Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible
in the Collection of Richard Weber

Double columns of 46 lines in Gothic Script
with Decorated Initials, Bar-Extensions,
and Running Titles
Acts 26:14 (est tibi) – Acts 28:9 (insula habe[/-bant] )

Northern France, circa 1330

Collection of Richard Weber, Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible, Recto: Top Right. Photograph by Richard Weber.

[Posted on 21 February 2025]

In connection with our new series of RGME Workshops on “The Evidence of Manuscripts, Etc.”, our Associate, Richard Weber, revealed another leaf in his collection. This discovery joins the posts about different items in his collection which have been reported in our blog on Manuscript Studies.

Our workshops began by examining a leaf on loan to the RGME with part of the text of the Book of Numbers in a Latin Vulgate Bible in double columns of 46 lines in Gothic script, with decorative elements. See the reports of our discoveries about that leaf:

• A Latin Vulgate Leaf from the Book of Numbers (Part 1)
• Latin Vulgate Bible Leaf in the Collection of Jennah Farrell, Part 2: Provenance
• The Latin Vulgate Bible Leaf in the Farrell Collection Part 3: The Full Leaf

Collection of Jennah Farrell, Single Leaf from the Book of Numbers in a Medieval Latin Vulgate Bible manuscript: Recto, top. Photography by Mildred Budny.

The collaborative work in our workshops, crowdsourcing the quest to identify the leaf, has revealed that it most probably came from the dismembered Saint Albans Bible, produced in Northern France in the 1320s or 1330s and formerly owned by Saint Albans’ Abbey. Our search among online resources, such as blogposts and vendors’ sites, and in printed works, ranging from books and journal articles to catalogues of sales or individual collections, followed up clues leading from one collection or sales room to another.

Collection of Jennah Farrell, Single Leaf from the Book of Numbers in a Medieval Latin Vulgate Bible manuscript: Recto. Photography by Mildred Budny.

The process of discovery persuaded us, from the resemblances between the leaf in hand and features of some surviving leaves from the Saint Albans Bible, that this leaf very likely came from the same manuscript — if not from another much like it by some of the same scribes and artists. We believe that proof positive (or the like) for this conjectured identification might come were one or both of the leaves which formerly directly preceded and directly followed the leaf to emerge into the light so as to demonstrate an exact match in the flow of text from one to the next.

And so we continue our search among the survivors, as we track the leaves from both the Old and New Testaments in the Saint Albans Bible, especially from the Book of Numbers. In view might be, were time and resources available, the creation of a virtual reconstruction of the manuscript, as has been accomplished or begun for various other manuscripts which now survive in fragments scattered across many locations.

Learning from our workshops that the Farrell Leaf is identifiable most probably as part of the dismembered Saint Albans Bible, our Associate, Richard Weber, reported the presence of another leaf from the same manuscript in his collection. With his permission, for which we give thanks, we introduce it to you and our Workshop Series, starting with RGME Workshop 4: “Manuscript Fragments Compared”.

The Weber Leaf
from the Saint Albans Bible

Acquired on May 23, 2023, from The Raab Collection (Nathan “Nate” Raab and Karen Pearlman Raab), this leaf preserves part of the Acts of the Apostles in the Saint Albans Bible, which was dismembered for resale in 1964. The leaf comes from the last part of the Book of Acts. It breaks off mid-word in its final chapter, about one-third of the way through it.

The Apostle Paul, His Travels, and His Travails

The text on the leaf presents the text from within Chapter 26 to within Chapter 28 of Acts in the Latin Vulgate Version. It opens within verse 14 ([persequeris durum /] est tibi contra) of Chapter 26, completes the chapter, turns to the full span of Chapter 27, and opens the last chapter of the Book up to its verse 9, whereupon it breaks off mid-word (insula habe[/-bant infirmitates]). That is, the span of text encompasses Acts 26:14–32 (the latter portion of the chapter); Acts 27:1–44 (the full chapter); and Acts 28:1–9 (the first third).

