Showing posts with label UCSB. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UCSB. Show all posts

Saturday, 19 April 2014

Otto Ege and other leaves at UC Santa Barbara

The University of California at Santa Barbara (actually a few miles west of Santa Barbara, near Goleta) has a small but interesting collection of medieval manuscripts in their library's Special Collections department, including a Reims Book of Hours and three Bibles, which will be the subjects of future posts. 

The campus is right on the coast, making it a doubly nice place to visit:

They also have a varied collection of leaves and fragments, some illuminated. Some, but not all, were described by Christine Rose, "Medieval MS Fragments at UCSB Library", Soundings: Collections of the University Library, vol.XVIII, no.24 (1987), pp.35-59. A listing of the majority of the leaves and fragments is available online and as a PDF from here.

The most handsome leaf has an historiated initial: it shows a sainted bishop (St Clement) kneeling on (green) ground, praying to and being blessed by the Hand of God in heaven, some laymen behind him, and in front of him a sheep or lamb standing on a blue rock, with a stream of water flowing from near its raised fore-leg: