Ambrosiaster; Ambrose, letters, etc.

Title

Ambrosiaster; Ambrose, letters, etc.

Shelfmark

MS. Lyell empt. 9

Place of origin

German

Date

15th century, middle

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment

Physical extent

i + 180 leaves (fol. 159 is double, fol. i, 179 are flyleaves),

Hands

fol. 1–114v and 119–148v;

fol. 115–118v;

fol. 149–78.

Decoration

Decorated initials and border on fol. 1r. Decorated initials, initials with penwork, simple red and blue initials. (Pächt and Alexander i. 163, pl. XII)

On fol. 1 the first initial is in blue and gold infilled with flowers and foliage drawn in red and purple ink, with a background in green and blue. A gold bar border, ending in a blue floral spray and with purple pen decoration touched in green and blue, extends in the left-hand border. The second initial is in blue and red flourished in purple and red with a red bar border ending in an elaborate scrolling of flowers in red and blue. On fol. 87 is a painted initial in blue, scrolled in white and outlined in orange and red-brown, infilled with a spray of flowers in yellow and white on a divided orange and deep-red ground.

Other large initials are in red and blue, flourished in red and blue, or purple, sometimes with red bar borders. The initial on fol. 102v is infilled with flowers drawn in pen, partly washed in yellow and outlined in green. Smaller initials are in red and blue. Paragraph marks, also in red or blue, are often extended into the margins to form grotesques, etc.: e.g. fol. 28v, 39v, 40v, 74v, no, 113 and on fol. 59 and 56v flowers have been drawn independently. Pächt-Alexander i, no. 163 and Pl. xii (fol. 1, much reduced).

Binding

Original binding in wooden boards covered with white suede, squares projecting, original sewing, head and tail band sewn through the spine; coloured parchment knobs used as place-finders.

Provenance

On the front pastedown is a 15th-cent. list of contents preceded by the number A. 46 and a line of text ex-libris which has been cut out. There is an erasure at the top of fol. 1, and three labels have been removed from the spine.

From the library of the Carthusians of St. Barbara, Cologne, identifiable as no. O.39 in the catalogue of 1748: see K. Löffler, Kölnische Bibliotheksgeschichte in Umriss, Cologne, 1923, pp. 7–8, 73 n. 265.

Later belonged to Leander van Ess of Darmstadt: no. 133 in his sale catalogue of 1823.

Bought 1824 by Sir Thomas Phillipps: MS. Phillipps 518 (erased from lower comer of fol. 1r): lot 16 in Phillipps sale, Sotheby’s 24–8 April 1911.

Bernard Quaritch, Cat. 321, December 1912, no. 144 with plate of fol. 1. Bought from them by Wilfred Merton (see accompanying letter).

Acquired by Lyell as an exchange in July 1944 from Davis and Orioli.