A: Moral excerpts; B: Iacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea; C: Sermons, from Christmas to Trinity Sunday; D: Gospel harmony on the Passion, dated 1430. Germany: A, B 14th century, C, D 15th century

Title

A: Moral excerpts; B: Iacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea; C: Sermons, from Christmas to Trinity Sunday; D: Gospel harmony on the Passion, dated 1430. Germany: A, B 14th century, C, D 15th century

Shelfmark

MS. Hamilton 51

Place of origin

German

Date

14th century

15th century

c. 1430

Language

Latin

Contents

Physical extent

227 leaves

Binding

Medieval. Sewn on three slit tawed bands, laced into wood boards, covered with half brown leather. No pastedowns. Vestiges of a single clasp. Red-stained fore-edge tabs. Two medieval paper labels stuck to the front cover, one with a title ‘Passional[ … ]’, the other with ‘G [ … ] [possibly 7 corrected to 13]’ (the upper board split vertically, with a repair that obscures parts of these inscriptions). 19th-century gilt leather spine-label ‘51.’

Acquisition

Presented to the Bodleian Library by his sons and received in 1857. Formerly ‘Addit. MSS. Bodl. IV. A. 6.’ (fol. 1r).

Provenance

Erfurt, Charterhouse: their ownership inscriptions (fol. 1r). Parts 2 and 3 were already old before being bound: part 2 has significant damage to the edges of the leaves, part 3 begins at ‘201’ in an old foliation. Identified by Lehmann (Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge, II (1928), pp. 4, 368) as the Passionale bequeathed by Johannes Orthonis von Aldendorf and as the ‘Pars iemalis passionalis fundatoris, quem videlicet fundator domus Carthusiensium Erffordiensis eidem contulit. | Kalendarius. | Liber tercius de gestis et monitis et exemplis sanctorum patrum. | Liber in medi­cina. |’, G. 7 in the late 15th-century catalogue, but the contents and implied date do not seem to correspond well; an alternative identification is G. 13: ‘Passionale cum multis sermonibus abbreviatis de tempore et sanctis.’ Medieval table of contents stuck to the inner face of the upper board.

Friedrich Gottlieb Julius von Bülow, 1760-?1831 (?): perhaps identifiable as 290 in the catalogue of part 3 of his sale, 10 Oct. 1836 ('Passionale sanctorum, una cum quibusdam sermonibus etc.')

Sir William Hamilton, 1788–1856