Lot 53

Bede, Homeliarum evangelii libri II, Homilies on the Gospels, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [England, end of the twelfth century]

Estimate

3,000 - 5,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

a leaf, 295mm. by 203mm., two columns, 37 lines, late romanesque textura (littera praegothica textualis libraria), capitals touched in red, 'diple' in the margins in red (to mark the biblical lemmata), punctuation added in red including the 'punctus elevatus' and (suggesting use in a Cistercian or possibly Carthusian house) the 'punctus flexus', homily numbers added in upper margin in slightly later hands, in roman numerals in red and (very rare for this date) in arabic numerals in black, recovered from use on the outside of a binding, some stains, lower margin defective and repaired, hessian binding

Provenance

provenance

Phillips, 17 April 1986, part of lot 26, which included a half-leaf of Reynard the Fox and a leaf of Ambroise, L'estoire de la guerre sainte (now at Keio University), all with distinctive seventeenth-century English pressmarks, as here, 'I, J6 / J5' (cf. Revue d'histoire des textes, XXII, 1992, p.164); Quaritch, Bookhands III, cat.1088 (1988), no.8; Schøyen MS 127.

Catalogue Note

text

From an English manuscript of Gospel commentaries by one of the earliest and greatest Anglo-Saxon biblical scholars (see also lots 35 and 36). The text is from Homily 1:16 (D. Hurst, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, 122, 1955, pp.114-8), on John 1:42.

literature

J. Griffiths, 'Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection Copied or Owned in the British Isles before 1700', English Manuscript Studies, 5, 1995, p.39.