Patch Work in ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’

September 10, 2020 in Manuscript Studies, Uncategorized

Patched Repairs in ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’
With Pieces
of Text and Decoration
Extracted From the Same Manuscript

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, MS 14, Genesis Opening Leaf: Recto, Detail of Patch.

In a nutshell: Patches Work. Cut-Outs and Patches are recognized genres (sadly) in the history, transmission, plunder, and showcasing of medieval manuscript glories, plus efforts in some cases to cover the tracks.

Tracking those Traces? Call it Forensics. Detection Works.

Continuing our series of reports for some of the manuscripts dispersed by Otto F. Ege (1888–1951), we focus upon a little-recognized feature in one of them, which incorporates reused pieces from leaves in the same book for filling holes in other leaves. Previous accounts of the manuscript have taken scare notice of the feature; it could be more widespread in the book than their individual reported cases would indicate.

About this manuscript see, for example:

Updates for Some ‘Otto Ege Manuscripts’ (Ege MSS 8, 14, 41, and 61)

Some Leaves in Set 1 of ‘Ege’s FOL Portfolio’ (Ege MSS 8, 14, 19, and 41)

See also The Illustrated Handlist (Number 4).

We look forward to further publications about this manuscript by other scholars, including Joseph Bernaer and Peter Kidd. Joseph has kindly responded to our invitation to contribute his discoveries for publication, and Peter Kidd offers photographs which aid the quest. Peter’s publication of Volume 3 of The McCarthy Collection: French Miniatures (forthcoming, 2020) is eagerly anticipated.

Patchwork

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, ‘Ege Family Album’, Leaf 14 verso, detail.

Some leaves of ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’ have patches which fill gaps made in excising decorative elements, presumably for display in their own rights as cuttings.

Many Western medieval manuscripts survive either with cuttings or from cuttings, which forcibly extracted portions of a leaf, resulting in a hole within its original expanse. Although very many of Ege’s leaves themselves constitute cuttings in the form of “whole leaves”, I distinguish these fragments from the related phenomenon of “snippets of decorated borders and isolated initials”, as described and illustrated from collections at the Victoria & Albert Museum, the British Library, and the Walters Art Museum.

So far as I know, studies of the manuscript and attempted reconstructions of the extant pieces of Ege Manuscript 14 do not take much account of the patches, apart from occasional mentions for some individual leaves.

While working to update an account of surviving parts of the manuscript, presented in More Discoveries for ‘Ege Manuscript 14’, I took care to inspect anew images of the leaves available for viewing online. In the process, I was struck by the references to patches on a couple of different leaves described by catalogue entries. Those references call for attention.

Their notices appears in 2 catalogue entries known to me. Both are “Rogue Leaves”, a term applied to some pieces of Ege’s manuscripts. That is, they were distributed otherwise than through the customary sets of Ege’s FOL Portfolio (Fifty Original Leaves from Western Medieval Manuscripts), in which specimens from Ege MS 14 — usually single leaves, but rarely a pair of leaves in a bifolium — were selected for Leaf Number 14.

An example, within its Ege mat:

The original manuscript is mostly known as Ege Manuscript 19 (Gwara, Handlist, No. 19, page 124). The numbering follows Ege’s numbering for his FOL Portfolio. Some identified parts are listed in Scott Gwara’s Handlist, by which we cite them here.

Via the Handlist

1. Gwara, Handlist 14.1.

Boston University = Judith H. Oliver, Manuscripts Sacred and Secular (1985), number 36 [but no plate]

End of Kings, Prologue to I Chronicles, and beginning of I Chronicles,
with a ‘patch taken from another illuminated page of the same manuscript’ covering the cut-out from the ‘theft of initial for I Chronicles’.

One wonders which other page yielded its riches to patch up this leaf. (See below.)

2. Gwara Handlist 14. Ref 14.

Sold at Sotheby’s 10 July 2012, lot 2(b)

The leaf carries the Opening of the Catholic Epistle of James on its verso; I have not seen an image of its recto (But see below).

The leaf is described in the Sotheby’s catalogue thus:

leaf from a lectern Bible, 400mm. by 270mm., with a large initial ‘I’ (opening “Iacobus ihesu christi seruus …”, the epistle of James) in burnished gold with a coloured architectural roof and arch, enclosing a bearded James with a golden halo pointing at the opening of his epistle, angular foliage forming text-frame around all sides of one text column, terminating in golden leaves and a dragon, 3-line initial enclosing ivy-leaf, similar text-frame on verso with a dragon and a 5-line initial containing a sprig of foliage ending with a dragon’s head, double column, 50 lines in a regular gothic hand, area of one column cut away (90mm. by 95mm., presumably once with a large initial), now repaired with another cutting from same volume [highlights added], once mounted on card with remains of tape on recto, France or southern Flanders, early fourteenth century

Its contents:

Part of the Prologue to the Catholic Epistle of James (from [ut quia Petrus /] est primus in ordine apostolorum) and the opening of this Book, with 1:1–2:4 (nonne iudacitis [/ apud vosmet])

— plus a replacement patch with lines of script from 2 columns of text

Pasted to the recto of the leaf, on the verso the patch shows through the acquired hole, which functions as a form of ‘windowed mat’, across the end of column a and most of column b in their lines 25—37 on the damaged verso of the leaf. Viewed from the recto, the more-or-less rectangular patch, which has unevenly trimmed edges, can be seen to its full extent. Viewed from the verso, the extent and shape of the cut-out itself is known.

The mention of “remains of tape on recto” by which the leaf was “once mounted on card” shows that Ege’s matting turned the leaf front-to-back to display the verso. This is the same side as showcased in the Sotheby’s view online for its auction. The removal of part of the leaf presumably addressed an attractive historiated initial which began the Prologue on the recto.

The text on the patch identifies the leaf from which it was extracted in turn. (See below.)

In the “Otto Ege Collection” now at Yale

Another case has emerged in the Otto Ege Collection. This “find-place” demonstrates that the patch was in place within Ege’s collection, not in some subsequent handling after it left his hands.

3. First leaf of Genesis

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection

Genesis opens with a full-page initial I (for Initium) and carries the text from Book 1:1 to 3

Recto

Opening page of the Book of Genesis, with a full-page illustrated initial I for 'In' ('In Principio'), showing scenes from Creation to the Crucifixion. Dismembered leaf from 'Otto Ege MS 14'. Otto Ege Collection, Beinecke Manuscript and Rare Book Library, Yale University. Reproduced by permission.

First page of Genesis from ‘Otto Ege MS 14’. Otto Ege Collection, Beinecke Manuscript and Rare Book Library, Yale University. Reproduced by permission.

Verso

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, MS 14, Genesis Opening Leaf: Verso.

The Patched Repair

Recto

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, MS 14, Genesis Opening Leaf: Recto, Detail of Patch.

Verso

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, MS 14, Genesis Opening Leaf: Verso, Detail of Patch.

From Which Leaf?

Without (apparently) text on the patch to serve as a guide, it is uncertain to which leaf this decorated element belonged. At least, to judge by the animated decoration, with a dragonesque biped and branching, scrolling foliate tail, the element belonged to part of a major decorated initial.

The blank side of the patch could be suggestive. Can we know if originally the decorated element stood on a recto, with a blank verso, or the reverse?

As it now stands on the Genesis leaf, the decorated portion of the patch stands on the recto, with the blank side on the verso. If the pasted portion of the patch, hidden from view at the edges of the patch where it is pasted to the verso of the leaf, carries any text, the quest might become easier.

Might the hidden side of the patch itself, wherein the pasted parts of its ‘recto’ attach to the verso of the Genesis leaf, hold further clues in any other elements of script or decoration?

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, MS 14, Genesis Opening Leaf: Recto, Detail of Patch.

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, MS 14, Genesis Opening Leaf: Recto, Patch Rotated.

At present, in its patched position, the supplied decorative feature stands with the head of its dragonesque creature facing left with opened jaws. Seen in profile, the biped spreads both legs — appearing as hindlegs — in a striding pose, appearing to march forward, while its elaborate foliate tail creates a nest of branching, coiling scrolls below its body, plus an extension which descends into the lower margin. There, the tail branches again to form an opposed pair of foliate terminals.

On this side of the leaf, the patched portion neatly fits into the gap. The supplied segment with its creature nestles below the flat base of the initial I (for Initium). The letter comprises a vertical row of 8 block-like panels containing figural scenes illustrating episodes which culminate in the Crucifixion.

The tapering downward curve of the creature’s tail in the supplied portion appears to flow more-or-less seamlessly into an existing part of the decoration on the patched page, namely the downwards extension of a foliate strand which produces the pair of foliate terminals. Thus, the supplied patch and the existing decoration form a new, remedied, form of elaborate terminal for the full-page initial.

Who can say at present from which leaf came the patch? Might its decorative creature have stood in some other alignment on its original page (for example, as shown on the right)? That alternative, however, seems unlikely, given the orientations of similar decorative terminals to major initials in other parts of the book.

It is appropriate to wonder which major decorated element within the book was mostly ‘sacrificed’ for the sake of taking a patch from it. And what forms, perhaps, of damage which that element and its leaf had undergone already to be deemed to ‘merit’ such treatment. Relevant cases of significant damage could be, for example, the leaf near or at the front of the volume and now at Randolph College, with part of Jerome’s 2 Prologues to the Vulgate Bible.

The Patch for the “Sotheby Leaf” Sold on 10 July 2012
(Now in a Private Collection)

Viewed from the Verso

On the verso of the Sotheby leaf from the opening of the Epistle to James — seen online via Sotheby’s 10 July 2012, lot 2(b) — the patch ‘fills in’ parts of 13 lines of text on the patched page. Pasted onto the recto, on the verso the patch supplies the right-hand side, or end, of column a and most of column b on the page, as it peeps through the irregularly-shaped ‘window’ cut into the leaf. In column b, the framed view of the patch covers most of the column between its line having mun-/tiam et habundantiam malitiae in man-[suetudine] of James 1:21 and its line with religio / Religio munda et immaculata apud deum et pa-/trem of James 1:27. The patch covers most of the lines in between, leaving visible the last few letters of the original column.

The patch provides the text of 13 lines from parts of 2 columns of text, presenting the narrow portion of a right-hand column and the wider portion of a left-hand column from some other leaf. Its own column b carries most of the lines of text from James 3:5 to to 3:9. Here I separate those transcribed lines into groups of 5, for convenience in keeping track of their span. Square brackets enclose the lost, or hidden, letters at the ends of lines, as spaced within the original column.

Verso of Patch: Text in parts of 2 columns from the Catholic Epistle of James 2:8–12+ (in one column) and 3:5–9 (in the next)

Column b:

lines ‘1–5’

quidem membrum est, et magna ex[altat. Ecce]
quantus ignis quam ignis quam magnam [silvam incen-]
dit. Et lingua ignis est universitas [iniqui-]
tatis. Lingua constituitur in mem[bris nostris]
quae maculat totum corpus, et inflamm[at ro-]

lines ‘6–10’

tam nativitatis nostrae inflammata [a genen-]
na; Omnis eni natura bestia[rum et volu-]
crum et serpentium, et ceterorum do[mantur,]
et domita sunt a natura humana: li[-nguam]
autem nummus hominum domare potest: [?]

lines ’10–12′

inquitum malum, plena venendo [mortifer-]
o . In ipsa benedicimus Deum et Patrem [et in ipsa]
maledicimus homines, qui ad simili[tudinem . . . ]

The portions of column a on the patch show a few letters at the ends of lines of text apparently from James 2:8 to 12 and beyond. For example, starting opposite line ‘2’ of the column b of the patch:

Column a:

lines 2–5

[ . . . proximum tuum sicut teipsum bene facitis]: si au–
[tem personas accipitis, peccatum operam]ini, re–
[darguti a lege quasi transgressores] Quicum–
[que autem totam legem servaverit, offendat] autem in

lines 6–7

[uno, factus est omnium reus. Qui enim] dixit
[Non moechaberis, dixit et: Non occides. Qu]od si

[Etc.]

The other side of the patch would show the flow of text in its course either from or to these columns, so as to establish which side represents the original recto, and which the original verso. (See below.)

Rate of Text-per-Column or Text-per-Page on the Manuscript Leaf
Versus the Printed Vulgate Edition

However, even without seeing that side of the patch, estimating the rate of text-per-column which the script and layout of the Vulgate text customarily accomplished on its pages in the manuscript, apart from decorated initials of various sizes and opening or closing titles, allows for an educated guess as to where the patch would once have stood on its original page, and to which leaf it would have belonged.

The span of text missing between the bottom of the verso on the “Sotheby’s Leaf” (which ends within James 2:4) and the top of its inserted patch (beginning within James 3:5) amounts to some 3 columns of text as printed in a standard edition of the Latin Vulgate.

I chose as standard the “Weber” critical edition, also known as the “Stuttgart Vulgate”, edited by Robert Weber, Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam versionem (Stuttgart, 2 volumes, 2nd revised edition, 1969), although that edition exists in later forms. My copy has served faithfully over the years since I purchased it in Dublin in the early years of my postgraduate research dedicated to a magnificent large-format Vulgate Bible manuscript, also despoiled, made in Canterbury in the 9th century and surviving in fragments in different places. That manuscript, too, has patched portions which remedy cut-out holes and corner-sections. (See below).

A note on available Vulgate editions (from Wikipedia, “Stuttgart Vulgate”):

Weber, Robert; Gryson, Roger, eds. (2007). Biblia sacra : iuxta Vulgatam versionem. Archive.org. Oliver Wendell Holmes Library, Phillips Academy (5th ed.). Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft. ISBN 978-3-438-05303-9.
Weber-Gryson (Stuttgart) Vulgate – text only
Latin Vulgate with Parallel English Douay-Rheims and King James Version, Stuttgart edition, but missing 3 and 4 Esdras, Manasses, Psalm 151, and Laodiceans.

In the Weber edition, like some other editions of the Vulgate version of the Bible, the double columns of text per page are laid out per cola et commata, as arranged by its translator Jerome. That is, the lines are set out in clause- and phrase-units, as an aid to readers, in accordance with long-standing tradition — rather than in continuous lines or paragraphs, as happens in Ege Manuscript 14. The printed pages have critical textual apparatus in the lower margin to report significant variants found in certain manuscript witnesses and some earlier printed editions. Note that the textual apparatus, reporting certain variants from the standard edition, can be useful in approaching late-medieval copies of the Vulgate, as I have found in examining portions of text in Ege Manuscript 14, including the ones here.

In Ege Manuscript 14, other cases of the rate-per-page can be seen on the first leaf of Genesis (also patched). Its recto, with a full-page initial at the left-hand-side of its column a, introduces that significant decorated variable or disruption in the standard rate. In contrast, its verso, without such major interruption or diversion within one of the columns, carries the text from Genesis 2:2 (et requirevit / de septimo ab universo) to within 3:19 (in pulverem reverteris et uo-[cavit Adam]). That span corresponds roughly to 3 1/2 columns of printed text (set out per cola et commata).

So, counting the rate of coverage in the manuscript, roughly 3 columns of text, as printed, would have stood between the “Sotheby’s Leaf” and the top of the patch on that leaf when still part of its own leaf. Which means the leaf following the Sotheby’s Leaf.

The patch extracted from James and 3:5 to 3:9 (on one of its sides) came conveniently from the very next leaf in the Bible; the recto of the patch served to remedy the recto of the cut-out portion on the restored leaf. The cutting from the Sotheby Leaf itself would have carried the decorated, and perhaps or probably historiated, initial on its recto.

Viewed from the Recto

And now, in a development for the unfolding research, Peter Kidd has kindly sent me a photograph of the recto of the Sotheby Leaf, now in a Private Collection, and photographs of both sides of the patched leaf in Boston University.

Sotheby Leaf

Recto of Patch: Text in parts of 2 columns from the Catholic Epistle of James2:8–12(+) and 3:5–9

The Patched Leaf at Boston University

As described in Judith Oliver’s Catalogue of Manuscripts Sacred and Secular (1985), the leaf with a patch at Boston University has the

End of Kings, Prologue to I Chronicles, and beginning of I Chronicles (as above)

It is now possible to refine the description, with thanks to Peter Kidd’s photographs.

The leaf is Boston University, School of Theology Library, MS Leaf 38. The leaf itself contains, albeit with gaps front and back from the cut-out section:

the end of IV Kings 25:17 [cubitor altitudinis/] habeat columna) to the end (verso 30),
the text of Jerome’s Prologue to Paralipomenon (Chronicles) [however numbered as XXVI in the margin], including the decorated initial S of Si, and
the beginning of I Chronicles to 1:41 (Dison filii [/ Dison Amaran]), but without the decorated initial of the Book and parts of its column b (cut out and lost)

On the verso, seen in full, the patch covers part of column a, between the last few lines of the Prologue, following the words ipsi et / meis iuxta], and the first lines of Book 1 up to the last line of the column, preceding [Rif-]ath et Thorgorma filii autem Ie[-van Elisa].

The Patch carries portions of text from the same Catholic Epistle. The framed recto of the patch shows 12 lines of text, while the full, unframed, extent of the verso shows 14 lines. Seen in full, the verso demonstrates that the patch came from the bottom of its column, as it retains not only the last line of text but also the upper portion of the lower margin (some 2 lines’ worth of space), including parts of the foliate ornament of the lower terminal descending from the vertical band which frames the left-hand-side of the column. The expanse of margin at the left beyond that border bar demonstrates that the column stood at the left in the pair of columns on its original page, and not in the narrower intercolumn between the pair.

Recto of Patch: Catholic Epistle of James 3:17 ([sucedib-/il[is] bonis consentiens) to 4:4 (est Deo Quicum[/-que ergo]), including the opening initial U of Unde for Chapter 4
Verso of Patch: Catholic Epistle of James 5:4 ([uestras qui] fraudata est) to 5:10 (patientiae prophetas [quo locuti])

Note: The reading sucedibilis + bonis consentiens in James 3:17 corresponds to a variant attested in some other witnesses, shown in the textual apparatus for the Weber edition (1975), volume II, page 1862.

The Source Leaves

The gap in text between Patch ‘1’ from the Epistle of James and Patch ‘2’ — that is, the text between James 3:9 and 3:17 — amounts to roughly 3/4 of a printed column in the Weber edition.

