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Detailed record for Royal 17 F VII
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| Author |
Alfonso 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 |
| Scribe |
Jean Duchesne |
| Artists |
Follower of Loyset Liédet |
| Decoration |
2 large miniatures in colours and gold with full foliate borders, and initials in colours and penwork decoration in gold, at the beginning of books (ff. 1, 129). 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 380 (310 x 230) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 162 (+ 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and 1 at the end, and 2 unfoliated medieval parchment flyleaves at the beginning and 3 at the end; ff. 127, 128 are blank) |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
Post-1600. Royal library binding of brown leather with the royal arms. |
| 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' (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, Royal Appendix 71, f. 13.
Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library. |
| Notes |
In two volumes, the first volume is Royal 17 F VI.
Catchwords written vertically and bifolium signatures. Continuous foliation in red in two volumes, beginning in vol. 1, Royal F VI, 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.
Hanno Wijjsman, 'William Lord Hastings, Les Faits de Jacques De Lalaing et le Maître aux inscriptions blanches à propos du manuscrit français 16830 de la Bibliothèque nationale de France', in ’Als Ich Can’: Liber Amicorum in Memory of Professor Dr. Maurits Smeyers, ed. by Bert Cardon and others, 2 vols (Paris: Uitgeverij Peeters, 2002), pp. 1641-64 (p. 1654).
Scot McKendrick, Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts 1400-1550 (London, 2003), pl. 68.
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). |
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