The 13th-Century Bibles from Norwich

Almost exactly four years ago I posted a reference to an unidentified Bible from Norwich Cathedral, which I found in an 1899 auction catalogue:

In the process of making additions to the new edition of N.R. Ker's Medieval Libraries of Great Britain (about which there will be a future blogpost) I realised that "Clingham" (which I had not been able to identify, and does not appear to be a place-name), must be a mis-reading of "Elingham". Ellingham is about 15 miles south-east of Norwich:

An Unpublished Medieval Scribe's Advertisement-Sheet

Looking through images on the website of the Free Library, Philadelphia, I encountered a fragment of a sheet of samples of script and decoration, later cut up for use as a pastedown, but originally presumably made by a 15th-century German scribe to advertise his skills to potential clients:

Despite the fact that it is identified on the website, it is, as far as I can ascertain, unpublished.[1]

The Early Provenance of the Beauvais Missal

Having previously discussed parts of the provenance of the Beauvais Missal in various places, it may be worth pulling all this information together in one post with what is known of its earlier provenance, with some new material.

A Cryptic Circular Colophon

I don't use Twitter, but browsing the site recently I came across a tweet from Jesse D. Hurlbut, asking if anyone could solve this colophon:

The text in the middle circle reads:

¶ Les

lettres de ci environ

¶ Si font le non & le surnon

¶ Qui bien les saroit a droit

metre ¶ Et curieux de l'entre

metre ¶ De celui qui cest livre

fist ¶ Et du clerc qui son songe

escripst ¶ Qui la prophecie a

moustre ¶ U cercle des-

sus est nomme ¶ Qui

le livre a fait &

trouve

de Ricci On Cutting Up Manuscripts

Much attention has been given in recent years to the activities of Otto Ege and his defence of book-breaking in his article "I am a Biblioclast", and the whole subject was covered in some detail by Christopher de Hamel in his Cutting Up Manuscripts for Pleasure and Profit (Charlottesville, 1993).

But one surprising defender of the practice has, as far as I am aware, been overlooked in these discussions: Seymour de Ricci (1881–1942), probably best known for his Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada (1935–37). In addition to this vast union catalogue, de Ricci also catalogued a few private collections, such as the books and manuscripts of the first Lord Amherst of Hackney (1835–1909) in 1906, and in 1913 an exhibition catalogue of miniatures belonging to the Parisian art historian and dealer Léonce Rosenberg (1879–1947):

Pietro Ursuleo of Capua: A New Attribution

In a previous post about the Psalter and Passion Sequences written by Pietro Ursuleo, I used images of a Psalter in Baltimore (Walters Art Museum, MS W.330) to suggest what two features of the missing leaves might look like.

What I did not mention is that the Baltimore manuscript appears to me also to have been written by Ursuleo, an observation that has apparently not previously been made.[1]

Baltimore, Walters MS W.330

"BRAUNSCHWEIG", The Ashburnham Price-Code

One price-code missing from the excellent The Price-Codes of the Book-Trade: A Preliminary Guide, by "Exhumation" [i.e. Ian Jackson] (Berkeley, 2010),

and thus apparently unrecorded, is that of the man who, besides Sir Thomas Phillipps, formed the largest and most important private collection of medieval manuscripts in 19th-century England, namely, Bertram, 4th Earl of Ashburnham (1797–1878).