It appears that the patch on the Boston University Leaf may have come from the same leaf as the one sacrificed to patch the ‘Sotheby Leaf’.

We might presume that the work of patching both these leaves belonged to a single operation. Perhaps the patch for the Genesis opening leaf now at Yale likewise belongs to the same operation?

Styles of Cutting and Styles of Patching

It might be true that “A Rose is a Rose is a Rose”. But the same does not pertain to “A Patch is a Patch is a Patch”. Patches in medieval manuscripts come in many different shapes and sizes, and their styles of application vary, too.

Exhibit A

The 9th-century Royal Bible of Saint Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury: London, British Library, Royal MS 1 E. vi., available for view in a digital facsimile. It is the subject of my Ph. D. dissertation, “British Library Manuscript Royal 1 E.vi: The Anatomy of an Anglo-Saxon Bible Fragment” (University of London, 1985), published online.

The large-format Vulgate Bible has been reduced to a fragment of its former splendor. Originally a Bible of some 1,000 leaves in large format, it has lost very many leaves, as well as some part-leaves. At least some of them were apparently severed at knife-point for elements of illustration, decoration, and decorated text. The losses belonged to more than one campaign of spoliation, which took place apparently at the home of the manuscript in the medieval period, Saint Augustine’s Abbey.

Here we consider the surviving patches, of uncertain date, which inelegantly fill the gaps introduced when portions of decorated script were cut out, perhaps to serve as specimens.

Patches adhere to 3 surviving leaves. Each patched leaf has decorated text on its recto, while the verso was originally blank.

Folio 1

Folio 1 at the front of the Gospel or New Testament unit is a purple-dyed leaf written in lines of monumental capitals which alternate between lines of gold and (oxidized) silver pigment. The centered last line of the inscription was cut out at some stage; presumably its letters were gold. Its gap was filled with a stained and now darkened patch pasted to one side.

The process of cutting involved drawing the point of a knife along the surface of the leaf while it lay against the following leaves. The cutting mark incised a corresponding flap in folio 2; the severed lines were stitched back into place.

© The British Library Board, Royal MS 1 E vi, folio 1v. Reproduced by permission

The next leaf has a stitched repair for the cut-out flap which resulted from the drawing of the knife point against the sought-after recto of the preceding folio while the book lay open. The stitching is visible just above the British Museum stamp centered below the columns of text.

© The British Library Board. Royal MS 1 E VI, folio 2r.

Folio 28 (with a Patch similar to Folio 68)

The unevenly cut-out lower outer corner of the leaf with the Chapter List for the Mark Gospel was filled with an unevenly trimmed patch, similar to the patched repair on the John Chapter List. In both cases, the Chapter List occupies the recto of the leaf; the verso is blank. Presumably the tapered text of column b led to an embellished element of some kind, for which the excision was effected. The patch is pasted to the verso.

Recto

© The British Library Board, Royal MS 1 E vi, folio 29r. Reproduced by permission

Verso of Patch

On the back, the full extent of the patch shows itself.

An Example of the Decorated Titles

© The British Library Board, Royal MS 1 E vi, folio 28v. Reproduced by permission

The patches at least fill gaps on the leaves of the Bible, but their function solely replaces pieces of parchment. In the case of Folio 1, the patch offers an attempt to colorize the patch, so as to try to match or mask the purple-dyed original leaf. Over time, the color on the patch has faded or changed to brown, revealing its different stage in the non-original work on the manuscript.

Cuttings Galore

Specimens of cut-outs, once they are extracted from their original books, sometimes gather in collections dedicated to specific dates, regions (say, Italy), and types of decoration. For example, The British Library’s collection of Italian illuminated cuttings. Described thus:

The British Library’s collection of Italian illuminated cuttings consists of around 675 initials, miniatures, and single leaves. These were predominantly cut from liturgical manuscripts of northern and central Italian monasteries and churches that were suppressed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Cuttings from non-religious manuscripts, such as miniatures from law text-books, and frontispieces from doge’s commissions of the Venetian Republic, are also represented in the collection.

The Victoria & Albert Museum has many such specimens, besides its collection of manuscripts. The range is summarized thus:

The National Art Library at the V&A holds over 300 Western illuminated manuscripts dating from the 11th to the early 20th century, including books of hours, bibles, missals, choir books, classical works, patents of nobility, and grants of arms and illuminated addresses.

In addition to these, the museum’s collections also include about 2,500 manuscript cuttings representative of different styles, periods and regions. While a few Islamic and Ethiopian manuscripts are held in the National Art Library, most of the non-Western material is part of the museum’s Asian collections.

Etc. Somewhere, perchance, the cuttings from Ege Manuscript 14 might survive, awaiting discovery. Perchance might the leaves from which the patches were extracted also survive?

The Extant Patches in Ege Manuscript 14 as Cuttings
and Its Extant Leaves with Cut-Outs

So far, we know of no extant leaves from Ege Manuscript 14 which have holes left-over from decorated elements cut out from them, say in the form of cuttings for display on their own.

Perhaps it is worth considering scrapbooks or collections of cuttings as possible locations for dispersed parts of the book. Peter Kidd’s website for Medieval Manuscripts Provenance reports admirable cumulative research on these subjects.

Are we in a position to know when the cuttings were extracted from Ege Manuscript 14? All at once? Neither of the sales catalogues which showcased the manuscript while still intact, at Sothebys in 1936 and at Parke Bernet in 1948, mention such cuttings, nor such repairs. Does that omission indicate an unremarked or unmentioned feature, or did the cut-outs exit later? Are we certain that the sale in 1948 went directly to Ege, or instead to some intermediary?

Clues toward the ‘workshop’ which patched the cuttings might reside in the ‘style’ of patch work. That is, the choices of patches and their methods of placement and positioning upon the leaves exhibit an elevated degree of attention to design and layout.

The recto of the patched Sotheby’s leaf shows pencil markings in the form of arrows which guide the placement of the patch to fit within the ‘window’ of the hole. See its image: Sotheby’s 10 July 2012, lot 2(b) . Might we guess whose marks are these?

More research on the fragments of Ege Manuscript 14, as more become visible to study, may help to answer such questions. They may, for example, reveal further aspects of Ege’s workshop practices in dismembering his manuscripts or other books and presenting them for display and distribution.

Contributions to that research is presented on our blog. For example:

A Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 19’ and Ege’s Workshop Practices
Contents List for the blog on Manuscript Studies

*****

Do you know of other patched leaves in this manuscript? Do you know of cuttings from it?

Please let us know.

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Watch this space and follow our blog for further research on dispersed manuscripts, those of Otto Ege included. See the Contents List.

*****

Tags: Cut-outs from Manuscripts, Despoilated Manuscripts, Otto Ege Manuscript 14, Patches in Manuscripts, Royal Bible of Saint Augustine's Abbey
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Updates for ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 19’

August 12, 2020 in Manuscript Studies, Uncategorized

A Glimpse of
‘Otto Ege Manuscript 19’
While It Was Still Intact

Portable Quarto Bible in the Latin Vulgate Version
Italy, circa 1275, with Illuminations made apparently in Paris

Double columns in 48 lines
circa 235 × 170 mm <written area circa 153 × 107 mm>

[Posted on 12 August 2020]

Opening of the Book of Maccabees in Otto Ege MS 19. Private Collection.

Continuing to explore the tracks of manuscripts dispersed by Otto F. Ege (1888–1951), we gain access to the Sotheby’s catalogue for the auction in 1936 from which the manuscript mostly known as ‘Ege Manuscript 19’ came to him. For the name, see Scott Gwara, Handlist, Number 19 (page 124).

For access to the elusive catalogue, we thank Stephen Massey, Bruce McKinney, and our Associate, Eric White, for help with the quest while libraries remain closed through months in 2020.

We began to study the manuscript when the owner of one of its leaves, J. S. Wagner, contacted us on account of our blog, which reported discoveries for some other Ege manuscripts. For example,

A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’

More Discoveries for ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’

A Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 19’ and Ege’s Workshop Practices

Updates for Some ‘Otto Ege Manuscripts’ (Ege MSS 8, 14, 41, and 61)

Some Leaves in Set 1 of ‘Ege’s FOL Portfolio’ (Ege MSS 8, 14, 19, and 41)

More Leaves from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 51’

More Discoveries for ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’

Our discoveries for Ege MS 19 are reported here:

A Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 19’ and Ege’s Workshop Practices

Some Leaves in Set 1 of ‘Ege’s FOL Portfolio’ (Ege MSS 8, 14, 19, and 41)

Now we examine the written record for the Provenance and the state of the volume before Ege.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Ege Manuscipt 51, Ege Manuscript 14, Ege Manuscript 19, Fragmentology, History of Binding, Interpretation of Hebrew Names, Interpretationes Hebraicorum Nominum, Latin Vulgate Bible, Manuscript studies, Medieval Manuscript Fragments, Otto F. Ege, Sothebys
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More Discoveries for ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’

August 3, 2020 in Uncategorized

Some Known Leaves
from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’
In Sequence

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, Family FOL Portfolio, Leaf 18 original recto, opening of Apocalypse Prologue.

We offer an updated and illustrated list of some of the leaves — not all — which have come to light from the dismembered and widely dispersed copy of the Vulgate Bible in large format now known as “Otto Ege Manuscript 14”.

It takes its name from the owner, Otto F. Ege (1888–1951), who took it to pieces and destroyed its integrity as an intact volume which had been purchased at auction in New York after World War II. It takes its Number from the number which Ege assigned to it in the series of specimens from similarly dismembered medieval manuscripts arranged in his Portfolio of Fifty Original Leaves from Western Manuscripts (FOL for short), numbered 1–50.

There the specimens are presented in matted frames of uniform size and provided with a printed label which cites the Leaf Number and offers a paragraph with some generic observations about the manuscript, the author, the type of script, the genre of text, and suchlike. The label was worded so as, presumably, to suit many different leaves from a given book.

Within the frame, the manuscript leaf would stand behind the windowed mat which obscures some of its exterior features. The hinged mat allows (if permitted by the owner) for opening the frame to inspect the full extent of the leaf and, it may be, to lift the leaf so as to observe features on its other side. Not infrequently, Ege turned the original rectos of the leaves to the verso position in the frame, so as to display whichever features might be deemed preferable for display.

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, Leaf with the opening of the Book of Revelation within Ege’s mat, which turns the original verso to the front.

The former manuscript had many more leaves than the number required for the 40 numbered Sets of the FOL Portfolio — plus any unnumbered Sets, of which perhaps 1 or 2 are known. As characteristic of Ege’s distribution strategies, individual leaves could have their own mats and, often, their own labels.

The current locations of a number of Sets have been identified, and more may come to light. So too, many other leaves have turned up in various collections. The work of identifying them as belonging to Ege Manuscript 14 and discovering where they are preserved represents a significant stage in the recovery process. That many have passed through the sales rooms of auction houses and book-sellers, sometimes more than once, introduces challenges to that process of discovery.

“The Long Shot”

On display among “New Acquisitions” Exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library in November 2016, separate sections of the Bible stand in a row, accompanied by 2 Beinecke exhibition labels on paper boards. From left to right: “Lectern Bible” Label; 1 detached Board from the former Binding, with marbled endpaper and an effaced blue label or bookplate; 2 “stacks” or “piles” of segments of loose leaves in nested bifolia; “Family Album” Label; and 1 leaf from the “Family Album” in its Ege mat, with its Ege label for Leaf 14.

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, New Acquisitions Exhibition (2016). Ege MS 14 in pieces.

A closer view of the 2 “stacks” or “piles” of disbound leaves. They display respectively 3 and 4 segments of manuscript leaves or bifolia. Let us call them, from left to right, Stack 1 (× 3 Segments) and Stack 2 (× 4 Segments).

New Acquisitions Exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in November 2016: View of Some Parts of "Otto Ege Manuscript 14". Photograph by Mildred Budny.

“A Long Shot”. New Acquisitions Exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in November 2016: View of Some Parts of “Otto Ege Manuscript 14”. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Stack 1

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, MS 14 Segments, with verso for Numbers 5:88 – 6:26 on top. Photograph Mildred Budny.

Segments of Leaves from left to right

Segment 1.1: Esther 2:19 ([Mordocheus manebit /] ad regis) – 3:8 in column a on a recto (seen in part here)

Segment 1.2: Proverbs 13:22 ([et ne-/]potes et) – 14:28 in column a on a recto (seen in part)

Segment 1.3: Numbers 5:18 ([cum execra-/]tione)– 6:26 (convertat dominus [/ ultum sum]), plus catchwords (ultum sum) at the bottom, on a verso (seen in full)

Stack 2

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, MS 14 Segments, with recto for Psalms 68:28 – 71:14 on top.

Segments of Leaves from left to right

Segment 2.1: 1 Samuel 16:16 ([spiritum dei /] psallat manu) – 17:10 in column a on a recto (seen in part here)

Segment 2.2: Tobias 4:5 ([compleverit tempus /] uite sue) – 5:4 in column b on a verso (seen in part)

Segment 2.3: Numbers 13:1 ([est Maria /] Profectus est) – 13:29 in column a on a recto (seen in part)

Segment 2.4: Psalms 68:29 ([deleantur /] de libro) – 71:14 (honorabile non [/ eorum coram]) on a recto (seen in full)

Some Known Remnants

Here follows an updated, but still partial, list of the Remnants, based on some materials to hand. The identifications of textual contents offer corrections for the published reports of a few leaves.

Please note that this list is not complete, even for the records that I know about, let alone the ones yet to emerge into view. For example, some of the sales catalogues remain elusive, but they may surface.

In this list, the order of the scattered leaves from the Books of the Bible mostly follows the standard Vulgate edition, but their order in the manuscript seems to have differed somewhat. Where it differs, the actual order can be determined, at least in part, by the Known Folio Numbers (see above) and the text on some survivors which end one Book of the Bible and begin another. A case in point here is the leaf which begins Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, directly followed by the Acts of the Apostles.

I cite all the Known Numbers as locators in the series, even where the survival of those very leaves might remain uncertain. For emphasis, they are shown in *red, together with their asterisk. In the analysis following this list, any conjectured, rather than recorded, folio numbers are preceded by a question mark, also in the red (?*300). As I hope you might see, keeping track of these details has a purpose, sometimes (as here, hurray) with a payoff.

It is useful to track leaves according to their “find-place” or distribution method, that is:

in an individual numbered Set of Ege’s Portfolio of Fifty Original Leaves of Western Manuscripts (“FOL”), in which the specimens from this dismembered Bible are Leaf number 14, set in a windowed frame and accompanied by a printed label
as a “stray” or “Rogue” Leaf distributed on its own, with or without a mat and a label, or with a pencil description by Ege in the lower margin
as a “Residual” batch of multiple leaves (sometimes with the binding or a part of it) seemingly left over from the phases of disbinding, selling, and distributing leaves in the Portfolio sets, in the matted frames, or in loose-leaf form

Complete Vulgate Bible
accompanied by Prologues
and the Glossary of Interpretationes Nominum Hebraicorum

Several sellers or collections list groups of leaves which include, or might include, non-consecutive leaves and/or leaves acquired at different times from different sources. Sometimes they cite the contents in some detail, sometimes not.

Examples include non-continuous leaves listed in a single lot number, gathered in a single collection, or grouped in a large batch in a single collection. As here:

3 non-continuous Rogue Leaves = Gwara Handlist 14.9.
Metropolitan Museum of Art = William D. Wixon et al., Mirror of the Medieval World (1999), pages 118–119 (number 141),Leaves ‘1’, ‘2’, and ‘3’,
with Portions respectively ofEzdra > Nehemiah [?]
Joshua
Ephesians 1:1 – 2
102 Residual Leaves = Gwara Handlist 14.7.Oslo and London, The Schøyen Collection, MS 223.
Its full contents are not known to me.
Requests for further information have yielded no details.The specimen image on the collection’s website shows a detail of the page withPaul’s Epistle to Philemon and the beginning of his Epistle to Hebrews

A Preliminary Reconstruction of the Original Sequence of Leaves

Poster 2 for the 2016 'Words & Deeds' Symposium at Princeton University, with 2 images from the Otto Ege Collection, The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Photography by Lisa Fagin Davis. Reproduced by permission. Poster set in RGME Bembino

2016 ‘Words & Deeds’ Symposium Poster.

Here I list the contents in their Biblical places, insofar as they are revealed. Some leaves do not have available photographs, or available photographs for the other side (whichever side of the leaf that might be). Some leaves I know only through the sales catalogues, not their destinations.

This list represents an advance on the earlier version posted in my first post on parts of this manuscript: A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’. Here, by gathering my notes and photographs from on-going research on Ege manuscripts and other materials, the list might accompany others’ reconstructions based on their familiarity with other collections.

Thanks are due to scholars, collectors, curators, and students, including Barbara Shailor, Giles Constable, Lisa Fagin Davis, Raymond Clemens, Diane Ducharme, Peter Kidd, Joshua Benaer, the staff at the Morgan Library & Museum, Kent State University Library, the Cincinnati Public Library, and many others.

Important discoveries have emerged in the past several years. Examples include the deposit of the Otto Ege Collection at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library of Yale University and the beginnings of its detailed study. A report on some of its features appeared in the Research Group Symposium on ‘Words & Deeds’ in March 2016, with illustrations from Ege MS 14 on the Posters and in the Symposium Booklet.

With generous permission, I have been able to consult some parts of that Collection in visits to New Haven, in connection with the symposium celebrating it and subsequently. While continuing to wait for the Collection to be catalogued and made accessible for outside readers, I examine my photographs as records or glimpses of parts of its materials for, and from, ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’. Recently, the work by Joshua Benaer on the lection marks and their signifcance has inspired me to advance with work on other aspects of the book, including its material evidence.

Some discoveries for the manuscript are reported in our blog.

A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’

More Discoveries for ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’

A Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 19’ and Ege’s Workshop Practices

Updates for Some ‘Otto Ege Manuscripts’ (Ege MSS 8, 14, 41, and 61)

Some Leaves in Set 1 of ‘Ege’s FOL Portfolio’ (Ege MSS 8, 14, 19, and 41)

See also The Illustrated Handlist (Number 4).

Note that Leaf 4 at Stony Brook University has a ‘starring role’ in the video of Unscattered Leaves: Digitizing the Otto F. Ege Manuscripts (2018).

