Peter Lombard, gloss on the Pauline epistles

Title

Peter Lombard, gloss on the Pauline epistles

Shelfmark

St John's College MS 43

Associated place

Oxford

Place of origin

England (Bury St Edmunds) (Bury St Edmunds)

Date

s. xii ex.

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Vellum (HSOS/HFFH).

Physical extent

Fols. ii + 234+ i (numbered fol. iii).

Hands

Written in two styles of protogothic bookhand. Punctuation by point, punctus elevatus, and punctus interrogativus.

Decoration

No headings. Verses in the biblical text introduced by alternate red and blue 3-(gloss-)line arabesque capitals.

The gloss is relatively undivided, with occasional 1-line capitals in text ink.

Running titles identify the epistle, in blue on versos and red on rectos through fol. 129 , thereafter red, until they end at fol. 217, as do additions to the column for authorities.

Marginally cited authorities in red.

Painted initials at the head of each epistle.

The first (fol. 2ra)blue and violet on a gold-leaf ground, with Paul nimbed in gold and holding a scroll.

At the other initia, blue on red (or the reverse) with blue, violet, green, and orange vine, leaf, and floral shapes on gold leaf. For the prologue (fol. 1ra), a very different style, gold leaf on a blue ground with blue and red flourishing.

See AT, no. 101 (13) and plate vi (fol. 2ra).

Binding

Rather yellow leather (pigskin?), the medieval wrapper, now stiffened, with slight turn-ins on the leading edges to protect the leaves. Sewn on three thongs. Gold and hand-written ‘43’ at the top of the spine, in black ink on the leading edges. The pastedowns medieval vellum from the received wrapper. At the front, one modern paper flyleaf and one medieval vellum one; at the rear, one modern paper flyleaf (iii).

Provenance

‘Liber monachorum sancti edmundi P.58’ (fol. 1, upper margin); ‘liber sancti Edmundi Regis et martiris’ ( fol. 234v, s. xiv1); ‘liber domus de burie’, ‘Liber monachorum sancti edmundi P.58’ (the rear pastedown). Owned by (and presumably produced at) Bury St Edmunds (OSB) (Ker, MLGB 22, 233). Our MS does not appear in the late twelfth-century Bury book-list ( CBMLC 4, list B.13 ), although there are unidentified glosses on the Pauline epistles there, no. 128 ‘Epistole Pauli iiiglosate’ (72) and no. 230 ‘Epistole Pauli secundum breuem glosuram’ (probably the ordinary gloss, 84). For changes in the types of books read and produced at Bury, see R. M. Thomson, ‘The Library of Bury St Edmunds Abbey in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, Speculum47 (1972) 617–45.

Perhaps alienated (? in Oxford) rather early: ‘Caucio ff j haliwelleMonachi sancti Edmundi de Bury’ (the rear pastedown, s. xv?). He cannot be identical with the only John Halywell in BRUO (860), for although he was active at the right time, c. 1400–15, he was a secular priest, eventually rector of the London church St Martin’s-le-Grand.

A later shelfmark ‘254’ and a note (s. xvi/xvii) ‘prec’ 13 s 4d’ (fol. 1, upper margin).

‘Robertus Hobbs’ (s. xvii) and a theological note (fol. ii).