Vulgate Bible; England, s. xiiiex.

Title

Vulgate Bible; England, s. xiiiex.

Shelfmark

Christ Church MS. 108

Place of origin

England

Date

s. xiiiex

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Very thin parchment (HSOS?)

Physical extent

Fols: i + 366 (numbered fols 1–360 [item (1)], 357–62 [item (2)]) + ii (numbered fols 363 and 364). Flyleaves paper apart from first at rear (fol. 363) which is medieval parchment (probably a pastedown from an earlier binding).

Hands

Written in gothic textura rotunda, probably a pair of scribes alternating sections.

Punctuation by point and punctus elevatus.

Decoration

Headings in red, with much running and offset, given the damage from damp. At the openings of the books, nine- and ten-line red and blue lombards with flourishing of the same; at the openings of the prologues, two- or three-line red lombards with blue flourishing. Chapters indicated by alternate red and blue lombards in the margin, one-line alternate red and blue lombards in the text (usually, but not always, unflourished). The text is divided by red-slashed capitals. Running titles in alternate red and blue lombards indicate the books.

Binding

Brown leather, with a plain stamped frame outline over millboards, dateable to 1628 (see provenance). Sewn on four thongs. Edges all red speckled, a shelfmark ‘Th.B.1’ painted in black on fore-edge. Paper pastedowns, a ChCh bookplate on the front pastedown.

Provenance

The manuscript provides no early information of its whereabouts; there are a few pentrials, mostly biblical bits and two names: ‘Thomas’ (fol. 363v; s. xv), and ‘margaret an’ (fol. 156; s. xvi1). A note on the front pastedown, ‘1628. Ex dono Honoratissimi Comitis de Corke’, shows the book was given by Richard Boyle (1566–1643), created earl of Cork in 1620. For his colourful career in Ireland, see Toby Barnard in Oxford DNB. The gift is not recorded in the Donors’ Book but the explanation of how Boyle – himself a Cambridge man, having attended Corpus Christi College – came to donate a volume to ChCh is provided by his notebooks, where, under 27th October 1628, he records: I sent my manuscript byble to my unckle, Doctor Weston, to be as my gift given to the library of christchurch colledg in oxford, and paid 3s and 6d for byndyng [The Lismore Papers,1st ser., 5 vols, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (sl, 1886), 2:284].

John Weston (1551/2–1632), DCL (1590), canon of ChCh from 1591, was Boyle’s uncle by marriage, being the brother of Alice, mother to Boyle’s second wife, Catherine Fenton (AO). John was also son of Robert Weston (d. 1573), sometime lord chancellor of Ireland, on whom see Andrew Lyall in Oxford DNB. When Boyle sent this gift to Oxford, he himself was not in Ireland but in and around London; the plain binding which he provided for this manuscript must, then, have been made in the capital in the autumn of 1628. During his visit, his papers suggest, he was keen to show both family piety and to nurture associations which could be helpful to his tempestuous political career; this gift presumably served both these purposes. Perhaps he also had in mind the future education of one or more of his seven sons, the youngest of whom, Robert (1627–1691), was of course later to become the outstanding Oxford scientist, while the eldest, Richard (1612–1698), who was to be 2nd earl of Cork, did apparently study briefly in Oxford in 1629–30 (Toby Barnard in Oxford DNB). It was only, however, with the 2nd earl’s sons, Charles and (another) Richard, that there is a definite educational presence of the family at Christ Church, both matriculating in 1656 (AO, 163). The first of these was to be a donor of a printed book to the library (see Appendix II, C.2.1).

The book also bears old ChCh shelfmarks: that of the 1676 catalogue, ‘A.11’ (front pastedown, cancelled, and fol. i), and that given it with the move to the New Library, ‘G.5’ (front pastedown). At top right of fol. i, a cancelled mark, ‘Th. B. 1’, agreeing with that on the fore-edge and presumably relating to the pre-1676 sequence, though this does not appear in John Hinton’s 1665 catalogue (on which, see Introduction, ‘Age of Catalogues’).