The Former Bindings

See below.

The Manuscript Leaves

According to the Beinecke exhibition label for parts of this “Lectern Bible” (see above), a note entered “at the end of this Bible”, written by “a later hand”, states it had “502 folios”. It is not clear (at this distance) if the count included any endleaves apart from the original medieval manuscript. The leaves themselves are not numbered, apart from some quire-numerals.

The Sotheby’s sale catalogue of 1931 for this book, while intact, cites 15 specific folio numbers for some significant decorative elements, and adds “B” to the number to indicate a verso. Here I indicate them in red. Although those numbers do not appear on the leaves themselves, they locate 10 historiated initials — among a total of “Seventy-eight large miniatures” — in these places: folios 46 (Book of Numbers), 155 (II Chronicles), 191 (Judith), 220 (Psalm 54), 253 (Ecclesiasticus), 266B (Isaiah), 308B (Ezekiel), 345B (Nahum), 440 (Acts of the Apostles), and 457 (Apocalypse).

Old Testament with Prologues

Prefatory Texts

Jerome’s Prologues for the Vulgate Bible and the Pentateuch

The Bible opens with 2 of Jerome’s epistolary Prologues for his Vulgate Version. His Epistle to Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, serves as a general preface, beginning Frater ambrosius tua mihi minuscola preferens. Beginning Desiderii mei desideratas accepi epistulas, Jerome’s Epistle to Desiderius serves as preface to the Pentateuch, the first 5 Books of the Old Testament.

These prefatory texts spread across 3 leaves.

Rogue Leaf (1 of 2 from the Esther Rosenbaum Collection).
Sotheby’s, Catalogue of Single Leaves and Miniatures from Western Illuminated Manuscripts, 25 April 1983, lot 83(a), without plate
— described in the catalogue as the

‘Opening leaf of the Bible, with the [First] Prologue of St. Jerome’ beginning Frater Ambrosius,
and extending to labiis personaret, ‘which shows the secundo folio to have begun’ with the words ignorabat eum

Location unknown

[1 leaf in this Prologue, with the text from ignorabat eum in Chapter ‘VI’ to et regna in Chapter ‘VII’]

Rogue Leaf = Gwara Handlist 14.8. Randolph College (available via the Internet Archive)
Part of Jerome’s 2 Prologues to the Vulgate Bible (that is, 2 of his own Epistles applied to his translated work as guides and explications):

Part of Frater Ambrosius, from within Chapter ‘VII’ (omnia subvertentem) to the end,
all of Jerome’s [Second] Prologue Desiderii mei,
and Opening Title for the Book of Genesis

Opening page for Genesis in 'Otto Ege Manuscript 14'. Photograph Courtesy of Sotheby's, Inc. © 29 November, lot 326, plate on page 119

Photograph Courtesy of Sotheby’s, Inc. © 29 November, lot 326, plate on page 118

Old Testament with Prologues

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection

Opening of Genesis on a recto

The recto was reproduced as the fold-out plate for the Sotheby’s catalogue of 6–7 July 1931, lot 389;
and as the first of two plates for the Parke-Bernet catalogue of 29 November 1948, lot 326 (plate on page 118)
— in both cawhile the manuscript remained whole.

The plate from the Parke-Bernet catalogue is also reproduced in Gwara, Otto Ege’s Manuscripts, figure 79.

The leaf disappeared from view until resurfacing in the Otto Ege Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

First page of Genesis from ‘Otto Ege MS 14’. Otto Ege Collection, Beinecke Manuscript and Rare Book Library, Yale University. Reproduced by permission.

Verso

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, MS 14, Genesis Opening Leaf: Verso.

Rogue Leaf. Maggs Bros, Papyrus to Paper. Catalogue 1059 (1985),
number 49, ‘a leaf with four dragons’ (with plate on page 28, of top half of verso)

Genesis 32:29 ([interroga–/]uit to 34:6 and beyond in the lower half of that verso (out of frame in the plate)

Rogue Leaf. Maggs Bros, Papyrus to Paper. Catalogue 1059 (1985), number 42 (no plate)

Genesis ‘end ch. 42, ch. 43 & most of ch. 44’ with ‘drawing of a rabbit with calligraphic flourishes’ in the upper margin of the recto

Location unknown: Rogue Leaf (2 of 2 from the Esther Rosenbaum Collection)
Sotheby’s, Catalogue of Single Leaves and Miniatures from Western Illuminated Manuscripts, 25 April 1983,
lot 83(b), with plate from the upper part of one side (unspecified)

including the Prologue to Exodus and the opening of Exodus 1 with historiated initial

Rogue Leaf (3 of 3) sold by Bruce P. Ferreni, Catalogue One: Important Western Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts & Illuminated Leaves (1987),
number 27 (page 44), without plate

Exodus 9 – 11

Location unknown

Leviticus

Location unknown

[Numbers initial = folio *46r]

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection

“Segment 1.3” (see photograph): Numbers 5:18 ([cum execra-/]tione)– 6:26 (convertat dominus [/ ultum sum]), plus catchwords (ultum sum) at the bottom, on a verso (seen in full in the “New Acquisitions” exhibition display as “Stack 1 Segment 3”)

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, “New Acquisitions Exhibition”, Ege MS 14: Recto of Leaf from the Book of Numbers (5:88 – 6:26).

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection

Leaf with Numbers 13:1–29 in column b on a verso (partly visible in the “New Acquisitions” exhibition display as Stack 2 Segment 3 = 3rd from the left)

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, MS 14 Segments, with recto for Psalms 68:28 – 71:14 on top.

Set 27. University of South Carolina, reproduced also here

Numbers 8.10 (suas) – 11.13 (ut co-[/medamus])

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collecdtion

‘Segment 2.3’ (photograph above): Numbers 13:1 ([est Maria /] Profectus est) – 13:29 in column a on a recto (seen in part)

Rogue Leaf (1 of 2). Sotheby’s, Western Manuscripts and Miniatures (21 June 1994), lot 10(a.1), without plate

Numbers 19–21

Set 19. Otto F. Ege: Fifty Original Leaves, Leaf 14, Special Collections and University Archives, Stony Brook University Libraries

Deuteronomy 17:14 ([dabit ti-/]bi et possideris) – 20:19 (nec per circuitam se[sic for de-][/bes vastare])

Recto of leaf

Otto F. Ege, “Fifty Original Leaves”, Leaf 14 recto, Special Collections and University Archives, Stony Brook University. Image Public Domain.

Verso of leaf

Otto F. Ege, “Fifty Original Leaves”, Leaf 14 verso, Special Collections and University Archives, Stony Brook University. Image Public Domain.

Spectator Included

Otto F. Ege, “Fifty Original Leaves”, Leaf 14 verso, detail top left. Special Collections and University Archives, Stony Brook University. Image Public Domain.

Location unknown

[Joshua initial = folio *73v]

Rogue Leaf (2 of 3) = Gwara Handlist 14.9. Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1994.539
= Wixom et al. (1999), no. 141, Leaf ‘3’ with plate on page 119, column b

Joshua 8:32 ([la-]/pides] – 10:1 (sicut enim fecerat) on verso

Location unknown

Judges

Location unknown

Ruth

Location unknown

[Prologue initial for I Kings (1 Samuel) = folio *93r]

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection

“Segment 2.1” (photograph above): 1 Samuel 16:16 ([spiritum dei /] psallat manu) – 17:10 in column a on a recto (seen in part)

Rogue Leaf. RMGYMss Bible Leaf Ref 560: RMGYMss BIBLE LEAF Ref 560 recto and RMGYMss BIBLE LEAF Ref 560 verso

I Kings (1 Samuel) 26:7 ([et Abi-/]psae ad populum nocte) – end of 28:25 (noctam illam [/ Congregata sunt])

Location unknown

II Kings (2 Samuel)

Rogue Leaf. RMGYMss Bible Leaf Ref 180

III Kings 11:20 ([et nutrivit /] eum ahias) – end of 13:15 (comedas panem [/qui ait])

Rogue Leaf = Gwara, Handlist 14.1.
Boston University = Judith H. Oliver, Manuscripts Sacred and Secular (1985), number 36 [but no plate]

End of Kings, Prologue to I Chronicles, and beginning of I Chronicles
with a ‘patch taken from another illuminated page of the same manuscript’ covering the cut-out from the ‘theft of initial for I Chronicles’.
[One wonders which other page yielded its riches to patch up this leaf.]

2 Rogue Leaves = Gwara Handlist 14.10. Hollins University
These leaves include

a page with the End of I Chronicles, Prologue for II Chronicles, and beginning of II Chronicles
[= folio *155r]
(reproduced in Gwara, Otto Ege’s Manuscripts, figure 51)

Rogue Leaf. Stanford University
[Formerly available at http://artsinstitute.stanford.edu/sites/scriptingthesacred/gallery/case-bible/ via Stanford Arts Institute],
purchased from Bernard Quaritch, Medieval Manuscripts. Catalogue 1396 (2010),
number 10, with color plate of recto

II Chronicles 4:12 ([episty-/]lia) – 6:10 (super thronum Israhel)
with quire number xiiii on bottom of the recto
[= say folio ?*157, as reckoned below]

Set 13. University of Minnesota

Prayer of Manassas Chapter 15 (quoniam),
Prologue to I Ezra,
I Ezra 1:1 – 2:62 (eiecti sunt)

Rogue Leaf (1 of 3) = Gwara Handlist 14.9. Metropolitan Museum of Art
= Wixom et al. (1999), no. 141, Leaf ‘1’ with plate on page 118, column a of one side of the leaf (unspecified)

Ezdre I > Ne[he]miae as indicated in the running titles
I Ezra 10:13 (in sermone) – 44 (end),
beginning of II Ezra [= Ezra 11:1–10 (manu tua)] on one side of the leaf

Rogue Leaf. Maggs Bros, European Bulletin 13 (1986), number 52 (with plate of lower half of recto)

Nehemiah 5:18 – 7:3 (porte clausae) on that portion of the page

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection

“Segment 2.2” (photograph above): Tobias 4:5 ([compleverit tempus /] uite sue) – 5:4 in column b on a verso (seen in part)

Location unknown

[Judith initial = folio *191r]

Set 30. Denison University

Judith 16:31, Jerome’s Prologue to Esther, and Esther 1:1–2:19

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection

“Segment 1.1” (see photograph above): Esther 2:19 ([Mordocheus manebit /] ad regis) – 3:8 in column a on a recto (seen in part)

Rogue Leaf. formerly Boston, Endowment for Biblical Research = Judith H. Oliver, Manuscripts Sacred and Secular (1985), number 35, without plate

Job 31:1 – 33:20

Location unknown

[Psalms 54 initial = folio *220r]

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Psalms 68:29 ([deleantur /] de libro) – 71:14 (et honorabile nomen [/ eorum cora]) on the recto

Viewed while on exhibition (Top leaf here = “Segment 2.4”):

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, MS 14 Segments, with recto for Psalms 68:28 – 71:14 on top.

Parke-Bernet Galleries, Sale Catalogue of 29 November 1948, lot 326, plate (apparently a verso): Psalms 109 initial (“Holy Trinity”)

Psalms 108:13 (generatione) – 112:4 (do-[/mine super caelos]) on the verso

Page with the text of Psalms 108:13 to 112:4 on the New Leaf from 'Otto Ege Manuscript 14'. Photography © Mildred Budny

Psalms 108:13 to 112:4 on a verso. Photograph Courtesy of Sotheby’s, Inc. © 29 November, lot 326, plate on page 119

[Maybe here in the original sequence?]
Rogue Leaf. Christie’s, Illuminated Manuscripts, Continental and English Literature . . . ,
Sale Catalogue of 16 December 1991, lot 2, plate on page 14 with detail of initial (on a verso?)

Proverbs (Book of Wisdom) initial 1:1 (full span of leaf unreported)

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection

“Segment 1.2” (see photograph above): Proverbs 13:22 ([et ne-/]potes et) – 14:28 in column a on a recto (seen in part)

Location unknown

[Ecclesiasticus initial = folio *253r, reproduced in the Sotheby’s 1931 Catalogue, as reported above]

University of Kansas, Kenneth Spencer Research Library

Ecclesiasticus 12:16 ([in foream /] in oculis suis) – ([et inter-[rogatio omnium]), with catchword –rogatio

Set 5. Ohio University

Ecclesiasticus 39:25 – 42:26

Recto

Ohio University, Ege MS 14, Recto. Image Public Domain.

Verso

Ohio University, Leaf from Ege MS 14, verso. Image Public Domain.

Location unknown

[Isaiah initial = folio *266v]

Rogue Leaf (2 of 3) sold by Bruce P. Ferreni, Bruce P. Ferreni, Catalogue One: Important Western Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts & Illuminated Leaves (1987),
number 26 (page 44), without plate

Isaiah 50 – 54; full span unreported

— These leaves presumably are consecutive

Rogue Leaf for sale via Charles Edwin Puckett

Isaiah 54:10 ([montes enim /] commovebuntur et) – 59:3 on recto; verso not shown

Set 2. Ohio State University

Jeremiah 7:27 ([patres eorum /] Et [with tamen crossed out] loqueris) – 10:11 (caelis sunt [/ Qui facit])

Set 24. Lilly Library

Jeremiah 37:20 (Ieremias in uestibulo) – 40:15 (peribunt)

Rogue Leaves. Bifolium with non-consecutive leaves at the Cleveland Museum of Art

Leaf 1, recto?
verso. End of Baruch 6: 6:61 ([perficiunt quod /] imperatum est),
Jerome’s Prologue to Ezekiel,
Ezekiel 1.1 – 13 (et quasi aspec-[/tus lampadarum]) on verso
[= folio *308v]

> Location unknown

Leaves between Ezekiel 1:13 ([aspec-/]tus lampadarum) and Ezekiel 8:2 (et ecce [/ similitudo quasi])]

Leaf 2, recto. Ezekiel 8:2 ([et ecce /] similitudo quasi) – 9:9 (habebat attramentarium [/ in dorso])
on the verso?

Cleveland Museum of Art, Bifolium from a Bible: (Ege MS 14), with parts of Ezekiel,via https://clevelandart.org. /art/1959.271. Image Public Domain via Creative Commons..

Set 35. Rochester Institute of Technology

Ezekiel 18:21 – 20:11 (recto).
verso: ‘A scan of the verso is not currently available.’

Set 38. University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Ezekiel 24:25 ([et di-/]siderium oculorum eorum) – 27:30 (et clamabunt [/ et superiacient])

— These 2 leaves are consecutive

Set 37. Case Western Reserve

Ezekiel 27:30 ([clamabunt /] amare) – 30:20 (in un-[/decimo])

Set 32. University of Colorado at Boulder, recto and verso

Ezekiel 33:31 ([ingrediatur popu-/]ulus meus) – 35:3 (meam [ / super te])

Set 1. Private collection. See Some Leaves in ‘Set 1’ of Ege’s FOL Portfolio

end of Jeremiah (52:21 ([quattuor de-/]gitorum) to 52:34) and Lamentations 1:1 – 2:19 (qui defecerunt [/ in fame])

Recto of leaf

Set 1 of Otto Ege’s FOL Portfolio, Leaf 14 recto.

Verso of leaf

Set 1 of Ege’s FOL Portfolio, Leaf 14 verso.

Set 4? [Or a Rogue Leaf?]. Cleveland Museum of Art

End of Prologue 1 to Jonah [Sanctum ionam . . . et quo /] a facie tua fugiam], all of Prologue 2 to Jonah (Iona[s] columba . . . ),
all of Jonah (1:1–4:11),
Prologue to Michah, and Michah 1:4 (vales scindentur [/ sicut cera])

Recto of Leaf

Cleveland Museum of Art, Single Leaf from a Bible: Initial E with Jonah Swallowed by the Whale via https://clevelandart.org. /art/1959.271. Image Public Domain via Creative Commons.

Verso of Leaf

Cleveland Museum of Art, Single Leaf from a Bible: Initial U of Uerbum with Prophet Micah, via https://clevelandart.org/art/1959.271. Single Leaf from Ege MS 41, Verso. Image Public Domain via Creative Commons.

— These 2 leaves are consecutive

Set 22. Cleveland Public Library

Micah 1:4 (sicut cera) – 6:2 (iudicum do-[mini])

— These 2 leaves are presumably consecutive

Rogue Leaf. Maggs Bros, Papyrus to Paper. Catalogue 1059 (1985), number 46 and plate on page 27 with detail of initial

‘The final chapter of the Book of Micah and the opening two chapters of the Book of Nahum’,
plus Mirmelus’s inscription in the first person
[Nahum initial = folio *345v]

Rogue Leaf (1 of 3) sold by Bruce P. Ferreni, Catalogue One: Important Western Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts & Illuminated Leaves (1987),
number 25 (page 44), with plate of verso

Habakkuk 1 (span unreported) – 3, Prologue to Zephaniah (“Sophonias*), and Zephaniah 1:9 (super om-[/nem qui arrogantur])

Set 15. Kent State University

Zachariah 7:7 ([ad austrum /] et in campestribus) – 11:10 (cum omnibus / [populis]), reproduced here by permission

Recto of Rogue Leaf in I Maccabees from Ege Manuscript 14 at Kent State University. Reproduced by permission

Recto of Rogue Leaf from Ege Manuscript 14 at Kent State University. Reproduced by permission

Rogue Leaf. Kent State University = Gwara, Handlist, Number 14.5

I Maccabees 12:29 (lumina ardentia) – 14:4 (et quesiuit), reproduced here by permission

Verso of Rogue Leaf from Ege Manuscript 14 at Kent State University. Reproduced by permission

Verso of Rogue Leaf with part of I Maccabees from Ege Manuscript 14 at Kent State University. Reproduced by permission

New Testament with Prologues

Location unknown

[Gospel of Matthew 10 = folio 388B]

Two details at top and bottom of the page are reproduced in the Sotheby’s catalogue of 6–7 July 1931, lot 389, plate facing the description.The figural elements among the marginal decorations on this ‘one very outstanding page’ without ‘historiated initials of miniatures’, but with a rich repertoire of ‘grotesques’, are described in some detail in the Parke-Bernet catalogue of 29 November 1948, lot 326, page 120.

