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Royal MS 1 D I
- Record Id:
- 040-002105767
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002105724
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000224.0x00036e
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Royal MS 1 D I
- Title:
- Bible, with the Interpretation of Hebrew names ('Bible of William of Devon')
- Scope & Content:
-
This Bible earned its moniker ('Bible of William of Devon') due to a colophon in which the scribe identifies himself: Rebound for Henry VIII.
Contents:
f. 1: Epistle of Jerome to Paulinus.
The books of the 0. T. are in the usual Vulgate order, except that the Prayer of Manasses follows 2 Chronicles without break, Tobit follows Esther, and Wisdom follows Ecclesiasticus. Jerome's prologues, except that to Esdras and the second prologue to job; and in addition a short prologue to Ruth (f. 110, 'Ruth Moabitis ... filie Syon', from the epistle to Paulinus), a prologue to the Psalms (f. 231 b, 'Dauid filius Iesse quia Dauid dictus est Christus'), and the usual Minor Prophets prologues to Wisdom, Baruch, the (with the extracts from Jerome's epistle to Paulinus), and the short (third) prologue to Maccabees. The N. T. is arranged thus: Gospels, Pauline Epistles, Acts, Catholic Epistles, Apocalypse, with the usual prologues to the Gospels, Pauline Epistles, and Apocalypse, two prologues to the Acts ('Lucas Antiochensis', and 'Actuum apostolorum nudam aliqui'), and the prologue to the Catholic Epistles ascribed to jerome ('Non ita est ordo apud Graccos'). The apocryphal Epistle to the Laodiceans is inserted after 2 Thessalonians (f. 504). Titles and modern chapters. At the end (f. 541) are ' [by ].
ff. 541-582: [Remigius of Auxerre], Interpretationes nominum Hebraeorum ('Interpretation of Hebrew Names').
Decoration:
2 miniatures in colours and gold (ff. 4v, 231v). 83 historiated initials in colours and gold, at the beginning of all biblical books. Foliate initials in colours and gold, at the beginning of prologues, all with bar extensions in the margins decorated with birds, animals, human figures, and hybrids, sometimes forming full or partial borders (e.g., f. 5). Numerous smaller initials in blue with gold and blue, and red pen-flourishing, throughout. Running titles and chapter numbers alternately in red or blue with red and blue pen-flourishing and gold throughout. Some rubrics and paragraphs written in gold (e.g., f. 292).
This Bible is associated with a group of manuscripts known as the 'William of Devon group', including: Blackburn, Museum and Art Gallery, MS 091.21001, British Library, Egerton MS 1151, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M. 756, Cambridge, Emmanuel College, MS 116 (2.I.6), Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. D. I. 17, British Library, Royal MS I. E. II, Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS I, and Oxford, New College, MS 306. These manuscripts are marked by the influence of Parisian illumination in style and iconography (see Bennett 1972, pp. 31-33 and Temple 1984, p. 344). According to Branner (Branner 1972, pp. 24-30), the William of Devon group was originally part of the Parisian Johannes Grusch workshop.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Royal Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002105724
040-002105767 - Is part of:
- Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X : Royal Manuscripts
Royal MS 1 D I : Bible, with the Interpretation of Hebrew names ('Bible of William of Devon') - Hierarchy:
- 032-002105724[0041]/040-002105767
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
A parchment codex.
- Digitised Content:
- Languages:
- English
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1250
- End Date:
- 1274
- Date Range:
- 3rd quarter of the 13th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions:
Foliation: ff. 582 (+ 1 unfoliated medieval parchment flyleaf at the beginning, and 1 unfoliated modern parchment flyleaf at the beginning and at the end).
Script: Gothic, written below top line.
Binding: Post-1600. Purple velvet with silver-gilt centre pieces and corners, and title on a slip of parchment attached to the cover; gilt and gauffered edges.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: England, S. (Oxford or Canterbury?)
Provenance:
Written by William of Devon: his colophon, 'Will[elmu]s devoniensis scripsit istum / librum/' (f. 540v).
The Old Royal Library (the English Royal Library): Westminster inventory number 'no. 972' (f. 1), included in the inventory of books in the Upper Library at Westminster of 1542.
Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library.
- Publications:
-
Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, 3 vols (London: John Murray, 1854; reprinted London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 2003), I, 161-62.
W. R. Tymms and M. D. Wyatt, The Art of Illuminating as Practised in Europe from the Earliest Times (London: Day and Sons, 1860; repr. Studio Editions, 1987), pl. XIII.5.
Walter de Gray Birch and Henry Jenner, Early Drawings and Illuminations: An Introduction to the Study of Illustrated Manuscripts (London: Bagster and Sons, 1879), p. 5.
