Bestiary

Title

Bestiary

Shelfmark

St John's College MS 61

Place of origin

England York

Date

s. xiii in.

Language

Latin

Middle English (1100-1500)

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Vellum (HSOS/HFFH).

Physical extent

Fols. i + 103+ ii (numbered fols. ii–iii).

Hands

Written in large transitional protogothic bookhand/gothic textura of an s. xiimien, above top line. Punctuation by pointand occasional punctus elevatus.

Decoration

No headings. At the head of the text, a 7-line high gold letter on blue and red grounds, with diapering and orange and white vine infills.

At chapter incipits 3-line high similar letters, in gold leaf on blue, red, violet, or some combination.

Some decorative red and green line-fillers.

In addition, elaborate illumination: most chapters up to fol. 69vhave an illustration of the animal subject, generally depicted on a gold ground, about ninety in all; many of these have English identifications in the margins, s. xv ex.

Florence McCulloch, Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries (Chapel Hill, NC, 1960) argues (36) that the illustrations most resemble in their iconography James’s copy, CUL, MS Ii.iv.26. W. B. Yapp’s classification of ‘second family’ MSS, ‘A New Look at English Bestiaries’, Medium Ævum 54 (1985), 1–19,corresponds to no textual or iconographic feature, although it is potentially useful in indicating artists who drew from life, rather than pattern-books.

In addition to the chapter illustrations, five full-page paintings survive:

Fol. 1v: the Creation, in four cartoons: God creating the birds and beasts, God taking Eve from Adam’s side, the fall, and the expulsion.

Fol. 2:Adam (confusingly in a gown of the same colours as the creator God on the facing page) naming the beasts.

Fol. 3v: three illustrations of the lion.

Fol. 68: the salamander tree, a dead (?sleeping) man under a tree filled with snakes poisoning the fruit.

Fol. 103v: the ‘lapides igniferi’, a man and a woman attracted by their stones and then embracing in fire; at the page foot the medieval ex-libris, painted within two dragons and a tendril/interlace.

Other full-page illustrations, on the basis of the analogous Ashmole and CUL MSS, were on leaves now removed: two pages of illustrations of dogs, after fol. 23; eagles flying towards the sun, after fol. 35 ; the whale mistaken for an island, after fol. 72; and Isidore composing his book, after fol. 85.

See AT, no. 146 (17) and plate vii( fols. 3v, 103v); Morgan, no. 42 (90) and 12, 23, with dating c.1220, plate 146 (fol. 3v) and 8 (fol. 45v); Jurgis Baltrusaitis, Réveils et Prodiges: le gothique fantastique (Paris, 1960), 130–1, pl. 19c; George C. Druce, ‘The Medieval Bestiaries and their influence on Ecclesiastical Decorative Art—II’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association NS 26 (1920), 35–79 (passim and plates II/1, VII/2) ; and ‘The Elephant in Medieval Legend and Art’, Archaeological journal76 (1919), 1–73 at 35–6, 44, and plate v/2 ; M. R. James, The Bestiary(1928). 18–19 and plates 17–18 (fols. 6v and 103v).

Binding

Dark brown leather over millboards, s. xvii, gold stamped rectangular border with floral sprays at the corners on both boards; gold leaf and flower designs on the spine. Sewn on five thongs. Black ink ‘61’ on the leading edges. Pastedowns and endleaves modern marbled paper, a College bookplate on the front paste-down. At the front, one marbled paper flyleaf, at the rear, one modern paper flyleaf and another marbled paper one ( ii-iii).

Acquisition

‘Liber Collegij Diui Johannis Baptistae Oxon ex dono Domini Gulielmi PaddeiMilitis et Collegii olim Convictoris 1634’ ( fol. 3 , upper margin).

Provenance

‘Liber sancte Trin | ITATIS EB O C//’, i.e. ‘Trinitatis Eborac’ (now much defaced, in the illumination, fol. 103v), the sole surviving book from this alien priory (OSB) ( Ker, MLGB 218).

A table of contents, not fully completed ( fol. 1, s. xiii ex.).

An old shelfmark ‘D.4’ ( fol. 1v, s. xvii?).

‘De Naturjs Animantium’, s. xvii; ‘This volume contains 103 folios now in 1816, about ten having been cut out at some former period by me P. B.’ ( fol. 1, upper margin, the last four words in faded pencil).