Latin Vulgate Bible Leaf in the Collection of Jennah Farrell, Part 2

November 7, 2024 in Manuscript Studies, Uncategorized

The Latin Vulgate Bible Leaf
in the Collection of Jennah Farrell

Part 2: Provenance

Single Leaf from the Book of Numbers, within Frame
Laid out in double columns of 46 lines in Gothic Script

Visible area within mat:
maximum circa 24.1 cm. tall × 16.3 cm. wide
(circa 9 7/8 in. tall × 6 7/8 in. wide)
< ruled writing area
circa 18.7 × 12.5 cm. (circa 7 3/4 × 4 7/8 in.)>

[Posted on 6 November 2024]

Collection of Jennah Farrell, Manuscript Leaf in Mat: top left. Photograph by Jennah Farrrell.

Part 2 in our blogposts about a “New Loan” to the RGME “Lending Library” from the Collection of Jennah Farrell examines the evidence for the provenance of the Latin Bible leaf once it reached her collection.  Removing the leaf from its frame waits for a next stage (Part 3).

Part 1 introduced the leaf by examining the span of text and accompanying features on the visible side of the leaf, from the decorated initials and chapter numbers to the full-page vertical bars with extended foliate ornament.

The visible features establish that this side was the original recto.

Besides the evidence provided by the frame and its backing paper, mounts, and hanging wire, the nature of the acquisition (the ‘find place’ in archaeological terms) affords information about the former owner and its place in that former collection.  Jennah has provided those details from the circumstances of the purchase and her explorations to discover more about the leaf, its identity, and its potential value.

This quest led her to loan the leaf to the RGME and to permit its study, photography, and publication, for which we are grateful. The process, integrated with the on-going work of the RGME in the course of its activities through its 2024 Anniversary Year, gives the opportunity for teaching as the research unfolds.

Detached from its former manuscript, the single vellum leaf from a medieval Bible in the Latin Vulgate Version preserves part of the Old Testament Book of Numbers.  In its present state, the leaf within its frame carries no statement of its original manuscript, any stages by which it was separated and dispersed, or other written declarations of its date and place of origin or its transmission across time from the medieval period to our own time.  Such information must be deduced or inferred from the evidence internal to the leaf and its frame and detected from evidence external to them, to be found in written and/or other sources of many kinds.

Such is the fate of countless medieval manuscripts disbound and dispersed for the market.  Some methods of detection are time-tested.  Some of our earlier blogposts describe and employ them.

This leaf can serve as a test case for accuracy of interpretations on the basis of partial evidence. How good are the methods of detection and our abilities?

The Story So Far

The leaf in its frame displays its features selected as its “best side” and cropped to exclude margins beyond a narrow confine focused upon the columns of text and decoration.

Let’s see what we can know about it in this position and its chain of acquisition.

First, the span of text and its layout within its former manuscript. Next, the provenance for the leaf itself, as known or ascertainable. Later, when the frame is removed, the full extent of the leaf will be revealed.

Collection of Jennah Farrell, Manuscript Leaf in Frame. Photograph by Jennah Farrrell.

The Span of Text

Laid out in double columns of 46 lines per column, the text on the recto of the leaf begins mid-word and breaks off mid-phrase, as part of a longer continuous text.  The visible side (or page) of the leaf carries the text for Numbers 18:27 ([oblati-/]onem primitovorum) – 20:5 (aquam non / [habet ad bibendum]).  It has inset 2-line decorated initials for both chapters 19 and 20, with their illuminated chapter numbers (XIX and XX in roman numerals squeezed into the ends of the preceding lines), and a partial running title ([NUME-]RI) at the top of the page.  A page’s worth of the text is preserved on the hidden opposite side.

Because the visible side shows its full span of the Bible text in the two columns, we can conjecture how the facing page ended and the following page began.  We do so with reference to online or printed editions and other manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate, and with awareness that medieval manuscripts could often vary their ‘readings’ of the text which might differ (or ‘deviate’) in some ways, sometimes seemingly capriciously, from the known standards.  In a word, complicated. Such is the nature of the text and its transmission through manuscripts across time. Useful to know.

If the layout of text and rate-per-column in this manuscript behaved similarly to the specimen on the recto of the leaf and followed a similar approach to the wording of the Vulgate text, we could expect the following:

1) the preceding page (on the former facing verso) would most likely have ended partway through Numbers 18:27 (ut reputetur uobis in oblati[onem]); and

2) the following verso presumably picks up at the end of 20:5 ([et aquam] non habet ad bibendum).

At the same rate of script per column, the verso would have completed Chapter 20 and moved into Chapter 21, with a minor inset 2-line initial, whereas the recto of the preceding leaf could have started Chapter 18 with a similar initial and reached partly into Chapter 17.

