Biblia; France, s. xiiex

Title

Biblia; France, s. xiiex

Shelfmark

Exeter College MS. 5

Place of origin

France

Date

s. xiiex

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment HFFH

Physical extent

339 leaves preceded by two 18th-century paper flyleaves and two medieval membrane flyleaves and followed by two 18th-century paper flyleaves.

Hands

1, written below top line in several small, neat, gothic bookhands; 2, written in a more documentary but still neat hand. Both punctuated by low point.

Decoration

Good 6/9-line lombards, some with extenders, bows filled with delicate arabesques; also simple red initials flourished blue and one-line red and blue initials.

Running titles and book numbers are written in mixed red and blue. Rubrics.

Binding

Sewn on five bands between millboards covered with marbled paper (s. xviii). Standard Exeter calf spine: simple and quite elegant, calf over millboards, the calf bearing blind decoration of a floral type, early 19th century.

Provenance

Judging by script and decoration, the book was probably written in France and the absence of English hands from the many 13th-century marginalia suggests that it may have stayed there during the medieval period.

Rust holes and stains at the foot of fols. 1–4 indicate that it was once chained in a library.

‘W: Howard’ on fol. ivr, at the head of a contents list, is the autograph of Lord William Howard of Naworth, d. 1640, the owner of a considerable library, on whom see for the present DNB and D. Mathew, ‘The library at Naworth’, For Hilaire Belloc: Essays in Honour of his 72nd Birthday, ed. Douglas Woodruff (London, 1942), 117–30, which is largely based on Howard’s household accounts published in Surtees Society 68 (1878), 469–87. A detailed study by Richard Ovenden is in progress. An obliterated name on fol. iiir may also be Howard’s.

Identifiable with CMA, no. 49 by the quotation of the opening words of Jerome’s prologue on fol. 1r.

Exeter library identifications, on the front pastedown, are bookplate 2, ‘Z 8—Gall’ (deleted), ‘Q6—5 Gall’ (deleted), ‘174–k–5’ altered to ‘170–I–5’; and ‘Coxe v’ (pencil).