Monastic rules, etc.

Title

Monastic rules, etc.

Shelfmark

MS. Lyell 60

Place of origin

Austrian, probably Melk, Benedictine abbey

Date

15th century, middle

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment

Physical extent

i+208 leaves (fol. 103 is double, fol. i is a flyleaf),

Hands

fol. 1–20, 196–206v a rather variable hybrid hand occasionally using loops, especially on d:

fol. 20v–33v, a current hybrid hand;

fol. 37–154, a set cursive hand (PL XXXIa);

fol. 155–169v, a hybrid hand similar to a; e fol. 109v–195v, a hybrid hand.

A sixth hand added further items in a hybrid script on leaves originally left blank, fol. 34–36v, 154r–v, 206v–207v.

Decoration

Some blue or red initials flourished in contrasting colours, including figures on fols. 124v (a shepherd?), 140r (a king); other initials plain red or blue. (Pächt and Alexander i. 166)

Binding

Original binding of wooden boards covered with two pieces of white pigskin sewn together with the seam down the spine, decorated with tooled panels and stamps; five metal bosses on each cover; two metal clasps on leather straps, the upper one embossed with a Paschal Lamb, fastening to edge of upper cover; two 15th–16th-cent. parchment labels on front cover with short list of contents and shelfmark; inside, attached to the top of the spine by a piece of string, a 15th-cent. sliding parchment book-marker, with numbers and sliding square. This is quite different from the 13th–14th-cent. book-markers described by Destrez in Beiträge, Supplement-band iii (1935), 19–35.

Acquisition

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

Provenance

Belonged to the abbey of Melk in Austria and was almost certainly copied there. Entered in the fragment of the mid–15th-cent. Melk catalogue (Gottlieb, Mittelalt. Bibl.kat. Österreichs 1, p. 150, 1. 4–14), without the later additions (items a-e above). These are described in the 1483 catalogue, where our MS. was no. C. 76 (Gottlieb, op. cit., p. 182). The label on the front cover with the shelfmark C. 54 possibly derives from Stephan Burchard’s catalogue, begun in 1507 and finished in 1517; see Gottlieb, p. 139. On fol. 1 is the 17th cent.(?) note: Monasterii Mellicensis ht. C. 54. No. 194 (D. 32) in Cat. Codd. MSS. Mellic. 1, 1889, pp. 270–1.

Bought by Lyell in 1938 from E. P. Goldschmidt and Co.: see his Cat. 100, no. 69.

James P. R. Lyell, 1871–1948