Stephen Langton, Comm. in Ecclesiasticum; England, s. xiii1

Title

Stephen Langton, Comm. in Ecclesiasticum; England, s. xiii1

Shelfmark

Exeter College MS. 24

Place of origin

England

Date

s. xiii1

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment FHHF

Physical extent

219 leaves, preceded and followed by one 18th-century paper flyleaf.

Hands

A good gothic book hand punctuated by low point, by several scribes. The hand is mostly rotunda but some of the scribes come close to writing quadrata.

Decoration

Sparse decoration, inadequate as ordinatio to guide a reader through the text. On fol. 1 are two 6-line green-and-red lombards with arabesque infilling, otherwise initials are plain green or red, 1/3-line. There are rubrics and a few red lemmata, and some marginal authorities, sparsely cited compared with MS Bodl. 706 (SC 2605), are underlined red.

Binding

Sewn on five bands. Standard Exeter binding: simple and quite elegant, calf over millboards, the calf bearing blind decoration of a floral type, early 19th century.

Provenance

The decoration suggests that the book may have originated in a Cistercian house but a friars’ house is also possible.

Fols. 1–2 are eroded by a rust stain, bottom centre of lower margin, indicating chaining in a library.

Recorded at Exeter c. 1600 as Ecloga, no. 4, then in CMA, no. 39. On fol. 1 is a title in an italic and secretary hand, c. 1600.

Exeter library identifications, on the front pastedown, are: the book stamp; ‘Ex: Coll: Oxon.’, ‘Q.8–4 Gall’ (deleted); ‘172–G–4’; and ‘Coxe Cat. no. XXIV’ (pencil). ‘4’ is on a round paper label on the top of the spine.