{"id":5370,"date":"2015-09-06T03:54:47","date_gmt":"2015-09-06T03:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/?p=5370"},"modified":"2021-04-23T15:03:16","modified_gmt":"2021-04-23T15:03:16","slug":"a-new-leaf-from-otto-ege-manuscript-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/a-new-leaf-from-otto-ege-manuscript-14\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part of the ‘Interpretation of Hebrew Names’
\nfrom a 50-line Lectern Bible
\nin the Vulgate Version<\/h2>\n

Budny,<\/strong> Handlist Number 9
\n<\/strong><\/span>A Leaf From ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 14’<\/h4>\n
Alcath<\/em> \u2013 Ananias <\/em>in the A-<\/em>Group
\nFrom the Interpretationes Hebraicorum Nominum<\/em><\/strong>
\nIn the partly alphabetized Version beginning Aaz<\/em> Apprehendens<\/em> (or a Variant thereof)
\n<\/em>At the end of a large-format Bible used for lectern reading
\n<\/em>
\nCirca 312 \u00d7 212 mm <written area circa 225 \u00d7 157 mm >
\nTriple Columns of 50 lines written in Gothic Formata <\/em>bookhand
\n<\/em><\/h5>\n
Produced probably in Flanders or Northern France, circa 1325<\/h5>\n

In our series on Manuscript Fragments<\/a>, Mildred Budny examines some leaves dispersed into various collections, both private and public, through the methods of Otto F. Ege. Earlier posts on those leaves considered Lost and Foundlings<\/a>, A New Leaf from \u2018Otto Ege Manuscript 41\u2019<\/a>, and A New Leaf from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 8’<\/a>.\u00a0 Later posts considered A New Leaf from \u2018Otto Ege Manuscript 61\u2019<\/a> and New Leaves from \u2018Otto Ege Manuscript 51\u2019<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Now we focus on a large-format leaf which, despite its relatively unembellished contents, formerly belonged to a large-format single-volume Bible amply endowed with decoration, illustrations, and glittering gold.<\/span><\/p>\n

[Posted on 6 September 2015, with updates.\u00a0 The updates reflect access to the sales catalogue of 29 November 1948, with thanks to Judith Weston of Sotheby’s and to Sotheby’s Inc. for permission to cite it here, and the resulting consultation of the resources both online and in the card indexes of the Index of Christian Art.\u00a0 Newer updates reflect access to the Maggs Bros, Catalogue 1059<\/em> (1985).<\/p>\n

More recently, the announcement that (after earlier sales from that collection), the residue of manuscript materials in the possession of Otto F. Ege’s family has been purchased by the Beinecke Library<\/a> at Yale University in November 2015 encourages the anticipation of more revelations about surviving leaves from the dispersed manuscripts, including this one.\u00a0 More recently still, the preparations for the Research Group Symposium on ‘Words & Deeds’<\/a> in March 2016, to include a session reporting on this new trove, have allowed us to glimpse more pages from the same noble Lectern Bible.\u00a0 With permission, the Posters and the Program Booklet for the Symposium can show some of them, both from the Lectern Bible and from other ‘Ege Manuscript’ materials.<\/em>]<\/p>\n

\"Leaf<\/a>

Recto<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Verso<\/a>

Verso<\/p><\/div>\n

We unveil another detached leaf, privately owned and previously unknown, from one of the very many manuscripts which Otto F. Ege<\/a> (1888\u20121951) dismembered for dispersal, mostly by sale. Some of its leaves were dispersed individually as specimens in the different sets of his early Portfolio edition of Fifty Original Leaves from Medieval Manuscripts, Western Europe, XII\u2012XVI Century<\/em><\/a>, issued circa 1950.<\/p>\n

In this Portfolio, each specimen from the one manuscript appeared as Leaf Number 14<\/a>, framed in a mat, provided with a uniform printed descriptive caption, and placed in the company of single leaves from other manuscripts similarly presented. Other parts of the same book circulated differently, as the so-called ‘Rogue Leaves’ or groups of leaves (‘Residuals’) discharged from Ege’s corral. The New Leaf is one such ‘Rogue’.<\/p>\n

