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Detailed record for Royal 3 D VI
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| Author |
Petrus Comestor |
| Title |
Historia scholastica (The 'Ashridge Petrus Comestor') |
| Origin |
England, S. (London?) |
| Date |
between 1283 and 1300 |
| Language |
Latin |
| Script |
Gothic |
| Decoration |
20 historiated initials in colours and gold with partial borders and one full border (f. 234), and in most cases with instructions to illuminators in Latin, at the beginning of books (ff. 3, 45v, 46, 69v, 79, 93, 99, 104v, 116, 130v, 160v, 177, 182v, 206, 210v, 213v, 225v, 227v, 234, 283v). 7 foliate initials in colours and gold with partial borders (ff. 3v, 115v, 142, 180, 186, 187v, 190). Initials in blue with red pen-flourishing and 'I'-band borders in red and blue. Running titles and chapter numbers with pen-flourishing in red and blue, line-fillers in red and blue. Omitted text written in the margins in blue and yellow frames, or with blue paraphs with red pen-flourishing. Descenders in the form of human heads (e.g., f. 7) |
| Dimensions in mm |
400 x 265 (240 x 145) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 322 (+ 2 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves and 1 unfoliated medieval parchment flyleaf at the beginning and at the end; f. 1 is a medieval parchment flyleaf) |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
BM/BL in-house. |
| Provenance |
Edmund, Earl of Cornwall, (d. 1300) probably made for him, and presented by him to Ashridge College, Bucks, founded by him in 1283: his arms together with those of Edward I, king of England, Edward of Caernarvon, and Richard, king of the Romans (f. 234).
Ashridge College, Bucks: ownership inscription 'Liber dom[u]s de assherugge' (f. 1).
The Old Royal Library (the English Royal Library): Westminster inventory number 'no. 791' (f. 1), included in the inventory of books in the Upper Library at Westminster of 1542, and in the 1698 catalogue of the library of St James's Palace (see [Edward Bernard], Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae (Oxford: Sheldonian, '1697', but 1698?), no. 7979?).
Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library. |
| Notes |
Includes table of contents (ff. 1r-v).
The manuscript is related in style to the Alphonso Psalter (Add. 24686) and, according to Sandler 1986, was illuminated by two artists (Hand I: ff. 3, 45v, 46, 69v, 79v, 116, 130v, 182v, 206, 210v, 213v, 225v, 227v; Hand II: ff. 93, 99,104v, 160v, 234, 283). |
| Select bibliography |
J. A. Herbert, Illuminated Manuscripts (London: Methuen, 1911), pp. 190-91.
Schools of Illumination: Reproductions from Manuscripts in the British Museum, 6 vols (London: British Museum, 1914-1930), II: English 12th and 13th Centuries (1915), pl. 14.
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), I, p. 77.
Eric. G. Millar, English Illuminated Manuscripts from the Xth to the XIIIth Century (Paris: Van Oest, 1926), pl. 95, p. 127..
[Eric G. Millar], British Museum Reproductions from Illuminated Manuscripts, Series 4 (London: British Museum, 1928), pl. 23.
Elfrida O. Saunders, English Illumination, 2 vols (Florence: Pantheon, 1928), I, pp. 73, 74, II, pls. 77, 78.
Donald D. Egbert, The Tickhill Psalter: An English Illuminated Manuscript of the Early Fourteenth Century (New York: The New York Public Library, 1932), p. 11.
Guide to an Exhibition of English Art gathered from Various Departments and held in the Prints and Drawings Gallery (London: British Museum, 1934), no. 117.
Peter Brieger, English Art 1216-1307, Oxford History of English Art, 4 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1957), p. 218, pl. 82b.
Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. by N. R. Ker, 2nd edn, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 3 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1964), pp. 4, 227.
Margaret Rickert, Painting in Britain: the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (London: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 139.
C. A. Robson, 'Vernacular Scriptures in France', in The Cambridge History of the Bible, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963-1970), 2: The West from the Fathers to the Reformation, ed. by G. W. H. Lampe (1969), pp. 436-52 (p. 447 n. 2).
Peter Brieger, ‘Manuscripts’, in Art and the Courts: France and England from 1259 to 1328, The National Gallery of Canada, 1972 (Ottawa: National Gallery, 1972), pp. 50-70 (p. 59, fig. 53).
