the birth of the Middle Ages in the crucible of Gothic dominion over Italy and the invasion of the Lombards, a "barbarous and cruel nation", who wreaked such devastation that many thought that "the end of all flesh was come".

This is followed by a lengthy extract of the De ecclesiasticis dogmatibus (on church doctrine) by Gennadius of Marseilles (d. c.496), better known for his continuation of Jerome's De viris illustribus. This text begins here on fol.100r, and includes chapters 1-17 and 19-21 of a total 88. The Historia Eremitica of Rufinus of Aquileia (d.410) follows on fol.103r, as does a life of St. Giles on fol.199v.