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Royal MS 20 B XX
- Record Id:
- 040-002107679
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002105724
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000338.0x0003c6
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Royal MS 20 B XX
- Title:
- Le livre et la vraye hystoire du bon roy Alixandre
- Scope & Content:
-
The Vraye histoire du bon roy Alexandre, incipit (rubric):'Comment nostre seigneur donna congnoissance a Alixandre de trier le bien du mal'; (text): 'Puis que le premier pere duman lignage'; with a table of contents (ff. 1r-2v). The French text of the Vraye histoire is based on the Latin Historia Alexandri Magni de preliis, written in the 10th century by the Neapolitan archpriest Leo.
Decoration:
86 two or one-column miniatures in colours and gold, with partial borders, at the beginning of each chapter, some with traces of preliminary sketches for illuminators (e.g., ff. 83, 86, 92). Foliate initials in colours and gold with extensions. Small initials in gold on blue and rose grounds with penwork decoration in white, and line-fillers in blue, rose and gold with penwork decoration in white in the list of contents section (ff. 1-2v).
Illuminated by the Master of the Royal Alexander (formerly identified with the Harvard Hannibal Master, see Backhouse 2004), active in Paris and Normandy (Rouen?); other manuscripts illuminated by him include a Book of Hours of Rouen use (Baltimore, Walter Art Gallery W. 259), and a Book of Hours of Sarum use (Sloane MS 2468) perhaps made in Rouen for the English market (see Reynolds 1994).
The subjects of the miniatures are:
f. 1r, The author reading a book at a desk in a bedroom furnished with a low chair and a blue canopied bed decorated with suns and stars.
f. 3r, Landscape with clerks studying astronomy and geometry; holding an armillary sphere, a set square, and compasses.
f. 4r, Nectanebus, enthroned with courtiers, receiving three messengers.
f. 4v, Nectanebus in his chamber, enchanting a basin of water.
f. 7r, Olympias enthroned, with attendants, and Nectanebus in a white robe with a case of astronomical instruments.
f. 8v, Nectanebus practicising enchantments on Olympias, who lies in bed.
f. 9v, Philip seated with a bird in his lap and a serpent and eggshell on the floor, surrounded by attendants, with an astronomer interpreting.
f. 10v, Aristotle instructing Alexander and three other children in the schoolroom, and Alexander being instructed by others outside.
f. 11r, Nectanebus outside a city instructing Alexander in astronomy, and Alexander pushing him into a pit.
f. 12r, Alexander in an ermine robe with Aristotle in doctor's robes, and Bucephalus being brought in by two attendants.
f. 13v, The victory of Alexander over Nicolaus.
f. 14r, Alexander being crowned by two bishops, with courtiers watching.
f. 15r, Philip enthroned, with a large sword, receiving a Persian messenger.
f. 16v, The defeat of Philip by Pausanias.
f. 18r, Alexander defeating Pausanias.
f. 18v, Alexander enthroned, conversing with his subjects.
f. 19v, Alexander with his army leaving Macedon, with the temple of Apollo on the right.
f. 20r, Alexander and his fleet about to set sail.
f. 21r, The building of Alexandria.
f. 22r, Two-part image of the destruction of Tyre, and Alexander's fleet departing for Crete.
f. 23r, Alexander, preceded by priests, entering the Temple of Jerusalem.
f. 24r, Alexander enthroned, receiving gifts sent by Darius.
f. 26v, Alexander with a glove full of seed, receiving Darius's envoys.
f. 27r, Olympias in bed; Alexander holding her hand.
f. 29v, Alexander addressing his people from a raised platform.
f. 30v, 33r, Alexander's battles with the Persians.
f. 34r, Surrender of the keys of a city.
f. 36v, Alexander's army before Darius' city.
f. 38r, Murder of Darius.
f. 38v, Burial of Darius.
f. 39v, Alexander ordering Darius' murderers to be bound.
f. 40v, Alexander praying that the mountains may close in upon a wicked tribe of savages.
f. 41v, Albanians presenting Alexander with a dog, and the dog fighting an elephant and a lion.
f. 44v, Alexander and Porrus.
f. 47v, Meeting of Alexander and the Amazons.
f. 49v, 50r, 50v. Alexander battles with dragons, beasts and white lions.
