'Mirmellus Arnandi'

Among the bibles broken up by Otto Ege and/or Philip Duschnes is one often called the bible of 'Mirmellus Arnandi' (of which an example is shown above), produced in Paris c. 1300. Leaves were no. 14 in the famous Ege portfolio of Fifty Original Leaves.

The bible derives its name from the description of a cache of 210 of leaves sold at Sotheby's, 11 December 1984, lot 39: some of the leaves have erased inscriptions in formal gothic script the lower margin, and from those that remain partially legible, Christopher de Hamel concluded that the bible was 'Bequeathed to a Dominican Convent in 1450 by Mirmellus Arnandi, lawyer and judge', e.g. 'Ego mirmelus [sic] arnandi legum doctor et [...] Judex' on the leaf with the beginning of the book of Nahum.

For the 2021 catalogue of the French illuminations in the McCarthy collection I was able to trace there whereabouts of about 25 of the leaves with historiated initials [1], and was able to add to the provenance. In particular, I noted that the volume was apparently copied for a Carthusian house from a non-Carthusian exemplar, as can be deduced from marginal references next to some of the biblical prologues, stating that these prologues are not read by Carthusians: 

[Source]

'Iste prologus non legitur in cartusia. & ideo non correctus' 
[detail of the image above]

The margins also have a type of marking characteristic of the Carthusians: the letters 'P', 'S', and 'T' (for Prima, Secunda, and Tercia), for the three readings during the Night Office during the week, and indications of days of the week (e.g. 'feria iiij') corresponding to Carthusian liturgical readings: 

There is also a separate eight-part system of textual division using the letters  ‘a’ to ‘h’, which I mistakenly interpreted as the system used by the Dominicans (in fact, the Dominican system is seven-part, and only goes from 'a' to 'g'): this, as Joseph Bernaer told me, is the Carthusian system of divisions, indicating the first 8 readings on Sundays (of 12; the other 4 were from a homiliary, rather than a bible).

Soon after the publication of the McCarthy catalogue, François Avril kindly contacted me with a number of  addenda and corrigenda. As regards the 'Mirmellus Arnandi' bible, he shared with me a copy of the notes that he had sent to the compilers of the catalogue of the collection of Dr Naito, which had recently donated to the Museum of Western Art Tokyo. The catalogue, when it was eventually published three years later, barely mentioned François's discoveries about the provenance [2], so I think it would be worthwhile to provide a very brief summary of them here, to give them the attention they deserve.

First, he pointed out that the name Mirmellus seems to be unrecorded, whereas the name 'Mermetus' is very well-attested in the Duchy of Savoie in the Middle Ages. Second, he found a man named 'Mermetus Arnaudi' among the witnesses to an article of the Statutes of Savoy promulgated at Chambéry in 1430. François therefore suggested this is the correct spelling of the man's name, and that the Dominican convent to which he gave the Bible was the one in Chambéry.

A few weeks later I was looking at C. Heid-Guillaume and A. Ritz, Manuscrits médiévaux de Chambéry: textes et enluminures (Paris, 1998), and noticed that the index of owners includes a 'Mermetus Amandi', referring to MS 19, which has an inscription read by the cataloguer as 'Iste liber est domini Mermeti Amandi [sic], legum doctoris, [...]' dated 24 April 1440. The manuscript has since been digitized, so we can look at the inscription for ourselves: 

[Source]

It is easy to see why the cataloguer read the name in the middle of the first line as 'amandi': 

but the signature below it clearly begins 'Arn' not 'Arm':

As in the bible inscription quoted at the top of this post, he refers to himself as 'legum doctor', Doctor of Laws, so it surely has to be the same man: 

This manuscript was later owned by the Dominicans of Chambéry, as shown by their ownership inscription in the upper margin of fol. 3r: 

 'Ex co[mmun]i biblio[theca] F[ratrum] Praedic[atorum] Cambe[riensis]'
[Source]

I will have more to say about the erased inscriptions in the bible on a later occasion, but for now it is enough to record and confirm that François was correct in his identification of Mermetus Arnaudi.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Peter Kidd, The McCarthy Collection, III: French Miniatures (London, 2021), no. 60 pp. 199-202. I have since found some more; they are listed under no. 60 on this page: 
https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/p/mccarthy-catalogue-vol-iii-french.html

[2] Manuscript Leaves in the Naito Collection, the National Museum of Western Art: A Catalogue Raisonné, ed. by Asuka Nakada (Tokyo, 2024), p. 103.