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Seventeen mainly vellum documents 1649-1869, mainly Redenhall, Norfolk, including 1649 vellum document, 19 lines of manuscript in Latin, relating to, and signed by, Thomas Fuller (1573-1659), of Redenhall with Harleston; 1705 Redenhall vellum document, 36 lines of m/s in Latin, also relating to Fuller family; 1711 Redenhall document Simon Fuller & William Brookes, signed with wax seals; 1731 Redenhall vellum document "The Probate of Samuel Fuller's Will, senior, Redenhall", and 1751 vellum probate of John Fuller's will, Redenhall; 3 19th Century Redenhall vellum admissions, William Bingham Lord Ashburton, 1850, Sir Robert Shafto Adair, 1865, Robert Alexander Shafto Adair, 1871, plus vellum Enfranchisement Lord of the Manor of Redenhall to Right Honourable Lord Waveney, 1873; large 3 page 1852 vellum mortgage indenture, Bakers Barn Farm, Starston & Redenhall, with m/s plan; large 3 page 1851 vellum mortgage indenture, freehold estate in the parishes of Starston & Redenhall, with hand coloured m/s plan; plus 5 other Redenhall documents 1868/69; plus large 3 page vellum lease indenture of a farm at Thelveton, 1827, with hand coloured m/s plan (17)

Large two page 1877 vellum indenture, conveyance of a freehold and copyhold farm at Alpington and East Poringland in Norfolk, Execs. of the late Robert Wells, of Norwich, to John Furness, of Forncett Grove, Forncett St Peter, Norfolk, with manuscript pen, ink & wash plan of Framingham, East Poringland, Alpington, approx 30 x 48cm, signatures and wax seals (generally VGC)

A large well executed manuscript Enclosure plan of the Parish of Swaton in the County of Lincoln, 1808, by Edward Arden, showing land divisions and land owners, signed by the commissioners Edward Hare and Thomas Burcham, major land owners Lord Willoughby de Broke, Henry Lee Warner etc, on vellum, wash hand colouring, approx size 150 x 81cm (Swaton, North Kesteven District, near Sleaford, Donington)

A good quantity of George III Land Tax Assessments 1827-1836, all Lincolnshire, specifically the division of Aveland (South Kesteven administrative district), including Scowilloughby, Walcott, Kirkby Underwood, Hacconby, Horbling, Haceby, Falkingham, Dowsby, Osbournby, Rippingale, Laughton, Sempringham, Morton etc etc, each a printed bifolium [4pp] with manuscript entries for names of Proprietors, Occupiers, Description of Estates or Property, Rentals and futher columns of figures, signed by an assessor and with confirmation signatures of three commissioners (approx 65 in total)

A small collection of late 19th/early 20th Century documents relating to the Terrington Estate, Terrington St. Clement, West Norfolk, and Henry Aldenburg Bentinck Esq., including seven leases 1882-1910 from H.A. Bentinck, for Greenland Farm, Pierrepont Farm, Tower Farm, Manor Farm, Marchbanks Farm, New Marsh Farm, Rhoon Farm, plus 28 separate printed lists of Bentinck Estate Terrington St Clement Garden Allotments Rules, each manuscript numbered and with name of tenant verso; plus 14 page document 1914 for the sale of the Terrington Estate, H.A. Bentinck to Messrs. H. Kirkham, W. Johnson & R.H. Kirkham

A good quantity of 18th-20th Century Lincolnshire vellum and other documents, including Manor of Swineshead mortgage 1780, William Wolseley to Samuel Barrett, Ironmaster of Kings Bromley, Staffs., various signatures, 1781 Manor of Swineshead release William Wolseley to John Stanley; 1731 Stamford will of Thomas Moore; 1822 Grantham, two letters from Mary Newbetts Dee; Sale particulars Freehold Estate at Barrowby, near Grantham, Lincs., 1813; 1773 copy of wills of George and John Kent, Lincoln; Neslam Farm, Sempringham, sale particulars 1919 (3), two large loose accompanying folding maps; Sleaford billheads 1924; various manuscript and printed documents, order of charity commission, mid 19th Century, Cowley's Charity, Donington (11); Manor of Moulton Harrington, Lincs., documents c.1928; Haconby nr. Bourne sale poster 1874, etc etc

A good quantity of mainly Edinburgh 19th Century Documents and letters, including packet of Edinburgh letterheads, circa 1870's-1890's, (100+); packet various manuscript invoices/bills, mainly Edinburgh c.1820's-1860's; m/s architectural plans 1900, "Stanley Villa North Berwick proposed addition for T. Maitland", 4 plans, signed as approved; packet of m/s and printed docs, County of Edinburgh, Dean Park in Currie & Balerno, 1860's-1880's; packet good qty. letters and documents 1885 Edinburgh & Glasgow, various solicitors, banks, Corporation of Paisley etc etc

Ireland, Irish History, Plantations and Penal Laws, George I, a folio document with 6 pages of manuscript land and rent related entries 1699-1703, mainly for the city of Dublin "for Wm. Ellis Late Proprier.", entries for properties on Church street, Arran's Lane, Arran's Key, Phoenix Street, George's Lane, Dames Street, listing tenants names and two columns for rent figures, with further entries on final two pages for Meath County and Leitrim County, these with a final column with manuscript observations, marbled paper wraps (worn). Sir William Ellis (c.1648-1732), English Jacobite, secretary of State to James II in exile, appointed 1676 as customer, comptroller and searcher for the Irish provinces of Leinster and Munster; and while holding this sinecure acquired considerable property in Ireland. Accompanying James II to Ireland he was placed on his privy council and appointed one of the assessors of Dublin in April 1690; together with 17 George III Parliamentary Acts realting to Ireland 1804-1812, including "An Act... to examine into the Nature and Extent of the several Bogs in Ireland, and the Practicability of draining and cultivating them...", 1811, together with Irish Freehold Land and Bog Improvement Company document

Three framed and glazed Indo-Persian manuscript illustrations and a Chinese watercolour together with a Chart of the Western coast of Africa drawn from the French Chart of the Western Ocean, published 1738 by Order of the Count de Mantrepas, sculpted T Kitchen, plate 164 No. 94 Vol 2 p362, 20cm x 25cm, mounted in a glazed frame and an 18th century coloured engraving of the North West View of Clun Castle in the County of Salop, To John Walcot Esq, S&N Buck Dalin 1731, 21cm x 37cm mounted in a glazed frame and a watercolour of classical ruins signed indistinctly to lower right 28cm x 20cm mounted in glazed frame Location: 1:2

A mounted North African manuscript, "Page of Prayers"

A mounted Persian manuscript, page of poetry by the Sufi Muslim poet Jalal-el-Din

A mounted Indian manuscript, page from a miniature Koran

A mounted manuscript, page of Indian Love Lyrics

Ɵ Small cuttings from a Homiliary, with parts of Ambrose of Milan, Expositio Evangelii Secundum Lucam, and Leo the Great, Tractatus 76, in Beneventan minuscule, decorated manuscript in Latin on parchment[Italy (perhaps Naples), late eleventh century] Two small cuttings from a single parent manuscript, each roughly rectangular in shape, the first with remains of double column of 10 lines in a somewhat idiosyncratic Beneventan minuscule, with some Bari-type features such as medial 'r' with a straight shoulder and a large 'e', but this clearly not of pure Bari-type, capitals touched in red and iridescent yellow wash, the second cutting with remains of a single column of three lines in same and remnants of a large initial 'P' in red with acanthus leaf flourishing, recovered from a binding and hence with scuffs, tears, small holes and stains, overall fair condition, 100 by 170mm. and 85 by 130mm.; bound together in a cloth-covered card binding Provenance: Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 67, and acquired in two stages: the first fragment in Quaritch cat. 1128, Bookhands of the Middle Ages IV: Beneventan Script (1990), no. 15; and the second fragment in Sotheby's, 21 June 1994, lot 5. Other fragments of the same parent manuscript can be found in the bindings of Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, VI B 1, VI B 12, VI E 41, XV AA 1 and other volumes there. Published: V. Brown, 'A Second New List of Beneventan Manuscripts (II)', Mediaeval Studies, 50 (1988), p. 601, under Bernard Quaritch Ltd, no. iii.BMB. Bibliografia dei manuscritti in scrittura beneventana, 1993-1995, 2000-2001, 2008, 2014, 2018, no. SPS 67 (but reported in error there as in Norway).V. Brown, 'A Second New List of Beneventan Manuscripts (III)', Mediaeval Studies, 56 (1994), p. 346.V. Brown, 'A Second New List of Beneventan Manuscripts (IV)', Mediaeval Studies, 61 (1999), pp. 361 and 387.

Ɵ Fragments of a single leaf from Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Evangelia XL, in Beneventan minuscule, decorated manuscript in Latin on parchment[southern Italy, thirteenth century] Three small cuttings: a long and thin strip and two equally sized small rectangular pieces, the first with remains of a single column of 23 lines of angular Beneventan minuscule with some lateral compression, capitals touched in red and yellow wash, the two smaller cuttings each with 5 lines from the centre of a column in same, recovered from a binding and hence with scuffs, tears, small holes and stains, the two smaller pieces stained dark brown, overall fair condition, 210 by 70mm., 41 by 76 and 42 by 76mm.; bound together in a cloth-covered card binding Provenance: Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 64, acquired in two stages: the larger strip in Quaritch cat. 1128, Bookhands of the Middle Ages IV: Beneventan Script (1990), no. 22, and the smaller pieces together in Sotheby's, 21 June 1994, lot 5. All three cuttings here are from the innermost column of a single leaf, and the largest strip in Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, XV AA 1 is part of the outer column of the same leaf. Other fragments from the same parent manuscript can be found in Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, VI B 1 and XX AA 1, as well as Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Lat. fol. 936. Published: V. Brown, 'A Second New List of Beneventan Manuscripts (II)', Mediaeval Studies, 50 (1988), p. 602, under 'Bernard Quaritch ltd', no. x.BMB. Bibliografia dei manuscritti in scrittura beneventana, 1993, 1995, 2000, 2018, no. SPS 64 (but reported in error there as in Norway).V. Brown, 'A Second New List of Beneventan Manuscripts (IV)', Mediaeval Studies, 61 (1999), pp. 359-360.

Ɵ Substantial part of a leaf of Maximus of Turin, Sermones, in a fine Carolingian minuscule, decorated manuscript in Latin on parchment[France, first half of the ninth century] Substantial fragment of a leaf (trimmed at edges to remove most of blank margins, and trimming away a line or two from foot of text), double column of 31 lines remaining in a fine and early Carolingian minuscule (with end of Sermon 1 and opening of Sermon 110, both for Feast of SS. Peter and Paul), with an open 'g', insular 'F' with mid-bar on baseline, et-ligature commonly used integrally within words, both open and closed 'a', use of insular 'N' within words, and a tall 'I' at beginnings of words, capitals opening sections set off in margins, rubrics in ornamental capitals (these once orange-red, now mostly oxidised to silver), opening words of text in same infilled with red dots (now oxidised), one large initial 'T' (opening "Tempus admonet fratres [ut] evangelii capitulum ...") in panels of dull-red and yellow, these once with internal decorated compartments, a later medieval erroneous attribution of Sermon 110 here to Augustine, one natural flaw in outer vertical edge of leaf (stitched together, perhaps at time of reuse in a binding), offset in one corner from another leaf of same parent manuscript, scuffs and stains, some cockling, but overall good and legible condition, 285 by 210mm.; in cloth covered card binding Provenance: 1. Written and decorated in the first half of the ninth century in France, most probably for reading within a monastic setting. Then almost certainly reused in the same site at the close of the Middle Ages as binding material, and passing into private hands at the time of the Secularisation.2. Quaritch cat. 1147, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, V (1991), no. 74.3. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 643. Text:St. Maximus of Turin (d. between 408-423) was a theological writer who held office as the first recorded bishop of Turin, and whose ordination may have been related to the establishment of the see in 398. A mention of himself in his Sermon 81 as an eye-witness to the martyrdom of missionaries in 397 at Anaunia in the Rhaetian Alps strongly suggests that he was born before that date. Gennadius of Marseille records that he died under the rule of Emperors Honorius and Theodosius II. A namesake appears in the records of the council of Milan and Rome in 451 and 465, leading to some previous confusion about his date of death. Confusingly, both wrote sermons, and later medieval copyists appear to have conflated their works. The first sermon here was established by Almut Mutzenbecher to be part of a large sermon collection by the first Maximus (Corpus Christianorum, series Latina, 23, 1962, pp. 4 and 427-428), and the second here may also be an example of his work that survived in isolation.  Manuscripts survive from the sixth or seventh century (St Petersburg, National Library of Russia, Lat. Q.v.I 5) and the eighth century (Milan, Ambrosiana, C.98 inf.). The ninth century saw substantial interest in his works, with several manuscripts of that date surviving and a number of his individual sermons being included in the homiliary of Paul the Deacon produced within the Carolingian court, as well as other sermon collections (such as those in Tours, Bibliothèque municipale 279, and Bodleian, Laud. Misc. 129).  Script:This leaf is the first of three examples of Carolingian minuscule, the script fashioned from Roman Half-Uncial and Insular forms perhaps in Corbie in the second half of the eighth century, and championed by Charlemagne and his court school during the earliest years of the Carolingian renaissance, for its ease of intelligibility. From the monasteries of Tours under the auspices of Alcuin of York it was disseminated across the entire Empire, sweeping away almost all the cacophony of preceeding local hands. It is probable that without this paleographic revolution, the Carolingian educational reforms would not have flourished, and the grand embracing of literacy and learning by the elites in the ninth century would have faltered.