f. 51r, Alexander's battle with boars and many-handed savages.
f. 51v, Alexander fighting a three-horned beast and other strange animals.
f. 53r, Alexander unhorsing Porrus.
f. 54r, Alexander killing Porrus.
f. 54v, Burial of Porrus.
f. 55v, Alexander at a river crossing, meeting women armed with maces.
f. 56r, Alexander fighting with a hippopotamus-like beast.
f. 57r, Alexander driving off elephants with pigs and musical instruments.
ff. 58r, 58v, Alexander meeting women of the forest.
f. 60r, Alexander encountering a naked and homeless tribe (the gymnosophists).
f. 62v, Alexander has an inscribed column erected.
f. 63r, Alexander fighting with giants.
f. 64r, Alexander burning a wild man.
f. 65r, Alexander ascending by a chain of gold to a palace on a mountain.
f. 66r, Alexander sleeping in bed out of doors, under the trees of the sun and the moon, with attendants and a phoenix nearby in a tree.
f. 67v, Capture of Candaculus' wife.
f. 68v, A city being captured and Candaculus' wife restored.
f. 70r, Candace in her chamber showing Alexander his statue.
f. 71v, Candace taking Alexander to her chamber and giving him a crown.
f. 73r, Alexander fighting against dragons with emeralds in their foreheads.
f. 73v, Alexander's battle against wild bulls.
f. 75v, Alexander entering the city of Ambria.
f. 76v, Alexander, in a cage, being carried aloft by griffins.
f. 77v, Alexander lowered into the sea in a cask.
ff. 78r-80v, Fights with sword-horned men, sheep-horned dragons, horse-headed men, one-eyed giants, headless men with faces on their torsos (blemmyae) and lion-like beasts.
f. 81r, Burial of Bucephalus.
f. 82r, Alexander builds a city as a memorial to Bucephalus.
f. 82v, Alexander receiving white elephants as a gift.
f. 83r, Alexander enthroned, presented with the caladrius birds.
f. 83v, Alexander fighting with two-headed dragons.
f. 84r, Triumphant entry of Alexander into Babylon.
f. 85r, Alexander sending letters.
f. 85v, Aristotle sending a letter to Alexander.
f. 86v, The birth of a monstrous child.
f. 88v, Alexander at table; Jobas serving him poisoned wine.
f. 89r, Alexander leaving the table.
f. 92r, The funeral car of Alexander.
f. 94v, Burning of a city to avoid the capture by Perdiccas.
f. 97r, Capture of Pydna and murder of Olympias.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Royal Collection
Royal Manuscripts Digitisation Project - Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002105724
040-002107679 - Is part of:
- Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X : Royal Manuscripts
Royal MS 20 B XX : Le livre et la vraye hystoire du bon roy Alixandre - Hierarchy:
- 032-002105724[1820]/040-002107679
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
Parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Royal_MS_20_B_XX (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- French
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1415
- End Date:
- 1430
- Date Range:
- c 1420-c 1425
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment codex.
Dimensions: 285 x 195 mm (text space: 200 x 125 mm).
Foliation: f. i + 97 (+ 4 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves: 2 at the beginning and 2 at the end; f. i is a medieval parchment flyleaf)
Collation: f. i (added singleton); i8 (ff. 1-8); ii4 (ff. 9-12); iii-ix8 (ff. 13-68); x-xi2 (ff. 69-72); xii-xiii8 (ff. 73-88); xiv8+1 (ff. 89-97; f. 97 is a singleton).
Layout: written in two columns of 35-36 lines.
Script: Gothic cursive.
Binding: Post-1600. Royal library 18th-century binding of brown leather with the royal arms and a date of 1757.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: France, Central (Paris).
Provenance:
Added sketch in ink of two horses and fighting knights, 15th century (f. 53v).
Henry VIII (b. 1491, d. 1547), King of England and Ireland: the monogram 'HR' [for Henricus Rex] (f. i recto) and a shelfmark of a very large number in brown ink '73' (f. i recto) (see Carley 'Marks in Books' 1997).
The Old Royal Library (the English Royal Library): Westminster inventory number 'no. 475' (f. i recto), included in the inventory of books in the Upper Library at Westminster of 1542; and perhaps 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.
- Administrative Context:
- France, Central (Paris).
- 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 http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm.