The leaf contains most of the extended first-hand account by the Apostle Paul (circa 5 – circa 64/65 AD) of his life’s adventures in his defense before King Herod Agrippa II of Judea (27/28 – 92 or 100 AD). From his own viewpoint, we hear about his transformation from soldier and Roman citizen to apostle in locations stretching from Tarsus in Asia Minor to Jerusalem, Antioch, Thessaloniki, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, Malta, and finally Rome.

The scope, range, and variety of his exploits or adventures are illustrated vividly in some medieval manuscript illustrations. Notable among them is the full-page, multi-tiered cycle of scenes rendered by an exceptional master artist in the large-format Carolingian version of the Latin Vulgate Bible prepared at Tours for presentation to the monarch Charles the Bald (823–877). On this imposing Bible, see, for example, Latin 1.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 1, fol. 386v. Image Public Domain via https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8455903b/f780.item#.

The Leaf, Its Contents, and Its Presentation

Sections of the text are demarcated by

1) enlarged, decorated initials rendered in polychrome or in ink,
2) ornamental vertical bars extending from the 2-line inset polychrome Chapter Initials to foliate terminals,
3) ornamental or figurative motifs embellishing the enlarged pen-initial in the top line of all but one column,
4) polychrome chapter numerals,
5) polychrome running titles in the upper margins, rendered partly in alternating pigments and partly in pen-line flourishes, and
6) a marginal ‘insertion’ of script to correct an omission in the text.

Let us have a closer look.

The Recto

The recto of the Weber Leaf

Collection of Richard Weber, Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible, Recto. Photograph by Richard Weber.

Lively decorated letters rendered in ink rise to considerable heights in the first lines of each column of text, one to each column. In column a, E for Ego opens Verse 15 of Chapter 26. In column b, T completes the opening word UT of Chapter 27:1.

The two-part running title at the top spaces its words at a distance from each other. It keeps the first part (Actus) more-or-less centered above the two columns and places the second, abbreviated word (Ap[osto]lor[um]) offset extending partway into the margin.

The distant, offset half of the running title appears like an afterthought, although apparently as the work of the same scribal artist and during the same campaign of operation (if not at the same sitting). Could it represent a correction to supplement the ‘mistake’ of putting the first component, Actus, on the recto of an opening, rather than on the verso?

On the verso of a two-page opening, with the verso of one leaf facing the recto of the next, customarily a bipartite running title for one set text on both pages might have the first half or portion of a single title on the verso and the continuation in the second half or portion on the recto. What if this leaf received the Actus as if it were a verso, so that its match or completion, Apostolorum, was deemed to need to be fitted in? We wonder what the verso originally facing this leaf had for its running title.

Collection of Richard Weber, Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible, Recto: Top Right. Photograph by Richard Weber.

The Verso

Collection of Richard Weber, Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible, Verso. Photograph by Richard Weber.

This side of the leaf retains the use of a tall ink-drawn letter in the top line, but only for one column. The initial U or V for Valida opening 27:18

The running title keeps to its short form of one word (or syllable) only. Presumably the second part of the title appeared facing it on the recto of the next leaf. We are uncertain what intentions were in place for this enigmatic running title comprising DE (“Of”, “About”), which seems to stand in a suspended state awaiting the completion of a name or phrase on the formerly facing recto. Here is another mystery awaiting resolution, if possible, with the discovery of the next leaf in the sequence in the original book.

Collection of Richard Weber, Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible, Recto: Top Center. Photograph by Richard Weber.

The first stem of the animated pen-initial U atop Column a (the left-hand column of the pair on the page) on the verso rises to a backwards and downwards curve containing the shaggy neck and head of a wide-eyed creature with opened jaws with exposed teeth and fangs. One might wonder if the apparent ferocity of the creature emulates or evokes the stormy text of the verse which this initial opens (27:18), as it reads: Valida autem nobis tempestate jactatis sequenti die jactum fecerunt (“And we exceedingly tossed with a tempest, the next day they lightened the ship.”) Might we think of this creature as presenting the Jaws of a Tempest?

