Description
191 leaves (plus remnants of original flyleaves), 440mm. by 255mm., a gathering wanting from beginning and a number of leaves throughout: collation: i1 (first leaf cut away, a fourteenth-century bifolium adding the first preface, now with text from "...apriatur quem ad edictum" to the end), ii6, iii8, iv4, v7 (v a singleton), vi8, vii5 (last cut away), viii8, ix7 (v cut away), x5 (last cut away), xi6, xii7 (probably last cut away), xiii7 (vii cut away), xiv6, xv4 (i and iii singletons), xvi10, xvii6 (i and iii cut away), xviii6, xix8, xx6, xxi8, xxii7 (last cut away), xxiii6, xxiv7 (iii a singleton), xxv6, xxvi8, xxvii6, xxviii7 (i cut away), xxix9 (last probably a singleton), xxx2, double column, 52 lines in brown ink in a number of early gothic bookhands, small initials in red or blue (sometimes overlapping or heightened with a single line in contrasting colour), sixty-eight decorated initials in blue or burgundy heightened with white penwork and gold bezants, on contrasting grounds, often enclosing lacertine animals (some with human faces) and accompanied in the margin by birds, drolleries and animals (including two cat-like animals, one brown one blue, on fols.117v and 130v, a monkey in a coif eating a golden fruit on fol.182v, and a man holding a golden fruit to his nose on fol.4r), similar to the output of the Johannes Grusch atelier (cf. R. Branner, Manuscript Painting in Paris, 1977, figs.220-25), fifty-eight other line drawings in margins (predominantly of people gesturing towards the text) in various hands, some rustic, some skilled (see below), some scuffs, stains and tears to edges of leaves, last 14 leaves damaged by burning with loss of an area 90mm. by 160mm. from margin and outermost edge of text, else fair condition, early probably original sewing structures (some thongs now split) and remnants of boards (both split halfway across and missing parts restored with modern replacements), white skin pasted over spine, now torn in places exposing remnants of near-contemporary manuscript fragments in lining
Provenance
provenance
Graham Pollard (1903-76), bibliographer and with John Carter the exposer of the forger T.J. Wise.
Catalogue Note
text
This is an excellent example of a working legal text, added to during at least a century of use. The original body of the volume was written in Italy (doubtless Bologna) in the first quarter of the thirteenth century. Some decades later, it passed to France where it received its illuminated initials, and there it was augmented with a more up-to-date gloss, by cropping the margins on the three outer sides and replacing these with new vellum for the replacement text. Also added in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century were the fifty-eight marginal line drawings, as visual aids to help locate crucial passages (cf. other examples in S. L'Engle, 'The Pro-active Reader: Learning to Learn the Law', in Medieval Manuscripts, Their Makers and Users, 2011). These range from quite rustic figures (see the hound chasing a hare on fol. 167r and the criminal with his head in a noose about to be hanged on fol.144r) to well-accomplished works of art, such as the young man in robes of fine drapery on fol.151r, and the detailed drawing of a bishop's head in profile on fol.47r.
The volume comprises the Digest of
Corpus Juris Civilis from book I:2 (opening imperfectly "in civitate sumum uti leges ...") to the end of book XXIV.
