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Add MS 18719
- Record Id:
- 032-002095312
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002095312
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000044.0x000315
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165145085.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 18719
- Title:
-
Bible moralisée
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript contains one an illustrated Bible moralisée. The Bible moralisée functioned as a picture book of the Bible, but also offered the reader biblical interpretation: it presents a large cycle of biblical images and accompanying biblical texts each of which is connected with another image and text that offers a moralising interpretation. Bibles moralisées were produced for the personal use of the kings and queens of France: six of the seven early extant copies were produced in Paris for the milieu of the royal court (see Lowden, The Making of the 'Bibles Moralisées' (2000), pp. 189-219). This manuscript is the only English Bible moralisée. It was copied from a French Bible moralisée in three parts (now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 270b; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 11560; and London, British Library, Harley MSS 1526-1527). The English workshop compressed the three volumes into a single volume by using both sides of the manuscript's leaves. The English manuscript may have been intended as a workshop model that could be used for further Bibles moralisées.
Contents:
ff. 1r-18r: The Book of Genesis.
ff. 18r-29r: The Book of Exodus.
ff. 29r-33r: The Book of Leviticus.
ff. 33v-42r : The Book of Numbers.
ff. 42v-47r: The Book of Deuteronomy.
ff. 47r-52r: The Book of Joshua.
ff. 52v-61v: The Book of Judges.
ff. 62r-64v: The Book of Ruth.
ff. 64v-74r: The Book of 1 Kings.
ff. 74r-80v: The Book of 2 Kings.
ff. 80v-86v: The Book of 3 Kings.
ff. 87r-92v: The Book of 4 Kings.
ff. 92v-94r: The Book of Esdras.
ff. 94r-98v: The Book of Tobit.
ff. 98v-100r: The Book of Judith.
ff. 100v-102r: The Book of Esther.
ff. 102v-113r: The Book of Job.
ff. 114r-132v: The Book of Psalms.
ff. 132v-143v: The Book of Proverbs (ff. 135v-143v is erroneously labelled as the Book of Wisdom).
ff. 143v-145v: The Book of Ecclesiastes.
ff. 145v-159r: The Canticle of Canticles.
ff. 159v-160v: The Book of Wisdom.
ff. 160v-161r: The Book of Sirach.
f. 161r: Prologue to the Book of Isaiah.
ff. 161v-177v: The Book of Isaiah.
ff. 177v-190v: The Book of Jeremiah.
ff. 190v-204r: The Book of Lamentations.
ff. 204r-214v: The Book of Ezekiel.
ff. 214v-219v: The Book of Daniel.
f. 219v: The Book of Hosea.
ff. 219v-220r: The Book of Joel.
f. 220r: The Book of Amos.
f. 220r: The Book of Obadiah.
ff. 220r-221r: The Book of Jonas.
f. 221r: The Book of Nahum.
f. 221v: The Book of Habakkuk.
f. 221v: The Book of Zephaniah.
f. 221v: The Book of Haggai.
f. 221v-224v: The Book of Zechariah.
ff. 224v-241r: The Book of Maccabees.
ff. 241r-273r: The Gospels.
ff. 273r-291r: The Acts of the Apostles.
ff. 291r-302r: The Epistles.
ff. 302r-311v: The Book of Revelations.
[f. 113v is blank].
Decoration:
1 large miniature in colours: God enthroned, creating the world using a compass (first column of f. 1r)
4,973 miniatures drawn in brown and blue ink, in rectangular frames (70 x 70 mm), 8 per page, organised in two columns on the right side of the two text columns; some coloured (see miniatures in the Book of Proverbs, the Book of Lamentations, and the Book of Zechariah).
The titles of the biblical books are written at the top of each page in red and blue initials with blue and red penwork decoration. Initials in gold in purple or blue frames or initials in blue or purple in blue or purple frames for (most of) the openings of biblical books and for individual Psalms in the Book of Psalms. Numerous blue initials with red penwork decoration throughout the manuscript.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "032-002095312", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Add MS 18719: Bible moralisée" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002095312
- Is part of:
- not applicable
- Hierarchy:
- 032-002095312
- Container:
- not applicable
- Record Type (Level):
- Fonds
- Extent:
-
Parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100165145085.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1275
- End Date:
- 1285
- Date Range:
- c 1280 - c 1295
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 410 x 295 (text space: 280 x 220 mm).
