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Royal MS 19 B XIII
- Record Id:
- 040-002107605
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002105724
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000338.0x00035f
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Royal MS 19 B XIII
- Title:
- Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose
- Scope & Content:
-
Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun; rubric: 'Ci commence le romans de la rose Ou lart damors est toute enclose'; incipit: 'Maintes genz dient que en songes Na se fables non et menconges'; explicit: 'Ainsint oi la rose vermeille Atant fu ior et ie mesueille.' Colophon: 'Explicit le romanz de la rose'.
Decoration:
2 full-page miniatures in colours and gold preceding the text (ff. 3v, 4r). 22 smaller miniatures in colours and gold (ff. 5r, 6r, 6v, 7r, 8r, 9r, 10v, 14v, 16r, 17v, 29r, 31v, 51v, 83r, 103r, 138v, 141v), some with instructions to illuminator (ff. 14v, 18r, 31v, 103r) with a full bar border containing drolleries. 1 foliate initial in colours and gold, at the beginning of the text (f. 5r). 'Champ' initials in gold on blue and rose grounds with penwork decoration in white.
The contents of miniatures are:
ff. 3v- 4r, Two miniatures forming four compartments: L'Amans (Lover) pierced by an arrow kneeling before the God of Love (Diex d'Amour) and holding a scroll reading 'Sa mon gre e sauourousaite'; and 12 figures including men, women, monks and a queen, all pierced by arrows holding scrolls with the following verses 'Lonc temps vivre ne pouray', 'Ay ay nus ne doit amer', 'Dame merci si forment', 'lonc temps servi ay', 'Parmi la forest damours', 'Joliaitement me maintendray', 'Qui longuement pourait', 'Longue demouree fet', 'Je ne lay mie mes vous', 'Ma dame ie vous aim', 'Vray diex que feray iane', 'Lasse iai failli a ioie'.
f. 5v, L'Amans (Lover) dreams in bed about the Rose and beside him a figure with a club (Dangier?); Haine (Hatred) and L'Amans (Lover).
f. 6r, Vilanie (Villainy) offers L'Amans (Lover) a potion; Covoitise (Covetousness or Greed) standing outside a closed gate.
f. 6v, Avarice,with a chest full of treasure and raiment hanging above; Envie, looking askance at a pair of lovers.
f. 7r, Tristece (Sorrow or Misery) tearing her hair and clothes.
f. 7v, Vielleice (Old age), with crutch, crouching over the fire.
f. 8r, Papelardie (Religious hypocrisy), with open psalmbook, kneeling at an altar; Povrete (Poverty) in rags with a nun and a friar looking at her.
f. 9r, Oiseuse (Idleness) admits L'Amans (Lover) through the gate of the Garden of Deduiz.
f. 10v, Deduiz and four companions dancing. Above is inscribed in gold 'Sus au vireli devant, derriere sont li mesdisant'.
f. 14v, Narcisus at the fountain.
f. 16r, Amors (God of Love) shoots L'Amans (Lover) with his arrows.
f. 17v, Amors (God of Love) takes L'Amans prisoner.
f. 29r, Honte (Shame, Modesty) and Peor (Fear, Timidity) rousing Dangier (Danger).
f. 31v, Bel Acueil in prison, guarded by Vielle (old woman).
f. 51v, L'Amans (Lover) talks to Amis (Friend).
f. 83r, Faussemblant (False Seeming), Contrainte Atenance (Abstinence), and another converse with Male Bouche.
f. 103r, Franchise, with spear and shield, addresses Dangier.
f. 138v, Pygmalion kneels before the statue.
f. 141v, Venus sets fire to the castle.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Royal Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002105724
040-002107605 - Is part of:
- Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X : Royal Manuscripts
Royal MS 19 B XIII : Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose - Hierarchy:
- 032-002105724[1752]/040-002107605
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
A parchment codex, 144 folios
- Digitised Content:
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Royal_MS_19_B_XIII (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- French
French, Old - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1315
- End Date:
- 1345
- Date Range:
- c 1320-c 1340
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Material: Parchment codex.
Dimensions: 310 x 210 mm (text space: 230 x 150 mm).
Foliation: ff. iii + 144 + iv (the unfoliated flyleaves are 2 modern paper leaves at the beginning and at the end, and 1 medieval parchment leaf at the beginning and 2 at the end; ff. 1-2 are medieval parchment flyleaves).
