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Royal MS 19 C VII

Record Id:

040-002107617

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

032-002105724

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000338.0x00036b

LARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100165171787.0x000001

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Royal MS 19 C VII

Title:

Geoffroy de la Tour-Landry, Le Livre du Chevalier de la Tour-Landry; Renaut de Louhans, Mélibée et Prudence; Philippe de Mézières, Griseldis

Scope & Content:

This manuscript contains a copy of Le Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landry (The Book of the Knight of the Tower), written by Geoffroy IV de la Tour Landry (b. before 1330, d. between 1402 and 1406), a nobleman of Anjou, for the instruction of his daughters.

The volume also contains a number of other texts in French, including Mélibée et Prudence, a translation by the Dominican friar Renaut de Lousans (fl. 1330s) of Albertanus of Brescia's Liber Consolationis et Consilii; Griseldis, a prose translation of Petrarch's Tale of Griselda, written by Philippe de Mézières (b. c. 1327, d. 1405); and a devotional poem attributed to the French author Jean de Meun (b. c. 1240, d. c. 1305).

Contents:

ff. 1r-121v: Geoffroy IV de la Tour-Landry, Le Livre du Chevalier de la Tour-Landry, written in French prose, with a prologue beginning, 'En lan mil troixcens soixante et onze, en vn jardin...'; the main text beginning, 'Et cest moult belle chose et moult noble...'.

ff. 123r-148v: Renaut de Louhans, Mélibée et Prudence, an adaptation of the Liber Consolationis et Consilii of Albertano of Brescia (b. c. 1195, d. c. 1251), written in French prose, beginning, 'Uns jouuenceauls appele Melibee, puissant et riches, ot vne femme nommee Prudence...'

ff. 150r-164r: Philippe de Mézières, Griseldis, a translation of Petrarch's Tale of Griselda, written in French prose, beginning, 'Es confines de Pimont en Lombardie...', and ending with a colophon, 'Ci fine listoire du miroue[r] des dames mariees, cestassauoir de la haulte et merueilleuse vertu de pacience obedience et vraie humilite et constance de Griseldiz marquise de Saluces'.

ff. 165r-166r: A devotional poem of 88 lines, written in French, attributed to Jean de Meun, beginning, 'Dieux ait lame des trespassez/ Car des biens quilz ont amasses...'; written in a different hand from the rest of the manuscript.

ff. 122r-v, 149v and 164v are blank.

Decoration:

1 miniature of Geoffroy de la Tour-Landry, reading to his wife and daughters in a garden, in colours and gold, with a foliate border in colours and gold (f. 1r).

Large foliate initials in colours and gold, with foliate extensions, at the beginning of each of the three main texts (ff. 1r, 123r, 150r).

Small decorated initials in gold on red and blue grounds. Line-fillers in gold, red and blue.

Added drawings of armoured knights, horses and noble ladies, in a 15th-16th century hand (ff. ii recto, ii verso, 149r, 166v, 167r).

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Medieval and Renaissance Women
Royal Collection

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002105724
040-002107617

Is part of:

Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X : Royal Manuscripts

Royal MS 19 C VII : Geoffroy de la Tour-Landry, Le Livre du Chevalier de la Tour-Landry; Renaut de Louhans, Mélibée et Prudence; Philippe…

Hierarchy:

032-002105724[1764]/040-002107617

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_100165171787.0x000001

Thumbnail:

Languages:

French, Middle

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1430

End Date:

1470

Date Range:

Middle of the 15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript

Physical Characteristics:

Material: Parchment.

Dimensions: 320 x 230 mm (written space: 205 x 130 mm).

Foliation: ff. ii + 167 (+ 1 unfoliated paper flyleaf at the beginning and the end); f. i is a parchment flyleaf with a marbled paper leaf affixed to the recto; f. ii is a parchment flyleaf; f. 167 is a parchment flyleaf with a marbled paper leaf affixed to the verso.

Collation: Gatherings of 8: i-xx⁸ (ff. 1-160), xxi⁷(ff. 161-167).

