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Royal MS 14 E II
- Record Id:
- 040-002107003
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002105724
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000338.0x000099
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100057740420.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Royal MS 14 E II
- Title:
- Jean de Courcy, Le chemin de Vaillance; Christine de Pisan, L'epistre Othea; Alain Chartier, Le breviaire des nobles and other texts in French
- Scope & Content:
-
Contents:
ff. 1r-294v: Jean de Courcy, Le chemin de Vaillance, beginning: 'La glorieuse trinite Trois persones en vnite', ending: 'Pardonnez moy car ie songoye'.
ff. 295r-331v: Christine de Pisan, L'Epistre Othea, beginning: 'Othea, deesse deprudence, Quy les bons adresse en vaillance'.
ff. 332r-335v: Alain Chartier, Le breviaire des nobles. 'Cy commence le breviaire des nobles', beginning: '[J]e Noblesse, dame de bon vouloir, Royne des preux, princesse des haulz fais'.
ff. 335v-337r: Les complaintes des IX malheureux et des IX malheureuses. Beginning: '[V]ous quy voulez par ce present arroy scavoir le cas des malheureux humains'.
ff. 338r-354r: Ramón Lull, Libre del Orde de cavayleria in an anonymous French translation, beginning: 'Cy commence le livre de lordre de chevallerie'.
Decoration:
4 large miniatures in colours and gold, with full borders, at the beginning of books (f. 1r, 77r, 194r, 250r). 10 smaller miniatures in colours and gold, with partial borders (ff. 30r, 51v, 103v, 123r, 133r, 145r, 163v, 218r, 261v, 295r, 338r). Spaces left for miniatures or initials (ff. 287r, 332r, 335v). Large initials in colours with penwork decoration in gold, at the beginning of books and chapters. Initials in gold on rose and blue grounds, with penwork decoration in white.
The subjects of the miniatures are:
f. 1r: Nature appearing to the author, Jean de Courcy, in a dream and showing him the lady Vaillance;
f. 30r: Jean de Courcy, brought to Reason by Prowess and Boldness;
f. 51v: Pleasure helping the author, Jean de Courcy, to pass a bridge;
f. 77r: Jean de Courcy, sleeping at a fountain with Nature as a young woman approaching;
f. 103v: Prowess and Boldness as soldiers addressing a group of women;
f. 123r: Jean de Courcy, and Humility with the ruins of the Castle of Pride;
f. 133r: Jean de Courcy, riding a horse along a narrow path with soldiers lying in wait;
f. 145r: Violence, Fraud, and Deceit with arms and the lady Greed with her treasure;
f. 163v: Hope leading Jean de Courcy out of a tower;
f. 194r: Jean de Courcy, accompanied by Virtues leaving the Forest of Temptation;
f. 218r: Jean de Courcy, in a boat with other men;
f. 250r: Jean de Courcy, conducted to a garden by Charity;
f. 261v: Faith showing the spiritual mountain to Jean de Courcy;
f. 295r: Hector setting off to war, at the beginning of the L'epistre Othea;
f. 338r: A hermit instructing a knight, at the beginning of the Libre del Orde de cavayleria.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Royal Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002105724
040-002107003 - Is part of:
- Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X : Royal Manuscripts
Royal MS 14 E II : Jean de Courcy, Le chemin de Vaillance; Christine de Pisan, L'epistre Othea; Alain Chartier, Le breviaire des nobles and other… - Hierarchy:
- 032-002105724[1202]/040-002107003
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100057740420.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- French, Middle
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1473
- End Date:
- 1483
- Date Range:
- 1473-1483
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Material: Parchment.
Dimensions: 470 x 345mm (text space: 295 x 220), written in two columns.
Foliation: ff. 354 (+ 1 unfoliated modern parchment flyleaf at the beginning and 3 unfoliated medieval parchment flyleaves and 1 unfoliated modern paper flyleaf at the end).
Script: Gothic cursive.
Binding: Post-1600. Royal Library brown-leather binding, with the royal arms of England, and a date of 1757.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Netherlands, Bruges.
Provenance:
Edward IV (b. 1442, d. 1483), king of England and lord of Ireland: the royal arms of England surmounted by a crowned helm with mantling in Edward's colours of red and blue, surrounded by the Garter (ff. 1r, 77r, 194r, 250r), with two escutcheons bearing the royal arms differenced by labels of three or five points for his sons (f. 1), and a lozenge bearing a white rose of the York family, with a Yorkist badge 'Dieu et mon droit' (ff. 1r, 30r, 77r, 103v, 145r, 163v, 194r, 218r, 250r, 295)r; made for him in the Southern Netherlands, probably c. 1479- c. 1480: record of payment to the foreign merchant Philip Maisertuell for books and record of books in the Great Wardrobe Accounts of 1480 (see McKendrick, The Romuléon and the Manuscripts of Edward IV, 1994).
The Old Royal Library (the English Royal Library): included in the list of books at Richmond Palace of 1535, no. 26; and in the Catalogue of 1666, Royal Appendix 71, f. 13, as '31.2. Chemin de Vaillance en vers. Traittié Oth[ea] avec Gloses. Breviaire des Nobles. Chevalerie'.
Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library.
- Information About Copies:
- Select digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm.
- Publications:
-
Henri Omont, 'Les manuscrits français des rois d'Angleterre au château de Richmond', in Etudes romanes dédiés à Gaston Paris (Paris: É. Bouillon, 1891), pp. 1-13 (p. 7).