The Romance of Alexander / Der Pariser Alexanderroman: Royal 20 B. XX, The British Library, London, with contributions by Joanna Fronska, Maud Pérez-Simon and Siegbert Himmelsbach, 2 vols (Lucerne: Quaternio, 2014) [facsimile with commentary].
- 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), I, p. 128.
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. 11).
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 (2), pp. 369-70.
D. J. A. Ross, 'Olympias and the Serpent: The Interpretation of a Baalbek Mosaic and the Date of the Illustrated Pseudo-Callisthenes', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 26 (1963) 1-21 (p. 15, fig. 5d).
Loren MacKinney, Medical Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts, Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 5, 2 parts bound together (London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1965), with Thomas Herndon, Part II, Medical Miniatures in Extant Manuscripts: A Checklist, no. 67.D.
J. A. Ross, Alexander and the Faithless Lady: A Submarine Adventure, An Inaugural lecture delivered at Birkbeck College, London, 7th November 1967 (London: Ruddock and Sons, 1967), pp. 8, 15, fig. 3.
Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Late XIV Century and the Patronage of the Duke, 2 vols, National Gallery of Art Kress Foundation Studies in the History of European Art, 2 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1967), I, p. 391, etc.
John E. Murdoch, Album of Science: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. by I. B. Cohen (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1984), no. 163.
David J. A. Ross, Studies in the Alexander Romance (London: Pindar, 1985), pp. 173, 181, 259, 353, 364, 386-87, 395, 398.
Catherine Reynolds, 'English Patrons and French Artists in Fifteenth Century Normandy', in England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, ed. by D. Bates and A. Curry (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), pp. 299-313 (p. 304).
Janet Backhouse, 'Illuminated Manuscripts Associated with Henry VII and Members of his Immediate Family', in The Reign of Henry VII: Proceedings of the 1993 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by Benjamin Thompson (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1995), pp. 175-87 (p. 180, n. 19).V.
M. Schmidt, A Legend and its Image: The Aerial Flight of Alexander the Great in Medieval Art (Groningen, 1995), cat. no. 46, pp.185-86 [exhibition catalogue].
Scot McKendrick, The History of Alexander the Great: An Illuminated Manuscript of Vasco da Lucena's French Translation of the Ancient Text by Quintus Curtius Rufus (Los Angeles, 1996), fig.1.
The Mythical Quest: In Search of Adventure, Romance and Enlightenment, intro. by Penelope Lively (London: British Library, 1996), pl. on p. 40.
J. P. Carley, 'Marks in Books and the Libraries of Henry VIII', Papers-Bibliographical Society of America, 91 (1997), 583-606 (pp. 604, 606).
C. W. Dutschke, 'The Truth in the Book: The Marco Polo Texts in Royal 19.D.I and Bodley 264', Scriptorium: Revue internationale des études relatives aux manuscrits, 52 (1998) 278-99 (p. 298).
The Image of Time: European Manuscript Books (Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, 2000), no. 62 [exhibition catalogue].
The Libraries of King Henry VIII, ed. by J. P. Carley, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7 (London: The British Library, 2000), H2.298.D.
J. A. Ross and M. A. Stones, 'The Roman d’Alexandre in French Prose: Another Illustrated Manuscript from Champagne or Flanders c. 1300', Scriptorium: Revue internationale des études relatives aux manuscrits, 56 (2002), 345-56 (p. 346).
Sophie Page, Magic in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2004), pp. 1 (half-title page), 11-14, 64, pl. 8-9.
Elizabeth Morrison, Beasts: Factual & Fantastic (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007), pp. 78-79.
Margaret Scott, Medieval Dress & Fashion (London: British Library, 2007), pl. 83.
Scot McKendrick, John Lowden, and Kathleen Doyle, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (London: British Library, 2011), no. 75 [exhibition catalogue].
Maud Pérez-Simon, Mise en roman, mise en image: Les manuscrits du Roman d'Alexandre en prose (Paris: Champion, 2013), pp. 264, 268, 375.
The Romance of Alexander / Der Pariser Alexanderroman: Royal 20 B. XX, The British Library, London, with contributions by Joanna Fronska, Maud Pérez-Simon and Siegbert Himmelsbach, 2 vols (Lucerne: Quaternio, 2014) [facsimile with commentary].
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)