Vulgate Bible; England (Oxford), s. xiiimed.

Title

Vulgate Bible; England (Oxford), s. xiiimed.

Shelfmark

Christ Church MS. 105

Place of origin

England (Oxford)

Date

s. xiiimed

Language

Middle English (1100-1500)

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Parchment (FSOS)

Physical extent

Fols: 373 + ii (numbered fols 374–75)

Hands

Written in gothic textura semiquadrata, below top line; item 2 is written in textura semiquadrata, s. xiiiex.

Punctuation by point, punctus elevatus, and punctus interrogativus.

Decoration

Blanks for headings unfilled. At the openings of the books, seven- to nine-line red and blue lombards with flourishing of the same, often with marginal extensions. At the openings of the chapters, one-line red and blue lombards, unflourished, marginal numbering in alternate red and blue lombards. Running titles in alternating red and blue lombards, placed at top centre, very many cropped or entirely cut. In Psalms, three-line alternate red and blue lombards with flourishing of the other colour (six-line in both colours with flourishing in both at the openings of the Nocturns); one-line alternate red and blue lombards for versals.

Fol. 4, at the opening of Genesis, has a full-page high I illustrating in seven lozenges the six days of the Creation, with gold leaf, above floral whirls at the foot, the text opening in gold leaf with blue and violet.

Fol. 3v has had a full-page illustration pasted on and then removed; only the bordering lines now remain.

The single piece of surviving illumination is ascribed to the early Oxford illuminator, William de Brailes. Nigel Morgan first made the identification, Early Gothic Manuscripts [I] 1190–1250 (London, 1982), 115, where he listed the manuscript among six previously unnoticed examples of de Brailes collaborating with other hands, apparently members of his workshop.

William de Brailes’s work was first collected from six manuscripts by Sydney C. Cockerell, The Work of W. de Brailes An English Illuminator of the Thirteenth Century, Roxburghe Club (Cambridge, 1930). To these MSS, Hans Swarzenski, ‘Unknown Bible Pictures by W. de Brailes and Some Notes on Early English Bible Illustration’, Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, 1 (1938), 55–70, added a seventh, Baltimore, John Walters Art Gallery, MS 106. Graham Pollard, ‘William de Brailes’, Bodleian Library Record, 5 (1955), 202–9, identified de Brailes with an Oxford book-trade community in Catte Street. Claire Donovan, The de Brailes Hours (London, 1991), includes an extensive list of books produced in Oxford in the thirteenth century (de Brailes items are nos 15–21 [202–3]) but omits this volume. Other Bibles illuminated by de Brailes include BodL, MS Lat. bibl. e.7 (olim Dyson Perrins); and Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 350/567. There is, of course, a pleasing coincidence that a manuscript associated with William de Brailes should now reside in a library whose central south window overlooks the transept of what was once the priory of St Frideswide, for whose chapter house de Brailes may have designed the paintings on the vault: Margart Rickert, Painting in Britain. The Middle Ages,2nd ed. (Harmondsworth, 1965), 105. See AT no. 200 (22), dating 1230–60, and plate x (fol. 4).

Binding

Dark brown leather, s. xvi3/4 over millboards (the upper board presently adrift). Gold-stamped pattern of two rectangles, the inner one cornered with fleurs de lis without and cornerpieces within; a central lozenge, perhaps originally armorial, is now worn on both boards, and flanked by the initials D L (for David Lewis, see provenance). Sewn on four thongs. Holes in both boards for two pairs of ribbon ties, their stubs under the front pastedown. Nail holes from a chain staple at both Watson’s position 4 and 5 (latter with verdigris stains). Both of these are likely to date from after the manuscript’s arrival in ChCh, with that at Watson 5 resulting from the re-organisation of the library in or after 1614, and that at Watson 4 being witness to earlier chaining practice (see Appendix I). Pastedowns modern paper; a ChCh bookplate on the front pastedown. Leaves gilt-edged. Fols 374–75 are a heavy parchment bifolium, probably associated with an earlier binding: the second bears signs of having been used as a pastedown, and has a thin strip absent near foot consonant with there having been an earlier chain-staple.