Set 29. Lima Public Library

Matthew 27:46 ([Iesus voce /] magna dicens) – 28:19, Prologue to Mark, and Mark 1:1–38 (eamus [/ in proximo])

Location unknown

Gospel of Mark

Location unknown

Gospel of Luke

Location unknown

Gospel of John

Rogue Leaf. Maggs Bros, Papyrus to Paper. Catalogue 1059 (1985),
number 41 with plate on page 22 of top half of the verso

End of I Corinthians (from 15:56) and Opening of II Corinthians on the portion visible in the plate
[and not the opening of I Corinthians as stated in the catalogue]

Rogue Leaf (3 of 3). Gwara Handlist 14.9. Metropolitan Museum of Art
= Wixom et al. (1999), no. 141, Leaf ‘II’ with plate on page 119, column a]

Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians, 1:1 – 2:10 (end) plus opening title for Chapter 3 on verso

Among the Residual Leaves = Gwara Handlist 14.7. Oslo and London, The Schøyen Collection, MS 223.
Its full contents are not known to me.
The specimen image on the collection’s website shows part of the page with

Paul’s Epistle to Philemon and the beginning of his Epistle to Hebrews

[Might these 2 leaves have been consecutive? That depends upon what the verso of the specimen leaf contains.]

Set 6. University of Massachusetts at Amherst (both sides in black-and-white) and recto in color

Hebrews 1:13 (quando) – 6:20 (aeternum).

Set 23. Kenyon College

Hebrews 10:20 (iniciauit) – 13:4 (conui-[/bium])

— These leaves are consecutive

Rogue Leaf? Detroit Public Library [?]

Hebrews 13:4–25, Prologue to Acts, Acts of the Apostles 1:1–30
[Acts initial = folio *440r]

Set 25. University of Saskatchewan and here and here

Acts 4:1 – 5:11 on verso

Set 9. Cincinnati Public Library

Acts 13:37 ([quem uero /] deus suscitauit) – 16:2 (et Ychonio [/ fratres hunc])

Recto of leaf

Recto of Leaf 8 in Portfolio Set 9. From the Collection of The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Reproduced by permission.

Verso of leaf

Verso of Leaf 14 in Portfolio Set 9. From the Collection of The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Reproduced by permission.

[Or do the Catholic Epistles follow Acts? If so, maybe they come here in the series?]

Rogue Leaf.
Gwara Handlist 14.Ref 14. Sotheby’s 10 July 2012, lot 2(b)
[Current location unknown to me]

Opening of the Catholic Epistle of James on verso

described in the Sotheby’s catalogue thus:

(b) leaf from a lectern Bible, 400mm. by 270mm., with a large initial ‘I’ (opening “Iacobus ihesu christi seruus …”, the epistle of James) in burnished gold with a coloured architectural roof and arch, enclosing a bearded James with a golden halo pointing at the opening of his epistle, angular foliage forming text-frame around all sides of one text column, terminating in golden leaves and a dragon, 3-line initial enclosing ivy-leaf, similar text-frame on verso with a dragon and a 5-line initial containing a sprig of foliage ending with a dragon’s head, double column, 50 lines in a regular gothic hand, area of one column cut away (90mm. by 95mm., presumably once with a large initial), now repaired with another cutting from same volume [highlights added], once mounted on card with remains of tape on recto [therefore, turned front-to-back in Ege’s matting to display the verso], France or southern Flanders, early fourteenth century.

Verso:

Part of the Prologue to the Catholic Epistle of James (from [ut quia Petrus /] est primus in ordine apostolorum) and the opening of this Book, with 1:1–2:4 (nonne iudacitis [/ apud vosmet])

* Despoiled Leaf.
Preserved in part on the patch for the Sotheby’s Leaf opening the Catholic Epistle of James (see previous item); perhaps the rest of the leaf is lost?

Irregularly-shaped Patch containing parts of at least the Catholic Epistle of James 2:8–13 and 3–9 (on one side of the patch)

Rogue Leaf.
Maggs Bros, Papyrus to Paper. Catalogue 1059 (1985), number 44
with plates on pages 24 and 25, respectively of the verso and the top right-hand side of the recto

End of the Catholic Epistle I of James, all of his Epistles II and III, and the beginning of the Epistle of Jude (to verse 18[+])

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection

End of the Epistle of Jude (from verses 19 (? animales spiritum) to 25)
Prologue to the Apocalypse
Apocalypse 1:1 – 2:10 (coronam vitae [/ verse 11 qui habet])[Apocalypse initial = folio *475r]

Original recto

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, Family FOL Portfolio, Leaf 18 ‘verso’. Original recto.

Another view

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, MS 14, Apocalypse Prologue Opening Leaf: Original recto.

Original verso

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, Leaf with the opening of the Book of Revelation within Ege’s mat, which turns the original verso to the front.

Set 17. Massey College, recto + verso

Apocalypse 2:27 (qui habet) – 6:9 (altare)

Interpretation of Hebrew Names

The leaves so far recognized from the Interpretatio Nominorum Hebraeorum (“INH” or “IHN”) for this Bible represent different parts of the partly alphabetized version of this Glossary, beginning Aaz apprehendens (that is, ‘Aaz means “seizing” ‘) — or one of its variants. So far I have discovered only 3 leaves, from 2 letter groups: the A-Group and the I-Group. They are laid out in triple columns, unlike the double-column format of the Bible text.

Location unknown

[Opening initial A[az] = folio *465r]

Rogue Leaf: The ‘New Leaf’ (Private Collection). See A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’

Alcath . . . Ananias

Private Collection, Leaf from Ege MS 14, with part of the A-Group of the ‘Interpretation of Hebrew Names’. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Rogue Leaf: Enchiridion 21: Medieval Fragments for University Teaching & Research (2015), Item 2g

Asseremoth . . . Azer

Rogue Leaf (2 of 2). Sotheby’s, Western Manuscripts and Miniatures (21 June 1994), lot 10(a.2), without plate

with part of ‘the letter “I” ‘ (span unreported)

It is uncertain at present how many leaves intervened in the original sequence between the two identified so far in the A-Group. At least one leaf. It is also uncertain (to me) how the glossary ended, and if it was complete to Z.

More leaves could indicate to which variant the Glossary belonged.

The record of 1931 (Sotheby’s lot 329) reveals that this text spanned an impressive part of the volume. It stretched from folio *465r onward, perhaps fully to as far as folio *503 (recto? verso?), in 38 leaves at most. Also, like ‘the first three leaves’ of the volume’, the last leaves (number unspecified) of the book were damaged: ‘a few leaves of the Table at end are somewhat stained’.

Presumably ‘the Tables’ means the Interpretationes Nominorum Hebraeorum. (Unless, say, some other accompanying texts as well?) The stains perhaps represented the same sort of moisture damage visible on the Randolph College leaf at the front with part of the First Prologue for the Vulgate Bible and, probably, on the preceeding, first, leaf of that Frater Ambrosius prologue.

Because, so far, so few leaves from the Glossary portion of Ege MS 14 are identified, it seems probable that more await recognition. However, the leaves with multiple columns of text, without much if any of the decoration which charactizes most known leaves from the Bible portion — whether in historiated initials, extensions into the margins, foliage, creatures, and the like — may rule out a ready identification, or, for that matter, much interest among those collectors, curators, or scholars who would focus upon the “art” of the book, never mind the “boring” lists.

The first impetus for my interest in Ege Mauscript 14 came from a long acquaintance with the solitary leaf with the Alcath . . . Ananias portion of the INH. But, then, I have a long interest in the history, development, transmission, and adaptations of glossaries, proto-dictionaries, and dictionaries, as witness The Illustrated Catalogue.

It did take time to recognize which large-format Bible formerly held this text, where the text stood (whether before or after the Bible text), and so on. A clincher came in identifying the pencil inscription at the foot of the page as the work, and the wording, of Otto Ege for this dismembered book.

Pencil Inscription at the lower front of a manuscript leaf. Photography © Mildred Budny

Pencil Inscription (Budny Handlist 9)

All Bound Up

At the time of the 1931 sale, the sale catalogue reported that the volume still had its binding of “17th Century calf over stout wooden boards”, with the “binding worn and upper cover loose”. We might conjecture that the damage to the front and back of the text block arose from an exposed state, with water or other liquid damage affecting those front and back leaves as well as, if the book was bound rather than unbound, the covers of an earlier binding.

Such a condition of water or other liquid damage at the outsides could have led to a 17th-century rebinding or repair. It is a pity that the modern binding, with all its evidentiary value of whatever kinds, was removed and discarded from sight in the 20th-century dismemberment of the monument.

A Binding at the Beinecke

As with some other Ege manuscripts, the residue of the book, left after the process of selection of choice Specimens, remains to some extents. Such seems to be the case with the sale of many leaves of Ege MS 14 en bloc which mostly reached the Schøyen Collection, and with the acquisition of the Otto Ege Collection by the Beinecke Rare Books & Manuscript Library.

Part of the former cover of Ege MS 14 was exhibited along with other portions of the volume when they reached the Beinecke.

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, New Acquisitions Exhibition (2016). Ege MS 14 in pieces.

From what I could see through the glass case, it appears to be the front cover, turned to show the inside, with its marbled pastedown, beyond which extends the edges of the leather-covered board. The worn surfaces of the rounded corners expose the backing, which seems to resemble layers of cardboard. A rectangular blue slip (paper?) is pasted to the midsection of the pastedown. The slip is probably a bookplate, although any image or text across its center seems too rubbed to reveal its intended message.

The 1931 description of the binding, with its “upper cover loose”, implies that the front cover would easily have been lifted away in Ege’s hands, to surface decades later in the exhibition case along with other remnants of the volume.

Because the front cover does not show signs of damage similar to the Randolph College Leaf, we could reasonably conjecture that those effects occurred at an earlier stage in the life of the book, before it received the modern trade binding.

To that binding work we should attribute the red stain at the outer edges of the manuscript leaves, applied to the book-block as a unit.

Seen from the side:

Viewed straight on, through glass:

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, Ege ME 14 Binding Board and Endpaper with bookplate(?).

Without seeing the front of the board or its other parts, we have the evidence of the inside cover and outer edges.

Perhaps the marbled paper, within the tradition of this genre of bookbinding materials, might help to narrow down the location and date of this cover. Image-enhancement might reclaim features of the book-plate.

Meanwhile, it is possible to consider features of the marbled paper. Convenient guides, often with specimens. appear in print and online. Among many:

Richard J. Wolfe, Marbled Paper: Its History, Techniques, and Patterns, with special reference to the relationship of marbling to bookbinding in Europe and the Western World (New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 2nd edition with corrections, 2018)
Einen Miura, The Art of Marbled Paper: Marbled Patterns and How to Make Them (Kodansha, 1991)
Carina Greven, “The Development of a Standard Nomenclature for Marbled Paper”, Ink & Gall, 7:2 (Winter, 1993), pp. 10–113
The Phoebe Jane Easton Bibliography: Marbling Bibliography
Essay: Marbled Papers and Marbled Paper Patterns, University Libraries, University of Washington, Digital Collections
We Love Endpapers: Public Group on Facebook

Among pattern types, as exhibited, for example, here, the design on the former cover for Ege MS 14 corresponds to the “Turkish” pattern (also known as “Spot”, “Stone”, “Agate, “Stein”, “Achat”, and Caillouté Simple”).

This is the oldest of Western marbled patterns and date back to as early as the middle part of the 15th century. The pattern is created when one or more colors are thrown onto the surface of the bath using a marbling brush. The first colors through tend to constrict as others follow and become the ‘vein’ colors for the latte thrown inks.

. . . Since this pattern is probably the earliest and the most simple it also is the base or jump off point for a large number of other patterns.

Specimens are exhibited in Wolfe, Marbled Paper, plate XXVI, 44–48 and Muira, Art of Marbled Paper, pages 47–49, and Turkish Patterns. In the latter gallery, an example similar to the front endpaper from Ege MS 14 is listed as Vintage 17th c. marbled paper, Turkish pattern, from a book cover. dating “between 1800 and 1899” [sic].

In consultation, Simon Beattie, founder of We Love Endpapers, suggested this in an email communication:

that marbled paper makes me say ’18th-century, English’. It certainly doesn’t look 17th-century (that’s not to say the binding wasn’t 17th-c., but with later endpapers).

Further research may uncover more secrets of the binding history of the book. Perhaps the most recent of its bindings, represented by the remnants, endpaper(s) included, in which it travelled to Ege can shed light on the transmission of its ownership to and through the unnamed “Italian gentleman” who consigned it for sale in London in 1936.

*****

The Stitching Patterns

The patterns of holes for the stitching(s) of the volume are visible in the gutters, or inner folds, of bifolia. Likewise, most of the single leaves, which have been severed from their mates in former bifolia, retain holes or notches from the same patterns.

Some bifolia or groups of leaves retain dark, thick, stains and ‘encrustations’ at the outside of their spines from the glued back of the leather-covered binding. A thickly crusted case can be seen on the recto of the single leaf from II Chronicles 4–6 at Stanford University, at the front of Quire xiiii.

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, New Acquisitions Exhibition (2016). Ege MS 14 in pieces. Stack 1, Segments 1-3.

A few leaves retain pieces of the yellowish thread, twisted twine, and cord used for the stitching threads which linked quire to quire for the bound unit in a ladder-like structure of horizontal rows across the spine of the book, and for the raised bands at the back, or outside, of those rows.

For example, near the top of the recto of the Ecclesiastes Leaf at Ohio University, the frayed ends of a pair of severed threads rise from the uncut hole alongside the nicked, open-sided hole in the fold of the gutter. The markedly uneven cut edge of this gutter, which contrasts with the straighter edge of many severed single leaves from the manuscript, attests to a rougher approach.

Ohio University, Leaf from Ege MS 14, recto, detail: Top left. Image Public Domain.

The inside of some bifolia show their stitching patterns clearly. Such is the case with the bifolium from Ezekial at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Cleveland Museum of Art, Bifolium from a Bible: (Ege MS 14), with parts of Ezekiel via https://clevelandart.org/art/1959.272. Image Public Domain via Creative Commons.

The patterns derive from holes made in different approaches to binding or rebinding the volume. A close-up view shows differences in size, shape, and coloration between different ‘strata’ or sequences of stitching.

Cleveland Museum of Art, Bifolium from a Bible: (Ege MS 14), with parts of Ezekiel via https://clevelandart.org/art/1959.272. Image Public Domain via Creative Commons.

A detailed study across quires, insofar as they might be accessed, could determine the probable number of sewing interventions which the manuscript underwent in its history, from its original production, to individual ownership (Mirmellus Arnandi), to communal ownership (an unidentified Dominican convent), and back again (its “Italian” owner consigning the Bible to sale in London in 1936, and some other owner consigning it to sale again in New York).

*****

The Patched Repairs for Cut-Out Initials

In passing, we have noticed that a few leaves are said to have patched repairs taken from “the same” manuscript or volume. Such is the case for 2 catalogue entries.

1) Rogue Leaf = Gwara, Handlist 14.1.
Boston University = Judith H. Oliver, Manuscripts Sacred and Secular (1985), number 36 [but no plate]

End of Kings, Prologue to I Chronicles, and beginning of I Chronicles
with a ‘patch taken from another illuminated page of the same manuscript’ covering the cut-out from the ‘theft of initial for I Chronicles’.
[One wonders which other page yielded its riches to patch up this leaf.]

When first noting the case in the leaf opening I Chronicles (A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’), I observed that “One wonders which other page yielded its riches to patch up this leaf”.

2) Rogue Leaf = Gwara Handlist 14.Ref 14.
Sotheby’s 10 July 2012, lot 2(b)

Opening of the Catholic Epistle of James on verso (illustrated online for the catalogue)

described in the Sotheby’s catalogue thus:

(b) leaf from a lectern Bible, 400mm. by 270mm., . . . area of one column cut away (90mm. by 95mm., presumably once with a large initial), now repaired with another cutting from same volume [highlights added], once mounted on card with remains of tape on recto [therefore, turned front-to-back in Ege’s matting to display the verso], France or southern Flanders, early fourteenth century.

The text presents the end of the Prologue to the Catholic Epistle of James (from [ut quia Petrus /] est primus in ordine apostolorum) and the opening of this Book, with 1:1–2:4 (nonne iudacitis [/ apud vosmet]).

Even though the catalogue does not specify the position and nature of the patch, it is possible to make some educated guesses.

Next, we examine these patches.

*****

We thank the owners for the opportunity to study and to reproduce the leaves.

Do you know of more leaves from this manuscript? Do you recognize the hands of these scribes, artists, and annotators in other manuscripts?

You might reach us via Contact Us or our Facebook Page. Comments here are welcome too. We look forward to hearing from you.

Watch our blog on Manuscript Studies for more discoveries. Please visit its Contents List.

*****

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Fragments of a Castle ‘Capbreu’ from Catalonia

July 15, 2020 in Manuscript Studies

Fragments on Paper
from a Medieval Capbreu
(or Terrier)
for a Castle in Catalonia:

Vallfort or Castellví?

[Posted on 15 July 2020, with updates]

We examine fragments from a late-medieval Spanish manuscript on paper, with texts in Latin and Catalan. They come from a castle in Catalonia, Spain. In its texts the castle is named (so I am told) as Vallfort. Its lord is noted in one formula as Gaspar vilana senyor dela baronia e terme de castellny strem dela marcha . . . (“Gaspar Vilana, Lord of the Barony of Castellny and its Bounds, at the edge of the March . . . “). The “March” in this case presumably refers to the Hispanic Marches or the March of Barcelona — wherever and from what perspective then stood its particular terme. Purchased several years ago from a seller in Barcelona, the fragments are now in a private collection.

What’s In a Name?

Because the book has been dismembered and scattered, without the transmission of a clear record of its former state, contents, and sequence of leaves, and because medieval spellings of names of people and places exhibit differences and variants in the records (even in a single record or set of records for a particular individual or place), it is useful to state some givens. The power of such respect for individual and varied forms is exhibited, for example, in the study of another document elsewhere in this blog: A Charter of 1399 from High Ongar in Essex.

In the Catalan manuscript fragment, or rather the available parts of it, we encounter names designating one or other castle. In the Catalan language, or Català, the word Castel(l) means “Castle”. Vell means “old”. Castelví comes from Castel(l)vell. See, for example, Castellvi; and Occitan and Catalan Names in the Medieval Names Archive.

