Homiliary (Paul the Deacon, etc.); Germany, mid-12th century

Title

Homiliary (Paul the Deacon, etc.); Germany, mid-12th century

Shelfmark

MS. Laud Misc. 465

Date

12th century, middle

Language

Middle High German (ca. 1050-1500)

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment; with occasional original holes and other flaws; one or more of the outer margins often excised

Physical extent

i + 110 + i leaves

Hands

Written mainly by two formal Romanesque bookhands, changing at the start of Quire 12.

Decoration

One historiated initial in red ink and green wash: St Matthew(?): a full-length standing male numbed figure, beardless but with long hair; he stands on top of a large foliate initial ‘U’ (fol. 1v).

Most of the major decoration occurs in the second part of the volume: One pair of large initials in red with a pale yellow wash background (fol. 87r); other major initials at the vigil of Pentecost (fol. 87r), and Pentecost (fols. 91v, 93v, 95v), the latter with a dragon-bird-vegetal hybrid. One foliate initial is sketched but not inked (fol. 6v); some spaces completely blank or with very faint designs sketched (e.g fol. 10r).

Doodles include human and animal/demon faces and figures, black-letter letters in outline, etc. (fol. 1r)

Binding

Laudian binding. Sewn on four bands laced into pasteboards covered with brown leather, the centre of each cover stamped in gilt with the arms of archbishop Laud; no pastedowns; fore-edge tabs made partly from reused MS. waste (see e.g. fol. 2v); modern flyleaves; the joints repaired; traces of two ties at the fore-edge; the spine with vestiges of paper labels.

Acquisition

Part of his third donation to the Bodleian, 1639. Former Bodleian shelfmarks: ‘F.110’ (crossed through) and ‘Laud 465’ (encircled) (inside front cover).

Provenance

Seligenstadt (diocese of Mainz), Benedictine abbey of Sts Marcellinus and Peter: inscribed in the 13th(?) century, ‘Codex sanctorum martirum Marcellini et Petri in Selegunstadt’(?) (fol. 1r, several times), and ‘Codex sanctorum mart..(?)’ (fol. 49r, upper margin).

The excision of margins happened by the 15th(?) century, to judge by the attempts to restore missing letters and words (e.g. fols. 20r, 26v, 65r–v); a 14th(?)-century hand added notes next to some texts which lack adequate rubrics, e.g. ‘de resurrectione domini’ (fol. 7v), and ‘in choro’ (fol. 106r).

Presumably in a Cistercian or Carthusian house when punctus elevatus punctuation was altered to punctus flexus punctuation (e.g. fol. 9r–v). The Summary Catalogue suggested that the 15th(?)-century shelfmark(?) (fol. 1v) in the form of a ‘U’ flanked on each side by squiggles shaped like a ‘z’ or medieval arabic numeral ‘2’, themselves flanked on each side by a dot: ‘.z. U .z.’, was comparable to a shelfmark(?) in MS. Laud Misc. 456, from the Mainz Charterhouse. The comparison is not convincing and there is no other evidence for Mainz provenance.

‘Edges’ written in a 16th- or early 17th-century English(?) hand (fols. 1r, 2r, lower margin).

Archbishop William Laud, 1573–1645: with the usual inscription, here dated 1638 (fol. 1v, lower margin).

Title

Homiliary: at end is a fragment of a Latin Antiphoner of German origin

Shelfmark

MS. Laud Misc. 465

Date

12th century, middle

Language

Latin

Physical extent

110 Leaves

Custodial history

Old shelfmark V on f. 1v (? of Carthusians of Mt. S. Michael near Mainz--compare MS Laud Misc. 456). Manuscript 2646 acquired by the Bodleian Library