Innocent IV, Apparatus in decretales; England, c. 1330–1340

Title

Innocent IV, Apparatus in decretales; England, c. 1330–1340

Shelfmark

Exeter College MS. 30

Place of origin

England

Date

c. 1330–1340

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment FHHF

Physical extent

Written on 5–270 poorly prepared leaves, preceded by two printed leaves (see Binding) and their stubs (fols. iii, iv, i, ii) and two medieval membrane leaves (fols. v, vi), and followed by two printed flyleaves and their stubs (fols. I–IV) from the same book.

Hands

An English scribe’s poor attempt at the sort of Italian gothic rotunda script used in north Italian law books; punctuated by low point. The many glosses and the notes on fore- and endleaves are in anglicana. See further below, History.

Decoration

Original decoration is probably English but could pass as Italian in style: blue lombards flourished red, red lombards flourished blue or grey in Italian style; rubrics; red-and-blue running numbers for books; lemmata underlined red.

English-style decoration, round which the marginal gloss has been neatly written, consists of a 9-line illuminated historiated initial at the beginnings of books (that for bk. 1 has been excised), extended into a border in gold, crimson, and blue with white dots and/or lines on the colour throughout. Two/three-line initials at the beginnings of tituli are in this style throughout, presumably superimposed on Italian ones. The subjects of the four surviving English historiated initials are (fol. 86r: bk. 2, rubric De iudiciis) a judge(?) expounding to, or admonishing, two men, all standing; (fol. 163r: bk. 3, rubric De vita et honestate clericorum) a priest saying mass; (fol. 217r: bk. 4, rubric De sponsalibus et matrimoniis) a priest joining a couple in matrimony; (fol. 226v: bk. 5, rubric De accusacionibus [et iniquiis], miniature damaged) two seated figures (? accusers) with another(?) behind and between them.

Alexander and Temple, no. 288 (s. xiv2/4).

Binding

Sewn on seven bands between millboards covered with reversed calf, three blind fillets round the outer edge, s. xvii. Flyleaves at front and back are from the same, probably incunable, copy of Gratian’s Decreta as those in MSS 26, 28, and 43, which are bound in the same 17th-century style, and were probably added by the 17th-century binder rather than being taken over from an earlier binding. Rust stain and a hole at the foot of the front flyleaf (fol. 3) suggest that the book was once chained.

Provenance

In favour of a north Italian origin are (1) the fact that law books were exported abroad from legal centres such as Bologna and Padua; (2) that script and the original decoration could suggest a north Italian origin; and (3) that quiring in 12s is compatible with north Italian practice. Objections to this are (1) the membrane is of poor quality and free from any suggestion of preparation in the Italian style; (2) the script begins as a reasonably good gothic rotunda of English type but by fol. 2v, although becoming more Italian in style, has deteriorated and never improves. Letter forms are quite convincing imitations of Italian rotunda letters except that a is almost always in the north European two-compartment form and the Italian form with the high ascender and tiny low bow is never found. The Italian form of the ampersand is used but the -bus abbreviation is more often north European than Italian and m lacks the north Italian (especially Bolognese) habit of increasing the length of successive minims; (3) among all the glosses, the earliest dating from not long after the writing of the book, and on the several pages of notes, there seem to be no examples of non-English hands; (4) even marginal directions to the rubricator are in anglicana.

There is no evidence to date the book’s arrival in the College but it is recorded in Ecloga, as no. 18.2, and since acquisition of this kind of text during the sixteenth century is highly unlikely, had probably been there since at least the fifteenth century. CMA, no. 45.

Exeter library identifications, inside the front cover, are bookplate 1, ‘E1—24’ and ‘Q8—10 Gall’ (both deleted), ‘172–E–6’, ‘MS 30’ (pencil) and ‘Coxe MS xxx’ (pencil). For ‘23’ on fol. vr cf. ‘10’ in MS 29. ‘6’ is on a round paper label with serrated edges at the top of the spine.