Egerton MS 3050

'L'HISTOIRE DES TROIS MARIES': a French poem in octosyllabic rhyming couplets, composed and finished in 1357 (see below) by Jehan de Venette, Provincial of the Carmelites in France. For an analysis of the poem see J. Bonnard, Les traductions de la Bible en versfrancais, 1884, pp. 196-206, who gives extracts from three MSS. in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris, fonds francais 1531, 1532 and 12468). The poem tells the story of St Anne and her three daughters, St Mary the Virgin, St Mary Salome and St Mary Cleophas, and gives also a short résumé of Old Testament history and details about the relics of the Marys, including the healing of Pierre de Nantes, Bishop of St Pol de Léon, in Brittany (1328-1349; on which see the Abbé Faillon, Monuments inédits sur l'apostolat de Sainte Marie Madeleine en Provence, Paris, 1848, i, 1316; ii, 947-954). There are also accounts of the benefactions of Jeanne ct'Evreux, third wife of Charles IV of France, to the Carmelites of Paris. The contents are as follows, viz:-

(1) Two Prologues, the first telling how the poem came to be written, and the second giving a short synopsis of it. ff. 1-4b.

(2) Book I, from the marriage of Abraham to Sarah to the return of the Three Maries from visiting the Holy Places. ff. 4b-117.

(3) Book II, from the death and Assumption of the Virgin to the end (including the deaths of St James the Less, Joseph the just, and St John the Evangelist). ff. 117-220.

The date of the poem's completion is given in two colophons: the first on f. 220 (printed by Bonnard, op. cit., p. 196), beg. L'an mil ccc sept et cinquante en may que li Rossinoz chante un po de temps devant complie Fu ceste oeuvre toute accomplie. The second (f. 220b) includes the words 'fait et accompli a paris par un frere du carme l'an mil ccc cinquante et sept ou mois de May'. Between the two colophons is a note (ff. 220-220b) on the dates of the feasts of SS. Mary Cleophas and Salome (printed by Bonnard, op. cit., p. 205), in which the author refers to a joint feast for them as kept by some on 25 May; according to B. Zimmerman, Monumenta historica Carmelitana, Lérins, 1907, p. 141, a feast of the Three Marys on that day was instituted by the Carmelites in 1342. On ff. 221-223 is a list of chapter headings as far as ch. 149. The author, Jehan de Venette (also called Fillons), was born at Venette, near Compiègne, in 1307. After joining the Carmelite Order he became Prior of Paris in 1339 and from 1341-1366 was Provincial of France (see C. de Villiers de St Étienne, Bibliotheca Carmelitana, ii, pp. 132, 133). Besides other works, including a'Chronicon Carmelitanum', printed in Speculum Carmelitanum, Venice, 1507, he is credited with the authorship of the Second Continuation of Guillaume de Nangis's Chronica (see H. Géraud, Bibliothèque de 1'École des Chartes, iii, 1841, pp. 29-46). In the present work, which Venette says depends on a Latin original, he follows largely traditions popularised in the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine (ed. Th. Graesse, 1846). Other treatments of the subject are those of Wace and Pierre de Beauvais (on which see P. Mayer, 'Légendes Hagiographiques en Francais', Histoire Littéraire de la France, xxxiii, 1906, PP. 364-367). A short piece entitled 'De tribus mariis et earum filiorum' is preserved in Cotton MS. Caligula A. X (ff. 205 b, 206), from which ff. 65-196 were printed as Annales Prioratus de Wigornia in Annales Monastici (Rolls Series), iv, 1869, pp. 355-564. The cult of the Three Marys was popular at the French court of the 14th cent. and in 1367 Charles V founded a chapel to them in the Cathedral of Chartres (see V. Leroquais, Les Sacramentaires et les Missels Manuscrits, Paris, 1924, ii, p. 348). Paper; ff. 224. 390 mm. x 280 mm. xv cent. Written in double columns in a bastard hand. Crude flourished initials in blue and red throughout. Inserted between ff. 1 and 2 is a coloured German woodcut of the second half of the 15th cent. (66 mm. x 45 mm.) representing the Pietà (f. i*). Of the three watermarks used, the only uncommon one (a tulip with two leaves) is similar to no. 6643 in C. M. Briquet's Les Filigranes from a Utrecht document of 1446. Gatherings mainly Of 12 leaves, with signatures (some indiscernible owing to the tightness of the binding). Modern 19th-cent. binding of crimson velvet, with silver gilt knobs at each corner; on both covers are large silver gilt plaques representing the B.V.M., crowned, with the sun and twelve stars about her head and the moon beneath her feet, trampling on the serpent, and surrounded by female saints including Gudula, patroness of Brussels, Agatha,

Elizabeth of Hungary and Catherine of Alexandria, that on the upper cover being probably of 19th-cent. date but that on the lower possibly 17th cent. From the description by P. Meyer, op. cit., p. 367, Of MS. 464 in the collection of Jean-Baptiste Joseph Barrois (d. 1855) this appears to be the present MS., which was therefore presumably sold with others of the Barrois collection to Lord Ashburnham in 1849. lt was described by J. Holmes in A Catalogue of the Manuscripts at Ashburnham Place, part ii, n.d., and in 1881 in the Hist. MSS. Comm., 8th Report, App. iii, p. go, no. 464. Bought at the Ashburnham (Barrois) sale (Sotheby's, 10 June 1901, lot 602) by Wickham Flower, of Great Tangley Alanor, co. Surr., at whose sale (Christie's, 15 Dec. 1904) it was lot 226. Subsequently Setheby's sale-cat., 27-28 April 1931, lot 199. From the Farnborough Fund.