Beschreibung:

PETER LOMBARD (d.1160), Commentary on the Pauline Epistles , in Latin, manuscript on vellum [France (Paris?) or England (Canterbury?), c.1160–80] From the library of Canterbury Cathedral, and perhaps owned by St Thomas Becket. A bifolium, each leaf c.325×240mm, ruled in rather thick plummet for 2 columns of 43 lines written above top line in an early Gothic bookhand, ruled space c.255×165mm, with lemmata underlined in red and authorities in the margins in red (‘Hai[mo]’, ‘Au[gustine]’, ‘A[m]b[rose]’), sometimes specifying the text (e.g. ‘Au.d.c.di.’: ‘Augustini de civitate dei’), prickings survive in all three outer margins, the margins with added symbols in the form of four dots in a lozenge pattern (characteristic of books from the library at Canterbury Cathedral) and a theta-like shape in the form of an ‘O’ with a cross-stroke (natural flaws in the vellum at the lower fore-edges, the second leaf with a small tear at the fore-edge, but otherwise in excellent condition). Bound in grey buckram at the Quaritch bindery. Provenance : (1) Perhaps written in Paris for St Thomas Becket (d.1170), Archbishop of Canterbury (see below), passing after his death into: (2) Canterbury Cathedral Library, and from there to: (3) Canterbury College, Oxford (see C. de Hamel, ‘The Dispersal of the Library of Christ Church, Canterbury, from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century’, Books and Collectors 1200 – 1700 , 1997, at pp.268–69 and n.34). (4) Probably among the manuscript fragments collected by the antiquary Philip Bliss (d.1837) from books rebound in Oxford in the 1820s. (5) Sir Thomas Phillipps (d.1872), presumably his MS 18133 (‘A vol. of vellum fragments from bindings’, ‘ex Bibl. Revdi. Philippi Bliss D.C.L’), by descent to his grandson: (6) Thomas Fitzroy Fenwick (d.1938). (7) Acquired as part of the final residue of the Phillipps collection by the Robinson Brothers in 1945; sold by the Robinson Trust in 1977 to: (8) H.P. Kraus; sold in April 1978 to: (9) Bernard Rosenthal, his 'I/277'. (10) Bernard Quaritch, cat. 1147 (1991), part of no 94. (11) Schøyen Collection, MS 639. De Hamel observes that the present bifolium ‘was certainly at Christ Church’ based on its characteristic Christ Church marginal markings, and ‘its page layout is of the most archaic form, written continuously without lemmata, a format generally abandoned by the late 1160s. If it was indeed at Christ Church since the twelfth century, it would not be inconsistent in date with Eastry no 803 […] given by Thomas Becket’. The text was disseminated from Paris where Peter Lombard, Bishop of Paris, died in 1160; Becket perhaps acquired his copy while in Paris when he was there in 1169–70, shortly before his fateful return from exile. Text : The text is continuous (so this was the central bifolium of a gathering), it starts in a gloss on I Thessalonians 4, continues with Romans 2, and ends in I Corinthians 15 (‘antichristi erunt residui […] id est peccatores vel’) Script : This is a relatively swiftly written (medium grade) bookhand, representing the transition from Romanesque to Gothic. There are numerous abbreviations, ascenders and descenders are rather squat, double ‘pp’ is fused (e.g. ‘p(ro)pter’, ‘p(ro)ponentibus’) but not other letters, double ‘ii’ is dotted, but still not single ‘i’, tall ‘s’ still predominates but round ‘s’ is found at the beginning or end of some words, and the ampersand is used almost to the exclusion of (uncrossed) tironian ‘et’. A characteristic of this scribe is the up-tick at the bottom of the descender of the letter ‘p’.