J. W. Bradley, A Dictionary of Miniaturists, Illuminators, Calligraphers, and Copyists, 3 vols (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1887-89), I, p. 282.
E. Maunde Thompson, English Illuminated Manuscripts (London: Kegan Paul, 1895), pp. 36-38, pl. II.
E. Maunde Thompson, 'English Illuminated Manuscripts from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Century', Bibliographica, 1 (1895), 394-96, pl. XIX.
E. Maunde Thompson, 'The Grotesque and the Humorous in Illuminations of the Middle Ages', Bibliographica, 2 (1896), 319-20, fig. 4.
Frederic G. Kenyon, Facsimiles of Biblical Manuscripts in the British Museum (London, 1900), no. XIX.
George F. Warner, Illuminated Manuscripts in the British Museum: Miniatures, Borders, and Initials Reproduced in Gold and Colours (London, 1899-1903), pl. 20.
Bertold Georg Vitzthum, Die Pariser Miniaturmalerei von der Zeit des hl. Ludwig bis zu Philipp von Valois und ihr Verhältnis zur Malerei in Nordwesteuropa (Leipzig, 1907), p. 91.
British Museum Bible Exhibition 1911: Guide to the Manuscripts and Printed Books exhibited in Celebration of the Tercentenary of the Authorized Version (London: British Museum, 1911), no. 17.
J. A. Herbert, Illuminated Manuscripts (London: Methuen, 1911), p. 183, pl. xxiii.
Schools of Illumination: Reproductions from Manuscripts in the British Museum, 6 vols (London: British Museum, 1914-1930), II: English 12th and 13th Centuries (1915), pl. 9.
George F. Warner and Julius P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections, 4 vols (London: British Museum, 1921), I, p. 15.
British Museum: Reproductions from Illuminated Manuscripts, Series 2, 3rd ed. by John Alexander Herbert (London: British Museum, 1923), pl. 10.
Eric G. Millar, English Illuminated Manuscripts from the Xth to the XIIIth Century (Paris: Van Oest, 1926), pl. 77.
Elfrida O. Saunders, English Illumination, 2 vols (Florence: Pantheon, 1928), I, p. 73, II, pl. 76.
Guide to an Exhibition of English Art gathered from Various Departments and held in the Prints and Drawings Gallery (London: British Museum, 1934), no. 112.
Peter Brieger, English Art 1216-1307, Oxford History of English Art, 4 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1957), pp. 157-58, 213, 218, 223, pl. 66a.
Margaret Rickert, Painting in Britain: the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1965), pp. 103-04, pl. 105.
Derek Howard Turner, Early Gothic Illuminated Manuscripts in England (London: British Museum, 1965), p. 14, pl. 4.
Lilian M.C. Randall, Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts (Berkeley: California University Press, 1966), fig. 125.
Colophons de manuscrits occidentaux des origines aux XVIe siècle, 7 vols (Fribourg Suisse: Editions Universitaires, 1979), II, no. 5866.
Bruce Watson, 'The Place of the Cuerden Psalter in English Illumination', Gesta, 9 (1970), 34-41 (pp. 37-40, figs 7, 11).
Francis Klingender, Animals in Art and Thought to the End of the Middle Ages, ed. by Evelyn Antal and John Harthan (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), p. 400 pl. 234.
Adelaide L. Bennett, 'Additions to the William of Devon Group', Art Bulletin, 54 (1972), 31-40 (pp. 31-33, 37, figs 2, 3, 9, 12).
Robert Branner, 'The Johannes Grusch Atelier and the Continental Origins of the William of Devon Painter', Art Bulletin, 54 (1972), 24-30 (pp. 24, 26, fig. 2).
Philippe Verdier, Peter Brieger and Marie Farquhar, Art and the Courts: France and England from 1259 to 1328, The National Gallery of Canada, 27 April-2 July 1972 (Ottawa: National Galley of Canada, 1972), p. 55 fig. 46.
Adelaide L. Bennett, 'The Place of Garrett 28 in Thirteenth-century English Illumination' (unpublished doctoral dissertation, New York: Columbia University, 1973), pp. 110, 111, 141, 148, 149, 154, 155, 174, 287.
Elzbieta Temple, 'Further Additions to the William of Devon Group', Bodleian Library Record, 2 (1984), 344-48 (pp. 344, 346, fig. 4).
J. J. G. Alexander and E. Temple, Illuminated Manuscripts in Oxford College Libraries, the University Archives and the Taylor Institution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 23.+
Adelaide L. Bennett, 'A Late Thirteenth-century Psalter-Hours from London', in England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1984 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by W. M. Ormrod (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1986), pp. 15-30 (p. 24).
