Petrus Comestor, Historia Scholastica, with addition on Acts probably by Peter of Poitiers; probably Italy or Southern France, early 13th century

Title

Petrus Comestor, Historia Scholastica, with addition on Acts probably by Peter of Poitiers; probably Italy or Southern France, early 13th century

Shelfmark

MS. Lyell 70

Place of origin

Italy

or southern France

Date

13th century, early

Language

Old Hungarian

Latin

Old French (842-ca. 1400)

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment

Physical extent

ii + 154leaves (fol. i-ii, 153-4 are flyleaves)

Hands

Current text hand.

Decoration

Blue and red initials with pen flourishes, sometimes partly formed of birds (fol. 1, 2).

There is a series of marginal pen drawings, sometimes with red touches, most of which appear to have been done by the first glossator (a) or at about the same time as gloss a, to which they are often joined, and certainly before gloss b, which is sometimes written over them (e.g. fol. 47, 68, 86v). The drawings are mostly of fantastic monsters, but there are also lions (fol. 32v, 47, 86v), birds (fol. 32v, 66v (double-headed), 88v, 118v), fish (fol. 68, 101) and heads (e.g. a king, fol. 44) and they sometimes consist partly of acanthus scrolling (fol. 4, 15v, 67v). Noteworthy are: (fol. 34v–35) large monsters; (fol. 61) head with three faces; (fol. 103) woman holding up a flaming torch; (fol. 107v) front part of a bull, with head turned full-face.

On fol. 37 (Lib. Num., cap. II) is a circular diagram with inscriptions in the hand of gloss a, illustrating the arrangement of the camps of the twelve tribes of Israel around the tabernacle; cf. similar diagram in Peter of Poitier's Compendium historiae, e.g. in MSS. Lyell 71, fol. 20; Fairfax 13, 13th cent., fol. 2v, etc. On fol. 57 a genealogy, linked to gloss a, appears to have been erased to make way for gloss b; other diagrams or drawings have been erased on fol. 67v, 68, 135. On fol. 7 another glossator, slightly later than a, has drawn diagrams of the interior arrangement of Noah's ark 'secundum Augustinum', and 'secundum alios'. A drawing of a peacock on fol. 10 may be by the same hand. ( Pächt and Alexander ii. 67)

Binding

Bound in modern pigskin over wooden boards.

Acquisition

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

Provenance

Probably written in Italy or the South of France to judge from the parchment.

On fol. 80 is written: 'Beatus Dominicus' (14th cent.). At the top of fol. 152v are press marks: 'ex parte sinistra(?) de sexta banca - G-littere' (14th cent.); 'Iste liber debet esse in prima bancha ex parte maris' (15th cent.). The second pressmark is identifiable (for example, by comparison with New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS. M 1156) as that of the Dominican convent of SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, and the volume is identifiable as no. DCVIII in the catalogue of the library's manuscripts published in 1784 in Nuova Raccolta ... Scientifici e Filologici Tomo Quarantesimo (separately paginated, p. 7).

Bookplate of 5th Baron Vernon (succ. 1835, d. 1866); see B.M., Cat. of Franks Collection of Bookplates, nos. 30334-7.

James P. R. Lyell, 1871–1948. Bought by Lyell in August 1943 from E. P. Goldschmidt; see his Cats. 21, no. 9, frontispiece (drawings on fol. 88, 86v) and pl. II (drawing on fol. 34°); 23 (1930), no. 95 and pl. XI; 44, no. 7 and pl. I-II; the later catalogues use the same plates as the first.