In a region of the world where, given its history, there were many castles (see a partial List of castles in Spain), some of them, by the late medieval period, could or would have been perceived and described as “old”. Moreover, over time, as names for a particular place could have varied before settling down into a preferred and established choice, the forms –vell, –ví, and the like, all meaning “old”, might have alternated with each other for the same edifice and place, not least when translating a name from another language into the Catalan. Some of those names may have passed out of use for the given place in modern times, and some may have disappeared from the record altogether.

Private Collection, Castle Cartulary Fragment, Folio 1r / Page 1 fuller view.

In some bilingual portions of the fragment, a single location is referred to as the “old castle” in both Latin and in Catalan. On a single page (both Folio ‘1’ recto and verso), it appears both as Castri ueteris (in the Latin genitive) and as Castellví or Castellvy (or Castellny/Castellni). Such patterns appear both on the title-page of the book (as known from the seller’s image) and on the first pages of the fragment from it as preserved in the collection which we showcase here.

Given multiple “old castles” which remained in seigneurial or baronial use at the time of these records, this one might well have required other descriptive elements to differentiate one from another. Such is the case now for some places which have, or retain, the name Castellvi, Castel(l)vell, and the like. For example, in Barcelona, there are still:

Castellví de Rosanes at Baix Llobregat, Barcelona, with castle ruins known as El Castellot
Castelví de la Marca, at Alt Penedés, Barcelona, likewise with castle ruins.

In the light of spellings discerned or potentially deciphered in the fragments, is the form Castellní (or similar) a known alternate for one or other of these? If not, then for some other place?

Given a castle-name Vallfort, the collector suggests that it may pertain to the family considered in: La documentació de la casa de Clariana (s. XIII-XV) conservada a l’Arxiu del Castell de Vilassar (1989), available online. For example, an inventory item for 23 November 1335 (No. 2 on p. 338) mentions a comte de Castellbó i senyor de Castellvell (“Count of Castellbó and Lord of Castellvell”) and a senyor de la casa de Vallfort dins del terrne de Castell vell (“Lord of the House of Vallfort within the terrne of Castellvell”). Here (highlights added):

1335, novembre, 23 Llicencia concedida per Roger Bematde Foix, comte de Castellbó i senyor de Castellvell, a Guillem de Clariana, senyor de la casa de Vallfort dins del terrne de Castell vell, donant-li perrnís pera construir dins del terrne i fins el coll d’ Alberic o de Santa Cristina premses i molins d’oli. Estableix en emfiteusi els molins i premses a Guillem, sota cens anual d’una quartera d’oli per premsa, cens que Roger es di vidira arnb Mir de Castell vell, e as tia del castell. Per entrada Guillem paga dos sous de moneda barcelonesa de tem.

Candidates for identifying these named places with modern ones could include:

Castellbó within Montferrer i Castellbó
Castellvell, a community in Bajo Campo, Tarragona

For the latter, we learn, a documentary record in 1336 mentions the “old castle” (castri veteri, terminus de reddis), whereas the place-name Castelvell does not appear in the historical record before 1409.

As for a Casa or Castle Named Vallfort, the present collector suggests that “the site is probably near the hotel/venue named Masia Vallfort” (see also Masia Vallfort), a restored medieval house, castle, or structure “in the Penedès area”. That venue describes itself thus: “Masia Vallfort is located in Camí des Clots, s / n, in Sant Jaume dels Domenys, . . . 10km from the beach, 25km from Sitges, 40km from Tarragona and 50km from Barcelona airport.” (See its Contact.)

Cartulary or Capbreu?

These leaves, which I have not yet seen in person (apart from photographs), have been described as part of a “castle cartulary”. Perhaps that appelation derives from the seller’s listings and records (which I have not seen).

Late-medieval fragments of a cartulary from the Church at Selbold, in Hessen, Germany, now in the same private collection, are examined in our blog on the Selbold Cartulary Fragments (seen in one page at the right). According with this type of book, the leaves contain copies or transcriptions of multiple documents, issued at various times by authorities (secular or ecclesiastical) conferring or affirming the rights and benefits which pertain to the particular institution.

Private Collection, Selbold Cartulary Fragment, Folio 2 recto.

The text on one leaf in the “castle cartulary fragments” from Barcelona (shown above and below as “folio ‘1’r–v”) constitutes the text or transcription of such a document, in both Latin and Catalan versions, including its dating clause in its own paragraph or section. A similar approach can be seen in the presentation of the Latin documents, with separately spaced dating clauses, in the Selbold Cartulary Fragments.

However, as a few more leaves of the Spanish/Catalan “castle cartulary” come into view, it becomes clear that it was a different type of book instead, with different purposes, and also with various other types of texts. That type of book is stated clearly in its own name for itself, on the former title page and also on the reused parchment document (issued at Barcelona in 1437) which, apparently, served as its cover or wrapper.

In its own words, this book is a Capbreu in Català, French, and other languages — which in English would be a terrier. The word derives from the Latin phrase caput breve. It denotes a specific type of seigneurial inventory, in the form of a book or register surveying the lord’s lands and tenants. The genre provides a record system for an institution’s land and property holdings; it “differs from a land register in that it is maintained for the organisation’s own needs and may not be publicly accessible”.

Described in French:

le capbreu ou livre de reconnaissances est un registre notarié en parchemin ou en papier dans lequel sont enregistrées les déclarations faites sous serment des tenanciers possédant des terres et autres biens-fonds relevant de la directe d’un seigneur foncier

Described in Català:

Un capbreu és un document on anotava, en forma abreujada i en períodes cronològics espaiats, les confessions o reconeixements fets pels emfiteutes o pels pagesos tenidors (podien ser de remença) als senyors directes, per tal de conservar memòria o prova de la subsistència dels drets dominicals.

Note that it is notarized.

Called capbreviato (capbrevació in Catalan), the process of compiling the registers on occasion might include the summoning of tenants before administrators and a notary, for the tenants to present for review the written titles to any lands which they held from their lord, and for disputes such as contested boundaries to be resolved. The head of each family was to swear on the Evangelists [or their Four Gospels] to tell the truth concerning the lands, rents, and services required. These representations would be recorded by the notary.

Characteristic of the genre would be multiple entries, made at different times and by different hands, sometimes over long periods of time extending across generations. The genre reflects a close relationship between land, countryside, seigniorial power, and families over changing conditions. An evocative description of the genre, its procedures, and its source-materials emerges in

Marc Conesa, “Capbreu et paysage. Remarques sur l’utilisation d’une source seigneuriale dans l’étude des paysages des Pyrénées de l’est (Cerdagne, XVI^e–XVIII^e siècle)”, Liame, 14 (2007), pp. 97–124.

A few more of the studies which I have found helpful on the genre, its functions, its agents, and its settings variously geographical, sociological, economic, cultural, and more:

Rodrique Tréton et al., Les Capbreus du roi Jacques II de Majorque (1292-1294). Documentes inédits sur l’histoire de France, 393 and 490 (Paris: CTSH, 2 vols, 2011).
Pere Benito i Monclús, “Agents du pouvoir ou entrepreneurs ruraux? Les intermédiaires de la seigneurie en Catalogne médievalé, essor et déclin,” in Les élites rurales dans l’Europe médiévale et moderne, ed. François Menant and Jean-Pierre Jessenne (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2007), 111-127.
Jonathan C. Farr, “Imagined Geographies and the Production of Space in Occitània and Northern Catalunya in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries” (Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Michigan, 2017), available here .

The Looks of the Books

The genre of capbreus had a long and active life, with recognizable, albeit varied, features pertaining to individual institutions, locations, holdings, and forms of book-production. The title-page from a Ca(p)breu now at the Arxiu Comarcal del Baix Penedès writes its title large on the page, with some forms of wording comparable to the notarized title in the “Castle Cartulary”:

Capbreu de Santa Magdalena de Bonastre, 1694: Title Page. Image via Notari reial Franesc Cervera. In Public Domain.

Another, calling itself a Caput breue, bears its signed attestation by the named notary at the lower right in 5 lines, beginning apud me . . . (“according to me”):

Capbreu dels llocs i termes de Ramonet, Les Ordes i Fontscaldes, dated 4 March 1616 – 29 August 1616. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

A Cabreu might even hold fine decoration and illustration, manifesting a chain of command, as with the headpiece illustration of the Cabreu of Saint-Laurent de la Salanque, now at Perpignan (A.D.P.O, MS IB33, folio 1r). At the left, the enthroned king has crown, orb, and scepter. In the middle stand 2 male witnesses. At the right, the suppliant bends on 1 knee, raises his right hand, and places his hand on the holy book (the Gospels) held open by the adjudicator, who stands in front of a bench. Between these 2 figures, a seated scribe, with monastic habit and cowl, bends to the task of recording the event. Held up at an angle between his knees and facing us, his writing sheet carries the name of the first tenant in the act copied directly below the scene. This detail manifests a conscious case of indicating that the scene illustrated represents the very action.

Capbreu d'Argeles (1292). Perpignan, Archives departementales des Pyrenees-Orientales (A.D.P.O.) 1 B 30, folio 1r, for Juane I, King of Majorca. Image in Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Capbreu d’Argeles (1292). Perpignan, Archives départementales des Pyrénées-Orientales (A.D.P.O.), 1 B 30, folio 1r, for Juane I, King of Majorca. Image in Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Fragments

This portion of the former volume of the Catalan “Castle Cartulary”, or Capbreu, comprises 28 leaves. All of paper, they are mostly bifolia, plus a folded full sheet inserted in their midst. The last 7 leaves are blank on both sides. The text presents entries or documents in book form.

All the entries in this portion have dates between 13 and 25 September 1489. A preliminary report of the fragment was presented in a conference session sponsored by the Research Group.

A look at the unbound group of fragments opened:

Private Collection, Spanish Castle Cartulary Fragment, Viewed Opened.

Most of the wormholes are a result of the stacking of the disbound leaves, although one wormhole is a relic of the original binding.

A view closer up of that opening, naming Jacobus . . . dominus . . . at the top right:

Private Collection, Spanish Castle Cartulary Fragment, Viewed Opened: Top Right.

The front of the Fragment:

Private Collection, Spanish Castle Cartulary, Folio ‘1’r.

The Next Page (Folio ‘1’v)

Private Collection, Spanish Castle Cartulary, Folio ‘1’v.

Other Parts of the Book

More parts of the dismembered volume were offered for sale at the same time, so other leaves survive elsewhere. The seller’s photographs total 52, all of which the collector saved to keep with the group of leaves. So far, I have seen only 2 of those images, whose information deserves incorporation here. As the copyright for those images reside with the seller, we show only ‘postage-stamp’ versions of them, whose display on the internet for the purpose of selling predates my acquaintance with the materials at all.

Private Collection, Bipartite 1437 Document in Latin from Barcelona. Docketing Inscription on verso or dorse of the vellum sheet, with information about the former volume which the vellum sheet formerly covered. Private Collection, reproduced by permission.

Bipartite of Document 1437 in Latin from Barcelona: Docketing on the Dorse.

Some elements of what can be known about the former ensemble derive from the seller’s account, as reported to me. For example, a parchment document of 1437 was said to have formed the cover for a time.

By inference — shall we say, by a preponderance of the evidence so far available — it appears that it was that very document which the seller sent, as a sort of extra bonus, to the same collection as the Fragments of 28 leaves presented here. Shortly after the document arrived in the collection, and without knowing about the possible connection with other leaves on the way, we reported it with a blog-post of its own, as a Latin Document of 1437 on Vellum from Barcelona. Now, its docketing assumes a heightened pertinence in the context of the Fragments.

The Front Page

The “former cover”, or title-leaf, was purchased by some other collector. The features of its front or recto can be glimpsed in the seller’s image. Besides marks of wear and tear, stains, and wormhole patterns, it has a series of entries by 3 different hands.

Centered at the top, a partly damaged 5-line Latin inscription in brown ink gives a description of the contents (Capibre[?] . . . omni . . . et H . . . domini Baronie Caste[?] . . . extrem . de Mar[?]. . . ). It closes with the attestation of the scribe as notary, cited by name as Bernard Vila and accompanied by his knot-like nota.

Capibre[?] . . . omni . . . et H . . . domini Baronie
Castri ueteris extrem . de Mar[?]. . . apud me Bernardum Vila
Villefranche penit[?]en’ a uet‘ . . . notarium publicum per totas
. . .et . . . Illust’ . . . Aragonum Qui . . .

But no date. The name Villefranche perhaps indicates the town still known as Villefranche (Vilfranca in Catalan) in Catalonia.

In dark ink, an X-shaped cross demarcates most of the page. Within its wedges stand four personal names (clockwise from the top): Johannes/ Marchus / Matheus / Lucas. With the name Johannes settled below the tail of the nota, it is not certain whether or not this entry pre-dates the Latin ‘title’. In any event, the four names represent the 4 Evangelists, on, or on whose names, the swearing would be intended to occur.

In pale brown ink, 2 later hands using cursive script entered variant versions of Catalan translations for the Latin inscription. Their fewer damaged passages may clarify some words of the Latin.

Capbreu que portanen a la jurisdicio del S[eño]r Baro di Castellví y extrem de la marca en poder di Bernard Vila Notari di Vilafranca . . .

That is, this is the “Capbreu which pertains to the jurisdiction of Señor Baron of Castellví and the end of the March . . . ”

The alignments of these entries demonstrate an adaptation of sorts to the pre-existing X-shaped bounding lines. Perhaps, among other things, they formed exercises in Latin translation.

Another Page

Another page offered for sale from the dismembered book, and sold elsewhere, appeared in the seller’s posted image.

Its text records an event of Wednesday, 23 January 1587, and names some persons of the Parrochie Sancti Jacobi de Castellvi dela Marca vicaria Villafrancha Penitenz ex altera. By its name, their parish presumably pertains to the still-surviving municipality of Castellvi (also spelled as Castelvell) de la Marca, in Alto Penedés, in the province of Barcelona.

At the top left on the page, the name Castellví is writ large in dark ink, in a less steady hand, adding a contents heading, rather like docketing for a document proper.

The ruins of Castell Castelvi still loom large:

Castell de Castellvi, Catalunya. View from below. Photograph by Antoni Grifol (2007), via Creative Commons.

Vilafranca del Penedès is not far from this place.

Vilafranca del Penedès des del jaciment d’Olèrdola. Photograph by Enric (2015), via Creative Commons.

The Parchment Cover for the Cabreo de Castellvi:
Reused Documents of 1437 from Barcelona

With the sale of the fragments as delivered in stages, the seller added a bonus item, the parchment cover from some ‘register’, not specifically named. That cover reused an older pair of documents, dated 1437.

We reported the document in an earlier blogpost, on its own, soon after it reached its current collection: Latin Document of 1437 on Vellum from Barcelona. Looking at it again, as we examine the Catalan ‘Castle Cartulary’ fragments in their own right, it now seems most likely that this document performed the service as the covering of this particular cartulary/register.

The large, single-sheet document now measures circa 58.4 cm × 34.1 cm (22 1/2 × 13″). Its size calls for photography in stages. Piecing together the images of the differently-folded pieces shows much of the whole, viewed from their faces. The undulating contour at the top corresponds with the chirographic approach to documents, as described and illustrated in our post on Preston Charters: The Chierographs. The wavy upper contours are made to match in a pair, to be cut from a single sheet, and matched-up later, if necessary to prove their equality as witnesses.

Bipartite Document of 1437 in Latin from Barcelona.

The ensemble comprises a still-joined, matching pair of records for a Sale in 1437 between 2 named ‘Transporters of Animals’ in the ‘City of Barcelona’. The pair of records would presumably have been intended for each of them, vendor and purchaser. Perhaps the sale was not effected, so that the documents had no cause for distribution?

Private Collection, Bipartite Document of 1437 in Latin from Barcelona: Top Left.

Both versions of the document have the notary’s name, signature, and nota. He was the notary Petrus Pons of Barcelona. His Nota in Version 1 of the document:

Bipartite Document of 1437 in Latin from Barcelona: Notarial Signature Version 1.

The Dorse

The ‘docketing’ or title on the dorse of the document names the register for which it served as cover. The dorse in full:

Private Collection, Document of 1437 from Barcelona, Dorse.

The Docketing and Annotations

Bipartite of Document 1437 in Latin from Barcelona: Docketing on the Dorse.

Written in two stages in two different inks and by two or more different hands identifying the contents, the inscriptions state:

Añ[n]o 14.88.
Cabreo de Castellví.
32 . . . . 3 . . . . 2

That is,

Year 1488.
Cabreo of Castellví
32 . . . . 3 . . . . 2

(Thus we correct our earlier transcription and translation. Examination of leaves from the “Castle Cartulary” and their spellings of the place-names revises a view of the penultimate letter as v, and the stain over it as extraneous rather than integral, Here is another case of the ways in which deciphering by photographs might be hampered by the archaeological “layering” which the artefact itself might contain. A telling example of the power of such correctives: St Dunstan’s ‘Classbook’ and its Frontispiece: Dunstan’s Portrait and Autograph.)

Our earlier report on this document supposed that the castle in question was “presumably Montjuïc Castle“, whose building still stands, although its moat has been overplanted. It was said then that this identification “derives from other evidence pertaining to materials purchased from the same online source.”

But now, it seems much more likely that the castle in question can find its identity through association with the Catalan Castle Capbreu fragments, disbound and sold in batches by the same vendor, who had stated that a document of 1437 formed the former cover for them.

Montjuïc Castle was a royal fortress. This one was a small baronial castle.

So, which castle? That question calls for inspection of the texts on the leaves of the Fragments.

The ‘Castle Cartulary’ Leaves

Without having seen or studied most of the leaves in the Fragment, I attend to a few which demonstrate some of its characteristics.

The First Leaf

The first page of the fragment as now collected launches straight into a single transcribed document.

Private Collection, Castle Cartulary Fragment, Folio 1r / Page 1.

Set out in 3 paragraphs or sections of long lines in a single column, it carries text first in Latin and then in Catalan, followed by the 2-line dating clause in Latin its own section.

Upper portion: Latin

Private Collection, Castle Cartulary Fragment, Folio 1r / Page 1, Upper Portion.

Lower Portion: Catalan and Latin

Private Collection, Castle Cartulary Fragment, Folio 1r / Page 1, Lower Portion.