Collation: i1+1+1 (including 1 unfoliated leaf), ii2, iii-xiii12, xiv8; Catchwords and bifolium signatures.
Layout: Written in two columns of 40 lines.
Script: Gothic. Instructions for rubrics and correction notes provided by one hand (e.g., ff. 66v, 128r, 131r-132r).
Binding: Post-1600. Royal library binding of brown leather with the royal arms and a date of 1757.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: France (Paris).
Provenance:
Sir Richard Stury (b. c.1327, d. 1395), privy counsellor to Edward III and Richard II, and one of the Lollard knights: owned by him, see inscription below.
Thomas [Thomas of Woodstock], duke of Gloucester (b. 1355, d. 1397), prince, the seventh (but fifth surviving) son of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault: inscribed, 'Ceste livre est a Thomas, fiz au Roy, duc de Glouc[estre], achates des / executours mons[ire] Ric[hard] Stury' (f. 2r); included in the list of books confiscated to him at this capture and death for treason in 1397 (see Krochalis 1988).
Richard II (b. 1367, d. 1400), king of England and lord of Ireland, and duke of Aquitaine: seized on his order with other goods of Thomas of Woodstock in 1397 (see above).
The Old Royal Library (the English Royal Library): perhaps to be identified with 'Le romant de la roze' in the list of books at Richmond Palace of 1535, no. 91.
Inscribed 'Lib[er] le romainis de la rose et incip[i]t 2° fo[lio] Enz en la milieu', 15th century (f. 5r).
Added sketches of knights in armour, early 16th century? (ff. 1v-2r).
Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library.
- Information About Copies:
-
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript, see Digitised Manuscripts http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/.
- Publications:
-
H. L. D. Ward and J. A. Herbert, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols (London: British Museum, 1883-1910), II (1893), I, p. 874.
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, p. 328.
Fritz Saxl and Hans Meier, Catalogue of Astrological and Mythological Illuminated Manuscripts of the Latin Middle Ages, 4 vols (London: The Warburg Institute, 1953), III: Manuscripts in English Libraries, p. 217.
V. J. Scattergood, ‘Literary Culture at the Court of Richard II, in English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, ed. by V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne (London: Duckworth, 1983), pp. 29-43 (pp. 36, 41).
Jeanne E. Krochalis, 'The Books and Readings of Henry V and his Circle', The Chaucer Review, 23 (1988), 50-77 (p. 51).
Herman Beart, 'Der Roman der Rose: Raum im Blick', in Träume im Mittelalter: Ikonologische Studien, ed. by Agostino Paravicini Bagliani and Giorgio Stabile (Stuttgart: Belser, 1989), pp. 183-92 (p. 190, n. 3).
Herman Beart, 'Aux sources du Roman de la Rose', in Medieval Codicology, Iconography, Literature, and Translation: Studies for Keith Val Sinclair, ed. by Peter Rolfe Monks and D. D. R. Owen (Leiden: Brill, 1994), pp. 110-16 (p. 111, n. 6).
Herman Beart, 'L'illustration de l'illustration: L'exemple de l'image dans le Roman de la Rose', in Ensi firent li ancessor: Mélanges de philologie médiévale offert à Marc-René Jung, ed. by Luciano Rosi, 2 vols (Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 1996), II, pp. 491-504 (pp. 497, n. 44, 505).
The Libraries of King Henry VIII, ed. by J. P. Carley, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7 (London: The British Library, 2000), H1.81.
Herman Braet, ‘L’instruction, le titulus, la rubrique: Observations sur la nature des éléments péritextuels’, in ’Als Ich Can’: Liber Amicorum in Memory of Professor Dr. Maurits Smeyers, ed. by Bert Cardon and others (Paris: Uitgeverij Peeters, 2002), pp. 203-12 (p. 203).
Tine Melis, ‘An Alexander Manuscript for a Powerful Patron (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodl. 264)’?’, 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. 961-81 (p. 972).
Pamela Porter, Courtly Love in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2003), p. 29.
David Rundle, 'Habits of Manuscript-Collecting: the Dispersals of the Library of Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester', in Lost Libraries: The Destruction of Great Book Collections since Antiquity, ed. by James Raven (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 106-24 (p. 120, n. 17).
Scot McKendrick, John Lowden and Kathleen Doyle, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (London: British Library, 2011), no. 129 [exhibition catalogue].
Herman Braet, Nouvelle Bibliographie du Roman de la Rose (Louvain: Peeters, 2017), p. 203.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)