Foliation: ff. 311 (+ 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves and the beginning + 10 at the end).
Binding: Post-1600. British Museum/British Library in-house: red gold-tooled red leather; the spine inscribed in gold at the British Museum: 'HISTORIA VETERIS AC NOVI TESTAMENTI, FIGURIS ILLUSTRATA'; gilt fore-edge.
- Custodial History:
-
Perhaps made for a king or queen of France, possibly Marguerite of Provence (d. 1295) who married Louis IX in 1234 (see Lowden, The Making of the 'Bibles Moralisées' (2000), I, p. 216).
Perhaps given by Marguerite or her sister Eleanor of Provence to Henry III (see Lowden, The Making of the 'Bibles Moralisées' (2000) I, p. 216).
In Paris by the 1350s, when it was copied for a manuscript for John II (b. 1319, d. 1364), King of France ('John the Good'); Documents apparently relating to the binding from between 1351 and 1352 are described in Lowden, The Making of the 'Bibles Moralisées' (2000), I, p. 218.
The Dominican nuns at Saint-Louis de Poissy, second half of the 14th century: inscription on f. 1r ('Iste liber est sororum [ecclesie] beati [Ludouici de Pissiaco]'); perhaps given to them by John II, King of France ('John the Good').
Docteur Demons, by 1839, when it was copied lithographically by Comte Auguste Bastard d'Estang; Purchased by the British Museum from M. Charles Mathieu, an assistant of Bastard d'Estang, on 12 July 1851 (inscription, f. [ii] recto: ‘Purchased of M. Charles Mathieu’).
- Information About Copies:
-
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk.manuscripts/.
Select digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm.
- Publications:
-
Walter De Gray Birch and Henry Jenner, Early Drawings and Illuminations: An Introduction to the Study of Ilustrated Manuscripts (London: Bagster and Sons, 1879), p. 7.
[Sir George F. Warner], British Museum: Reproductions from Illuminated Manuscripts, Series 3 (London: British Museum, 1925), pl. XVIII.
Schools of Illumination: Reproductions from Manuscripts in the British Museum, ed. by J. A. Herbert, 6 vols (London: British Museum, 1914-1930), V: Carolingian and French to early 14th century (1926), pl. 12.
Marc W. Evans, Medieval Drawings (London, New York, Sydney and Toronto: Hamlyn, 1969), no. 112, 113.
Richard Kenneth Emmerson and Suzanne Lewis, 'Census and Bibliography of Medieval Manuscripts containing Apocalypse Illustrations, ca. 800-1500 III', Traditio: Studies in Ancient and Medieval History, Thought and Religion, 42 (1986), 443-72, no. 153.
Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum, History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders, trans. by Thomas Dunlap (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 367.
John Lowden, The Making of the 'Bibles Moralisées', 2 vols (Philadelphia: The Pensylvania University Press, 2000), I, pp. 189-219 [includes full bibliography].
Nigel Morgan, ‘French Interpretations of English Apocalpyses’, in England and the Continent in the Middle Ages: Studies in Memory of Andrew Martindale, Proceedings of the 1996 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by John Mitchell and Matthew Moran, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 8 (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 2000), pp. 137-56 (p. 139).
John Lowden, 'The Apocalypse in the Early-Thirteenth-Century Bibles Moralisées: A Re-Assessment', in Prophecy, Apocalypse and the Day of Doom, Proceedings of the 2000 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by Nigel Morgan, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 12 (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2004), pp. 195-217 (pp. 198-99).
Robin S. Oggins, The Kings and their Hawks: Falconry in Medieval England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 194, 200.
John Lowden, ‘The Holkham Bible Picture Book and the Bible Moralisée’, in The Medieval Book: Glosses from Friends and Colleagues of Christopher de Hamel, ed. by James H. Marrow, Richard A. Linenthal, and William Noel (Houten, 2010), pp. 75-83 (p. 79).
The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages, ed. by Susan Boynton and Diane J. Reilly (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), p. 313.
John Sabapathy, Officers and Accountability in Medieval England, 1170-1300 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 107, 161, 253-55.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)