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Detailed record for Additional 42131
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Title |
Psalter and Hours, use of Sarum (the 'Bedford Psalter and Hours') |
Origin |
England, S. E. (Westminster or London) |
Date |
c. 1414 and 1422 |
Language |
Latin |
Script |
Gothic |
Artists |
Herman Scheerre |
Decoration |
11 large historiated initials in colours and gold with full borders, at the beginning of major Psalm divisions (ff. 7, 37, 46, 73, 95, 109, 122, 135, 151v, 166v, 183) anf 7 smaller historiated initials in colours and gold with full borders, at the beginning of each hour (ff. 12v, 21v, 24v, 26v, 28, 30, 33). 298 initials in colours with human heads. Three-sided borders in colours framing the text. |
Dimensions in mm |
450 x 275 (235 x 150) |
Official foliation |
ix + 240 (ff. iii, vi, vii, viii and 237-240 are medieval parchment flyleaves; ff. v and ix are paper book plates pasted on ff, vi and vii; f. iv is not extant; + 2 unfoliated modern parchment flyleaves at the beginningnand 2 at the end; ff. 45v, 72r-v, 237-240 are blank). |
Collation |
i6 (ff. 1-6); ii8-1 (ff. 7-13); iii-ix8 (ff. 14-69); x3 (ff. 70-72); xi-xxxii8 (73-240), with catchwords, in one cursive hand. First four leaves of each gathering mostly numbered i-iv. Gatherings signed as follows: ii-vi, a-e (preceded by the symbol ); vii-x, [a]-d (preceded by a cross +); xi-xxxi (item 3), a-x (l repeated). Another series of 15th-century signatures, b-j, placed on the first, second, or third leaves of alternate quires, survives between ff. 73 and 178 (gatherings xi-xxiv). |
Form |
Parchment codex |
Binding |
BM/BL in-house binding. Parts of the original binding are stored separately as Add MS 42131/1. |
Provenance |
Herman Scheerre [Scheere, Skereueyn] (fl. c. 1388- c. 1422), perhaps to be identified with Herman of Cologne who worked for Duke William of Guelders (c. 1388-1389) and Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy in Dijon (1401-1403), partialy illuminated by him: inscribed 'Herman your meke servant' (f. 124), and 'I am Herman your owne seruant' (f. 232v). John [John of Lancaster], duke of Bedford (b. 1389, d. 1435), regent of France from 1422 and prince, made for him: inscribed 'I commende me unto yow. I pray god save the Duke of Bedford' (f. 21); his arms, crest, badges of an eagle and yale, and his motto reading 'pur souffrir' (f. 73) . Mary Fitzlewis, wife of Anthony Wydeville (b. c.1440, d. 1483), 2nd earl Rivers, son of Jacquetta of Luxemburg (d. 1472), John of Bedford's widow: addition to the calendar 'maria fitz loys Nat. in iii Kalend. Junii. A[nn]o d[omi]ni m ccccxvii' (30 May 1467] (f. 3v). William Catesby (b. in or before 1446, d. 1485), royal councillor and executors of Anthony Wydeville's will, probably acquired by him after Wydeville's execution in 1483: his arms (quarterly Catesby, Cranford, Lodbrooke, and Bishopston, sometimes impaling his wife Margaret, quaterly Zouche and Cantelupe) (ff. 7,. 73, 95, 109, 122, 135, 151v, 166v, 183); included in the inventory of Catesby's goods made in December 1484 and received by John Strete, his servant (Public Record Office E. 154/2/4): 'Item a grete primer and a sawter covered with blewe damask: ch Rewe'. Edward Weld (b. 1741, d. 1775), landowner, of Lulworth Castle, Dorset: armorial bookplate (f. ix). Thomas Weld (b. 1750, d. 1810), landowner and benefactor, of Lulworth Castle, Dorset: armorial bookplate (f. v) The Weld family, sold by them at Sotheby's, London on 29 July 1929, lot. 11; purchased by the British Museum for £33,000, with the assistance of the National Art Collections Fund and a loan from John Pierpoint Morgan (b. 1837, d.1913), financier. |
Notes |
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts. Originally the manuscript was sewn on nine pairs of thongs and bound in 15th-century binding of white leather on wooden boards (beech and oak) with fragments of a 14th-century Italian manuscript of St Thomas Aquinas, Secunda secundae Summae Theologiae, used as pastedowns; re-covered, with red velvet, in the late 17th century (?), with ten parchment strips, cut from 15th and 16th- 17th-century legal documents pasted across the spine between the bands; and ff. iii and 240 are pasted to the boards and covered with marbled paper (one of which is numbered f. x; incised silver clasps. The portraits of a man with a white beard on ff. 34v, 35,,46v, 55, 56v, 90v,115,120,149v have been identified as John Gower, of a tonsured monk on ff. 118, 199 and 206 as Hoccleve and those of a man in a cap on ff. 16, 34, 51v as Geoffrey Chaucer by Sylvia Wright,('The author portraits' (1992), fig. 5). The king on f. 210 is Richard II, according to Wright. |
