William Durandus, Rationale de divinis officiis, Nigel de Longchamps, Speculum stultorum, the Mirror of Fools, in verse, an extract from Isidore of Seville on the orders of animals, and a substantial collection of the works of Anselm and Augustine, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [England, first half of the fourteenth century]

Estimate

10,000 - 15,000 GBP

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Description

Vellum

251 leaves, 360mm. by 230mm., complete, collation: i-xv¹², xvi¹² (most probably), xvii⁸ (most probably), xviii-xix¹², xx⁸, xxi¹², xxii⁸, xxiii⁷ (last leaf a cancelled blank), double column, c.62 lines in a number of late gothic bookhands, some capitals touched in yellow, rubrics in red, paragraph marks in red or blue, 2- to 3-line initials in blue with elaborate red penwork, penwork cadels to ascenders of uppermost line of text touched in red for last 12 leaves, larger initials in variegated red and blue with penwork picking out foliage within the bodies of the letters, slight cockling to volume, some spots and minor areas of discolouration, else excellent condition, marbled pastedowns, nineteenth-century brown leather over thick wooden boards

Provenance

provenance

(1) Presented in 1482 to a monastic or cathedral library by “Thome Wynter”, who paid for the rebinding at his own expense: his inscription at base of contents list on first endleaf.

(2) From the library of the Barons Monson in Burton: their MS.CLVII and “No.111” on first endleaf. Most probably acquired by William John Monson, 6th Baron Monson (1796-1862), and by descent.

Catalogue Note

text

This is a large monastic collection of both important and irreverent theological tracts, opening with the Rationale de divinis officiis of William Durandus (d.1296), bishop of Mende in southern France. The work was modelled on De sacro altaris mysterio by Pope Innocent III, but was more comprehensive in its reach, surveying the whole gamut of the liturgy. It remained the standard handbook of the subject throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

There follows the satirical verse, the Speculum stultorum (fol.168v) by Nigel de Longchamps (d. c.1200), who was a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, in the last decades of the twelfth century (he was a member of the community in the 1190s, and claims in the text to have met Thomas Becket, murdered in 1170). The text is a satire on the clergy and society in general. The hero is Brunellus, a foolish donkey, who seeks to improve himself in various ways, each of which backfires. Firstly, he goes in search of a means of making himself more beautiful by lengthening his tail. He visits Salerno in search of potions to help, but is attacked by a Cistercian monk and his dogs. Then he goes to Paris to study, but proves unable to even remember the name of the city after eight years’ university education, so he decides to join a religious order and live a life of religious austerity, but ends up founding his own by combining the easiest and most comfortable parts of the lives set out in the existing rules. Finally, he is recaptured by his master. The poem was immensely popular in the Middle Ages, and is cited by Chaucer in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale under the title “Daun Burnel the Asse”. Mozley and Raymo in their edition of 1960 list 39 extant manuscripts (pp.9-15, not including the present one), all in European institutional ownership.

The volume recommences with a substantial collection of the works of Anselm of Bec (c.1033-1109), the prelate, philosopher and archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to his death. Fol.185r-88v contains a tabula or concordance of his works, followed by his fundamentally important philosophical treatise, Cur Deus homo (fol.189r), his monumental Monologion (fol.213r) and Proslogion (fol.218v) and numerous shorter tracts. It closes with a collection of the shorter works of Augustine, enclosing on fol.238v an extract from Isidore of Seville, De Ordine Creaturarum.