Beschreibung:

from a Romanesque Bible manuscript, in Latin, on parchment [France (probably the north), c. 1150-60] Eleven cuttings with readings from the Old Testament: nine approximately square (c. 40 mm. by 40mm.) with 3-line initials in red, blue and green with delicate multi-coloured floral infill in facing or mirrored patterns, cut almost to edges of initial (with only a few words or characters of text remaining, at least two scribes writing excellent and precise early Gothic bookhands with no biting curves), and two others with similar initials but with 5 lines from whole column of text (c. 40mm. by 130mm., indicating an original double column layout and a written space of c. 330mm. by 220mm.), the latter with red capitula numbers inset into column on righthand side, all laid down on a nineteenth-century brown card, that somewhat torn at edges, one initial with text ink flaked away, but still legible, else in fine and presentable condition Another such card with nine initials from the same manuscript and by the same scribe and artist were sold as part of an album of cuttings by Sotheby’s, 10 December 1996, lot 6 (illustrated full-page there), and this is almost certainly a fugitive leaf from that collection. There they were identified as “not the Bible itself, perhaps Josephus”, presumably as the chapter numbers on two of the cuttings here, as well as one of those sold in 1996 are inconsistent with the standard numbers for the Old Testament. They are, perhaps, in fact numbers taken from the capitula-lists which precede each book, and as such this must have been a transitional version of the text, in which its copyists attempted to harmonise the numbering of these prefatory lists with the sections of the main text.