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Auction archive: Lot number 433

BEDE, De tabernaculo , in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [Normandy or Norman England?, late 11th or early 12th century]

Estimate
£20,000 - £30,000
ca. US$24,955 - US$37,433
Price realised:
£93,750
ca. US$116,978
Auction archive: Lot number 433

BEDE, De tabernaculo , in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [Normandy or Norman England?, late 11th or early 12th century]

Estimate
£20,000 - £30,000
ca. US$24,955 - US$37,433
Price realised:
£93,750
ca. US$116,978
Beschreibung:

BEDE, De tabernaculo , in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [Normandy or Norman England?, late 11th or early 12th century] An exceptionally fine and large example of Romanesque decoration, and of the script of Norman and English scribes in the decades after the Norman Conquest of England A single leaf, c.265×180mm, ruled in very faint plummet for 29 lines, the recto written in a very fine Romanesque bookhand with rubrics in red, in a mixture of minuscules and Square Capitals, the script on the verso with sharp angles and serifs, ruled space c.180×110mm, decorated with a very large initial ‘L’ more than the full height of the text, incorporating a ‘lion mask’ and foliate designs, executed in brown, green, and red inks, infilled with the same colours plus a pale yellow wash, prickings preserved in all three outer margins (light vertical and horizontal creases, minor staining and darkening in the margins, but overall in exceptionally fine condition). Bound in grey buckram at the Quaritch bindery. Provenance : (1) Reported to have been found within a book acquired in York in the 1940s (no later than 1947) by Louis Pearson, Chaplain of Bede College, Durham. (2) Bernard Quaritch, cat. 1088 (1988), no 4. (3) Schøyen Collection, MS 76. Text : This is the first (and surely the finest) leaf of the text, containing a capitula list of nine numbered chapters; a rubric ‘Incipit liber primus veneabilis Bede presbiteri in expositione de tabernaculo Moysi’; and the beginning of the text, from the incipit ‘Locuturi iuvante domino de figura tabernaculi […]’ to ‘[…] omnes gentes baptizantes’ (equivalent to D. Hurst, Bedae opera, pars II, 2A , Corpus Christianorum, vol. 119a, 1969, pp.3–5 line 31). Chapter 1 starts on the verso with a quotation from Exodus 24:12, introduced by a red initial ‘D’, and marked by diplé in the outer margin, followed by the text itself, marked by another red ‘D’. Scripts : Apart from the stunning decoration, the main interest of this leaf is that the recto and verso seem to have been written by different scribes; the verso written in a much more angular, ‘prickly’ script, comparable to that which was characteristic of manuscripts made at Canterbury and Rochester cathedrals (on which see N.R. Ker, English Manuscripts in the Century after the Norman Conquest , Oxford, 1960). Division of work between scribes is common in 11th- and 12th-century monastic manuscripts, often with the ‘master’ scribe writing the beginning, as if to set an example for an assistant to follow. In the accompanying correspondence from 1986, A.C. de la Mare writes that it ‘could well be XI2 and looks very Norman’, and Marvin Colker writes ‘I think it is early 12th century (the side with the contents and opening of text even looks as if it might be from the closing years of the 11th century.) I would regard the leaf as English’. Richard Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England (c. 1066 – 1130) (1999), no 619, attributes it to ‘England or the Continent’ . For several decades following the Norman Conquest of 1066, large numbers of monks from Norman monasteries moved to England (many English bishops and abbots having been replaced by Normans), often making it difficult to know on which side of the English Channel a manuscript was produced. A late 11th-century copy of the text from Winchester is now Oxford, Trinity College, MS 28 (255×205mm, 28 lines; see Gameson, Catalogue , 2018), a c.1100 copy from Christ Church, Canterbury is Bodleian, MS. Bodl. 385; and an early 12th-century copy from Durham (lacking its first leaf and, like the present leaf, with 29 lines per page) is Cambridge, Jesus College, MS 14.

Auction archive: Lot number 433
Beschreibung:

BEDE, De tabernaculo , in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [Normandy or Norman England?, late 11th or early 12th century] An exceptionally fine and large example of Romanesque decoration, and of the script of Norman and English scribes in the decades after the Norman Conquest of England A single leaf, c.265×180mm, ruled in very faint plummet for 29 lines, the recto written in a very fine Romanesque bookhand with rubrics in red, in a mixture of minuscules and Square Capitals, the script on the verso with sharp angles and serifs, ruled space c.180×110mm, decorated with a very large initial ‘L’ more than the full height of the text, incorporating a ‘lion mask’ and foliate designs, executed in brown, green, and red inks, infilled with the same colours plus a pale yellow wash, prickings preserved in all three outer margins (light vertical and horizontal creases, minor staining and darkening in the margins, but overall in exceptionally fine condition). Bound in grey buckram at the Quaritch bindery. Provenance : (1) Reported to have been found within a book acquired in York in the 1940s (no later than 1947) by Louis Pearson, Chaplain of Bede College, Durham. (2) Bernard Quaritch, cat. 1088 (1988), no 4. (3) Schøyen Collection, MS 76. Text : This is the first (and surely the finest) leaf of the text, containing a capitula list of nine numbered chapters; a rubric ‘Incipit liber primus veneabilis Bede presbiteri in expositione de tabernaculo Moysi’; and the beginning of the text, from the incipit ‘Locuturi iuvante domino de figura tabernaculi […]’ to ‘[…] omnes gentes baptizantes’ (equivalent to D. Hurst, Bedae opera, pars II, 2A , Corpus Christianorum, vol. 119a, 1969, pp.3–5 line 31). Chapter 1 starts on the verso with a quotation from Exodus 24:12, introduced by a red initial ‘D’, and marked by diplé in the outer margin, followed by the text itself, marked by another red ‘D’. Scripts : Apart from the stunning decoration, the main interest of this leaf is that the recto and verso seem to have been written by different scribes; the verso written in a much more angular, ‘prickly’ script, comparable to that which was characteristic of manuscripts made at Canterbury and Rochester cathedrals (on which see N.R. Ker, English Manuscripts in the Century after the Norman Conquest , Oxford, 1960). Division of work between scribes is common in 11th- and 12th-century monastic manuscripts, often with the ‘master’ scribe writing the beginning, as if to set an example for an assistant to follow. In the accompanying correspondence from 1986, A.C. de la Mare writes that it ‘could well be XI2 and looks very Norman’, and Marvin Colker writes ‘I think it is early 12th century (the side with the contents and opening of text even looks as if it might be from the closing years of the 11th century.) I would regard the leaf as English’. Richard Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England (c. 1066 – 1130) (1999), no 619, attributes it to ‘England or the Continent’ . For several decades following the Norman Conquest of 1066, large numbers of monks from Norman monasteries moved to England (many English bishops and abbots having been replaced by Normans), often making it difficult to know on which side of the English Channel a manuscript was produced. A late 11th-century copy of the text from Winchester is now Oxford, Trinity College, MS 28 (255×205mm, 28 lines; see Gameson, Catalogue , 2018), a c.1100 copy from Christ Church, Canterbury is Bodleian, MS. Bodl. 385; and an early 12th-century copy from Durham (lacking its first leaf and, like the present leaf, with 29 lines per page) is Cambridge, Jesus College, MS 14.

Auction archive: Lot number 433
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