Beschreibung:

ALULPH OF TOURNAI (d.1144), Gregorialis , in Latin, manuscript on vellum [southern Netherlands, Villers(?), third quarter of the 12th century] A substantial decorated portion of a very rare text, written not long after the death of the author, with a very distinguished provenance 12 leaves (2 leaves, a gathering of 8, and 2 more leaves), c.360×265mm, pricked in all four margins and ruled in plummet for two columns of 35 lines written above top line in a fine late Romanesque script, ruled space c.250×170mm, rubrics, running headings, and added marginal chapter numbers in red, decorated with a large six-line puzzle initial in red and green with penwork in both colours, with a further 20 two-line initials alternately red or green with penwork of the other colour, the capitula list of Book XI with one-line red and green initials, the text comprising parts of Books X–XII (see below), original parchment flaws repaired with medieval sewing (minor stains and darkening, mainly at the edges, and a few creases, but generally in very fine condition). Bound in grey buckram at the Quaritch bindery. Provenance : (1) Written at a Cistercian house, to judge by the punctus flexus punctuation (cf. lot 439), doubtless Villers-en-Brabant (about 20 miles south of Brussels), and doubtless the ‘Quarta pars Gregorialis’ included in their 1309 library catalogue; the abbey was suppressed in 1796, and this was one of a group of about 20 manuscripts from the monastery bought in Brussels c.1823 by: (2) Sir Thomas Phillipps (d.1872), his MS 29506, formerly bound at the end of his MS 322 (‘De tentatione domini, fol[io], v[ellum], S[aec]. xiii’, ‘Ex Abbatia de Villari, in Flandria’; 70 leaves of the parent volume are now bound as Brussels, Bibliothèque royale, ms II.930); part of the residue of his collection sold by his heirs in 1945 to: (3) Messrs Robinson, of Pall Mall, and by the Robinson Trust in 1977 to: (4) H.P. Kraus; bought from them in April 1978 by: (5) Bernard Rosenthal, his ‘I/276’. (6) Bernard Quaritch, cat. 1088 (1988), no 24, the 8-leaf gathering, and cat. 1147 (1991), no 93 (the four other leaves). (7) Schøyen Collection, MS 95. Text : Alulphus was a monk and librarian of St Martin’s, Tournai, and the dissemination of this rare work seems to have been limited to his own house and a handful of other Cistercian houses in French Flanders and the southern Netherlands; it remains unpublished. The volume in Brussels ends in Book IX, chapter 19; the present leaves contain Book X:8–10 (f.2), X:13–XI:17 (ff.3–12, with one leaf missing after f.10), and XII:4–7 (f.1). For a list of 19 leaves, including the present 12, see de Hamel, Gilding the Lilly , 2010, no 23. A leaf in the Takamiya Collection at Yale belongs immediately before the present f.1; one at Stanford University fills a gap between ff.2 and 3; and a leaf in the collection of Keio University belongs immediately after f.12. Script : The present leaves demonstrate the beginning of the transition from Romanesque to Gothic script, with ‘pp’ fused together, an extra stroke in letters such as capital ‘S’, hyphens at the ends of lines, and ‘i’ rarely dotted.