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Detailed record for Royal 17 F VI
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| Author |
Alphonsus de Spina, translated by Pierre Richard |
| Title |
Fortalitium fidei (La forteresse de la foy) |
| Origin |
France, N. (Lille) and Netherlands, S. (Bruges) |
| Date |
Last quarter of the 15th century |
| Language |
French |
| Script |
Gothic cursive (bâtarde) |
| Scribe |
Jean Duchesne |
| Artists |
Follower of Loyset Liédet |
| Decoration |
3 large miniatures in colours and gold with full foliate borders and initials in colours and gold with foliate decoration, and/or flowers, at the beginning of each book (ff. 26, 101, 146). Initials and paraphs in gold with black pen-flourishing or in blue with red pen-flourishing. Line-fillers in gold and blue. |
| Dimensions in mm |
510 x 370 (310 x 225) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 290 (+ 1 unfoliated modern paper flyleaf and 2 unfoliated medieval parchment flyleaves at the beginning and at the end; 1 blank leaf after f. 25) |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
Post-1600. Royal library binding of brown leather with the royal arms and the date 1757. |
| Provenance |
Jean Duchesne (or du Quesne), scribe and translator, written by him in Lille: his colophon, 'Ce present volume a este fait / et adcomply a Lille en Flandres / par la main Jehan du quesne' (vol. 2, Royal 17 F VII, f. 162v).
Edward IV (b. 1442, d. 1483), king of England and lord of Ireland: perhaps to be identified with 'La Forteresse de Foy' in the Wardrobe Accounts of 1480 (see Backhouse 1987).
The Old Royal Library (the English Royal Library): included in the list of books at Richmond Palace of 1535, no. 22; and in the Catalogue of 1666 (f. 13).
Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library. |
| Notes |
In two volumes, the second volume is Royal 17 F VII.
Includes a list of contents (ff. 1-21v).
Catchwords written vertically, and bifolium signatures. Continuous foliation in red in two volumes, beginning on f. 22. |
| Select bibliography |
H. Omont, 'Les manuscrits français des rois d'Angleterre au château de Richmond', in Etudes romanes dédiés à Gaston Paris (Paris: É. Bouillon, 1891), pp. 1-13 (p. 6).
George F. Warner and Julius P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections, 4 vols (London: British Museum, 1921), II, p. 263.
F. Winkler, Die flämische Buchmalerei des XV. und XVI. Jahrhunderts: Künstler und Werke von den Brüdern van Eyck bis zu Simon Bening / Mit 91 Lichtdrucktafeln (Leipzig: E.A. Seemann, 1925), p. 179.
Margaret Kekewich, 'Edward IV, William Caxton, and Literary Patronage in Yorkist England', The Modern Language Review, 66 (1971) 481-87 (p. 483).
M. Fifield, 'The French Manuscripts of La Forteresse de la Foy', Manuscripta 16 (1972) 98-111 (pp. 99-101).
P. Chavy, Traducteurs d'autrefois: dictionnaire des traducteurs et de la litte´rature traduite en ancien et moyen franc¸ais (842-1600) (Paris: Champion, 1988), p. 62.
Janet Backhouse, ‘Founders of the Royal Library: Edward IV and Henry VII as Collectors of Illuminated Manuscripts’, in England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by David Williams (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1987), pp. 23-42 (pp. 28 39, pl. 10).
Scot McKendrick, The History of Alexander the Great: Illuminated Manuscripts of Vasco da Lucena's French Translation of the Ancient Text by Quintus Curtius Rufus (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996), p. 31.
The Libraries of King Henry VIII, ed. by J. P. Carley, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7 (London: The British Library, 2000), H1.22.
Scot McKendrick, ‘The Manuscripts of Edward IV: The Documentary Evidence’, in 1000 Years of Royal Books and Manuscripts, ed. by Kathleen Doyle and Scot McKendrick (London: The British Library, 2013), pp. 149-77 (pp. 165, 169, 173). |
| Last revised: Friday, September 18, 2009 |
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f. 26
Fortress of Faith |
f. 101
Fortress of Faith |
f. 146
Fortress of Faith |
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