Parchment folio with text in brown and red ink, with decorated initial in red, blue green and brown. 29.7 x 20 cm. The fragment is stored in a binder from The Schoyen Collection, MS 598.
PETER LOMBARD (d.1160), Sentences, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [England, Oxford?, mid 13th century]
A fine representative of one of the fundamental medieval university textbooks.
A single leaf, c.300×200mm, ruled in light plummet for 2 columns of 48 lines written in black ink above top line in a somewhat cursive gothic script, ruled space c.210×130mm, the text comprising the last two items in the list of contents, and the beginning of the main text (Book 1, Distinctio 1, Capitulum 1–1.2.10), decorated with a large parted initial ‘U’ in blue and red, with foliate infill and extensions with washes of brown and green, and smaller flourished initials, prickings in all four margins (recovered from use as a pastedown, with consequent wear and damage especially to the verso, but still attractive and completely legible). Bound in grey buckram by the Quaritch bindery.
Provenance:
(1) The overall appearance and level of marginal annotation suggest that this was a university book – and the text was a standard university text for the study of theology – thus the manuscript is likely to have been made at Oxford.
(2) Still in active use in the 14th century, when marginalia were added, including ‘D.ia.’ (i.e. Distinctio prima) in the upper left corner.
(3) Bernard Quaritch, cat. 1088 (1988), no 28.
(4) Schøyen Collection, MS 598.
Script:
Although previously dated to the late 13th century, the writing above top line and the prickings in the inner margin would both be unusual for books made after about the middle of the century. The script was written carefully but fairly swiftly, with numerous abbreviations, and with cursive tendencies: note especially the long sideways ascenders on the letter ‘d’ when it occurs at the beginning of a line, and the very unusual tironian ‘et’, which descends below the line and then loops up towards the next letter like a modern letter ‘y’, sometimes joined to the next letter without a pen-lift (e.g. column 2, line 1: ‘pat(er) (et) filius’).
If made in Oxford and still there in the 16th century, the parent volume was probably broken-up for use as waste by an Oxford bookbinder, and other leaves may survive in Oxford bindings. N.R. Ker, Pastedowns in Oxford Bindings (revised edition, 2004), records more than twenty copies of Lombard’s Sentences, including two 13th-century copies written, like the present leaf, in 2 columns of 48 lines (nos 303 and 1354–56).
Full pdf available, https://dl.mospace.umsystem.edu/mu/islandora/object/mu%3A443151/datastre...
