Nicole Oresme and Pèlerin de Prusse, astronomical tracts translated for Charles V

Title

Nicole Oresme and Pèlerin de Prusse, astronomical tracts translated for Charles V

Shelfmark

St John's College MS 164

Associated place

Vincennes

Place of origin

France (Paris?)

Date

1365 x 1377. It is unclear whether our book should be considered a datable manuscript. A terminus a quomight be established by Oresme’s work here: ‘Pour le XIVe siècle, l’œuvre la plus importante est sans doute le traité De l’espère 53920de Nicole Oresme, qui date des environs de 1365’ (Frappier et al., 322). The terminus ad quem is provided by the most recent horoscope, for a child born in 1373; and by the fact that one of Charles’s children for whom a horoscope is provided, Marie, died in 1377. But the opening leaves of surviving booklets show substantial wear, suggesting that the book may have existed for a good while as a series of separate parts. And the 1418 description of a schedule of nativities as separate from the volume at large may also suggest piecemeal accretion.

Language

French

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Vellum (FSOS/FHHF).

Physical extent

Fols. iv + 148+ i + 4 + i (numbered fols. 149–53, v).

Hands

Except for additions, written by two scribes in textura rotunda, one responsible for booklet 1, the other for the remainder. Punctuation by point and medial point .

Decoration

[original portions only] Headings in red.

Four-line champes with floral sprays (most extended to full bar borders) at the head of major divisions; 2-line champes with sprays for less important ones.

In item 1 especially, elaborate diagrams and drawings; one of these (fol. 2v) is reproduced by Edgar S. Laird, ‘Robert Grosseteste, Albumasar, and Medieval Tidal Theory’, Isis81 (1990), 684–94 at 693.

Line-fillers in red, blue, and gold.

Texts broken with blue paraphs on red flourishing, sometimes alternating with red paraphs on blue flourishing.

In items 1 and 4, running titles ‘Spera’ and ‘Alcab m’ added later.

Incipits elaborately decorated with paintings etc.: At the head of item 1 (fol. 1), an illumination covering one-third of the page: Charles V enthroned, reading the book on a stand which also holds an astronomical instrument, with a book chest with other volumes to the side, on a ground of gold-diapered red and blue with gold fleur-de-lis, together with a 6-line champe and bar vinet with floral sprays in gold leaf and blue. Laird and Fischer identify (27) the illuminatorhere and at fol. 33 with one of the artists who painted a Bible historialepresented to Charles V in 1372, now The Hague, Rijksmuseum Meermanno-Westreenianum MS 10 B 23 .

At the head of the text (fol. 2), a 15-line high historiated champe, within a pair of demivinets (as the preceding, here one terminating in a wyvern): Oresme dressed as a Franciscan and holding the same kind of globe instrument Charles has on his reading stand.

At the head of text 2 (fol. 33), an illumination covering half the page: Charles in the same setting but now leaning forward to take the book offered him by a kneeling Dominican author together with a 5-line champe and double demivinet with two wyverns.

Within the text, 7- or 8-line champes with vinets at fols. 73, 111, and 120.

At head of text 4 (fol. 119), a 12-line high historiated champe, with vinet: a seated scholar studying the book as he alternately looks at the starry sky.

See AT, no. 738 (7)and plate xliii (fols. 1 and 2; the figure in the second is Oresme, not Pèlerin, as Alexander and Temple say). The illuminations have often been reproduced; see Claire R. Sherman, The Portraits of Charles V of France (1338–1380) (New York, 1969), 22, 74 and plates 6 (fol. 33) and 70 (fol. 1) ; ‘Representations of Charles V of France (1338–1380) as a Wise Ruler’, Medievalia et HumanisticaNS 2 (1971), 83–96 at 87–8 and figures 4 (fol. 1), 5 (fol. 33); and Imaging Aristotle, figures 2 (18, fol. 33) and 4 (21, fol. 1) ; La Librarie de Charles V(Paris, 1968), no. 199 (115) and plate 5 (fol. 151v) ; Les Fastes du gothique: le siècle de Charles V(Paris, 1981), no. 289 (335), with plates of fols. 1 and 151v.

Binding

Red velvet over millboards, with remaining seats for ties on both boards, s. xviii. Sewn on four thongs. ‘164’ on a damaged paper lozenge at the head of the spine, rather indistinctly in black ink on the leading edges. Pastedowns modern vellum, a College bookplate on the front pastedown. At the front, three medieval vellum flyleaves (a four-leaf quire, lacking the first leaf, now a stub) and a modern vellum flyleaf; at the rear, fol. 149 is early modern vellum, inserted between the main MS and the added material at the end, and fol. v a medieval vellum flyleaf the remains of a bifolium with its conjoint a following stub.

This manuscript received conservation treatment by Jane Eagan c.2008/9.

Acquisition

Liber Collegii Sancti Joannis Baptistae Oxon Ex Dono Guilielmi PaddyEquitis Aurati 1633’ (fol. iv v).

Provenance

Appears in the inventory of the royal study at Vincennes1418: ‘Un livre de parchemin couvert de velluy au roye vert, et signe du signet du roy Charles le quint, et y a atachee une cedule contentant ce qui s’ensuit: “La nativite de monseigneur le Daulphin, ainsne filz du Roy nostre sire, et la nativite de monseigneur Loys, second filz du Roy” (cited Delisle, 1:266).

Four horoscopes, the first two rubbed to illegibility; dated 1350 and 1386 (fols. iv–iii; cursive, s. xv).

'Henry Sythry’ (fol. i, s. xvi/xvii).

The old shelfmark ‘C. 52. I’ (the front pastedown).

A list ‘The following manuscripts are some of the most curious’, in a hand dated ‘1871’ (the front pastedown).