Nigel Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, 2 vols, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 4 (London Harvey Miller, 1982-1988), II: 1250-1285, no. 159.
Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting in the British Library (London: The British Library, 1997), no. 68.
The Libraries of King Henry VIII, ed. by J. P. Carley, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7 (London: The British Library, 2000), H2.972.
John Higgitt, The Murthly Hours: Devotion, Literacy and Luxury in Paris, England and the Gaelic West (London: British Library, 2000), pp. 121, 122, 202, 224.
John Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, 2 vols (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), I: The Manuscripts, p. 204.
Alixe Bovey, Monsters and Grotesques in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2002), pp. 45-46, pl. 39.
Justin Clegg, The Medieval Church in Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2003), p. 26, pl. 21.
Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England 1170-1300 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), pl.188.
Michaela Braesel, ‘The Influence of Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts on the Pre-Raphaelites and the Early Poetry of William Morris’, Journal of William Morris Studies, 15.4 (2004), 41-54 (p. 52 n. 19).
James P. Carley, The Books of King Henry VIII and His Wives, preface by David Starkey (London: British Library, 2004), pl. 12.
The Cambridge Illuminations: Ten Centuries of Book Production in the Medieval West, ed. by Paul Binski and Stella Panayotova (London: Harvey Miller, 2005), p. 101.
M. A. Michael, 'Urban production of manuscript books and the role of the university towns', in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain (Cambridge: University Press, 1999- ), II: 1100-1400, ed. by Nigel Morgan and Rodney M. Thomson (2008), pp. 168-94 (p. 179).
St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, ed. by B. C. Barker-Benfield, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 13, 3 vols (London: British Library, 2008), pp. cii, n. 103, 372, 1830-31.
Scot McKendrick, John Lowden and Kathleen Doyle, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (London: British Library, 2011), no. 15 [exhibition catalogue].
- Exhibitions:
- The Middle Ages, (online), 26 March 2015-
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)
- Related Material:
-
From Warner and Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections (1921), p. 15:
'I D. i BIBLE, in Latin, of S. Jerome's version; preceded by the epistle of Jerome to Paulinus (f. 1). The books of the 0. T. are in the usual Vulgate order, except that the Prayer of Manasses follows 2 Chronicles without break, Tobit follows Esther, and Wisdom follows Ecclesiasticus. Jerome's prologues, except that to Esdras and the second prologue to job; and in addition a short prologue to Ruth (f. 110, 'Ruth Moabitis ... filie Syon', from the epistle to Paulinus), a prologue to the Psalms (f. 231 b, 'Dauid filius Iesse quia Dauid dictus est Christus'), and the usual Minor Prophets prologues to Wisdom, Baruch, the (with the extracts from Jerome's epistle to Paulinus), and the short (third) prologue to Maccabees. The N. T. is arranged thus: Gospels, Pauline Epistles, Acts, Catholic Epistles, Apocalypse, with the usual prologues to the Gospels, Pauline Epistles, and Apocalypse, two prologues to the Acts ('Lucas Antiochensis', and 'Actuum apostolorum nudam aliqui'), and the prologue to the Catholic Epistles ascribed to jerome ('Non ita est ordo apud Graccos'). The apocryphal Epistle to the Laodiceans is inserted after 2 Thessalonians (f. 504). Titles and modern chapters. At the end (f. 541) are 'Interpretationes nominum Hebreorum' [by Remigius of Auxerre].
Vellum; ff. 582. 12.3/8 in. x 8 in. XIII cent. Gatherings of 16 leaves. Written by William of Devon ('Willelmus Deuoniensis scripsit istum librum', f. 540b), apparently for a religious house dedicated to S. Martin or for a private patron bearing that name.
Sec. fol. 'oculos meos'. The text is beautifully regular, with well-executed initials containing miniatures, and in many cases partial borders with grotesque figures, at the beginning of each book; initials of chapters elaborately ornamented in red and blue. A nearly full-page composite miniature on f. 4 b and another smaller one on f. 231 b; in the former (see Illum. MSS. iii the Brit. Mus., 1903, pl. 20) S. Peter, S. Paul, and S. Martin are introduced, and in the latter the martyrdom and legendary incidents in the life of S. Thomas Becket. For the illuminated first page of Genesis (f. 5) see Kenyon, Facsimiles of Biblical MSS. iii the Brit. Mus., 1900, Pl. xix; and for f. 350 b, pl. 10 of this Catalogue. Bound in oak boards covered with worn purple velvet, with silvergilt centre pieces and corners, and title on a slip of vellum nailed to the cover and protected by horn. This binding is of the 16th cent. and was probably added after the MS. had passed into the royal library. Old Royal press-mark 'no. 972'.