LARGE DOCUMENT RECORDING GIFTS. FRANCE (MONT-ST-ELOI, NEAR ARRAS), DATED NOVEMBER 1290

single-sheet document, c.335x410mm, vellum, 47 lines, with a small hole between lines 4 and 5 and an inconspicuous tear through the last five lines, endorsed ‘Littera abbatis et conventus de obitu domine tasse de tupigni in nostra ecclesia perpetuo faciendo et de supulta in capellam de magdalena sibi concessa ac multis aliis post decessum eius …’

Lots 45-48 from a private collection, United States. By this document Étienne [du Fermon], Abbot of the Augustinian monastery of Mont-St-Eloi, in the diocese of Arras, records that Lady Tassa [‘Witasse’ in other documents] de Hamelincourt, widow of Walter, the late Lord de Tupigny, and many other named people, give land in payment for the building of a chapel and for the saying of requiem masses, and for other purposes including THE PAYMENT OF SCRIBES (‘in usus librarii ecclesie nostre per manum et consilium prioris nostri’, line 7) AND FOR BOOKS, AND FOR SCHOLARS (‘libris utilibus et necessariis ad opus doctorum scolarium per consilium dicti prioris … scolares ad studium’, line 20, and ‘ad opus nostrorum scolarium’, line 27).

This document provides an insight into the funding of the production and study of manuscripts at Arras in the generation after Johannes Philomena.