A Loose Flyleaf in Canberra

Sometimes the most unassuming fragments turn out to be among the most informative. Looking at images of recently-digitised manuscript fragments at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, my eye was caught by a flyleaf with the stencilled crest of Thomas Phillipps on the verso:

[Source]

and on the recto various late-medieval inscriptions:

[Source] 

The Duprat Bible [Part II]

The previous post left the Duprat Bible in the 1724 catalogue of the Château d'Anet.

Whoever bought the Bible divided each volume into two and rebound them in the present 18th-century bindings, for an unidentified owner, with a gilt “P L” (? or "L P" ?) monogram stamp in each corner:

Phillipps MSS Catalogue Online

Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum in Bibliotheca D. Thomæ Phillipps, Bart., A.D. 1837 (Impressus Typis Medio-Montanis, 1837[–1871]).

I have a copy of the Orskey-Johnson reprint (2001) of the Phillipps catalogue. In the introduction A.N.L. Munby states that he knows of only about fifteen complete, or substantially complete, copies of the catalogue, of which only seven are available for consultation in public institutions, at the BL, London; Bodleian, Oxford; UL, Cambridge; BnF, Paris; KB, The Hague; Harvard, Cambridge (MA); and Newberry, Chicago. The reprint is a copy of one formerly owned by David Lew Feldman, New York.

[Any reader who does not know what an extraordinary book the Phillipps catalogue is, should consult the first volume of Munby's Phillipps Studies (1951), or this very brief summary]

In connection with an enquiry from a reader a couple of days ago I tried Googling a phrase from the catalogue, hoping that it might lead me to the present whereabouts of one of the manuscripts, but it took me instead to an online copy of the catalogue itself, of which I was unaware.

A Fragment formerly owned by Guilford and Phillipps, part II

[Continued from this post]

Looking at the original Phillipps auction catalogues from 1903 and 1911 it was possible to locate the following entries:

"858  Novum Testamentum. Pars Expositionis Bedæ in Actus Apostolorum, manuscript of the tenth century, written in double columns, on vellum, with the book-plate of Lord Guilford, half morocco                     folio X Cent"

and

"71  Bedæ Expositionis in Actus Apostolorum Fragmentum, manuscript of the eleventh century, written in double columns, on vellum, with the book-plate of Lord Guilford                                                         folio XI Cent"

In the 1903 sale it was bought by "Brewer" (or perhaps Bremer?) for £1, and in 1911 by J[acques] Rosenthal for £4 5s. Presumably Brewer/Bremer failed to pay for the item, or returned it for re-sale.

This tells us that the manuscript was a bound volume until at least 1911, although incomplete, and that there was definitive proof of having come from the Guilford library, as suggested by the Phillipps catalogue at no. 10614.  This description does not mention that the manuscript was a fragment, so the "fragm." of the first description indicated that it was an incomplete codex. The Schoenberg database does not include single leaves, however old or interesting, but it does include incomplete codices, and the present item can be found there by searching with "Bede" as author and "Guilford" in the Provenance field (I prefer to use the old interface, which is much more user-friendly than the "improved" one).

As usual, the results of searching the Schoenberg database are very hit-and-miss (hits often turn out to be misses), but two are correct:

Payne & Foss, Catalogue of Manuscripts, Books Printed on Vellum ..., February 1830, item 1053:

"1053  Bedae, (Venerabilis,) Expositio in Actum Apostolorum. A very ancient Manuscript of the Twelfth Century upon vellum, in double columns, from Lord Guilford's Collection, 3l. 3s     --     --    --     folio"

R.H. Evans, Valuable and extensive library of the late Earl of Guilford, Part the Third, 28 February, 1829, lot 410:

"410  Venerabilis Bedæ Expositionis in Actum Apostolorum, A VERY ANTIENT MANUSCRIPT, ON VELLUM"

A marginal note in ink in the catalogue "α/o/o" indicates that there was a reserve of £1 on the lot; it was bought by Thorpe for £1 3s.

Thus we have confirmed that the manuscript comes from the collection of Frederick North, 5th Earl of Guilford (1766-1827) part of whose library was sold in auctions from 1828 to 1835.

Frederick North, 5th Earl of Guilford. © National Portrait Gallery, London

A Fragment formerly owned by Guilford and Phillipps, part I

As noted in a previous post, I spent some time this summer enquiring about medieval manuscripts in Los Angeles collections. As a result of making contact previously, few days ago Helena Vilar de Lemos sent me images of a leaf that recently entered Special Collections in the Library at Occidental College: