ƟThe Canterbury ‘Trussel’ Bible, with prologues of Jerome and Interpretation of Hebrew Names, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on fine parchment [southern England, or perhaps northern France, third quarter of the thirteenth century] 690 leaves (plus two original endleaves at front, and two at back), foliated in modern hand to include endleaves and followed here, uncollatable in usual fashion, but entire text checked and only one leaf missing (that with 3 Kings, end of 22-opening 23), else complete, double column of 44 lines of a legible and professional university hand in dark black ink, capitals touched in brick-red, occasional marginalia set within coloured penwork boxes, versal initials in alternate red or blue set both in edge of column and in adjacent margin, running titles in alternate red or blue capitals at head of page with penwork extensions, 2-line initials in red or blue with elaborate contrasting penwork encasing them and filling margins with vine-like foliage curls and jagged edged lines along the innermost edges of their descenders, sixty-six decorated initials in blue or soft pink, heightened with white penwork, often enclosing lacertine dragon-headed drollery creatures, with foliate shoots and gold bezants at corners pushing into margins, all on contrasting coloured grounds with tiny white penwork, seventy-two historiated initials in blue or soft pink enclosing Bible scenes and figures, with thin gold bars used as frame to their grounds, these often with thick bodied foliate extensions terminating in tiny leaves and gold bezants in borders (that opening prologue to Genesis with decorated bar borders in same on three sides of text), ten very large historiated initials containing figures with castle turrents, curled animals and other devices, with space filled within the bodies of the initial with lacertine winged dragons curling around to bite their own bodies and sprouting foliage from their tails, one full-page Genesis initial with seven scenes of the life of Christ set within quadrilobed gold frames with sharp points at the intersections of their lobes, all set on a single blue and pink decorated band and with elaborate head and foot pieces in margin or swirling and interlocking foliage terminating in small leaves and gold bezants, many leaves with original alphabetical quire and leaf signatures, smudging to details of two initials, white paint of faces partly oxidised to grey in places, natural flaw to parchment on fol. 263, small number of mistakes by the painter of the versal initials (in form: missing numeral on fol. 184v, subsequently corrected by dropping ‘xvii’ later in text; and ‘xxxii’ on fol. 344v where he should have written “xxxiv’, thus ‘xlii’ repeated twice on fols. 347v-48r), small dark spotting in inner gutter on fols. 325v-326r, small losses to top of leaf in opening text of John (affecting only a few characters in uppermost 8 lines), two or three wormholes in first leaf, trimmed at edges with losses to running titles, else in very good condition, 174 by 115mm.; early nineteenth-century blue morocco, tooled with frames of rollstamps around a central rectangle of angular floral bosses, the outermost frame profusely gilt with floral designs, spine gilt tooled in compartments with “BIBLIA LATINA / MS / CIRC. 1353” (see below), outermost edges of inside of boards also profusely gilt, pale blue watered silk pastedowns and doublures (so close to the binding of another Bible ex Yates Thompson collection, and sold last in our rooms, 9 December 2015, lot 111, to suggest the same binder), the width and weight of the volume causing the binding to separate from the book block at front and back, now nearly loose in binding and held in place only by silk doublures (these with tears where binding attaches to volume), two thongs snapped in Pauline Epistles, but overall in solid and presentable state, gilt edgesThis is a fine thirteenth-century Bible, produced in a de luxe format with nearly one hundred and fifty decorated initials, probably in England. Only the tiniest handful of such Bibles surviving today have any secure medieval provenance, but this was demonstrably in the library of Canterbury Cathedral, the absolute epicentre of Christian worship in the British Isles, throughout the Middle Ages; and bears on its endleaf the signature of one of the last members of the community before the Reformation, who presumably took it with him. From there it passed through the hands of Thomas Rawlinson, “the Leviathan of book collectors”, and thereafter to the libraries of an important British theologian, a Liberal politician and a Mayfair aristocrat. It has not appeared on the open market in nearly forty years and is now the very last recorded manuscript codex in private hands from this most important of English monastic libraries Provenance:1. The Cathedral Priory of the Holy Trinity or Christ Church, Canterbury, the mother church of the English people and the central site of English Christian life: with an erased inscription on front original endleaf, but read with ultra-violet light: “Eccl[es]ie chr[isti] cantuarie” (most probably very late thirteenth or fourteenth century). The cathedral was founded by St. Augustine in 598 as his own seat and that of his successors, within the structure of the royal palace of King Æthelberht of Kent, itself reportedly of Roman origin. As a church rather than a monastery, Christ Church’s community consisted of secular canons up to the Norman Conquest, with monks introduced after the Norman Conquest by Archbishop Lanfranc. Since then, it has been the mother church of Christianity in the British Isles, perhaps the most important pilgrimage site in England, the site of the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket, as well as the burial place of the archbishops of Canterbury and Edward Plantagenet the Black Prince, and Henry IV. As the absolute focus for English devotions, it has loomed large in the English-speaking imagination, with William of Malmesbury in his Gesta Pontificum claiming of it that, “Nothing like it could be seen in England either for the light of its glass windows, the gleaming of its marble pavements, or the many-coloured paintings which led the eyes to the panelled ceiling above”, and Chaucer using it as the ultimate destination of his fictitious pilgrims in his Canterbury Tales. The present manuscript is probably English in origin (see below), and was published as such by Sotheby’s in 1967 and the late Jeremy Griffiths in 1995. If this is correct, then it must come from a large scribal and intellectual centre, such as Oxford or Canterbury. It may be identifiable as one of a small number of complete bibles in the early fourteenth-century booklist of the community (edited by M.R. James, The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover, 1903, no. II) as item 600 (“Biblia”), or among the additional material at the end of that list, recording books of former members bequeathed to the community. Of these, only six Bibles were given by men who lived after the present manuscript was copied: (i & ii) items 1639-40, two bibles from the collection of Archbishop Robert Winchelsey (reigned 1245-1313); (iii) item 1722, from ‘John of Thanet’ (presumably the early fourteenth-century monk of the same name from whose cope a panel still survives, embroidered with his name and profession, now Victoria & Albert Museum T.337-1921); (iv) item 1731, from ‘Robert Poucin’; (v) item 1773, from ‘William of Ledbury’; and (vi) III:1, that from the collection of Prior William of Eastry (held office 1285-1331). Ɵ Indicates that the lot is subject to buyer’s premium of 24% exclusive of VAT (0% VAT).
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