Many of the ‘Rogues’ roamed as single leaves, like this one.\u00a0 Its provenance, reaching its present owner by purchase already in late summer of 1953 at the Cleveland Museum of Art gift shop, establishes that it was a single ‘Rogue Leaf’ from the beginning of its travels apart from its siblings in the volume. Some other leaves outside the Portfolio traveled in ‘Residual’ Groups of 2 or more leaves, sometimes with regroupings which further separated those outcast siblings into smaller groups of ‘Orphans’ (that is my term), which sometimes turned into Single Leaves.<\/p>\n

By definition, perhaps, those new Single Leaves could then count as ‘Rogues’. Should we consider those redistributed leaves as ‘Changelings’?<\/p>\n

A spectacular case resides in MS 223 in the Sch\u00f8yen Collection<\/a>, perhaps as the dedicated result of gathering together portions of the book sold by different vendors at various times or maybe as the purchase from a single lot (a Big Lot).\u00a0 Some accounts say that that portion comprises 105 leaves, others say 210.\u00a0 I have not been able to ascertain which.<\/p>\n

As its website description declares, ‘It was a tragedy in art history that this grand and rare lectern Bible was broken up by speculators. It has been restored towards its former greatness as far as possible. Anathema on whoever dare to break it up again!’<\/p>\n

\u00a0The New Leaf<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The leaf is Number 9 in my Illustrated Handlist<\/a> of a group of medieval and early modern manuscripts, documents, and early printed materials. As written, it turns the hair side of the animal skin to the recto and the somewhat whiter flesh side to the verso.\u00a0 The unevenly trimmed inner edge, running more-or-less along the former fold line or gutter of the sheet, retains some of the notches at the former stitching line and, apparently, slight amounts of the connected leaf of a former bifolium, or pair of leaves from a single skin.\u00a0 So we could guess that this leaf used to belong to a bifolium.<\/p>\n

The Seller’s Tell<\/h3>\n

\"Pencil<\/a>At present, the leaf measures circa 312 \u00d7 212 mm, with a written area of circa 225 \u00d7 157 mm and script in a formal Gothic bookhand.\u00a0 Across the bottom of its recto there is spaced an inscription in pencil, written by a single hand, declaring its price and description:\u00a0 ‘$2.__ French Bible 1300 \u2013 List of Hebrew Names’.\u00a0 You could be forgiven for thinking that this statement is only quaint and perhaps insignificant.<\/p>\n

After all, that’s what I thought, too, years ago, when I first set eyes on the leaf itself, in the flesh.\u00a0 Its other features captured my attention, in terms mainly of the text and its layout.\u00a0 To start with, that is.\u00a0 But then, tending to them as well as to the wider picture of the former manuscript and its context across time, insofar as we can reclaim it, this inscription emerged as a crucial piece of evidence.<\/p>\n

Triple Treat<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In triple columns (‘a’\u2013’c’) of 50 lines, the leaf contains part of the A<\/em>-Group of a version in Latin of the Interpretationes Hebraicorum Nominum<\/em> (‘Definitions of the Hebrew Names’), a partly alphabetized glossary giving etymological explanations for many of the proper names, or terms, to be found in the Vulgate Bible, transliterated from Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek.\u00a0 This portion of the glossary starts with the entry for Alchath<\/em> or maybe Althath<\/em> (the territory mentioned in Joshua 19:25) and ends with, or within, the entry for Ananias <\/em>(the name for several men in the New Testament), interpreted as donum gracia domini uel donata<\/em> \/ [. . . ?]’.\u00a0 Ranging widely from prominent to obscure, the terms include Aleph<\/em>, Alla<\/em>, Alleluia<\/em>, Allegoria<\/em>, Alexander<\/em>, Alexandria<\/em>, Amalech<\/em>, Amen<\/em>, Amon<\/em> (with 5 different entries),<\/em> Amos <\/em>(with 2), and more.\u00a0 The individual entries range in length from 1 or 2 lines to as many as 8 (in lines rc27\u201334).<\/p>\n

