Speculum humanae saluationis

Title

Speculum humanae saluationis

Shelfmark

MS. Lyell 67

Place of origin

Bohemian, Prague

Date

14th century, late

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

paper; watermark, a mount, close to Briquet no. 11681

Physical extent

i+94 leaves (fol. i is a pastedown, now detached),

Hands

Written probably in Bohemia in the late 14th cent, in a cursive hand.

Decoration

Plain red initials, frequently omitted, especially from fol. 62 on.

Pen drawings. (Pächt and Alexander i. 145, pl. XI)

Binding

Original binding of wooden boards covered in white leather, very worn, with traces of five bosses on each cover, and of two clasps on leather straps. There are remains of a 19th-cent.(?) paper title at the top of the spine.

Acquisition

Chosen as one of the hundred manuscripts bequeathed to the Bodleian by Lyell in 1948.

Provenance

On the upper cover, in a contemporary hand, is written in capitals: Liber Ecclē. Wissegraden, i.e. of the famous collegiate church of SS. Peter and Paul at Vyšehrad in Prague, founded c. 1068 by Count Wratislaw II; it was destroyed, and its canons scattered, in 1420 during the Hussite wars, but was rebuilt later; see A. Frind, Die Kirchengesch. Böhmens, 1864.

Our MS. was probably at the Abbey of Göttweig in Austria by the early 15th cent., when MS. Göttweig 240 was copied from it (see above). It has Göttweig shelf marks: 136 (damaged); R. 20; 147 in red, all on spine. It is briefly described in Österreichische Kunsttopographie i (Bezirk Krems), 1907, p. 501, no. 9. MS. Vorau 259, a 14th-cent. Antiphoner in four vols., which also came from Vyšehrad, was brought to Vienna after the church was destroyed and sold there cheaply in 1435; see P. Buberl, Die ilium. Hss. in Steiermark 1 (Beschr. Verz. ilium. Hss. in Oesterreich iv), 1911, no. 265, esp. pp. 205, 214–15.

Lot 254, with illustration of part of fol. 90, in Sotheby’s sale 3 July 1933; bought by W. H. Robinson; see their Cat. 47 (1933), no. 71; 50 (1934), no. 7; 59 (1936), no. 84; Lyell bought it from Robinson in October 1939.

James P. R. Lyell, 1871–1948