Still within the Book of Numbers, the text which leads to the leaf in the Collection of Jennah Farrell and continues from it would be preserved on other leaves from the same book, were they to survive. If they do, where might they be now?

If the manuscript followed a standard order of the Old Testament Books in the Vulgate Version, the Book of Numbers would have stood between Leviticus and Deuteronomy.  Please note that the order of the books within the Vulgate Bible is by no means uniform in the surviving manuscripts, so that it is important to pay heed to the order within your given manuscript. A good rule of thumb with medieval Vulgate manuscripts can be to assume nothing, observe carefully, pay attention to patterns of presentation in various Vulgate witnesses, and turn to contextual evidence judiciously. Complicated? Can be. Rewarding? Can be. We’ll share tips.

By virtue of its text, layout, and genre of book, this single leaf implies a much longer original manuscript, perhaps a full Bible with both Old and New Testaments, and perhaps also with companion texts of customary kinds for the Vulgate, such as prefaces.  That is, the text on the leaf is not self-contained. It follows from somewhere and goes somewhere on the same path, in a well-known text that shows the way.

This projection is what the leaf can imply or tell us on its own, within its frame, set within the context of the genre of medieval Vulgate manuscripts in medium format as known from many other witnesses, their settings, and editions.

The Leaf with its Frame

The present owner acquired the leaf in its modern frame among a former owner’s belongings abandoned in a storage facility in Utah.  Contained within a brown wooden frame with a windowed mat, the leaf shows only part of one of its sides. The opposite side is hidden behind the black paper covering of the frame; of the leaf itself, all four outer edges of the visible side (or page) are masked behind the edges of the window.

On its mostly blank black paper covering glued to the wooden picture frame, the back of the frame shows only

  • the pair of hinged fastenings and the picture wire for the hanging;
  • the nail formerly used to suspend the frame and its contents, now attached by a strip of clear cellophane tape at the upper left along the wooden strip; and
  • the traces, more-or-less centered at the lower edge, of a label formerly affixed to the paper.

Perhaps that former label proclaimed the maker or firm responsible for the frame and the framing of the leaf.

Collection of Jennah Farrell, Manuscript Leaf: Back of Frame. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Chain of Ownership

Jennah Farrell reports that the leaf was purchased at auction in June 2024 from an abandoned storage unit in Las Vegas, Nevada. The previous owner had transferred it there from New York City, apparently among the belongings of  his parents in New York. These stored belongings seem to have been largely untouched since 2003, by which time the leaf in its frame must have arrived. Within the belongings, this item is the only medieval Bible leaf.

There is no evidence that its proximate owner had interest in history or the Bible; he worked or works in the tech industry also as a music producer. The storage unit, in lien, had belonged to Emerson Wong, who attended New Bedford Schools and Columbia University. His parents’ interests, travels, and activities are summarized in the obituary for his father Francis Tim Chui Wong (1951–2013).

Information about the leaf in its former collection, if not also earlier collections between the dismemberment of the manuscript and its placement in its frame must be gleaned from the frame itself and its mat.

Collection of Jennah Farrell, Manuscript Leaf in Mat: top left. Photograph by Jennah Farrrell.

Collection of Jennah Farrell, Manuscript Leaf in Frame: Top right. Photograph by Jennah Farrrell.

More to Come

Let us see what becomes revealed with the leaf is removed from its frame.

Watch this space.  A next blogpost would reveal more as our research continues.

A Pair of Workshops for this Leaf

Next, we plan two RGME Workshops on Looking at Manuscripts, the first in a new series, to introduce the leaf and learn how to identify its probable date and place of origin, as well as its former manuscript and its context among relatives. On loan since June 2024 to the RGME Library & Archives from the Jennah Farrell Collection for conservation, photography, research, teaching, and publication, the vellum leaf contains part of the Old Testament Book of Numbers in a Latin Vulgate Bible.

The Farrell Collection acquired the leaf in a modern non-archival frame, without identifying information about its text, original manuscript, date and place of origin, travels from its original home to the former owner, who had abandoned it. Our challenge is to discern what the leaf might itself have to say about these different stages, and what we might discover about its original identity, its former manuscript, and its dispersal.

Both workshops will be held online by Zoom, for which registration (free) is required.

1) Workshop 1 introduces the leaf and sets the groundwork.

Sunday 17 November 2024 at 1:00-2:30 pm EST (GMT-5) by Zoom

2) Workshop 2 follows up the lines of investigation as we might collectively compare notes and refine our inquiries more fully to understand the leaf and its relatives.

Sunday 16 December 2024 at 1:00-2:30 pm EST (GMT-5)

After you register, the Zoom Link will be sent to you a few days before the event.

Beginners and experts welcome!

Comments? Join the Journey!

Do you recognize this manuscript? Are you familiar with other leaves from it? Please let us know.

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