Augustine of Hippo, Enarrationes in psalmos 1–50; England, c. 1200

Title

Augustine of Hippo, Enarrationes in psalmos 1–50; England, c. 1200

Shelfmark

Exeter College MS. 38

Place of origin

England

Date

c. 1200

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment HFFH

Physical extent

189 leaves preceded and followed by two 18th-century paper flyleaves.

Hands

1: anglicana punctuated by low point.

2: written above top line by several late protogothic hands punctuated by punctus elevatus, punctus interrogativus, and low point.

The hand of fols. 145 et seq. is virtually gothic with broken bows and lozenges at the extremities of minims, but fused letters seem to be confined to de and pp. Insular abbreviations for enim and est are used.

Decoration

Four-line blue and red lombards, flourished blue and red, at the beginning of each psalm, some with extenders. Also similar ten- and six-line lombards at the beginnings of the commentary on the ferial psalms, 26 and 38, and plain one-line blue and red initials. Lemmata underlined red. One red line-filler; rubrics. Fragments of acanthus leaves drawn in margins probably indicate points of interest, as may occasional heads. Sometimes a foot stands on the top of an acanthus leaf (fols. 33v, 65v, 71v) and there are occasional hands, not pointing but open as if saying ‘behold!’ (fols. 34v, 36r).

Snakes are common: on fol. 38v a snake of 63 mm length is vertical in the margin and at one point is represented as disappearing into and emerging from the membrane; an elegant 45 mm snake is on fol. 43v; there are also a bird’s head, animal heads, and human feet. In the bottom margin of fol. 86v is a pencil drawing of a group of buildings, including a battlemented wall or tower, a domed tower, and a building with a red roof. Alexander and Temple, no. 150.

Binding

Sewn on six bands. Standard Exeter binding: simple and quite elegant, calf over millboards, the calf bearing blind decoration of a floral type, early 19th century. On the spine is a red leather label with the title in gold. Red-and-white endbands; sprinkled edges.

Provenance

Presumably of monastic origin.

On fols. 29v and 187v are two sets of verses, in different hands of c. 1200, ‘Post fulgus post fulgur fulmen habetur’ and ‘Versus. Ad pulmonis opus confert medicamen ysopus’. Neither is recorded by Walther, Initia, or Walther, Proverbia.

It is not known when the book came to Exeter but unless we suppose that this manuscript and MS 37 were together before coming to the College (for which there is no evidence) their sharing a common history in the 15th century, shown by the presence in both of the hand of that date that added the opening words of psalms (see above), makes it very probable that they were together in the College then. One of them may, indeed, be the book referred to in the Rector’s Accounts for summer 1419, ‘Item Vs pro vno libro beati Augustini.’ Both are recorded as being in the library c. 1600 (Ecloga, nos. 22 and 28 respectively) and at the end of the 17th century (CMA, nos. 22 and 29 respectively).

On fol. 94 (as in MSS 28 fol. 173 (172), 37 fol. 109, and 40 fol. 47) a tab was created to bear a title, ‘In Psalmos 50 Augustini.’

Exeter library identifications are, on the front pastedown, ‘P8—7 Gall’ and ‘C–2–10’ (both deleted), ‘173–H–3’, ‘Coxe Cat. no. XXVIII’ and the book stamp. On the spine is a round paper label with ‘3’ on it.