Select bibliography |
Eric G. Millar, 'Fresh Materials for the Study of English Illumination', in Studies in Art and Literature for Belle da Costa Greene, ed. by Dorothy Miner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), pp. 286-94 (pp. 293-94).
Margaret Rickert, 'Herman the Illuminator', Burlington Magazine, 46 (1935), 39-40 (p. 40).
Charles L. Kuhn, 'Herman Scheerre and English Illumination of the Early Fifteenth Century', Art Bulletin, 22 (1940), 138-56 (pp. 140, 149).
Margaret Rickert, 'The So-Called Beaufort Hours and York Psalter', The Burlington Magazine, 104 (1962), pp. 238-46 (p. 245).
D. H. Turner, ‘Bedford Hours and Psalter’, Apollo, 76 (1962), 265-70.
Illuminated Manuscripts Exhibited in the Grenville Library (London, British Museum, 1967), no. 32.
Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Manuscript (Oxford: Phaidon, 1979), pl. 53.
Richard Marks and Nigel Morgan, The Golden Age of English Manuscript Painting 1200-1500 (London, 1981), pl. 33, 34.
J. J. G. Alexander, 'Painting and Manuscript Illumination for Royal Patrons in the Later Middle Ages', in English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, ed. by V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne (London: Duckworth, 1983), pp. 141-62 (p. 150, fig. 1).
James McKinnon, ‘The Late Medieval Psalter: Liturgical or Gift Book?’, Musica Disciplina, 38, Aspects of Music in Church, Court and Town from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Century (1984), 133-57 (pp. 137-38, fig. 5).
Jenny Stradford, 'The Manuscripts of John, Duke of Bedford: Library and Chapel', in England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of 1986 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by D. Williams (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 329-50 (p. 342).
Susie Vertongen, 'Herman Scheerre, The Beaufort Master and the Flemish Miniature Painting: A Reopened Dabate', in Flanders in a European Perspective: Manuscript Illumination around 1400, Flanders and Abroad: Proceedings of the International Colloquium, Leuven, 7-10 September 1993, ed. by Maurits Smeyers and Bert Cardon (Leuven, 1995), 251-65 (p. 257).
Kathleen L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390-1490 Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 6 (Harvey Miller: London, 1996), no. 54. C. Paul Christianson, ‘Evidence for the Study of London’s Late Medieval Manuscript-Book Trade’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375-1475, ed. by Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 87-108 (p. 107 n. 44).
Kathleen L. Scott, ‘Design, Decoration and Illustration’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375-1475 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 31-64 (p. 54 n. 7, pl. 5b).
Sylvia Wright, 'The author portraits in the Bedford Psalter-Hours: Gower, Chaucer and Hoccleve', British Library Journal, 18 (1992), 190-202 (p. 190).
Janet Backhouse, The Sherborne Missal (London: British Library, 1999), p. 41.
The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain (Cambridge: University Press, 1999- ), III: 1400-1557, ed. by Lotte Hellinga and J. B. Trapp (1999), p. 61.
Kathleen Scott, 'The Illustration and Decoration of the Register of the Fraternity of the Holy Trinity at Luton Church, 1475-1546', in The English Medieval Book: Studies in Memory of Jeremy Griffiths, ed. by A. S. G. Edwards, Vincent Gillespie and Ralph Hanna (London: British Library, 2000), pp. 155-83 (p. 178).
Gothic Art for England 1400-1547, ed. by Richard Marks and Paul Williamson (London: V and A Publications, 2003), no. 73, pp. 16, 180, pl. 97 [exhibition catalogue].
Alessandra Petrina, Cultural politics in fifteenth-century England: the case of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester( Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 96, 166.
Kathleen Scott, 'Scribal Activity in English Manuscripts c. 1400-c. 1490: A mirror of the craft?', in Pen in Hand: Medieval Scribal Portraits, Colophons and Tools, ed. by Michael Gullick (Walkern, Herts: Red Gull Press, 2006), pp. 115-49 (p. 130, fig. 28, no. 21).
Scot McKendrick, John Lowden, and Kathleen Doyle, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (London: British Library, 2011), no. 26, pp. 53, 56, 152, 165, 398 [exhibition catalogue]. |
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f. vi Armorial bookplate of Thomas Weld |