Here is named bilingually

Gaspar vilana . . . Barchmone domini baronie castri veteris extremi di Marcha In peniten’ et eis terminorum . . . . In suis castro et terminis suis . . . (lines 6–8)

Gaspar vilana senyor dela baronia e terme de castellny strem della marcha . . . . (lines 15–16).

That might be:

“Gaspar Vilana, Lord of the Barony of the Old Castle (Castellvy) and its bounds, at the edge of the March in Peniten‘ “. Presumably the form Peniten’ indicates the (or a) Latin form for ‘Penedès’, expandable in some appropriate way.

Private Collection, Spanish Castle Cartulary, Folio ‘1’r: Name in Latin.

Both Latin and Catalan sections refer to this lord’s caput / breue suorum redditum (lines 8–9) or cap/breu (lines 18–19). Namely: this very book.

Private Collection, Spanish Castle Cartulary, Folio ‘1’r: Name in Catalan.

The dating clause also names the place: In loco dela Almunia perrochie . . . (“In the place of Almunia Parish”), at which point the text leads to the next page.

The Verso

The text continues to the top of the verso, on which the rest of the page remains blank. Again the Catalan, with a slight spelling variant, names Gaspar Vilana Senyor dela baronía e terme de castellniy strem dela marca.

Private Collection, Spanish Castle Cartulary, Folio ‘1’v, top.

These reiterated appelations emphasize the location of the castle as the “old” one, strem dela marca. Provided that boundary “at the edge of the March” stood in or near a place still known as Penedès, it could be more closely located. Historically a border region within the county of Barcelona, and now within the Province of Catalonia, this region lies between the pre-coastal mountain-range and the Mediterranean Sea.

La plana del Penedès i Montserrat des del jaciment d’Olèrdola. Photograph (2015) by Enric, via Creative Commons.

Its sub-divisions include Alt Penedès and Baix Penedès. The capital of the former is Vilafranca del Penedès, which name also features in the texts of the Fragments.

Vilafranca del Penedès des del jaciment d’Olèrdola. Photograph (2015) by Enric, via Creative Commons.

*****

Some Other Leaves

Another recto, copied by a different scribe, likewise set out in a single column.

Here, the second entry is written in smaller script of more densely packed lines. The principal paragraph includes some corrections, with horizontal cancelling lines, interlinear insertions, and a marginal entry.

Private Collection, Castle Cartulary, Spain, Script Sample.

The text includes such words in Catalan as Vindemia (“Vintage” wines), de lana (“of wool”), de anadous (“of ducklings”), and gelino, perhaps for gallina (“hen”). It may present a list of things owned, or owed, in a form of inventory.

A Verso, partly filled with script:

Private Collection, Spanish Castle Cartulary, Part-Filled Verso.

A closer view of the script:

Private Collection, Spanish Castle Cartulary, Part-Filled Verso, Detail: Script.

The inserted, folded sheet

Private Collection, Castle Cartulary Fragment, Inserted Folded Sheet, Opened.

A heading, partly altered, beginning Memorial . . .

Private Collection, Castle Cartulary Fragment, Inserted Folded Sheet, Opened: Top Right.

The Watermark: Architectural Column Surmounted by a Simple Latin Cross

The fragment has consistent watermarks of an upright architectural column topped by a cross. The cross is formed of single lines. In the Latin version of the cross, its stem is longer than its crossbar. With a single contour, the column comprises a stacked pile of 8 segments, variously oval, rectangular, sub-rectangular, and other, with a cushion-like segment with rounded sides at top and bottom.

Private Collection, Castle Cartulary, Watermark of a Column.

Private Collection, Castle Cartulary, Spain, Watermark of a Column.

In the monumental printed resource on watermarks assembled by Charles M. Briquet in the volumes of Les Filigranes: Dictionnaire historique des marques du papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en 1600 (Paris etc., 1907), available as Briquet Online, this specimen belongs to his group of watermarks known as Colonne | surmontée d’une croix. Among them, this version corresponds to Briquet number 4361, with sightings in materials dated or datable to “Narbonne 1488″ etc., as Briquet cited here.

Briquet 4361 Colonne.

The “find-place” of the watermark, that is, on a set of leaves carrying handwritten documentary materials in book form, includes dated entries for certain months of a single year, 1489, and for a given place and its region, at or near Barcelona. This case deserves to be counted among the “sightings” of the watermark as recognized by Briquet.

Private Collection, Castle Cartulary Fragment, Folio 1r / Page 1, Upper Portion.

This Specimen now joins our Gallery of Specimens for Watermarks & the History of Paper.

*****

Piecing together the fragments of evidence which the dispersed parts of the Capbreu (or Terrier) from Castellví — somewhere in Barcelona, apparently the one at Alt Penedès — might currently offer to view, it is possible to glean some shreds of information that might reveal its former nature, home, scope, and some of the individuals who contributed to it.

Perhaps more information might come to light from the other parts of the book and the seller’s notes. The images here make a start toward recognizing the characteristics of this manuscript witness.

*****

Do you know of other leaves from this Castle Capbreu? Do you recognize these scribes in other manuscripts? Do you know of other “find-places” for this version of a watermark of a Cross-Topped Column?

Do you have comments or suggestions?

Please offer your Comments here, Contact Us, or our Facebook Page. We look forward to hearing from you.

*****

More to Come. Follow our blog, and check its Contents List for more discoveries.

*****

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2021 International Congress on Medieval Studies Call for Papers

July 13, 2020 in ICMS, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Societas Magica, Uncategorized

Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
at the 56th International Congress on Medieval Studies
(13–16 May 2021)

Call for Papers

Proposals Due by 15 September 2020

[Posted on 13 July 2020, with updates]

After the cancellation of the 2020 Congress, the preparations now for the 2021 Congress permit re-submitting the sessions which had been designed to take place in May 2020. By popular request, we performed that re-submission for all 5 Sessions. With approval now by the Congress Committee, we announce the Call for Papers. This announcement augments the brief listings of all Sessions on call on the Congress website. #kzoo2021.

Update: 5 August 2020:

Please note these updated instructions for submission of proposals for papers. New for this year, all such submissions must be made through the Confex system, as directed on the Congress website. However, the Congress’s plans for Session Organizers to access any proposals were overly optimistic. Exploring this problem, we have now learned that it is uncertain when (or if?) such access would be enabled. So we ask that, when you submit your proposal by that method as required, you inform the Session Organizer as well. Here we list each Session’s Organizer and contact address.

Sorry for the inconvenience, not of our making.

Perhaps an easy way of informing the Organizer of your proposal would be to forward thence the confirmation email which the Confex system would send for your completed proposal (title, abstract, contact information). We look forward to hearing from you.

Adèle Kindt (1804–1884), The Fortune Teller (circa 1835). Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

The Plan We Had for the 2020 Congress

The Announcement for our Sessions and other Activities at the 2020 Congress describes what we planned. Note that we published the Abstracts of Papers, so as to record the intentions of speakers for their presentations. The Abstracts are accessible both through that Announcement and through the Indexes of Abstracts by Year and by Author.

Our tradition regularly has been to post on our website the Abstracts before the Congress, as a foretaste of the Menu. Years ago, as a sign of appreciation, we adopted the custom of posting the Abstract of one or other contributor who became unable to attend to present in person (as with the 2016 Congress and the 2014 Congress ). Thus we honor the intentions of our participants to present the results (or interim results) of their research and reflections, even when they could not do so at the event.

The Papers and their sequences within the intended Sessions were selected through the responses to the 2020 Call for Papers, which described the aims of the individual Sessions, both sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (3 Sessions), and co-sponsored with the Societas Magica (2 Sessions). The 2020 Congress would have been the 16th year of this co-sponsorship at the International Congress on Medieval Studies.

Like the 2015–2019 Congresses, we also planned for

an Open Business Meeting and
a co-sponsored Reception.

Even so, the Agenda for the postponed 2020 Business Meeting is available. It takes into account the changes for Spring 2020:

2020 Agenda.

The Plan for 2021

We contemplate a similar or suitably revised approach to the 2021 Congress, conditions permitting.

For the 2021 Congress, we aim to re-present the Sessions, and we invite proposals for Papers or Responses.

The sponsorship and co-sponsorship remains as before — with only 1 change. For 2021, the Societas Magica has agreed to co-sponsor 1 of the Sessions which the RGME sponsored on its own in 2020: “Prologues in Medieval Texts of Magic, Astrology, and Prophecy”. Now with an adapted title, this Session now joins the already co-sponsored pair of sessions dedicated to “Revealing the Unknown I–II”. The 2021 Congress will be the 17th year of our co-sponsorship with the Societas Magica, in a constructive partnership of friends, students, and colleagues.

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Selbold Cartulary Fragments

July 4, 2020 in Manuscript Studies

Selbold Cartulary Fragments

3 Leaves on Paper

Single columns of 38 lines
Circa 28.3 × 210 cm < written area of circa 20.6 × 15.5 cm>
Presumably Stift Selbold or its Region (Hessen) in Germany
Late 14th or early 15th Century
Watermark of Grape Cluster

[Posted on 3 July 2020, with updates]

Continuing our blog on Manuscript Studies (see its Contents List), we publish images and descriptions of a set of three leaves from the dismembered paper copy of a Latin cartulary (or codex diplomaticus or Kopialbuch, in Latin and German) of the former Premonstratensian monastery-and-then-abbey of Selbold in Hessen, Germany. The set presents a now-disrupted series of uniform transcriptions in book form of individual dated documents issued by ecclesiastical and secular rulers confirming, or reconfirming, rights and privileges pertaining to that institution and its dependencies.

Purchased from Boyd Mackus in the United States some years ago and now in a private collection, the fragments comprise 1 single leaf and 1 bifolium. We identify them here as folios “1” and “2–3”, using inverted commas or quotation marks to indicate a non-original sequence and location within the former volume. Written by a single scribe with a uniform layout, the leaves contain a late-medieval copy of the texts of 8 documents (not all complete) issued by various authorities in a range from the 12th to 14th centuries. Upon the original pages, even apart from the subsequent disruptions to the text through dispersal of leaves, the transcriptions are set out in sequences that are only partly chronological according to the issued dates of the documents.

Written in ink with elements of red pigment, the text is laid out on the leaves in single columns of 38 lines. One leaf has a watermark.

These leaves deserve to be considered in the contexts not only of the transmission of the documents which they represent, but also of the preservation and circulation of Selbold Cartularies or Kopialbucher, insofar as they are known or survive. Here we distinguish in red such historical records as the Selbold Cartulary Fragment(s) showcased here, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, one or more Selbold Kopialbuche (or Copialbuche) reported in German by various observers. We indicate one or other of those books known to have survived to the early modern or modern periods, but subsequently lost, or presumed to be lost, by a prefixed asterisk (*). Also recorded in some notices or copies thereof is a late-medieval [*]Liber privilegiorum et libertatum ecclesie Selboldensis (“Book of the Privileges and Rights of the Church of Selbold”), presumed to be lost.

Among the challenges, we might wonder to what extent one or other of those recorded [*]Selbolder Kopialbucher corresponds to this dismembered one. This post includes some detailed examinations of published editions of its texts and related texts. Why this detailed work is useful, and can yield strikingly significant results even for only a few leaves from a dispersed manuscript otherwise inaccessible, is revealed in the PostScript.

The subtitle for this post could be Manuscript Studies in a Time of Bibliographical ‘Lock-Down’. [Now see also the Addendum below.]

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Tags: Archbishop Heinrich I of Mainz, Birstein, Briquet Number 13003, Büdingen, Conrad III, Frederick II, Gustav Simon, Heinrich Reimer, Helfrich Bernhardt Wenck, History of Documents, History of Watermarks, Integrated, Isenburg, Karl IV, King Adolf of Germany, Langenselbold, Otto Ege's Manuscripts, Prince Bruno of Ysenburg-Büdingen, Royal Bible of St. Augustine's Abbey Canterbury, Selbold, Selbold Cartulary, Selbold Cartulary Fragment, Selbold Kopialbuch, Selbold Monastery, Ysenburg
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Vellum Binding Fragments in a Parisian Printed Book of 1598

June 30, 2020 in Documents in Question, Manuscript Studies

Pieces of an Early 16th-Century French Legal Document
Reused as Vellum Supports or Guards
in the Quarto Binding of
Henry de Suberville’s L’Henry-Metre
Printed in Paris in 1598

Manuscript Binding Fragments Remaining In Situ

[Posted on 30 June 2020, with updates]

Smeltzer Collection, Henry de Suberville, ‘L’Henry-metre’ (1598), Title Page.

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Spine View as Preserved.

With thanks to the owner, our Associate, Ronald K. Smeltzer, we observe some recycled vellum stiffeners which still stand in situ in a scientific book by the author and inventor Henry de Suberville, printed in Paris in 1598 by Adrien Perier. All the photographs here are Ronald’s, reproduced with permission. The volume has lost the boards and any covering of its former cover, but it retains elements of the binding, including the stitching and some stiffeners repurposed from earlier hand-written material. Our purpose here is to examine and illustrate the reused binding fragments in their settings.

Inspired by The Caxton Club/Bibliographical Society of America Symposium on the Book held in April 2015 on “Preserving the Evidence: The Ethics of Book and Paper Conservation”, Ronald has published a concise report (freely downloadable) about the volume and his approach to conserving and conserving it.

Ronald K. Smeltzer, “Preserving the Evidence: A 16th-Century Book Absent Its Binding”, Caxtonian: Journal of the Caxton Club, 18:9 (September, 2015), 1–3.

His Figure 5 (shown at the left) shows the volume in 3-quarter view, from the front and the spine, with minimal intervention. Here, we learn, is “Suberville’s treatise in its polyester enclosure with hook-and-loop fasteners, showing the intact structure of the spine, including the remains of head and tail bands and cords”.

Moreover, there survive further remnants from the former state of the volume. “Apparently as guards, vellum flaps are present, but not visible in Fig. 5, on both sides of the spine. Very old handwriting, not decipherable by me, is on the inner side of the vellum pieces, as illustrated in Fig. 6.”

Figure 6 (shown below) shows a reused vellum fragment as it fits in the volume, with the tops of the original script turned to the gutter and spine of the binding.

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598): Vellum Support, as shown in Smeltzer (2015), Figure 6.

As Ronald observed, “Considering the interesting visible and apparently contemporary structure of this late 16th-century book, it seems appropriate to leave it as-is.”

We agree. See, for example, Physical Evidence and Manuscript Conservation: A Scholar’s Plea (1994) by our Director, and posts throughout our blog, listed in the Contents List.

The Volume ‘As Is’

The volume is a copy of Henry de Suberville’s L’Henry-Metre, Instrument Royal et Universal avec sa théorique, usage et pratique démontrée . . . (Paris: Adrien Perier, 1598), lacking its former binding. The title-page lists the printer’s address as rue sainct Iacques en le boutique de Plantin au Compass, on a notable street in Paris in the Latin Quarter, among other booksellers and printers. Adrien Périer had marred Madeleine (or Magdalena) Plantin, daughter of Christophe Plantin and widow of Guy Beys (who died in 1595), and he came to use the Plantinian compasses as printing mark. The colophon of the volume states that the book was printed by Jamet Mettayer, printer and bookseller, that is, during the second period of Mettayer’s work in Paris (1594–1605).

We might wonder what scraps lay to hand to put to use in the sewing when the individual copies of the work received their bindings.

This volume is described thus:

It joins Ronald’s collection of works on early scientific instruments. On an “obscure” subject, Suberville’s book presents a text on mensuration with the trigonometric device which he had invented: the HenryMetre. Its Portraict is illustrated in the book and reproduced in Smeltzer’s Figure 2 (below left). “With its circular base, both horizontal and vertical angles could be measured. Hence, it could be used for surveying, measuring heights and distances, and carrying out astronomy measurements”. Basically, the text offers a guide to the instrument.

Paris, Musée du Louvre, Department of Paintings, Henry IV, King of France in Black Dress (1610), by Frans Pourbus the Younger. Image Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), ‘Pourtraict de l’HenryMetre’.

The book is a modest quarto. Its first half has 72 woodcut illustrations, many full page or nearly so, showing how the Henry-Meter is used and providing diagrams of the relevant geometry for calculations based upon measurements to be made with it. The second half of the text mainly considers specific problems, mathematical calculations, and tables of numbers. The 4 engraved plates include the “Pourtraict” of the device and the frontispiece portrait, by Thomas de Leu, of the dedicatee, King Henri IV (1553–1610), King of France and Navarre. (On this frontispiece, see, for example, its record in the British Museum collection.)

The Volume

The title page announces the Henry-Metre as subject, describes its abilities, names its inventor–author, Henry de Subreville Breton, and describes him as Chanoine en l’Eglise Cathedrale S. Pierre de Xaintes; & Aduocat en la Cour de Parlement de Bourdeaux. The cathedral church at which he was a canon was the former Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Saintes in Saintes, Carente-Maritime, France. Suberville composed his text apparently during the last few years of the wars of religion in 16th-century France — to which it refers.

Smeltzer Collection, Henry de Suberville, ‘L’Henry-metre’ (Paris, 1598), Title Page.

The Spine

Apparently original, the sewing remains mostly intact.

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Spine View as Preserved.

The Location of the Strips

It is useful to recognize how the vellum supports are integrated into the book’s structure, noting neighboring blank leaves not part of the gathering structure. The gathering formula encapsulates the structure of this unusual book:

At both front and back, a folded pair of blank paper leaves (comprising a bifolium) stands at the outer side of each gathering which has a vellum support. At the front, the vellum support encompasses gathering ã and two blank leaves before it. At the rear, the vellum support encompasses gathering H and two blank leaves following leaf H2. That the 2 blank leaves in each case are not part of the gathering structure itself is seen by their chain-lines that are vertical, and not horizontal as for the text leaves. The paper of the blanks seems to be slightly different to the touch. They carry no watermarks.

The Fragments and Their Text

The guards comprise 2 reused Strips, cut to shape. The Strips are visible at each end of the volume, as a narrow Flap at the end of the text-block, formerly facing the boards and any pastedowns or endleaves pertaining to them. Wrapping around the fold of its gathering, each Strip re-emerges into view within the text-block as a narrower Stub in the gutter in the opening between pages at the other end of the gathering.