Ɵ Leaf from a Lectionary, perhaps made for the individual worship of a Carolingian nobleman or ecclesiastic, in Latin, finely written Carolingian manuscript on parchment, [probably Germany, third quarter of the ninth century] Single leaf with single column of 25 lines in a fine Carolingian minuscule (with readings from Matthew 21:35-46 and Genesis 27:6-28), with et-ligature used integrally within words, only closed 'a', and noteably clubbed ascenders (see 'b' in particular), rich red rubrics and opening text of readings in capitals, recovered from a binding and hence with stains, folds and scuffed areas (but both sides legible), traces of tape at top centre of verso from last mounting, trimmed at top with loss of blank margin there, but wide margins elsewhere, with line-prickings remaining in outer vertical margins, overall in presentable condition, 285 by 246mm.; in a cloth-covered card binding Provenance: 1. Written and decorated in third quarter of ninth century, perhaps as a private devotional volume for a Carolingian nobleman or ecclesiastic (see below). 2. William H. Schab (active 1888-1975), book and art-dealer working firstly with Gilhofer & Ranschburg in Vienna from 1905, then fleeing Austria for New York in 1938.3. Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017), of San Francisco, California, his 'I/210', acquired from Schab in 1969; with Rosenthal's cataloguing and a copy of a letter from Bernhard Bischoff to Rosenthal concerning the dating, included.4. Quaritch of London, their cat. 1147, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, V (1991), no. 25.5. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 623. Text:The contents here point to a highly individual parent codex, produced perhaps for private devotion. Originally the lections in the Mass were from the Old Testament, the Epistles and the Gospels. Both the Gallican and the Mozarabic rites retained the Old Testament readings for some considerable time, even into the Carolingian period, but these died out in contemporary Roman usage to the point where they can only be found for significant feast days. After the Carolingian age, the Roman form dominated. Here we have the last of such readings from Matthew, followed by the opening reading of the next set from Genesis. Its use by the so-called 'Comes of Alcuin' (BnF. lat. 9452; comes here from 'Liber Comicus' an early liturgical volume with Bible readings to complement the Gospel Book and Lectionary) allows us to see that in the Gallican Rite in the ninth century this Genesis reading was for Saturday after the first Sunday in Lent (that also dedicated to SS. Marcellinus and Petrus, as in our leaf). However, a problem comes when we try to find other witnesses to the readings for that date alongside the passage of Matthew given here. In short, there are none. This may well be a witness to a personal and private devotional codex, compiled according to the individual needs of the commissioner. The scholars and theologians of Charlemagne's court have garnered the lion's share of attention, but there is substantial evidence of the education of secular nobles from across the Carolingian world in the court school and to some extent throughout the Empire from 789 onwards. At its highest levels the Carolingian ruling elite was expected to be literate (see J.L. Nelson, 'Literacy in the Carolingian Government', in The Frankish World, 750-900, 1996, pp. 1-36, and R. McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word, 1989, pp. 260-261), and other Biblical and liturgical books made in the ninth century for private and secular devotions survive in the Gauzlin Gospels (now in Nancy Cathedral), probably made for Count Arnaldus of Toul, a Psalter commissioned by and written for Count Achadeus of Reims (now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 272) and a now-lost Lectionary produced for Count Hechiardus (or Eccard) of Angers.

Ɵ Substantial fragment of a Carolingian Homiliary, perhaps that of Paul the Deacon, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment [probably western Germany, second quarter of the ninth century]To view a video of this lot, click here. Six leaves (including a bifolium, that forming the outermost leaves here, all others reconstructed into bifolia on small paper guards), each with a single column of 29 or 30 lines of a single fine and elegant Carolingian minuscule (all here 29 lines, except fol. 4 with 30 lines, but all in same hand and clearly from a single parent manuscript), with few abbreviations, the scribe varying the size of his script in places apparently in order to fit words neatly onto the lines, red rubrics and chapter headings, larger initials offset in margin, six large initials in red, a few contemporary corrections and erasures, some small smudges and spots, two leaves with vertical cuts in margin (see below), lower outer corner of fol. 5 repaired with strip of parchment (not paper as in earlier reports), outer edges apparently trimmed, else in excellent condition and on fine, heavy and supple parchment, 305 by 205mm.; in cloth-covered card binding Six leaves from a large and handsome Carolingian codex, surviving the twelve centuries since their creation not through reuse as binding material, but as leaves of a book and thus in an exceptional state of preservation Provenance:1. Written and decorated in a Carolingian scriptorium in the second quarter of the ninth century, most probably in Germany. With letter from Bernard Bischoff, dated 1989, establishing the dating.2. At least three of the leaves here were definitely owned by the manuscript-dealer Bruce Ferrini, and perhaps all these leaves were. A previous report of this manuscript noted that fol. 4 here was acquired by the Schøyen Collection from Ferrini in November 1989, and indeed it bears a pencil stock number of Ferrini's ("VM 5507"). In addition, fols. 2-3 here also bear Ferrini stock numbers ("VM 5508" and "VM 5509"), and the fact that the stock numbers are sequential suggests that Ferrini may have owned several bifolia from the parent manuscript and been bisecting these for individual sale. In the 1990s, the late Jeremy Griffiths suggested that fol. 4 was one of the leaves removed from Montpellier, Bibliothèque municipale, MS H. 240 in the nineteenth century (this most probably due to the fact that of the long list compiled by R. Étaix of homiliaries in French public libraries ['Répertoire des Homéliaires Conservés en France' in Homéliaires Patristiques Latins, 1994], only the Montpellier manuscript agrees with the physical layout of the present leaves). However, the Montpellier manuscript has quite different initials and script to that here. Furthermore, the publication earlier this year of a new study of the Homiliary of Paul the Deacon by Z. Giuliano with an apparently exhaustive list of early manuscripts (including 88 manuscripts of the ninth and tenth centuries), similarly contains no witness that could have served as the parent codex of these leaves. Finally, no other leaf from the parent codex is known to us, and they do not come from either of the two ninth-century Homiliaries listed in the Schoenberg database as being sold in the twentieth century. Thus, it seems most likely that only a handful of bifolia survived to the modern period, perhaps as part of a sammelband.3. Quaritch of London, who sold leaves 1-3 and 5-6 (the first and last of these the outermost bifolium here) to the Schøyen Collection in December 1989, and these marked up with individual Quaritch stock numbers and price codes.4. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 587, and acquired for that collection in order to protect these leaves from further dispersal. Text:Collections of homilies, or explanations of the Gospels, assembled and ordered for public reading throughout the ecclesiastical year, were fundamental to the medieval Church. The fifth and sixth centuries were dominated in this genre by the early popes, Leo the Great (c. 400-461) and Gregory the Great (c. 540-604), and the eighth century knew a now-lost homiliary composed by a Roman named Agimundus, as well as that of Bede of Wearmouth-Jarrow and that of Alanus, abbot of Farfa, which still survive. The ninth century saw homiliaries written by Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel and Hrabanus Maurus, as well as the grand compilation of Paul the Deacon produced at the behest of Charlemagne. The leaves here are not consecutive, and form three units. The first and last leaves here are parts of the same bifolium (with parts of Leo I, Sermo XCV, and a lection on the Gospel of John by Gregory I, Homilia XXX). The second leaf here contains part of the same text as that on the first leaf here. The third leaf here stands alone, with text from Gregory I, Homilia XXX, a lection on the Gospel of John 14:23-31, and the fourth and fifth leaves both contain parts of a tractatus on Luke by Ambrose, as well as other lections, readings for the Vigil of the Feast of St Peter and the Feast of the Octave of Pentecost and the opening of a sermon of Leo I for Feria IV mensis IV. Both homilies on fols. 1-2 and 3 here are found in the Homiliary of Paul the Deacon, and are not found together in any other homiliary recorded by Étaix. Ninth-century codices and substantial fragments of them are now of the utmost rarity in private hands, and only a tiny number of collectors can expect to acquire such an item in a single lifetime of collecting. Complete or substantially complete codices are now all but gone from private ownership, with Sir Thomas Phillipps' MS. 4558 having passed to Rosenbach in 1926, and thence to Edward Harkness (1874-1952), and on to the New York Public Library. J. Pierpont Morgan was able to secure two, in 1902 (now Morgan Library and Museum, M. 191), and 1927 (M. 728), and the grandest bookseller of the twentieth century, H.P. Kraus, in a lifetime of searching, obtained and sold only three (see his In Retrospect, 1978, nos. 5-7). To these must be added the Gospels of St. Hubert, sold in Sotheby's, 26 November 1985, lot 93, and the Gospels of Queen Theutberga, last appearing in Christie's, 15 July 2015, lot 20, and now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Even fragments of only a few leaves from codices of the ninth century now command high prices, with a fragment of 14 leaves recording the translations and miracles of St. Lomer, written in France c. 873, realising £60,000 hammer in our last Schøyen sale, 8 July 2020, lot 28. Script:The hand here is worth especial mention as a fine example of Carolingian minuscule. It is a model of legibility and elegance, with a rejection of the cacophony of ligatures of the Early Medieval local hands, employing instead ligatures only for 'et' and joining 'ct' and 'st'. The 'g' here is quite distinctive, in a closed form and with a tail commonly with a sharp-tipped 'fish-hook-like' end, as is the majuscule 'N' in which the first ascender is longer, descending far below the line, and the mid bar is horizontal, sitting just above the baseline.

Ɵ Two leaves from Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, in Latin, manuscript on parchment[France (Rhone valley, most probably Mirabel or vicinity, perhaps Valence), late tenth century or perhaps c. 1000] Two leaves, recovered from reuse as an account binding and hence trimmed at upper and outer edges with loss of about ten lines from top and a few letters from outer vertical edge of outermost column, with double columns of 40 lines in a small and rounded late Carolingian minuscule, showing the earliest influence of Romanesque bookhands (with parts of LXXVI:44-51), with a few residual et-ligatures used integrally at the end of words, a tongued 'e', a strong st- and ct-ligature and an early form of open 'g' with a sharp-tipped fish-hook like tail, capitals of each new section offset in margin, one-line initials once red (now oxidised to silver), numerous later scrawls from reuse as binding of accounts and for pentrials (see below), spots, stains and holes, else in fair and presentable condition, each leaf approximately 270 by 180mm.; in cloth-covered card binding Provenance:1. Most probably written for, and used by, a Cathedral in the vicinity of Mirabel in the Rhone valley between Lyon and Avignon: with inscriptions added from reuse on a binding there in the seventeenth century (including the main inscription: "Livre de Raison pour affaires de Miribel des années 1659 jusquen 1682", as well as another referring to nearby Grenoble). This places them within the Duchy of Burgundy: the successor to the independent kingdom of Burgundy, established by the East Germanic Burgundians in the fifth century during the final collapse of Roman authority, and subjected to Merovingian rule in 534 but maintaining a fierce independence even under the Carolingians. They came under French royal control only in the first half of the eleventh century. However, beyond Cluny (founded 910) which is probably too far away to have had significant landholdings in Mirabel, the region's monasteries are mostly foundations of the second half of the eleventh century and twelfth century, and so cannot have been the original home of the parent codex of these leaves. The closest cathedral is that of Valence, some 30 km northwards up the Rhone. The leaves here were studied for their original content in the nineteenth century (pencil inscriptions and underlining of that date identifying the text) and may have been separated by then from the seventeenth-century account books they were used to bind.2. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 1705, acquired from Quaritch in July 1993. Script:The script here has many of the letterforms and occasional ligatures of Carolingian minuscule (see above), but some outlying areas of France appear to have been initially resistant to the script changes of the Romanesque and pre-Gothic periods (see for example the penitential fragments offered in our last Schøyen sale, 8 July 2020, lot 31), and the south seems to have been particularly slow to eschew traditional practices. Here we see the very last phase of Carolingian minuscule, just before the large and imposing letterforms of the eleventh and twelfth centuries make themselves decisively felt.

Ɵ Leaf from a large Passional, with an early white-vine initial, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment[Italy, first half of the eleventh century] Single leaf, with double column of 41 lines of a large and rounded Romanesque bookhand (with parts of the readings of the Passio Sanctae Iulianae and the Passio Sanctorum Faustini et Iovitae, with very occasional use of the et-ligature integrally within words (usually at the end of words, and this perhaps copied across from a Carolingian exemplar), a letter 'h' with a tall bowl whose penstroke flows underneath its body to nearly close the bowl, and notably tall capitals, capitals opening readings offset in margin, bright red rubrics, opening with a red capital touched in iridescent yellow wash, one large initial 'T' (opening "Tempore adriani impissimi imperatoris ...") in parallel bands of red penwork, all except the top bar coloured with iridescent yellow wash (to emulate gold), the bands entwined with simple sprays of acanthus leaves and a simple geometric knot, the whole on vivid blue triangular grounds, a few smudges, wormholes and small traces of paper in borders of verso from last mounting (perhaps that in an album), twentieth-century pen "85" in upper inner corner of recto, trimmed at edges to remove much of blank margins, else in excellent condition, 310 by 210mm.; in a cloth-covered card binding Provenance: 1. Domenico Maria Manni (1690-1788) of Florence, a polymath, prolific publisher and editor, as well as local antiquary, who held office as librarian and director of the Biblioteca Strozzi in Florence. A marginal note in his hand at the head of the verso here: "Faustina et Jovita".2. Aldo Olschki (1893-1963), Florentine bookseller, the youngest son of Leo Olschki, who took over his father's publishing interests in Rome in 1928-1935, and the entire family's publishing business from 1946. 3. Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017), of San Francisco, California, his 'I/59', this leaf acquired in 1959.4. Quaritch cat. 1147, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, V (1991), no. 31.5. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 636.

Ɵ Leaf from a Homiliary, with a decorated initial, in Latin, manuscript on parchment[Italy, mid-eleventh century] Single leaf, with double column of 35 lines of a precise Romanesque bookhand, rubrics and remains of an initial in terracotta-red, one large initial 'D' (opening "Dominus ac redemptor noster ...", a Sermon on Luke 5:17-26) with following letters in ornamental capitals, in somewhat rustic penwork and yellow wash entwined with notably spiky and angular white-vine acanthus leaf foliage and enclosing red and blue ground, a later hand adding a penwork human face looking back at the initial, two natural flaws in parchment, somewhat stained and cockled (but legible), trimmed at edges with loss of one line from a column of text, else fair and presentable condition and on heavy and well-prepared parchment, 280 by 215mm.; in cloth-covered card binding Provenance: 1. Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017), of San Francisco, California, his 'I/187', acquired February 1965.2. Quaritch of London, cat. 1147, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, V (1991), no. 83.3. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 637.

Ɵ Leaf from a gargantuan Augustine, Tractatus in Iohannem, in Latin, decorated Romanesque manuscript on parchment[Italy (probably the Veneto, perhaps vicinity of Vicenza), mid-eleventh century] Single very large leaf, with double columns of 52 lines of a small but good Romanesque bookhand (with CXXIV, 26:13-27:5), with residual use of et-ligature integrally at end of a few words, a distinctive 3-shaped 'z' whose mid-bar sits on the baseline, marks in margin of a 'clover' symbol but with two (not three) dots at its head and a double 's', red rubrics, one-line red initials set off in margin, one large red initial 'V' (opening "Verba domini in evangelio quae sermonem pristinum ...", opening Tractatus in Iohannem CXXIV, 27) followed by opening words in capitals touched in red (these and the initial oxidised to silver in places), recovered from a binding and hence with folds, scuffs and small holes, and some seventeenth-century scrawls (that once on the spine with inscription: "Informationum / MDCVIII III", see also below), but still in presentable condition, 454 by 334mm.; in cloth-covered card binding Provenance: 1. The parent manuscript was doubtless written and illuminated for use in lectern reading in a monastic or ecclesiastical community, probably in the vicinity of Vicenza. It was reused in the seventeenth century as binding material for account books, with this leaf with inscriptions with the dates '1660-1677' and naming the owner then of these estates as "Sr Alessandro Boldrini" probably followed by "Vicenza". This name reoccurrs on what would have been the spine of the account book, with "Boldrini / vol. 1" there. The Boldrini/Baldrini family were based in north eastern Italy, with significant presences in the Veneto and especially Vicenza, and the Alessandro named here was most probably a close relative of the celebrated engraver and probable student of Titian, Niccolo Boldrini of Vicenza (d. c. 1566).2. Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017), of San Francisco, California, his 'I/150', probably acquired around 1961.3. Quaritch of London, their cat. 1088, Bookhands of the Middle Ages (1988), no. 14.4. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 92. Script:The thin and precise hand here, reminiscent in places of early Carolingian hands, and with frequent use of wedges to terminate ascenders as well as a rapid ductus conveyed by the numerous casual ligatures (note the way that capital 'E' attaches itself to the following letter, and longer words such as "putatis" are written with all letters joined together) is probably explained by the origin of the parent manuscript in the far north-east of Italy. Manuscripts from this region, especially early examples, are far rarer than those of Central Italy.

Ɵ Leaf from a Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Evangelia, in Latin, manuscript on parchment[Italy, mid-eleventh century] Large leaf, with single column of 22 lines in a small and squat Romanesque bookhand, much reminiscent of earlier Carolingian hands, capitals in larger version of same and infilled or touched with russet-brown or vivid-red (now oxidised to a dark purple-red), one line added interlineally by main hand, seventeenth- or eighteenth-century foliation "231" on verso, verso with heavy grain pattern to parchment, spots, stains, natural flaw to lower outer corner of leaf with loss to blank margin there, else good condition on fine and supple Romanesque parchment, 250 by 205mm.; in cloth-covered card binding Provenance: 1. Erik von Scherling, Leiden (1907-1956), son of the Swedish consul in Rotterdam, who worked for the bookseller Jacob Ginsberg in Leiden, learning Latin and Arabic while there, and then opened up a dealership issuing regular bulletins and a sale-catalogue/gossipy journal named Rotulus from the 1930s until the 1950s; this perhaps acquired from a German source ("XI Jahrh." on reverse in twentieth-century pencil, and not his hand), and sold in his Rotulus VII (1954), no. 2480 (illustrated there).2. Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017), of San Francisco, California, his 'I/33', bought from von Scherling in August 1955.3. Quaritch of London, their cat. 1147, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, V (1991), no. 82.4. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 665. Text:The homilies of Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) were composed by 593, soon after he reluctantly took up the papal office. The text was enormously popular, and never went out of fashion throughout the entire Middle Ages. The homily in question here (1.10:2-5) is on the condemnation of astrologers and the Priscillianist heresy. Von Scherling thought the hand here to be southern German, but there are abbreviations here (notably those for '-bus' and 'qui') that point to Italy instead. In addition, the archaic aspect of this hand and the nearly square dimensions suggest that our scribe was copying either an ancient exemplar or a Carolingian duplicate of one.

Ɵ Leaf from a very large Romanesque English Bible, with parts of 1 Maccabees 1:1-39, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment[England, mid-twelfth century] Single large leaf, with double columns of 36 lines of an angular and compact Anglo-Caroline Romanesque bookhand, which slants to the left, without significant use of biting curves despite some lateral compression, and with noted fishtailing to ascenders, few abbreviations, explicit in red, one-line initials opening each line of capitula offset in margin and in alternate red and green, versal number in red in margin, one very large initial 'E' (opening "Et factum est postquam percussit alexander...", 1 Maccabees 1) in red enclosing blank parchment foliage tendrils, recovered from a binding and hence with some discolouration, small holes and spots, folds and cockling at edges, tears to edges (including tear through edge of large initial) section missing from lower outer blank margin, upper blank margin trimmed, overall fair and presentable condition, 372 by 276mm.; in cloth-covered card binding Provenance: 1. The parent volume most probably written and decorated for use in an English Cisterican monastery, and with characteristic punctus flexus punctuation.2. Solomon Pottesman (1904-1978) of London, incunabulist, self-taught bibliographer and obsessive book collector, whose obituary by his close friend Alan Thomas in the Book Collector, 1979, pp. 545-553, should be in the arsenal of any serious collector seeking to justify his or her mania to a disapproving family member or friend as an example of a collector much further in the grip of bibliophilia. His sale, Sotheby's 11 December 1979, lot 10(part, main item).3. Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017), of San Francisco, California, his 'I/265', and with his notes and cataloguing. 4. Quaritch of London, their cat. 1088, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, III (1988), no. 61.5. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 106, acquired June 1988. Script:From a large and stately English Biblical manuscript, produced as a contemporary of the grand Bury Bible and Winchester Bible. Unlike those manuscripts, the ornament here is simple, perhaps reflecting Cistercian influence, while the hand is a magnificent example of the twelfth-century English scribal arts. Published: H.R. Woudhuysen, 'Manuscripts at Auction: January 1988 to December 1988', in English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700, II, 1990, pp. 311 and 315-17.J. Griffiths, 'Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection Copied or Owned in the British Isles before 1700', in English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700, V, 1995, pp. 36-42.

Ɵ Haymo of Auxerre, Homily XI on St. John the Evangelist, in Latin, manuscript on parchment[England, second half of the twelfth century (before c. 1180)] Single leaf, with double column of 32 main text lines in a fine and handsome Anglo-Caroline Romanesque hand beginning to show features of the pre-gothic, no biting curves, a few corrections to individual letters (notably capitalising some 'Q's) and a section at the base of one column and head of next where the original scribe's work has been erased and the correct (and considerably longer) text has been fitted into the same space by a correcting hand, stains from reuse in a later bookbinding, some slight cockling, else in excellent condition, 314 by 204mm.: in cloth-covered card binding Provenance: 1. Philip Bliss (1787-1857), registrar of the University of Oxford and principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford; this leaf from an album of leaves and fragments assembled by him from Oxford bindings and elsewhere, the album sold at Sotheby's, 21 August 1858, lot 119.2. Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), his MS. 18,133 (1858-1872); passing to his heirs and thence to the Robinson brothers of 16-17 Pall Mall, London; his sale in Sotheby's, 24 April 1911, lot 390.3. E.H. Dring (1863-1928), the first managing director of Quaritch, passing in turn to his son E.M. Dring (1906-1990), himself manager of Quaritch from 1960.4. Quaritch of London, their cat. 1036, Bookhands of the Middle Ages (1984), no. 79.5. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 237. Text:The homilary of which this leaf was once part was one of the fundamental collections of homilies and preaching materials known to medieval Europe from the tenth century onwards. However, while the manuscripts agree that it was the work of a Haimo, this could be either Haimo of Halberstadt (d. 853), who was a monk at Fulda and then the bishop of Halberstadt, or Haimo of Auxerre (fl. 840-75), who appears to have studied with the Irish grammarian Murethach and was for a time the abbot of the monastery of Sasceium (Cessy-les-Bois), as well as teaching at the school of the Benedictine house of Saint-Germain at Auxerre (see E. Jeauneau, 'Les écoles de Laon et d'Auxerre au IXe siècle', in La scuola nell'Occidente latino dell'alto medio evo, 1972, II, pp. 495-522). In 1907, E. Riggenbach demonstrated that the commentaries attributed in the Patrologia Latina to Haimo of Halberstadt were actually the work of Haimo of Auxerre (Die ältesten lateinischen Kommentare zum Hebräerbrief), and since then many of the homilies there have been tentatively reattributed to him.

Ɵ Bifolium from a Homiliary, with part of Bede's Homily 1:19, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment[Italy, late eleventh or early twelfth century] Two conjoined leaves, with continuous text and thus once the innermost bifolium from a gathering, with double columns of 30 lines of a fine and accomplished Romanesque bookhand, rubrics and initials in dark red, a few passages marked with a cross, later medieval folio numbers 'cviii' and 'cx', line-prickings visible and thus the leaves not trimmed, some darkening to parchment in places and some grain pattern noticeable in places, a few spots and stains, else in excellent condition, each leaf 318 by 235mm.; cloth-covered card binding Provenance: 1. Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017), of San Francisco, California, his 'I/183', acquired from a Continental bookdealer in February 1965. 2. Quaritch of London, their cat. 1088, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, III (1988), no. 5. 3. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 90, acquired June 1988. Script:The elegant and attractive Italian Romanesque hand here finds close parallels in a copy of the commentaries on the Pauline Epistles by Ambrosiaster, Haimo of Auxerre and Jerome, produced in Central Italy in the second half of the eleventh century (now BnF., Latin 1762: F. Avril and Y. Zaluska, Manuscrits enluminés d'origine Italienne, 1980, no. 50).

Ɵ Leaf from a Homiliary (probably that of Paul the Deacon), with parts of Bede's Homily, 1:7-8, and a fine white-vine initial, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment[Italy, first half of twelfth century] Single large leaf, with double columns of 44 lines in a fine and rounded pre-gothic Italian minuscule, without biting curves, opening words of sections in ornamental capitals, rubrics in red capitals, one red initial with a bauble mounted in a penwork extension from its foot, one large and fine white-vine initial 'Q' (opening "Quia temporalem mediatoris ...") in concentric bands of red and yellow enclosing a large and complex white vine spray on blue, green, red and burgundy grounds, the ends of the white vine shoots piercing the outer circle of the initial's body and intertwining with its tail, trimmed at top with loss of a line there and losses to edges of two lines in corner, losses at edges of leaf, a few large dark stains, but the initial in fresh and bright condition, overall good condition, 427 by 278mm.; in cloth-covered card binding Provenance: 1. Doubtless written and decorated in Tuscany for a monastic community there. The house may have been in the vicinity of Colonnata on the coastline adjacent to Florence: the lower margin of the verso of this leaf was used while still in its parent volume to record in Italian a local transaction by a priest named Francesco, "rettore de la chiesa di sancto nicolo", to "Alghia del popolo connoloneade" and others, dated 27 March 1337.2. Aldo Olschki (1893-1963), Florentine bookseller, the youngest son of Leo Olschki, who took over his father's publishing interests in Rome in 1928-1935, and the entire family's publishing business from 1946.3. Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017), of San Francisco, California, his 'I/80', acquired from Olschki in 1959.4. Quaritch of London, their cat. 1088, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, III (1988), no. 7.5. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 91, acquired June 1988.

Ɵ Leaf with a homily by Bede, from a monumental codex of Bede's Homilies or Paul the Deacon, Homiliary, with a large and fine white-vine initial, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment[Italy (Tuscany, probably Florence or vicinity), first half of the twelfth century] Single large leaf, in double columns of 48 lines of a rounded and accomplished pre-gothic minuscule (with end of Bede's Homily 3:15 and substantial text from 3:16), opening letters of first word of chapter in ornamental capitals, red rubrics, one large initial in split bands of red, one very large initial 'H' (opening "Hidropis morbus ab aquoso ...", the opening of Bede, Homily 3:16) in bands of brilliant yellow (emulating gold) enclosing red penwork geometric designs, a spray of acanthus-leaf foliage in red ink in upper compartment, and a tri-lobed sprig of large leaves in lower compartment, the whole initial on blue, burgundy and teal-green grounds, recovered from a binding and hence with a few wormholes, some folds and stains, and scuffs to verso with some small areas there illegible, upper and lower borders trimmed with small losses to blank margins there, else in good condition with initial fresh and bright, 510 by 380mm.; in a cloth-covered card binding Provenance: 1. Aldo Olschki (1893-1963), Florentine bookseller, the youngest son of Leo Olschki, who took over his father's publishing interests in Rome in 1928-1935, and the family's publishing business from 1946.2. Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017), of San Francisco, California, his 'I/76', acquired from Olschki in 1959. 3. Quaritch of London, their cat. 1088, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, III (1988), no. 6.4. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 84. Decoration:The spray of large acanthus leaves in the lower compartment of this striking white vine initial is a rare motif for this type of decoration, mostly employed in Florentine books from the second half of the twelfth century, with other examples listed by K. Berg, Studies in Tuscan Twelfth Century Illumination, 1968, nos. 17 (Florence, Bibl. Laurenziana, Plut. 15.13: fig. 197), 72 (ibid., Gadd. 44: fig. 201), 44 (ibid., Conv. Soppr. 292: fig. 228, from Camaldoli to the immediate west of Florence), and 26 (ibid., Plut. 17.40: fig. 349, from Arezzo to the south east of Florence).

Ɵ Cutting from a gargantuan 'Atlantic' Bible, with parts of Ecclesiasticus 18-19, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment[Italy, c. 1100] Substantial fragment of the centre of a leaf, cut horizontally from the parent leaf, and with remains of double columns of 31 lines in a professional pre-gothic minuscule, with a notably elongated 'st'-ligature, capitals touched in red, red rubrics, red chapter numbers in margins and red paragraph marks (these apparently added after the copying of the text in a clumsier hand), one large simple red initial 'C' (opening "Corripe amicum ne forte ...", Ecclesiasticus 19:13) enclosing a small red flowerhead, some spots, scuffs and stains, with more damage to verso than recto (but that quite legible), small amount of cockling, remains of paper strip to inner edge from last mounting, else good condition, 215 by 304mm.; in cloth-covered card binding Provenance:Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 646, acquired from Quaritch cat. 1147, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, V (1991), no. 9. Text and script:The cutting here contains text from Ecclesiasticus 18:21 ("Ante languorem humilia te ...") to 18:27 ("... et in diebus delictorum attendit [ab inertia]"; and 18:33 ("...nihil in sacculo: eris enim invidus vitæ tuæ") to 19:5 ("...odit loquacitatem, extinguit malitiam"); as well as 19:12 ("[Sagitta] infixa femori carnis ...") to 19:18 ("... et in omni sap[ientia dispositio legis]"), and 19:24 ("[et est] qui se nimium submittit a multa ...") to 20:2 ("... Concupiscentia spadonis devirginabit [juvenculam]". Where calculable, the missing sections between the columns come to approximately 16 lines in each case, indicating that the parent codex had approximately 47 lines per column, with each column approximately 425mm. high. With margins added, the original leaf here would have comfortably exceeded 500mm. While the text here is continuously that of the Bible, the function of the book in a monastic setting is perhaps indicated by the unusual rubric on the reverse: "de correctione fraterna . xl" that corresponds to the opening of 19:13. In the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, Italian centres began to emulate Carolingian Tours Bibles, creating a new form of prestigious giant Bible manuscript, usually at least 500-550mm. in height, with some outlying examples as tall as 650mm. (see Le Bibbie Atlantiche, Il libro delle Scritture tra monumentalita e rappresentazione, 2000, with p. 48 on their dimensions, note these are the same or perhaps a little larger than the vast Tours Bibles). These have been called 'Atlantic' Bibles, named after Atlas, the giant of Greek mythology who carried the world on his shoulders. Correspondingly, their script entered a new de luxe phase of pre-gothic splendour, with large and rounded letter forms created for impressive visual affect, and few abbreviations or ligatures.

Ɵ Leaf from a monumental Martyrology, with parts of the passion of St. Blasius, with a large finely decorated initial, in Latin, manuscript on parchment[northern Italy (probably Milan), second half of the twelfth century] Single large leaf, with double columns of 39 lines in a large and rounded pre-gothic minuscule, without biting curves and written below topline, red rubrics, one large initial 'I', opening "Igitur cum romani imperii Diocletianus ...") in bands of iridescent yellow (to emulate gold) edged in red penwork, enclosing geometric panels and topped with an interlace knot, and with foot extending into green foliage, all on blue and iridescent yellow grounds edged in red penwork, Early Modern foliation (perhaps '108') in upper outer corner, some stains and a few worm holes and small folds, damage to lowermost edge of leaf, residue in blank margins of verso from last mounting, else good condition with fresh and bright initial, 430 x 257mm.; in cloth-covered card binding Provenance: 1. Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017), of San Francisco, California, his 'I/32'.2. Quaritch of London, their cat. 1088, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, III (1988), no. 42 (but without classmark on reverse, as accidentally reported there). 3. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 240, acquired in March 1989.  Decoration:The large initial here is nearly identical in palette and design to those in a Gospel Lectionary produced in northern Italy and probably in Milan c. 1200, and associated with the Cistercian abbey of Santa Maria di Morimondo (formerly in the Ludwig collection, their MS. IV 2: see B. Ferrini and Les Enlumineres, Important Illuminated Manuscripts, 2000, no. 10, illustrations on pp. 58-59). Other parallels can be found in the initials of two fragmentary Bibles in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MSS. B. 28, Inf. And B. 29, Inf., both dated to the very early thirteenth century (see M.L. Gengaro and G.V. Guglielmetti, Inventario dei codici decorati e miniati (secc. VII-XIII) della Biblioteca Ambrosiana, 1968, pp. 91-93).However, the script of our leaf is some decades earlier than that of the Ludwig codex and the examples in the Ambrosiana.