Catchwords.

Script: Gothic cursive.

Binding: Post-1600. British Museum in-house. Brown half-leather binding, with the Royal arms gold-stamped on the upper and lower covers. Rebound 14 October 1968.

Custodial History:

Origin:

Northern France.

Provenance:

Inscribed, 15th century-16th century: 'Ihesus merci quod Ward' (f. i verso), with added pen-trials and drawings of armoured knights, horses, and ladies (ff. ii recto, ii verso, 149r, 166v, 167r).

The Old Royal Library (the English Royal Library): included in the list of books at Richmond Palace of 1535, no. 84 (see Carley, ed., Libraries of King Henry VIII (2000), pp. 22-23); included in the catalogue of 1666, Royal Appendix 71, f. 11r.

Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library.

Publications:

David Casley, A Catalogue of the Manuscripts of the King’s Library: An Appendix to the Catalogue of the Cottonian Library (London, 1734), p. 297.

Le Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landry pour l'enseignement de ses filles, ed. by M. A. de Montaiglon (Paris, 1854), pp. xlii-xliii.

H. 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. 10).

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. 335-36.

Jean-Thiébaut Welter, L'exemplum dans la littérature religieuse et didactique du Moyen âge (Paris, 1927), p. 204.

Mendal G. Frampton, 'The Date of the Flourishing of the "Wakefield Master"', Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, 50 (1935), 631-60 (pp. 636 n. 30, 638-39).

The Libraries of King Henry VIII,ed. by J. P. Carley, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 7 (London: British Library, in association with the British Academy, 2000), pp. 22-23 (H1.84).

Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales. Volume 1, ed. by Robert M. Correale (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002), p. 329.

Rebecca Barnhouse, The Book of the Knight of the Tower: Manners for Young Medieval Women (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 33, 236 n. 4.

Kate Jackson, 'Chaucer's Melibee: what can we learn from some late-medieval manuscripts?', Leeds Studies in English, 43 (2012), 93-115 (pp. 107-09).

Petrarch's Triumphi in the British Isles, ed. by Alessandra Petrina (Cambridge: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2020), p. 22.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Geoffroy IV de la Tour-Landry, soldier and nobleman of Anjou, fl before 1330-after 1402
Philippe de Mézières, French soldier and author, c 1327-1405
Renaut de Lousans, Dominican friar, fl 1330s

Places:

Northern France

Related Material:

From 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. 335-36.

'ROMANCES, &c., in French, viz.:-

1. 'Le liure que fist le Cheualier de La Tour pour lenseignement de ses filles.' In the prologue the author [Geoffroy de La Tour Landry] states that in 1371 he resolved to make 'vn liure et vn exemplaire pour mes filles aprendre a romancier et entendre comment elles se doiuent gouuerner et le bien du mal sauoir', and bade two priests and two clerks collect examples 'de la bible que jauoie, gestes des roys, et croniques de France, de Grece et dangleterre, et de maintes autres estranges terres'. He adds that he made 'deux liures, lun pour mes filz et lautre pour mes filles, pour aprendre a romancier'; but nothing is now known of the former book. The latter (the present work) was not finished until 1372: see f. 40, 'en cest an, qui est lan mil trois cens lxxii', and f. 89, 'des le temps de la bataille de Crecy [1346], et si a enuiron xxvi ans'. Another copy is in Add. MS. 17447. Printed at Paris in 1514, 1517, and n.d. (veuve Jehan Trepperel et Jehan Jehannot, early 16th cent.); and again in 1854, when it was 'publié d'après les manuscrits de Paris et de Londres' (i. e. the present MS.) by Anatole de Montaiglon, with a copious preface (cf. also P. Paris, Les MSS. François, v, p. 73). An English translation was made and printed by William Caxton in 1483-4; and an earlier English version, contained in Harley MS. 1764, was edited by Thomas Wright for the Early English Text Society in 1868. Prologue beg. 'En lan mil troixcens soixante et onze, en vn jardin'. The treatise beg. (f. 2 b, after a rubric now erased) 'Et cest moult belle chose et moult noble', and ends 'si comme il est contenu ou liure des saiges, et aussi en vne euuangille. Ci fine le iiure du cheualier de la tour'. f. 1.

