Lot 92

Pseudo-Jerome, In regula vivendi in monasteriis monialium, and Jerome, De viris illustribus, and Contra Jovinianum, in Latin and Greek, decorated manuscript on vellum [Italy, mid fifteenth century]

Estimate

6,000 - 8,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

79 leaves, 234mm. by 160mm., complete, collation: i-vii^{10, viii^{9 (the last leaf now the frontispiece of Bergendal MS.38, the previous lot here), single column, 39 lines in a number of neat humanistic hands, capitals touched in yellow, 2- to 3-line initials in red with iridescent yellow infill or contrasting penwork,}}four large multi-coloured initials (5- to 13-line) on fols.1r, 21r, 29r and 59r, the first in green and red acanthus-leaves, enclosing a human head and a fruit-tree, with tendrils terminating in fleshy buds and flowers spilling into margin, the last three in variegated red with penwork flourishes and some heightening in silver (now oxidised) emulating the Romanesque, sketch of acanthus-leaves in pen in margin of fol.20r, small scuffs, else excellent condition on fine vellum with wide and clean margins, nineteenth-century quarter vellum over pasteboards with modern spine

Provenance

provenance

1. Written and decorated in Italy, perhaps in Venice or the north-east.

2. St. Joseph's Seminary, Dunwoodie, N.Y.: their inkstamp on first leaf, "Bequest of the Rev. Patrick Brady of the Diocese of New York 1854".

3. Bergendal MS.39 (once bound with Bergendal MS.38, the previous lot) bought by Joseph Pope from Sam Fogg in February 1996: Bergendal catalogue no.39.

Catalogue Note

text

This manuscript includes a number of the lesser works either by Jerome (c.347-420) or ascribed to him in the Middle Ages. It opens with the In regula vivendi in monasteriis monialium, on rules for nuns, a text listed among his works by Migne (Pat.Lat.30:391-426), but most probably not by him. A short excerpt from the final two chapters of Jerome's celebrated catalogue of Christian writers, the De viris illustribus, follow on fols.20r, with the entries for Sophronius, the patriarch of Jerusalem (560-638) and Jerome himself. Finally, on fol.21r begins his Liber contra Jovinianum, a work composed in 393 and directed against Jovinianus, who controversially advocated that all sins (and punishments for them) were equal, and that virginity and abstinence brought with it no particular state of holiness. This work had particular influence on Chaucer, and echoes of it can be traced in the Wife of Bath's tale.