f. 1 January |

f. 1v February |
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f. 2 March |

f. 2v April |

f. 3 May |
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f. 3v June |

f. 4 July |

f. 4v August |
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f. 5 September |

f. 5v October |

f. 6 November |
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f. 6v December |

f. 7 Annunciation |

f. 7 Annunciation |
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f. 8 Crowned woman |

f. 8v Christ |

f. 10v Head of the Virgin and a head of a queen |
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f. 11 Head of a woman |

f. 11v Heads of a pope and a cardinal |

f. 12v Prayer in Gethsemane |
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f. 14 Heads of two boys |

f. 15 Heads of two Seraphim |

f. 16 Chaucer |
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f. 17 Text page |

f. 20v Inhabited initials |

f. 21 Heads of God the Father and Christ |
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f. 21v Kiss of Judas |

f. 24 Inhabited initial |

f. 24v Christ before the emperor |
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f. 26v Christ carrying the Cross |

f. 28 Crucifixion |

f. 29 Inhabited initial |
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f. 30 Descent from the Cross |

f. 32v Inhabited initial |

f. 33 Entombment of Christ |
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f. 34 Chaucer |

f. 34v Old man |

f. 35 Hours of the Virgin |
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f. 37 Christ's Resurrection |

f. 37 Resurrected Christ |

f. 38 Penitential Psalms |
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f. 42 Inhabited initial |

f. 45 Two monks |

f. 46 Office of the Dead |
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f. 46 Office of the Dead |

f. 46v John Gower |

f. 48v Virgin Mary |
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f. 51v Chaucer |

f. 55 Office of the Dead |

f. 56v John Gower |
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f. 64 Inhabited initial |

f. 67 Inhabited initial |

f. 68 Inhabited initial |
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f. 69v Head of a nun |

f. 70v Skeleton |

f. 71v Heads of two boys |
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f. 73 Beatus page and Tree of Jesse |

f. 73 Beatus page and Tree of Jesse |

f. 73 Anointing of David |
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f. 74 Head of a young king |

f. 76 Head of Christ |

f. 77v Head of God the Father |
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f. 83 Inhabited initial |

f. 90v John Gower |

f. 93 Christ |
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f. 95 David and the lion |

f. 100 King's head |

f. 109 David and Goliath |
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f. 109 David and Goliath |

f. 116 Head of a king |

f. 118 Hoccleve |
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f. 119 Head of a man |

f. 120 John Gower |

f. 122 David and Goliath |
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f. 122 David and Goliath |

f. 124 Text page |

f. 135 Saul and David |
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f. 135 Saul and David |

f. 149v John Gower |

f. 151v Marriage |
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f. 151v Marriage of David and Michal |

f. 155v Text page |

f. 165 Inhabited initial |
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f. 166v Historiated initial |

f. 166v Historiated initial |

f. 167v Old man's head |
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f. 168v Bearded man's head |

f. 183 David playing the harp |

f. 183 David playing the harp |
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f. 184 Inhabited initial |

f. 194 Inhabited initial |

f. 199 Hoccleve |
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f. 203 Two monks |

f. 206 Hoccleve |

f. 209v John Gower |
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f. 210 Richard II |

f. 211 King in chainmail |

f. 217v Head of a man |
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f. 218v Head of a tonsured man |

f. 225 Two kings |

f. 226 Landscape |
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f. 227v Head of the Virgin Mary |

f. 230v Head of a king |

f. 231 Text page |
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f. 232v Text page |

f. 235v Inhabited initials |
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