2. 'Le liure de Mellibee et de Dame Prudence' (so colophon): an adaptation of the Liber Consolationis et Consilii of Albertano of Brescia (d. circ. 1248, see above, 12 D. VII). From the introduction prefixed in a Paris MS. (now Bibl. Nat., fonds fr. 578) described by P. Paris, Les MSS. François, v, pp. 55-65, this version (on which Chaucer's Tale of Melibeus is founded) would seem to have been made by Renaud de Louens for the son of the lady to whom he had dedicated in 1336 his 'Boeoe de Consolation' (see 19 A. IV, art. 1). It has also been attributed to Jean de Meun (Albetani Brixiensis Liber Consolationis et Consilii, ed. T. Sundby, Chaucer Soc., 1873, p. xviii; Chaucer's Works, ed. Skeat, 1894, iii, p. 426, v, p. 201); but see P. Paris in Hist. Litt. de la France, xxviii, p. 429. Other copies are in 19 C. XI, f. 52, and the Paris MSS. Bibl. Nat., fonds fr. 580, Bibl. de l'Arsenal, nos. 2691, 3356. Printed in Le Ménagier de Paris, ed. J. Pichon, Soc. des Bibliophiles français, i, 1846, pp. 186-235, where it is incorporated in a moral treatise made about 1393. Beg. 'Uns jouuenceauls appele Melibee, puissant et riches, ot vne femme nommee Prudence'. Ends 'que Dieux au point de la mort nous veulle pardonner les nostres amen. amen'. f. 123.

3. The tale of Patient Griselda, translated from the Latin of Petrarch (see above, 8 B. vi, art. 22, 12 C. XX, art. 5), the latter's version (on which Chaucer based his Clerkes Tale) being itself an amplified translation of Boccaccio's Decameron, Day 10, Novel 10. The present version is printed in Le Ménagier de Paris (see above, art. 2), I, pp. 99-125. Another copy is in the Paris MS. Bibl. Nat., fonds fr. 2201. Beg. 'Es confines de Pimont en Lombardie'. The story ends (f. 163b) 'successeur de Saluces de tous ses amis et subgiez'. Then follow, without a break, the concluding remarks of Petrarch: 'Et est assauoir que maistre Francois Picart portecouronne [i.e. François Pétrarque, poëte couronné] dist ainsi en la fin de ceste merueilleuse ystoire. Ceste ystoire, dist il, ay ie voulu escripre . . . pour son mortel mary'. Colophon, 'Ci fine listoire du miroue[r] des dames mariees, cestassauoir de la haulte et merueilleuse vertu de pacience obedience et vraie humilite et constance de Griseldiz marquise de Saluces'. f. 150.

4. 'Le codicille maistre Jehan de Meun' (so title and colophon): the poem in 88 lines (see 19 B. XII, art. 5). f. 165. Beg.:-

'Dieux ait lame des trespassez Car des biens quilz ont amassez.'

Ends:-

'Que vous ne mauez mie creu A tart vous en repentirez.'

This article is in a different hand from the rest of the volume. On the fly-leaves (ff. 11, 11 b, 149, 166 b) are rough drawings of knights in armour, &c. (15th-16th cent.), and on f. 1 b is scribbled 'Ihesus merci quod Ward'.

Vellum; ff. ii + 167. 123/4 in. x 91/2 in. Middle of XV cent. Gatherings of 8 leaves (last⁷), with catchwords. Sec. fol. 'Ne leur acroistre'. One coarsely executed miniature (the author of art. 1 reading to his three daughters in a garden) with initial and border (f. 1); other initials in gold and colours. No. 94 in cat. of MSS. at Richmond Palace in 1535 (see 15 D. I); cat. of 1666, f. 11; not in CMA.'