Each Strip carries writing in ink only on one side, which is the flesh side of the animal skin and the Face of the written material. The Dorse (hair side) is turned outward around the gathering.

We call the guards Strips 1 at the back and 2 at the front, each with a Flap on the outside of the gathering and a Stub on the inside. Why number them that way, seemingly inverted? Spoiler Alert: Both Strips apparently come from a single manuscript or document, and the structure of their text indicates that Strip 1 would originally have preceded Strip 2.

The “outer” portion of each Strip, that is, the Flap, is slit about midway along into 2 sections. The slit corresponds to the middle row of sewing across the gatherings and its raised band.

Along the spine, it is possible to see the exposed outer edge of the guard at the front of the volume. Its color and texture contrasts with the paper of the gatherings otherwise. The guard extends not the full length of the gathering, but rather between its rows of kettle-stitchings at head and foot. At the end of the textblock, the guard sits alongside the 3 raised bands of stitchings spaced at even intervals along the spine. The slit midway along the guard which produced the 2 halves of the Flap on the outer side, but no division in the Stub on the inner side, is visible emerging alongside the raised middle band of stitching.

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Spine View, with 3 Raised Bands flanked by a Row of Kettle-Stitching at either end.

Close up:

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Spine: Front Midsection.

For each Strip, we show both front and back of each “outer” portion, or Flap, but only the visible Text Side of its Stub on the other side of the gathering.

Note that we view and number their portions taking the upright orientation of the script as the standard, not necessarily the position of the Strip as aligned with respect to the head or tail of the spine.

Strip 1 (at the Back of the Volume)

Flap 1a (Left-Hand Side)

Dorse (Hair side)

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Vellum Supports, Strip 1 ‘Upper’ Dorse.

Face / Text Side (Flesh Side), with the text seen upright. Compare Ronald’s Figure 6 above in black-and-white.

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598): Vellum Support 1, ‘Upper’, Face of Text.

Flap 1b (Right-Hand Side)

Dorse (Hair Side)

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Vellum Supports, Strip 1 ‘Lower’ Dorse.

Face (Flesh Side), with the text seen upright

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Vellum Supports, Strip 1 ‘Lower’ Face.

*****

Strip 2 (At the Front of the Volume)

Flap 2a (Left-Hand Side)

Dorse (Hair side)

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Vellum Supports, Strip 2 ‘Upper’ Dorse.

Face (Flesh Side), with the text upright

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Vellum Supports, Strip 2 ‘Upper’ Face.

Flap 2b (Right-Hand Side)

Dorse (Hair side)

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Vellum Supports. Strip 2 ‘Lower’ Dorse.

Face (Flesh Side), with the text upright

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Vellum Supports, Strip 2 ‘Lower’ Face.

On the Other Side of the Gathering

Stub 1 (Strip 1)

Left-Hand Side

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Vellum Support Slip 1, Stub, Left (“Royal”).

Right-Hand Side

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Subermeyer (1598), Vellum Support Slip 1, Stub, Right.

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Vellum Support Slip 1, Stub, Right-Hand Side.

Stub 2 (Strip 2)

Left-Hand Side

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Vellum Support Slip 2, Stub, Left.

Right-Hand Side

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Vellum Support Slip 2, Stub, Right.

The Pieces ‘Rejoined’

We virtually reconstruct the visible portions of the Strips, which had to be photographed in sections. The fit in the reconstructed view is approximate, rather than exact, because, in photographing the elements within the still-sewn structure, the angles and distances would have varied between 1 half of an individual Strip and the other.

Strip 1 (Stub 1 + Flap 1)

Stub 1

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Vellum Supports Slip 1, Inner Stub, Text ‘Rejoined’.

Flap 1

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Vellum Support Slip 1, Outer Flap, Text ‘Rejoined’.

Strip 2 (Stub 2 + Flap 2)

Stub 2

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Vellum Support Slip 2, Inner Stub, Text ‘Rejoined’.

Flap 2

Smeltzer Collection, Henri de Suberville (1598), Vellum Support Slip 2, Outer Flap, Text ‘Rejoined’.

*****

The Script and Contents

Parts of the text are visible. Some are legible.

The Stubs carry parts of 1 or 2 long lines of cursive script. Flap 2 carries parts of 2 lines of script, comprising a line of text and a staggered line of names, plus flourishes. Remnants of at least 6 lines of script can be seen on the Flap of Strip 1. Near the beginning of its line ‘2’, there stand the words toutes ses . . . (“all his/her/its/their”). Following the ‘join’ of the parts of the Flap in line ‘3’, there are the word loys qui . . . (“all his/her/its/their”). The word Royal, with a distinctive capital R, appears clearly on Stub 1a. Similar Rs occur elsewhere as well. Made with a pen having a broader, scratchy nib and paler ink than the text above, the prominent signature(s), accompanied by flourishes (#), spread(s) across most of the Flap on Strip 2 ( . –reston # Lebr . . . #).

The 2 Strips manifestly derive from the same written text, which stood on the Face or recto of the vellum sheet (rather than sheets, presumably). Given the location of the signature(s) and the orientation of the lines of script, it is appropriate to reconstruct the original — at least in its visible surviving parts — with Strip 1 before, or indeed above, Strip 2. The text on each Stub precedes the text on its Flap, with an interval of script now hidden within the inside of the fold, amounting to 1 or more lines. Perhaps the script on the 2 Strips interlocks at the cutting line between them?

Written in ink in a “loose and sloppy hand” characteristic of the period (as described by our Associate, David Sorenson), the now-bipartite fragment comes from a French charter from about 1510–1520 or so. It was evidently a legal document of some sort, possibly a deed, lease, or other contract. Perhaps its signer(s) might be identified in other sources.

Our blog has already presented some French documentary materials on vellum with 16th-century script from other private collections.

Say Cheese. Single-sheet document in Latin, circa 1530s, listing rents for plots of land, from Brie.

Single-sheet document in Latin on vellum, circa 1530s, listing rents for plots of land, from Brie in France. Private collection, reproduced by permission.

Private collection, Single-sheet document in Latin on vellum, circa 1530s, from Brie in France.

Scrap of Information. Single-sheet document in Latin, circa 1530s, with a transaction at Vienne, in Isère.

Private Collection, Latin document from Vienne, France, circa 1530s. Reproduced by permission

Private Collection, Document in Latin from Vienne, circa 1530s.

Its Signatures:

Detail of document of 1530 for a transaction relating to Vienne in France, showing the lower left-hand side of the document, with its citation of the date in Latin and with attesting signatures. Reproduced by permission.

Private Collection, Document in Latin from Vienne, France, circe 1530s

Scrap of Information. Fragment of a leaf or document on vellum with the number/date 1538.
Recto of Scrap from a leaf or document, with the date 1538.

Image-enhancement reveals more of its features:

Recto of Scrap from a leaf or document, with the date 1538.

*****

We thank Ronald Smeltzer for permission to examine this volume and for information about its structure and context. We also thank David Sorenson for advice about the script and type of document from which came the reused vellum strips.

Do you recognize this reused document or its scribe? Can you read more of the text?

Do you know of other parts of the same document (or similar documents), say in the binding structures of other books — including this text by Henri de Suberville (1598) — printed by the same printer/producer, whether Adrien Périer or Jamet Mettayer, for example when the latter returned to set up shop in Paris?

Please let us know. You might reach us via Contact Us or our Facebook Page. Comments here are welcome too.

Watch for more discoveries. See the Contents List for this blog.

*****

Tags: Adrien Périer, Binding Fragments, Binding History, Documents of the Ancien Regime., Henry de Suberville, History of Documents, Jamet Mettayer, Reused Documents
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Some Leaves in Set 1 of Ege’s FOL Portfolio

June 19, 2020 in Manuscript Studies

Leaves from
‘Otto Ege Manuscripts 8, 14, 19, and 41’
In a Newly Discovered Portfolio
of Fifty Original Leaves (“FOL”)

[Published on 18 June 2020]

Continuing our series of blogposts (see our Contents List) on some manuscripts dismembered and dispersed by Otto F. Ege (1888–1951) in various Portfolios or by other means, we report on selected leaves which emerge into view in a newly discovered set of the Portfolio of Fifty Original Leaves (“FOL”).

Set 1 of Ege’s FOL Portfolio, Leaf 14 recto: Initial for Lamentations.

Among the numbered sets, the ‘new’ one has the Number 1. This “previously-unknown” set of Ege’s “Fifty Original Leaves” in private hands is reported by our Associate Lisa Fagin Davis in her blog: Manuscript Road Trip: Otto Ege, St. Margaret. and Digital Fragmentology, Part 2 (June 7, 2020), following her Part 1 describing her own and other scholars’ work — ours included — on the FOL manuscripts: Manuscript Road Trip: Fragmentology in the Wild (July 14, 2019).

We thank the owner and Lisa for allowing us to see images of the relevant leaves in the new set, resulting in updates for the manuscripts which we have already considered within Ege’s FOL Portfolio. A complete set of the Portfolio contains ‘Ege MSS 1–50’, as numbered both by Ege and by Scott Gwara in his book on Otto Ege’s Manuscripts (2013).

Here, augmenting our work already on survivors from some of those Fifty manuscripts in other settings (sets of the FOL Portfolio and elsewhere), we focus on Ege MSS 8, 14, 19, and 41. This post contributes to our on-going study of Ege’s manuscripts and other materials, medieval and other, Western and more. So far: Ege MSS 8, 14, 41, 51, 56, 61, and 214 (see our Contents List). Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: De tribus diebus by Hugh of Saint-Victor, Dialogues of Gregory the Great, Dispersed Manuscript Leaves, Ege's FOL Portfolios, Epistles of John Chrysostom, Fragmentology, History of Manuscripts, Hugh of Saint-Victor, Latin Vulgate Bible, Medieval Manuscript Fragments, Meditations of Saint Anselm, Otto Ege, Otto Ege MS 14, Otto Ege MS 19, Otto Ege MS 41, Otto Ege MS 8, Otto Ege Portfolios, Wilton Processional
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A Charter of 1399 from High Ongar in Essex

May 11, 2020 in Manuscript Studies, Uncategorized

A Charter of
23 Richard II (=1399)
Issued on 17 July 1399
at Alta Aungre (High Ongar)

London, British Library, Royal MS 14 E IV, folio 10 recto. “Recueil des croniques” by Jean de Wavrin. Coronation of Richard II at the age of 10 in 1377.

[Posted on 12 May 2020, with updates]

Mildred Budny continues the series of posts on medieval and early modern charters from England in a private collection. See our Contents List.

First we examined the numbered group of documents mainly from Preston in Sussex. Then we turned to documents from other places.

From the Time of Richard II

Once again, we examine a charter from the time of King Richard II (6 January 1367 – c. 14 February 1400), who reigned from 1377 until he was deposed in 1399.

6 Richard II

Previously we considered a charter from this king’s Regnal Year 6, issued at an unnamed location on the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, that is, on 19 September 1382. That one is Charter 1 in the numbered series in that private collection which opens the section devoted to English charters. Charter 1 made its appearance in casting More Light on English Charters.

6 Richard II (= 22 June 1382 – 21 June 1383)
“On the Feast of Saint Michael Archangel” = 19 September
I. e. 19 September 1382

Private Collection, “Charter 1”: 6 Richard II Face.

The document retains its original seal, more-or-less intact, with its Legend in Lombard Capitals and its Device in the form of a (partly rubbed) heraldic shield. The Legend begins with a customary star (*) and the word SIGILLUM (“Seal”).

Charter 1: 6 Richard II Charter Seal.

The Document in Question: 23 Richard II from High Ongar

The later specimen from the reign of Richard II which we showcase here is not only later in date of origin, but also a later addition to the private collection; we had the chance to see it soon after its acquisition.

Like “Charter 1”, this document specifies both the Regnal year and a certain day within the year, upon a specific saint’s feast day. Unlike Charter 1, it names its place of issue.

Single Sheet with Tag and Seal

Like all those others in the series (from Full Court Preston onward), this document in Latin on vellum stands on a single sheet. It places the hair-side of the animal skin to the outside, folds its lower edge inward to form a flap, and holds between slits a pendant vellum tag upon which to attach the wax seal.

On the face of the sheet, the text forms a single column of 11 long lines, professionally written in Anglicana Formata script. (See another in similar script, by a different scribe: Preston Charters Continued.) The dorse, originally blank, carries a few docketing inscriptions. The uncolored seal survives in part.

Private Collection, Document of 23 Richard II, Face.

The Dorse

The dorse is creased and stained. The fold-lines and their directions demonstrate that the sheet was folded in half horizontally, then into thirds to form a packet, from which the tag extended.

Originally blank, the dorse acquired 3 docketing inscriptions. They stand in a “vertical row”, with their tops turned to the right-hand side of the sheet in one of its folded sections. It would appear that they gathered upon that section as it lay or stood ‘upright’, and with the seal and its tag extending to the right.

23 Richard II Dorse with Tag and Seal.

The Docketing

The 3 lines of docketing entries on the dorse include a mostly erased line in brown ink, a statement of the Regnal Year (“23 R 2”) in dark brown ink with arabic numerals, and the date in pencil in arabic numerals (“1399”).

23 Richard II Dorse

Back-lighting reveals a few more traces of the erased inscription and the differences of in width and smoothness between the strokes in the first and second ‘halves’ of the arabic numeral.

23 Richard II Docketing under Back-Lighting.

The Face

The text is laid out in a single column of 11 long lines written by a single scribe in a professional version of Angicana Formata documentary script (see Charter 6 in Preston Charters Continued). Mostly the ink is light brown in color, but in some places, where the freshly dipped pen left darker strokes, it looks almost black.

Such is noticeably the case in line 2, where one personal name stands out jarringly in darker color than the flow of the script to either side. Perhaps this effect resulted from a space left in the course of the transcription, to be filled upon a return (line 2) once the scribe had ascertained the name of this tenant (Nich’o) among the group of 4.

To the left of the first line and its enlarged initial, there stands a flourished mark, likewise in ink, forming an n-shaped feature rising to a clockwise loop. The text concludes with a separate flourish, which forms an undulating hook-like motif suspended after the conclusion of the text.

23 Richard II Face with Tag and Seal.

The Tag and Seal

Part of the uncolored wax seal survives upon the partly crumpled vellum tag.

Private Collection, Document of 23 Richard II, Tag and Seal.

The wax by now is friable, as a close view shows. To judge by the remnant of the seal, its matrix was round. The imprint of its face retains about half of the rimmed border containing an illegible legend or inscription. At the center the device has an oblong central element of some kind.

23 Richard II Seal Now.

The Script

The document presents its record entirely in ink, the work of a single scribe. It begins with an enlarged initial S which rises both above the line and into the left-hand margin, opening the process with minimum fanfare. Along with such customary features of Anglicana Formata script as a double-compartment a, this scribe consistently used a rounded, closed, theta-like e formed in a single looped stroke, with the tongue descending to the right within the closed bow.

23 Richard II Face: Left-Hand Side.

Of all the enlarged initial letters, the repeated N of the name Nich’o (lines 2 and 6) is both broad and distinctive, with a descending first stem, a slanted top leading to the second stem, and a backward-descending diagonal cross-stroke.

23 Richard II Face

The Text

The text of the document exhibits similar wording and formulae to some charters in our earlier posts. (For example, Preston Charters Continued.) Into such a formula, the scribe would enter the relevant particulars:

Sciant presentes et futuri quod ego . . . dedi concessi et hac praesenti carta mea confirmavi . . . presenta carta sigillum meum apposui hiis testibus . . . Anno regni . . . etc.

Thus, with those ‘supplied’ particulars highlighted here in BOLD, with abbreviations expanded between square brackets ([so]), with superscript letters indicated between inverted commas [‘so’], and with the text transcribed line by line, the document declares:

[Line 1]

Sciant pr[e]sentes et ffuturi q[uo]d Ego Thomas Herde alias Tobere dedi concessi et hac p[rae]senti carta mea co[n]firmaui

Joh[a[n]i Passelewe de Aungre ad Castrum Will[el]mo atte Bregga de Stanford Ryi’r’us Nich[el]o Atte Style de Dodyng[-]

herst R[i]c[ardo Barne de Kelwedon[e] om[n]ia illa t[err]as et ten[ementa] que h[ab]ui ex dono et foeffamento Joh[an]is Marden[is]

Et Joh[a]ne ux[o]’r’is eius cu[m] accederint post decessu[m] p[rae]dictor[um] Joh[an]is et Joh[an]e in hameletto de marden[e] de alta

[Line 5]

Aungre h[ab]end[um] et tenend[um] o[mn]ia pr[ae]dict[as] t[err]as et ten[emena] cu[m] accederint p[raed]ict[i]s Joh[an]i Passelewe Will[e]mo atte

Bregge Mich[el]o atte Style R[i]c[ard]o Barne heredib[is] et assign[antis] eor[um] de capital[ibus] d[o]m[ini]s feod[i] illius p[er] S[e]’r’uicia

inde debit[ur] et de iure consuet[a] Et ego p[rae]dict[us] Thomas et hered[es] mei o[mn]ia p[rae]d[i]cta t[e]r[ra] et ten[ementa] cu[m] accederint

p[rae]dict[is] Joh[an]i Will[el]mo Nich[el]o R[i]c[ar]o heredi[bus] et assign[antis] eoru[m] contra omnes gentes Warrantizabim[us] in p[er]petu[m] In cuius

rei test[i]m[onium] huic p[rae]senti carte sigillu[m] meu[m] apposui hiis testib[us] Steph[an]o P[ar]ker Herico Symms Roberto

[Line 10]

Taylor Rob[er]to Muskh’a’m Joh[an]e Smyth et alis Datur apud alt[am] Aungre die Iovis p[ro]x[ime] post festu[m] t[ra]nslatio[ni]s

S[an]c]t]i Swithini Anno Regno regis R]i]c[ard]i Secundi post conquestu]m] vicesimo tercio.