Collection of Richard Weber, Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible, Verso: Top Left. Photograph by Richard Weber.

The Seller’s Description

Richard shares with us the description which accompanied the leaf in preparation for its sale by The Raab Collection in 2023. This description deserves to join the growing group of sellers’, collectors, scholars’, curators’, and others’ descriptions of individual leaves or groups of leaves which are present, for a time, in their hands and before their eyes.

As such they can constitute direct witnesses to surviving portions of the manuscript. Our work toward a collaborative virtual reconstruction of the original will also assemble the descriptions as a contribution toward fuller knowledge of the manuscript and its stages of ownership, study, and wider understanding.

We quote:

The Saint Alban’s Bible started life in Paris in the 1320s or 1330s. Likely, three artists worked together in an atelier, or workshop, to create the high quality product. The workshop to which Christopher de Hamel attributes the creation is that of the famed Parisian artist, Jean Pucelle, one of the most important and influential artists for the Gothic style. While the Saint Alban’s Bible is not in the hand of John Pucelle, it is in the hands of his associates, the Saint Louis Master, whose name has been identifed as Mahiet (Kuroiwa, “Working with Jean Pucelle”). On the margins of another manuscript illustrated by the Saint Louis Master, housed in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris, a marginal note from Pucelle to an illuminator, Mahiet, confirms the Saint Louis Master’s identity. Through the association of the Saint Albans Bible with Mahiet and Pucelle, a complex network of Parisian bookmakers opens up, and their works can be traced.

From its manufacture on the Rue de la Parcheminerie, the Bible was likely a gift from Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham to the Abbey of Saint Albans after his 1320-1330s visit to Paris (de Hamel, “Leaf of a Bible Manuscript”). Leaves have ended up in collections such as the Tokyo National Museum of Western Art, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the University of British Columbia, with others in private hands. The post-medieval lives of manuscripts, as they fragment and change hands, demonstrates their endurance as status symbols and works of art— as a whole and as a part.

The text gives part of Paul’s recount of his life story to King Agrippa who is almost persuaded to become a Christian. The imprisoned Paul’s ship runs aground and he is shipwrecked in Malta on his way to face trial in Rome. The barbarians of Malta show Paul and the shipwrecked crew kindness by building a fire, but a viper emerged from the ashes and bit Paul’s hand, though he did not die.

Provenance: 1. From an incomplete Bible sold at Sotheby’s, 6 July 1964, lot 239, to the dealer and book-breaker Philip C. Duschnes [1897–1970], who dispersed it. Other leaves had already been removed, with some ending up in the collections of E.H. Dring (1864-1928), one reappearing in Bernard Quaritch, cat. 1036, 1984, no. 76).

Then identified in 1981 as from the medieval library of St Albans Abbey, Hertfordshire, and perhaps to be identified as one of ‘duas bonas biblias’ acquired by Abbot Michael de Mentmore (C. de Hamel in Fine Books and Book Collecting, 1981, pp. 10–12).2.

More details:

Leaf from the St Albans Abbey Bible, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment [northern France (Paris), c. 1330] Single leaf, with double columns of 46 lines in a fine gothic bookhand (Acts 26:14–32; Acts 27:1–44; Acts 28:1–9), with hairline penwork ornamenting the V with a grotesque animal head biting the ascender, versal numbers (27, 28) in alternate liquid gold and blue capitals with contrasting penwork, running titles in same, two 2-line initials (one each side of leaf) each in faded pink with white ornamentation on gold background and enclosing foliage, one medieval correction in the margin indicated by a signe-de-renvoi, modern pencil numerations (3, 73), 295 by 200mm or 12 by 8 inches.

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Collection of Richard Weber, Leaf from the Saint Albans Bible, Recto: Top Right. Photograph by Richard Weber.