\"Top<\/a>Each glossary entry or item starts with the lemma (the name or term) to be defined, presented in transliteration.\u00a0 Set at the beginning of the line and highlighted with an enlarged 1-line initial in red or blue pigment (alternating in color from entry to entry), the lemma is followed by its definition, or sometimes by variant definitions, as with Allel<\/em> [sic<\/em>] = laus uel laudacio\u00a0<\/em> (‘Alle<\/em> [means] ‘praise or commendation’) in line ra15.\u00a0 There is no special distinction for the openings of the different alphabetical groups starting with AM<\/em> and AN<\/em>, perhaps in a uniform treatment of the A-Group as a whole.<\/p>\n

Some initial letters have cue or guide letters, written discreetly in ink in small script in the space indented for them, to direct the form of the letter for insertion in the different pigments.\u00a0 Their position within the inset area allowed the completed form of the initial letter to stand over, and mostly to obscure, the cue letter.\u00a0 But not entirely, as with the A<\/em> beginning the recto.<\/p>\n

Usually the entries span one or two lines, but some extend further, in more detailed explanations.\u00a0 Many definitions spill over into the available space at the ends of the preceding or the following entries, so that some lines contain parts of two different entries.<\/p>\n

Running On and On<\/h3>\n

Within such lines, the intruder is preceded, and framed, by an emphatic C-shaped 1-line paraph-sign which has a long horizontal top extending above most or all of its letters, sometimes even farther (in rc3 and va3) into the outer margin or intercolumn.\u00a0 These brackets alternate in color between red and blue pigment, adding to the colorful effect of the blocks of text.<\/p>\n

For clarity, the two different forms of run-overs<\/strong> can be described as running either below<\/strong> or ahead<\/strong>.\u00a0 In this manuscript, a thin curved line in ink traces a path upward or downward from the end of each line which runneth over, and then stops at the end of the relevant line with the remainder, so as to indicate directly the direction in which to seek the completion of the entry.\u00a0 Usually that path involves the short span between one line and either the next one or the previous one.\u00a0 Sometimes it involves a longer course, of 3 or even (in rc43>40) 4 lines.<\/p>\n

These are subtle features, perhaps, but helpful for the reader trying to find the way through densely packed columns of definitions for curious words, perhaps the more so when the transliterations transmitted across time, manuscripts, and different copyists could themselves garble the intentions.\u00a0 That the copyist of this leaf had some difficulties in the transcription can be seen in some mistakes corrected by several means, including the wrong run-ahead in line ra48 (crossed out with a horizontal line through its letters) and the omitted word populus <\/em>placed in the margin to the right of line rc24, with an identical pair of signes-de-renvoi<\/em> (\/..) placed above that word and above its required position within the line.<\/p>\n

A mess, huh?\u00a0 That’s nothing compared to the problems that face efforts to reconstitute, albeit virtually, the leaves dispersed from the manuscript.<\/p>\n

Ege Manuscript 14<\/h3>\n

This leaf belonged to the large-format manuscript which came to be distributed in isolated specimen leaves as Leaf 14<\/a> within the Portfolio of Fifty Original Leaves from Medieval Manuscripts, Western Europe:\u00a0 XII\u2013XVI Century<\/em> assembled by Otto F. Ege circa 1950.\u00a0 In Scott Gwara’s printed Handlist of Manuscripts Collected and Sold by Otto F. Ege \u2014 <\/em>Appendix VIIII (pages 106\u2012107) in Otto Ege\u2019s Manuscripts<\/a><\/em> (2013) \u2014 the manuscript is Ege Manuscript Handlist Number 14<\/strong> (pages 121\u2013122), attributed to ‘Flanders (possibly France), c[irc]a 1325’.<\/p>\n

The nature of the Portfolio, its edition, its methods and date-range of assembly, and the present locations of some of its 41 or more sets (counting those both numbered and unnumbered), are described in our recent posts on<\/p>\n