Acquisition

The Library Donors’ Book for 1614, pp. 26b-27ª, records a later gift from Prichard, comprising £5 (with which the library bought five books) and two printed books. Both are in situ. One, recorded as a ‘Biblja Galljca. fol: 1565’ is NB.2.1 (Paris: Henri Estienne, 1565), with a note of Prichard’s donation, not in his hand. The other, recorded as ‘Durandus super sententias Parisijs Anno 1556 fol.’, must surely be the library’s G.3.3.10 – must surely because, despite a difference of date from that recorded in the Donors’ Book (the volume was published by Charlotte Guillard and Guillaume Desbois in 1550) and despite not having a note of Prichard’s donation, it does have on the title-page the inscription ‘Liber Davidis Lewes legum Doctoris Juris nautici in regno Angliae pro 7s comparatus’; it presumably, then, passed from Lewis to Prichard as did this manuscript. This volume has, at the front pastedown, two former ChCh shelfmarks, that of the 1676 Catalogue, ‘B.1’, cancelled (see Appendix I), followed by the New Library’s ‘E.9’ (see Appendix IV); the latter is repeated in the lower margin of fol. 1.

Provenance

This Bible’s calendar is suggestive of its early use. As it lacks any reference to St Francis, we can assume it was not originally intended for Franciscan use, in contrast to BL, MS Harl. 2813, which Peter Kidd relates to de Brailes and to the Oxford convent: ‘A Franciscan Bible illuminated in the Style of William de Brailes’, Electronic British Library Journal, sn (2007), article 8, freely available on-line [last accessed 14th August 2012]. On the other hand, the early addition of the feast of St Anthony of Padua suggests it soon entered that ambit.

Our manuscript received early attention from readers, who left their mark both in annotations (heavy in Song of Songs and in John, as well as Apocalypse) and in drawings (a monstrous serpent in plummet at fol. 165, and human faces in pen at fol. 178 and 179. There are also later annotations, including a manicula (fol. 32, 33, 197; s. xv?) and, in the first folios especially, a set of fifteenth-century corrections (eg. fol. 5, 7 – 10, 12v, 43, 66, 88). None of these, though, hints at its ownership.

The earliest definite information is provided by the inscriptions Willelmus Skipwyth in red (fol. 180, upper margin), s. xv3/4; Willelmvs skipwith in red capitals above the incipit (fol. 4); he also signs (as ‘Armiger’) 14 lines below the explicit (fol. 356rb, covering two verses of added text (b)), as well as writing his surname in the outer margin at the opening of the Psalter (fol. 165). At least three William Skipwiths might have owned the book. One, from Habrough (Lincs.), was an MP for Norwich 1463–65 and died 1487; see Josiah C. Wedgwood and Anne D. Holt, History of Parliament: Biographies of Members of the Commons House 1439–1509 (London, 1936), 733. The second, from Calthorpe (Lincs.), was knighted 1447/51 and died 1483. The education of a third would explain how this Oxford book came into his hands: of York diocese, he was a BA of Oxford, there in 1446 but, the following year appointed a chaplain of Eton College (BRUO, 3:1711); there is, though, no sign of whether he was ‘armiger’. Three families of the name, their connection with these candidates unclear, were barons in the fifteenth century (Charles Kingsford sub Sir William Skipwith (fl. 1380) in old DNB).

Whichever Skipwith it was, he is perhaps responsible for a further addition: Domine labia mea aperies et os meum a and more fully below ... meum annunciabit laudem tuam Deus in adiutorium meum in (fol. 356rb beneath the signature, s. xv).

The next indication of ownership represents the eventual donor to the College: Liber Guilielmi Prichardi ex dono auunculi sui Dauidis Lewis Doctoris in iurisprudentia Admiralis curiæ supremi iudicis (fol. 1, upper margin). David Lewis, of Abergavenney, Monmouthshire, was educated at All Souls College, graduating BCL and DCL in 1540 and 1548, respectively; he was a fellow there from 1541. He was principal of New Inn Hall 1545–48 and the first principal of Jesus College 1571–72. A lawyer from 1548, he was (as the inscription indicates) judge of the High Court of the Admiralty, a post he held from 1558 to 1575 (thus providing the time limits within which his gift of this codex to Prichard must have occurred). Lewis died in 1584 (AO, 905; T. G. Watkin in Oxford DNB).

The inscription of donation, written in the same hand as the preceding note, reads: Liber Ecclesiæ Christi ex dono Guilielmi Prichardi ibidem alumni et in artibus Magistrj (fol. 1, lower margin). Prichard, like his uncle a Monmouthshire man, matriculated at Jesus College in 1581, and was at Christ Church by 1585; he received the degree of MA in 1588 and was a Proctor in 1595. He was vicar of Abergavenny in 1589 and of Caerwent (Mons.) 1601, rector of Ewelme (Oxon.) 1606–29, and canon of Salisbury and St Paul’s from 1620. He died in 1629 aged about 66; most of his benefactions went to Jesus College (AO, 1211). The donation of this volume is datable to between 1600 and 1614: the terminus ante quem non is provided by the fact it does not appear in James, Ecloga, and the terminus post quem non by the evidence of its two chain-staples: (see binding).