A Lavishly Illuminated 13th-Century Psalter-Hours Made for a Nun [III]

In a previous post (also discussed here) I proposed that a leaf I had seen and photographed in the 1990s from a lavishly olluminated 13th-century Psalter-Hours was doubtless made for a nun, because it has a collect mentioning 'our abbess'.

I have just re-discovered this leaf in Friedrich Georg Zeileis, "Più ridon le carte": Buchmalerei aus Mittelalter und Renaissance: Katalog einer Privatsammlung von illuminierten Einzelblättern, 3. rev. Nachdruck der Aufl. von 2004 (Rauris, 2009), no.145:

More on the 12th-Century Cistercian Missal Formerly Owned by Otto Ege

In a previous post I wrote about a 12-century Cistercian Missal whose leaves were dispersed by Otto Ege, in which I brought attention to a description of the book published in 1928, before it was dismembered. It was previously only known from a shorter 1948 description.

A Italian Cistercian Breviary, in Newark, NJ

While in New York recently, I not only crossed the East River to go to Brooklyn, but also crossed the Hudson to go to Newark, New Jersey, because I had been in touch with Nadine Sergejeff at the Public Library, and she had kindly agreed to show me their medieval manuscripts. The one I was most interested to see is a Breviary, briefly described by Bond & Faye as being Cistercian, and perhaps from Lombardy:

An Unrecognised York Breviary in New York

Earlier this year I catalogued a Missal of the Use of York, one of only a dozen known to survive, with an interesting provenance, owned by someone who wanted to sell it to a public institution. Maggs handled the deal and everyone involved is happy with the result: it is now at Lambeth Palace Library.

In the process of cataloguing it I became familiar with the features that distinguish the Use of York calendar from the much more common Use of Sarum, as outlined by Richard Pfaff, The Liturgy in Medieval England: a History, 2009, pp.445–62.

While browsing Digital Scriptorium (from which all the images below are taken) in advance of a recent visit to the Grolier Club, New York, I noticed that their MS 3 has most of these features.

A Manuale from the Augustinian Convent of Sts James and Christopher, Steterburg (Lower Saxony)

Having discussed one of Occidental College's two medieval codices in a previous post, we can turn to the other: a fascinating German nuns' book – a manuale – whose origin can be deduced from its textual contents.

But before turning to its origin, what can we tell about its more recent provenance?

A Thérouanne Book of Hours at Occidental

Occidental College has a very interesting and unusual Book of Hours, one of whose features is a unique(?) image of its patron saying the rosary.

 I provide a fairly detailed textual and iconographic descriptions below, but first the known details of its provenance.

Bodleian, MS. Auct. D. 4. 6, revisited

Exactly three years ago I wrote a blog post questioning the often-asserted link between Bodleian, MS. Auct. D. 4. 6 and Roger, abbot of Reading Abbey from 1156 to 1165.

My skepticism has now received support in a recent publication by Nigel Morgan:

"The litany not only contradicts the destination claimed for the book, but also its date. ... In the litany ... there is an erasure of the fourth saint following the three English martyrs Alban, Oswald, and Edmund. There is little doubt that the erasure is of ... Thomas of Canterbury. The litany text ... must therefore be after 1173, and the connection of the book at the time of its making with Abbot Roger and Reading must inevitably be completely abandoned. ... neither Abbot Roger nor his institution was its original destinee"

Nigel J. Morgan, English Monastic Litanies of the Saints after 1000, II: Pontefract–York, Henry Bradshaw Society, 120 (London, 2013), p.33.

The old image-link seems to be broken, but a large version of the image is available here.

A Reims Book of Hours written by Raulinus de Sorcy

A full set of digital images have recently been made available of a Book of Hours of the Use of Reims, now in Houston. It was alluded to at the end of a list of Reims Horae by Jean-Luc Deuffic in 2007, on his Pecia blog, and has recently been blogged about at Houston.

Following the gospel extracts (fol.15r) is the scribal colophon:

"Raulinus de Sorcy scrip-
toris hunc librum scripsit. et
in omnibus complevit. Misereatur sibi deus."