In Sum

Supplied particulars:

Where & When

23 Richard II (= 22 June 1399 – 29 September 1399)
“On the First Thursday after the Feast of the Translation of Saint Swithin” (= 15 July in England)
I. e. 17 July 1399
at Alta Aungre (High Ongar, Essex)

From

Thomas Herda alias Tobere

What

Omnia terras et tenementa (“All lands and holdings”)
received of the late John Marden and his wife Johanna
in the Hamlet of Marden of Alta Angre

To a Group of 4 Tenants

John Passelewe of Aungre ad Castrum (Chipping Ongar, Essex)
William Atte Bregge of Stanford Ryirus (Stanford Rivers , Essex)
Nicholaus Atte Style of Dodyngherst (presumably Doddinghurst, Essex)
Richard Barne of Kelwedon (Kelvedon Hatch, Essex)

Witnesses

John Parker
Henricus Symms
Robert Taylor
Robert Muskham
John Smyth
Et Aliis

How do we know? Read on, Dear Reader, Read On.

The Day and the Date of Issue

Among Richard II’s Regnal Years, Year 23 was his last, brief, Regnal Year, spanning 22 June 1399 – 29 September 1399. The dating clause at the end of the charter spells it out, as pertaining to Anno regnis regis Ricardi Secundi post Conquestum vicesimo tercio (“in the 23rd year of the reign of King Richard II after the Conquest”).

This clause also specifies the place and the day: Datum . . . die Jovis proxime post festum translationis sancti Swithini (“Issued . . . on the day of the first Thursday after the feast of the Translation of Saint Swithin”). The feast-day of one of the principal English saints, Saint Swithin (circa 800 – 2 July 863), Bishop of Winchester from 852 to 863, is celebrated on 2 July or 15 July, marking the date of his death or the date of the translation of his relics.

The choice of the latter in the document commemorates the translation on 15 July 971 of Swithin’s body to the newly restored basilica at Winchester, newly dedicated to him as its patron saint (in place formerly of the Apostles, Saints Peter and Paul). The Benedictional made for the Anglo-Saxon reformer, Saint Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester from 963 to 984, for whom the translation was effected, takes care to include an image of this patron among its magnificently illuminated pages. There, the full-page image faces the opening of the text for the celebration of Swithin’s Deposition (2 July).

London, The British Library, Add MS 49598, folio 97v. Saint Swithin. Image Public Domain.

The document of 23 Richard II specifies the Feast of Swithin’s Translation. In 1399, Saint Swithin’s Day on 15 July fell on a Tuesday. The first Thursday after that would have been 17 July. By such calculations can we find the day upon which the document was issued, and not only the year.

23 Richard II Face

Names and Places

The place-name Aungre appears thrice in the document. First it qualifies the name of the first tenant: Johannis Passelewe de Aungre ad Castrum (line 2). Next it refers to a finding point in the boundary clause: in hameletto de marden’ de alta Aungre (lines 4–5). Then it specifies the location at which the document itself was issued: apud alt’ Aungre (line 10).

23 Richard II Face

The name Aungre stands for Ongar (meaning “Grassland” in Old English) in Essex. Aungre is an oft-recorded spelling for that place.

Its appelation ad castrum (“at or by the castle”) relates to Chipping Ongar, which still has a a castle — albeit now in ruins.

Church of Saint Mary, High Ongar, Essex, with 12th-Century Nave. Photograph by John Salmon (8 May 2004), Image via Wikipedia.

The appelation alta (“tall” or “high”) designates High Ongar (see also High Ongar) — at the time probably only a hamlet. High Ongar lies about 1 mile (1 1/2 km) to the south and east from Chipping Ongar.

The “hamlet of Marden of High Ongar” (in hameletto de Marden’ de alta Aungre) appears to have a modern incarnation in Marden Ash, which formerly formed part of the parish of High Ongar. Here “the name Marden goes back at least to the 11th century and means ‘boundary valley’: it suggests that this was the boundary between Chipping Ongar and High Ongar even at that time”.
— — P. H. Reamey, The Place-Names of Essex. English Place-Name Society, Vol. 12 (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1935), page 73; also British History Online: High Ongar.

In this context, it may accord with long-standing practice that the document locates boundaries with reference to Marden as one of them.

Stanford Rivers is also near by, only about 2 miles (3 km) south of Chipping Ongar. The common place-name Stanford derives from “a stone, or stony, ford” in Old English. A Stanford survives in Norfolk as a deserted village. As with some other Stanfords, the place called Stanford in the document both received and retained an appelation. Stanford Rivers is listed in the Doomsday Book as Stanfort, but in 1289 as Stanford Ryueres, adopting the name of the 13th-century manorial family Ryueres. See, for example, Anthony David Mills, A Dictionary of British Place Names (Oxford: Oxford University Press, revised edition, 2011: ISBN 019960908X ), p. 432. The document spells the name as Ryi’r’us (line 2), with a superscript r between the 3 minims (i and u); a similar superscript r stands above ux’r’is in line 4.

Dodyngherst is presumably Doddinghurst, in Essex, to the southeast of High Ongar and close to Stanford Rivers. Across time, its recorded spellings varied, for example with Duddingeherst in 1218. Pertaining to an early layer of Old English place-naming patterns in the early medieval migrations to England, the Old English name means “the wooded hill of Dudda‘s people”. (For example, the Dictionary of British Place Names, page 146.)

Richard Barne of Kelwedon came also from Essex. Villages in Essex among medieval settlements still extant with such a name are Kelvedon (Kelvedon) in northeast Essex and Kelvedon Hatch (Kelvedon Hatch). The latter stands within the Hundred of Ongar and considerably closer than the former to the other places cited in the document, pertaining to Aungre in its several manifestations, both on higher ground and near a castle, and now known as High Ongar and Chipping Ongar. Kelvedon Hatch lies 3 miles south of Chipping Ongar.

The Hundred of Ongar comprised 26 parishes, including Kelved Hatch, Stanford Rivers, Cheping Ongar, and High Ongar. Some Ongar parishes are picturesquely described and illustrated in “The Hundred of Ongar” by the English antiquary Elizabeth Ogborne (1763/4 – 1853) in The History of Essex from the Earliest Period to the Present Time (London: R. H. Kelham,1 814), pages 235–280, with the full list of parishes on page 236. The subtitle of this work advertised it as being Illustrated with accurate Engravings of Churches, Monuments, Ancient Buildings, Seals, Portraits, Autographs, &c., With Biographical Notices of the most distinguished and remarkable Natives. Alas, the work was unfinished, with only Volume I, in which the illustrated descriptions of the individual parishes of this Hundred cease before they reach any of those names within whose reach the place-names of the document come to rest.

Spellings very similar to those in the document are recorded in the Essex Poll Tax for 1377, which dates only some 20 years earlier. The modern edition of that record notes the modern equivalents.

Stanford Rever = Stanford Rivers
Alta Aungr = High Ongar
Kelwedon = Kelvedon Hatch
Aungr ad Castrum = Chipping Ongar

— — The Poll Taxes of 1377, 1379, and 1381, Part I: Bedfordshire–Leicestershire, edited by Carolyn C. Fenwick. Record of Social and Economic History, New Series, 37 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998–2005), “Essex 1377: Ongar and Rochford Hundreds”, at E179.

Such close, and even precise, correspondences for the individual place-names — as their records adapted across time — and for the cluster of names recorded within the transaction appear to establish their identities in the document beyond doubt as pertaining to the Hundred of Ongar in Essex.

23 Richard II Face: Text.

Location, Location, Locations

These places, with a few variants in spelling, appear on Old Maps of Essex, available among the Old Maps Online and other digital resources:

Map of Essex among the 35 colored maps published by Christopher Saxon in the Atlas of England and Wales (1579).
Interactive version of the Map of the County of Essex from the atlas of 25 engraved sheets by John Chapman & Peter André (1777).
Map of Essex actually surveyed with the several Roads from London, etc. (London [1678]).

The latter, via Public Domain, comes from the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library:

Boston Public Library, Map of “Essex actually surveyed with the several Roads from London, etc.” (London [1678]), Image via Public Domain.

With a detail of Ongar Hundred:

Boston Public Library, Map of “Essex actually surveyed with the several Roads from London, etc.” (London [1678]), Detail of Ongar Hundred. Image via Public Domain.

The Transaction as Record

From its details, the document yields information about a set of individuals and their interrelationships regarding landscapes, both which they have been associated — Aungre ad castrum, Alta Aungra, Stanford Ryirus, Dodyngherst, and Kolwedon — and over which they formally transfer custodianship on Saint Swithin’s Day, 1399. In the case of the land at the center of the transaction, we learn also about its previous transfer (at an unspecified date) from a named couple after their death.

Private Collection, Document of 23 Richard II, Tag and Seal.

*****

Do you recognize other examples of this scribe’s work? Do you know more about the history of these features, places, and persons?

Please contact us via Contact Us or our Facebook Page. Comments here are welcome too.

*****

More to Come. See the Contents List for this blog.

*****

P. S. On a Personal Note (17 May 2020). Although I don’t remember if I visited any of the places mentioned in the document, I vividly recall visiting Greensted close by. The purpose of the visit was Greensted Church, located about one mile west of Chipping Ongar town center. My interest resided in seeing the wooden structure of the building, because of its age and its Anglo-Saxon construction.

This was while I lived in London and engaged in long-term postgraduate study of Anglo-Saxon and related manuscripts and their broader context — leading from the M. A. in English Language and Literature before 1525 (University of London, 1972) to the Ph. D. in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts (London, 1985). An important component of the research was travel to examine material evidence first hand.

It was natural that part of the observation attended to building structures, given their settings for the production, viewing, and use of the manuscripts and other media, and given my studies in seminars with archaeologists and building historians, among others. Apart from archaeological excavations and ruins, many of the viewing opportunities allowed for more imposing architectural structures, but I wished also to see the “only remaining example of the many timber churches” of the Anglo-Saxon period before the Norman Conquest, as Greensted Church is described in a standard reference work on the subject.
— — H. M. and Joan Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3 volumes, 1965 and 1978), Volume 1, pages 262–264, at page 263.

North Side of Wooden Church at Greensted-juxta-Ongar, Essex. Photograph by Simon Garbutt via Wikimedia Commons.

The Church of Saint Andrew at Greensted is regarded as “the oldest wooden building in Europe still standing, albeit only in part, since few sections of its original wooden structure remain”. The nave, made of large split oak tree trunks, is mostly original. The official name of the place is Greensted-juxta-Ongar (“Greensted adjoining Ongar”), to distinguish it from another Greenstead, also in Essex, but some 30 miles distant, in Colchester.

My visit took place on a sunny day, in a day trip by car from London. I forget which year, but having a car places the date in the later 1970s. I remember well the warm sunshine outside the building and the dark wooden interior, so it would probably have been in the spring or summer. There are photographs from the visit, so others’ available photographs might serve.

From the distance of this blogpost, I survey the distance travelled across time and space by the document from its origins in Essex to my view of it as it first entered its current collection in the United States several years ago, and by my understanding of the subjects from immersion in study for the M. A. onward. The “papers” selected for that M. A. in London were dedicated to Language, Palaeography, Archaeology, and English Place-Names.

In all the travels and studies over the years devoted to such subjects (see, for example, Her Page and (Selected Publications), I might not have guessed that they would have come to include a close look at place-names centered upon one of the central areas of Ongar Hundred.

*****

Tags: Alta Aungre, Anglicana Formata, Aungre ad Castrum, Chipping Ongar, Dodyngherst, High Ongar, History of Documents, History of English Place Names, Hundred of Ongar, Kelvedon Hatch, King Richard II, Kolwedon, Medieval English Documents, Medieval Seals, Place Names of Essex, Preston Charters, Saint Swithin, Stanford Rivers, William Herde alias Tobere
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Simurgh and Zal from a Persian “Shahnameh”

May 7, 2020 in Uncategorized

Simurgh and Zaal
from a Persian Shahnameh

[Posted on 7 May 2020]

Continuing to examine manuscripts or manuscript fragments and related materials in our blog, we turn to an illustrated paper leaf, now in a private collection, from a Persian Shahnameh or ŠĀH-NĀMA (“Book of Kings”).

The Contents List for our blog shows the range of our explorations. Our Galleries of Scripts on Parade include specimens of script in Persian as well as other languages, Western and non-Western.

The Paper Leaf

The leaf was purchased in the Portabello Road in London circa 1985. The paper is typical of Persian paper from at least the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries CE. One side has text, and the other has both text and inset illustration. The ensemble probably dates from the 19th century, with acquired damage of various kinds, including unevenly trimmed edges.

Private Collection, Leaf from a Persian Shanameh. Simurgh and Zal.

The Shahnameh

This long epic poem, which the Persian poet Abul-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi or Ferdowsi (circa 329 – 411 AH / 940 – 1010 CE) began to compose circa 977 and completed on 8 March 1010 CE, forms a major work of world literature. It recounts in more than 50,000 couplets the history of the kings and heroes of Persia from mythical times to the overthrow of the Sassanids by the Arabs in the middle of the 7th century.

Several episodes describe encounters between the benevolent mythical, phoenix-like creature Simurgh and Zāl or Zaal, the legendary prince who, born with white hair, grew into a heroic warrior king. This illustration shows the gigantic creature with the man in adulthood.

This creature had rescued him as an infant when his parents, in fear of his albino appearance, had abandoned him on the mountain Alborz, where Simurgh dwelled. She raised him as her own and taught him wisdom. After Zāl’s return to his kingdom and the world of mankind, he summoned Simurgh’s expertise for aid when his wife Rudaba was undergoing prolonged labor in childbirth — leading to the birth of the great hero Rostam. That aid took the form of instructing Zāl how to perform a caesarean section.

Illustrations in Manuscripts

The long tradition of illustrations for the Shahnameh or Šāh-nāma is richly varied, in books and other visual arts, and in Persian and other spheres. We learn that the documented history of its illustration in manuscripts begins circa 1300 “in the Il-khanid period (1256–1353), coinciding with the start of the canonical history of Persian painting”. There developed varied approaches to the choices of episodes illustrated, the positioning of the illustrations upon the leaves and at regular or irregular intervals through the course of the volumes, the manner of depicting a given episode, and artistic license. In sum, “there was no prescribed manner for depicting the same episode”, and “there was no fixed set of Šāh-nāma illustrations”. From these rich origins developed the unfolding traditions of manuscript illustration for this text in later dynasties and regions, Persian and other.

Among the very most magnificent representatives of the tradition is the now-dismembered and dispersed Shahnamen of Shah Tahmasp, made at Tabriz by many artists circa 1525–1530 CE and completed for Shah Tahmasp (1514–1576). That manuscript, preserved in multiple collections, probably originally comprised two volumes with some 280 large folios and 190 illustrations. Some collections exhibit online a range of its illustrations, as with the 10 folios in the Houghton Shahnameh and some of the 78 illustrated pages at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

That the manuscript tradition could continue to flourish into the 19th century (and beyond) is demonstrated by the copy at the Morgan Library & Museum, as MS H. 9, made probably in Shīrāz, Iran, between 1852 and 1856.

Perhaps needless to say, at various times in the widespread transmission of the text of the Shahnameh and its illustrated versions, non-royal patronage and commercial production also flourished, up to and beyond the history of printing. Given the history of collecting, it seems inevitable that specimens of any standard of quality or otherwise might find their way to fragmented and widely dispersed states of existence or survival. As such, the leaf presented here stands in a very large but vastly separated crowd.

Simurgh and Zāl

The fabulous story of Simurgh and Zāl offers ample scope for vivid depictions. Many expert examples reside in major collections, as with this case at the Metropolitan Museum in New York of circa 1300–1330 CE, aattributed to Northwestern Iran or Baghdad (MMA Rogers Fund 1969, 69.74.1).

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Folio from a Shahnama, circa 1300–30 CE. “Zal is Restored to his Father Sam by the Simurgh”. Image Public Domain.

Or this elaborate version from the famous Tahmasp (or Ṭahmāsp) Shahnamah (see above) at the Freer Gallery in Washington D. C., in which a passing caravan sights Zal with Simurgh as she brings food for him and her nesting chicks.

Washington, D. C., Freer Gallery of Art, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, LTS1995.2.46: Tahmasp Shahnamah, folio 62v. Iran, Tabriz, circa 1525 CE. “Zal is Sighted by a Caravan as Simurgh Feeds Her Chicks”. Image Public Domain.

The Illustration on Its Page

On the page of “our” leaf, the illustration stands within the text. The fully painted illustration contrasts with the open background of the script, written in black ink with rubrication in red pigment and set out in 4 columns, with 2 to a couplet and 12 lines of text altogether. The heading in red occupies the space of 2 couplets at the center of line 7. Above the illustration stand 10 lines of text, in which the last line spreads to either side of the stepped riser of the illustrated frame, yielding only the 2 outer columns. Below it stand 2 more lines, of which the first similarly spreads around the stepped descender of the frame.

Both the lines of text and the illustration are partly enclosed by an open-topped framework of ink outlines, which form single (or retraced) vertical bounding lines at both sides and a horizontal line at the bottom. Inset within that frame, the painted illustration stands within its own outlined stepped frame which has block-like risers at top and bottom.

Private Collection, Leaf from a Persian Shanameh. Simurgh and Zal.

Zāl’s name figures in the rubric, and his identifying white hair appears to emerge, like an ear-flap, below his helmet. Simurgh assumes a recognizable but perhaps non-standard form, with huge size, spread wings, long tail dividing into streamer-like tips, and red rooster-like crest.

In the illustration, the pair of figures, man and avian, appear against a painted landscape. Descending from the sky, the creature swoops down from the right to nip or clamp the waistband or sash of the fleeing warrior king, whose outstretched right hand reaches beyond the frame partway into its interspace. With helmet and mustache, the man wears boots, trousers, and a knee-length tunic which partly exposes his white undergarment.

Private Collection, Leaf from a Persian Shanameh. Simurgh and Zal.

Mostly, the recounted relationship between the creature and her adopted Zāl appears benign, but here she grabs him — with both of them poised in mid-flight.

Private Collection, Leaf from a Persian Shanameh. Simurgh and Zal.

*****

Detached from its former manuscript, for now this illustrated leaf must stand for the original whole. Do you know of other leaves from this book and by the same scribe and artist?

Please leave your comments here or Contact Us. Watch this space and the Contents List for more discoveries in our blog.

*****

Tags: Freer Gallery, Houghton Library, Illustrated Manuscripts, manuscript fragments, Morgan Library & Museum, Shahnameh, Simurgh, Simurgh and Zal, Tahmasp Shahnameh, Zal
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Simurgh and Zaal
from a Persian Shahnameh