Henry Leigh Douglas Ward and John Alexander Herbert, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols (London: British Museum, 1883-1910), I, pp. 895, 922.
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), II, pp. 139-40.
Pere Bohigas, 'El Repértori de manuscrits Catalans', Estudis Universitaris Catalans, 12 (1927) 1-47 (p. 40).
Roberta D. Cornelius, The Figurative Castle: A Study in the Medieval Allegory of the Edifice with especial Reference to Religious Writings (Bryn Mawr, Pensylvania, 1930), pp. 170-72.
Alison Joan McCrae, ‘A Contribution to the Study of ‘Le Chemin de Vaillance’, a fifteenth century allegorical poem by Jean de Courcy’ (Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of London, 1934), URL: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1546140/1/McCrae_693858.pdf [accessed 17.05.21].
Curt F. Bühler, 'Sir John Fastolf's Manuscripts of the Epître d'Othéa and Stephen Scrope's Translation of this Text', Scriptorium: Revue internationale des études relative aux manuscrits, 3 (1949), 123-28 (p. 124).
Fritz Saxl and Hans Meier, Catalogue of Astrological and Mythological Illuminated Manuscripts of the Latin Middle Ages, 4 vols (London: Warburg Institute, 1953), III: Manuscripts in English Libraries, p. 199.
Anglo-Flemish Art under the Tudors: An Exhibition held in the Department of Prints and Drawings (London: British Museum, 1954), no. 3.
Gianni Mombello, 'Les complaintes des IX malheureux et de IX Malheureuses: Variations sur le thème de Neuf Preux et du Vado Mori,' Romania, 95 (1966), 345-78 (pp. 361, 369-76) [an edition of ff. 335v-337].
Gianni Mombello, La tradizione manoscritta dell'Epistre Othea de Chrstine de Pizan: Prolegomeni all'edizione del testo, Memorie dell’Accademia delle Scienze di Torino. Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, ser. 4. no. 15 (Turin: Accademia delle Scienze, 1967), no. 39.
Margaret Kekewich, 'Edward IV, William Caxton, and Literary Patronage in Yorkist England', The Modern Language Review, 66 (1971) 481-87 (p. 484).
Janet Backhouse, 'Founders of the Royal Library: Edward IV and Henry VII as Collectors of Illuminated Manuscripts', in England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by David Williams (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1987), pp. 23-42 (pp. 25, 39).
Scot Mckendrick, ‘La Grande Histoire Cesar and the Manuscripts of Edward IV’, in English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700, 2, ed. by Peter Beal and Jeremy Griffiths, (London: British Library, 1990), pp. 109-38 (p. 110, pl. 2).
Scot McKendrick, 'Lodewijk van Gruuthuse en de Librije van Edward IV', in Lodewijk van Gruuthuse , Mecenas en Europees Diplomaats ca. 1427-1492, ed. by M. P. J. Marten (Bruges: Stichting, 1992), pp. 153-59 (p.159, n. 89).
Scot McKendrick, 'The Romuléon and the Manuscripts of Edward IV', England in the Fifteenth Century, ed. by N. Rogers, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 4 (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1994), pp. 149-69 (p. 162, nn. 75, 77).
B. Doris Dubuc, 'Le Chemin de Vaillance: mise a point sur la date de composition et la vie de l’auteur', in Medieval Codicology, Iconography, Literature, and Translation: Studies for Keith Val SinClair, ed. by R. Rolfe Monks and D. D. R. Owen (Leiden : E. J. Brill, 1994), pp. 276-83.
Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting in the British Library (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), frontispiece.
Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs, Richard III’s Books: Ideals and Reality in the Life and Library of a Medieval Prince (Stroud, Gloucestershire, Sutton, 1997), pp. 80 n. 21; 99 n. 100, fig. 36.
The Libraries of King Henry VIII, ed. by J. P. Carley, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7 (London: The British Library, 2000), H1.35.
Hanno Wijjsman, 'William Lord Hastings, Les Faits de Jacques De Lalaing et le Maître aux inscriptions blanches à propos du manuscrit français 16830 de la Bibliothèque nationale de France', in ’Als Ich Can’: Liber Amicorum in Memory of Professor Dr. Maurits Smeyers, ed. by Bert Cardon and others, 2 vols (Paris: Uitgeverij Peeters, 2002), pp. 1641-664 (p. 1652).
Scot McKendrick, Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts 1400-1550 (London, British Library, 2003), pls 62, 64.
Thomas Kren and Scot McKendrick, Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003), p. 289. [exhibition catalogue].
Gothic: Art for England 1400-1547, ed. by Richard Marks and Paul Williamson (London: Victoria & Albert Museum Publications, 2003), no. 43 [exhibition catalogue].
Margaret Scott, Medieval Dress & Fashion (London: British Library, 2007), pl. 97.
Philippe Champy, Les Courcy: Mille ans d'histoire d'une famille normande (Paris: Guénégaud, 2007), pp. 61, 66.
Scot McKendrick, John Lowden and Kathleen Doyle, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (London: British Library, 2011), no. 62 [exhibition catalogue].
Scot McKendrick, ‘The Manuscripts of Edward IV: The Documentary Evidence’, in 1000 Years of Royal Books and Manuscripts, ed. by Kathleen Doyle and Scot McKendrick (London: The British Library, 2013), pp. 149-77 (p. 155).
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)