Thomas of Ireland, Manipulus Florum, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [England or possibly northern France, early fourteenth century]

Estimate

7,000 - 9,000 GBP

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Description

Vellum

209 leaves (plus 3 early endleaves at back), 180mm. by 125mm., wanting 2 leaves from front, single leaves from the sixth, twelfth and thirteenth gatherings, and gatherings after fols.93, 185 and 197, else complete, collation: i¹⁰ (wanting i-ii), ii-v¹², vi¹¹ (wants i), vii-xi¹², xii¹¹ (vi a singleton), xiii⁹ (wants iv), xiv-xviii¹², catchwords, single column, c.42 lines in brown ink in a small gothic hand, rubrics and names of authorities in red, Biblical passages underlined in red, each alphabetical division beginning with a 3-line initial in gold on blue and pink grounds heightened in white, subsequent entries with a blue initial touched in red penwork, the remainder of the word in ornamental capitals, capitals in index section touched in red, 2 leaves torn, else good condition, endleaves from a near-contemporary antiphonary with 2 columns and space left for musical notation, and a bifolium from a fourteenth-century English accounts, repeatedly naming “Stephanus de Barnby”, original endleaf at back with hole and rust marks from chain hasp, nineteenth-century brown leather over pasteboards

Provenance

provenance

From the library of the Barons Monson in Burton: their MS.CLXVII. Most probably acquired by William John Monson, 6th Baron Monson (1796-1862), and by descent.

Catalogue Note

text

Thomas de Hibernia (c.1265-after 1329) was an Irishman, who studied at Paris, where he became a fellow of the Sorbonne by 9 June 1295, and used the library of that institution to compile this list of 6000 extracts from the writings of the Fathers and doctors of the Church on a wide variety of moral and ethical topics (Rouse and Rouse, Preacher, Florilegia and Sermons, 1979, ch.4). These were arranged according to an innovative reference system, with the entries being alphabetised and the extracts within them classed a-y (intentionally missing i, j and z) and aa-ay and so on. The work was completed by 1306, and widely disseminated, and some 89 manuscripts survive (ibid. pp.313-405). The present copy is among the earliest extant, from within the author’s own lifetime or the decades immediately following.