Art and the Courts: France and England from 1259 to 1328. / L'art et la cour. France et Angleterre, 1259-1328 (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada 1972), cat. 27 [exhibition catalogue].
Lucy Freeman Sandler, The Peterborough Psalter in Brussels and other Fenland Manuscripts (London: Harvey Miller, 1974), p. 136, n. 8.
G. E. Hutchinson, 'Attitudes toward Nature in Medieval England: The Alphonso and Bird Psalter', Isis, 65 (1974), 5-37 (pl. 13f).
A. G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c.700-1600 in the Department of Manuscripts, The British Library (London: British Library, 1979), I, no. 866.
W. B. Yapp, 'The Birds of English Medieval Manuscripts', Journal of Medieval History, 5 (1979) 315-48 (pp. 332, 346).
Bruce Watson, 'The Artists of the Tiptoft Missal and the Court Syle', Scriptorium: Revue internationale des études relative aux manuscrits, 33 (1979) 25-39 (p. 34).
Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts 1285-1385, 2 vols, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 5 (London: Harvey Miller, 1986), II, no. 2.
Adelaide Bennett, 'A Late Thirteenth-Century Psalter-Hours from London', in England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1984 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by W. M. Ormond (Grantham, 1984), pp. 15-30 (pp. 15-16).
Early Gothic Manuscripts (II) 1250-1285 (Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles), (Harvey Miller: London, 1988), pp. 33, 143, 167, 171, 189.
Susan H. Cavanaugh, 'Royal Books: King John to Richard II', The Library, 6th series, 10 (1988), 304-16 (p. 306).
Alison Stones, review of N. Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts [II], in Speculum, 63 (1993), pp. 213-16 (p. 216).
Lucy Sandler Freeman, 'The Image of the Book-owner in the Fourteenth Century: Three Cases of Self-definition', in England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1991 Harlaxton Symposium (Harlaxton Medieval Studies III: Stamford, 1993), ed. N. Rogers, pp. 58-80 (p. 61).
The Libraries of King Henry VIII, ed. by J. P. Carley, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7 (London: The British Library in association with The British Academy, 2000), H2.518.
John Higgitt, The Murthly Hours: Devotion, Literacy and Luxury in Paris, England and the Gaelic West (London: British Library, 2000), pp. 61, 124.
John Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, 2 vols (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), I: The Manuscripts, p. 209.
The Cambridge Illuminations: Ten Centuries of Book Production in the Medieval West, ed. by Paul Binski and Stella Panayotova (London: Harvey Miller, 2005), p. 281..
Scot McKendrick and Kathleen Doyle, Bible Manuscripts: 1400 Years of Scribes and Scripture (London: British Library, 2007), p. 119, fig. 106.
M. P. Parkes, Their Hands Before Our Eyes: A Closer Look at Scribes (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pl. 26.
Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (London: British Library, 2011), no. 16 [exhibition catalogue]. |
| Last revised: 21 September 2009 |
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f. 3
Peter Comestor |
f. 3
Stork |
f. 3
Peter Comestor |
| |
f. 3
Peter Comestor |
f. 6v
Text page |
f. 6v
Pen-flourished initial |
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f. 45v
Israelites |
f. 46
Israelites |
f. 69v
Moses |
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f. 79v
Israelites |
f. 79v
Israelites |
f. 93
Synagogue and Ecclesia |
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f. 93
Bird |
f. 93
Synagogue and Ecclesia |
f. 93
Synagogue and Ecclesia |
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f. 99
Death of Moses |
f. 104v
Joshua |
f. 104v
Bird |
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f. 116
Bird |
f. 116
Elcanah, Hannah and Peninnah |
f. 130v
David |
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f. 142
Foliate initial |
f. 160v
Ahaziah |
f. 160v
Ahaziah |
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f. 177
Jeremiah |
f. 182v
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f. 206
Woman and a dying man |
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f. 210v
Esther |
f. 213v
Manasses |
f. 225v
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f. 227v
Death of Simon |
f. 233v
Text page |
f. 234
Rabbit |
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f. 234
Annunciation to Zacharias |
f. 234
Annunciation to Zacharias |
f. 234
Lion and rabbit |
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f. 234
Peacock and grotesques |
f. 283v
Ascension |
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