Ɵ Leaf from a Lectionary, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment[southern Germany, c. 1100] Single leaf, with single column of 27 lines in a large and rounded German pre-gothic minuscule, with pronounced fishtailing to ascenders and without biting curves, rubrics in red, two large and simple red initials (the first, an 'F', quite elegant), recovered from reuse in a later binding and hence with staining in places, folds, cockling and scuffing to rear (obscuring some text there), sixteenth-century German scrawls from reuse as binding of account book, traces of paper mounts at head of verso, overall fair condition, 313 by 210mm.; in cloth-covered card binding Provenance: 1. Antiquariat Robert Wölfle, Munich bookdealer, with Robert Wölfle active until his death in 1943, and the business passing thereafter to his daughters, who continued to work until their nineties, the business closing in 2011: their pencil notes on foot of recto.2. Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017), of San Francisco, California, his 'I/268', acquired in 1983.3. Quaritch of London, their cat. 1147, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, V (1991), no. 36.4. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 631. Script:The inclusion of this leaf and the next two lots allows us to show some of the range of German hands in the Romanesque and pre-gothic periods, from the squat and square formal script as here that harks back to Ottonian book production, through to the taller, thinner and more gothic hands of the next two lots, that despite such paleographical evolutions retain a profoundly German angularity to their penstrokes. Close comparisons for the hand here can be found in the Windberger Psalter, produced in Windberg to the east of Regensberg in the last quarter of the twelfth century (now Bayerische Staatsbibl. Cgm 17: Pracht auf Pergament, Schätze der Buchmalerei von 780 bis 1180, 2013, no. 64).

Ɵ Bifolium from a Lectionary with Gospel and Epistle readings for the period after Easter, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment[southern Germany, first half of the twelfth century] Two conjoined leaves, each with single column of 20 lines of a upright and angular Romanesque bookhand, red rubrics and simple red initials, contemporary folio numbers "CI" and "CIII" in red at head of text column on rectos, recovered from reuse in a later binding (see below) and hence with corners clipped away, some stains and folds, overall good and presentable condition, each leaf 256 by 114mm.; in a cloth-covered card binding Provenance:1. Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017), of San Francisco, California, his 'I/201', acquired c. 1966 or earlier.2. Quaritch cat. 1147, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, V (1991), no. 403. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 1376.

Ɵ Bifolium from a Homiliary, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment[Germany, late twelfth century] Bifolium, with double column of 28 lines in an elegant and angular German Romanesque script, capitals touched with additional penstrokes, 2-line initials in red with long sweeping ascenders with fish-tailed ends (and one with baubles mounted at tips), red rubrics (that near foot of first column of fol. 1r, having run out of space and continued in lower margin below), five large red initials, one of those infilled with diagonal lines forming chevrons and small flowerheads (this probably added later), contemporary foliation "cxxxii" and "ccxxxv" at head of leaves above second column on each recto, small spots and stains and some cockling, else in good condition, 324 by 238mm.; in cloth covered card binding Provenance:1. Probably Antiquariat Robert Wölfle, bookdealer of Munich, Robert Wölfle active until his death in 1943, and the business passing thereafter to his daughters, who continued to work until their nineties, the business closing in 2011.2. Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017), of San Francisco, California, his 'I/263', and with his cataloguing of 1979.3. Quaritch of London, their cat. 1088, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, III (1988), no. 21.4. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 103, acquired in June 1988.  Script:Close comparisons for the hand here can be found in a Legendary, produced in Himmerod in the opening years of the thirteenth century (now BnF., n. a. latin 1836: F. Avril and C. Rabel, Manuscrits enlumines d'origine germanique, 1995, no. 102)

Ɵ Leaf from the Old Gelasian Sacramentary, containing a record of the earliest Merovingian and northern European forms of the liturgy, or an ordines Romani, a pre-Carolingian order of liturgical service, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment[Germany or Switzerland (most probably San Gallen), late ninth century] Large fragment of a single leaf, with 31 lines of a probably German Carolingian minuscule, with a distinctly low and squat et-ligature, an 'm' suggesting Insular influence, few abbreviations, some opening words in hand imitative of uncials, red rubrics (now oxidised in places), one 2-line initial 'H', recovered from reuse in a binding and hence with margins trimmed, but without loss of any lines of text at foot, to only small losses to small sections of text at upper and lower inner corners, folds and stains, these obscuring much of text on reverse, but readings here awaiting lifting with UV light and careful reading, overall fair and legible condition, 243 by 140mm.; in cloth-covered card binding  This unassuming looking leaf is an important and hitherto unrecognised witness to a lost manuscript of the Old Gelasian Sacramentary, the Merovingian liturgical rite that preceded the Carolingian one, and known only from a tiny handful of manuscript witnesses; moreover, no other copy has come to the market before, and none is likely to ever emerge on the market again  Provenance:1. Most probably produced within the scriptorium of San Gallen, or a house directly connected to that monastery, and sharing close affinities with two other copies of the text reportedly produced there in the late ninth or tenth century (see below). Then dismembered and reused at the close of the Middle Ages on a bookbinding.2. Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017), of San Francisco, California, his 'I/195'.3. Quaritch of London, acquired 1989; their cat. 1147, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, V (1991), no. 77, described there as a "Carolingian commentary on the Creed" following a description by Marvin Colker.4. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 664.  Text:In its simplest form, the Sacramentary served as the principal collection of Biblical and liturgical texts spoken by the priest during services, and was replaced by other compilations such as the Missal during the course of the twelfth century. However, it had not always existed in an immutable form, and records survive of an attempt to produce a liturgical compilation to serve the same function in an incomplete collection of missal booklets of the fifth or sixth century now known as the Leonine or 'Verona' Sacramentary (now Verona Cathedral, MS. 85). Some centuries later, it was reported that another attempt had been made by Pope Gelasius I (d. 496), and this lead to the erroneous naming of the present text. It is now thought to date to either the seventh century or earliest decades of the eighth century, and contains a hybrid Gallican-Roman text inherited from Merovingian worship, and practised in some form throughout Gaul, Spain, Britain and Ireland, and perhaps also northern Italy, with the alternative Roman rite holding sway in only Rome and southern Italy. As a functioning liturgy it did not survive the Carolingian renaissance, and after Pope Hadrian I presented a copy of the liturgy approved by Pope Gregory the Great to Charlemagne in 785, that 'Gregorian' version was disseminated quickly throughout the empire, driving out its predecessor.  Due to its early replacement and demise, it survives as a coherent text in only three codices, plus, to the best of our knowledge, three early fragments of only a few leaves surviving from other lost copies of the whole text, a single witness containing readings from it, and the readings of a final lost manuscript recorded in a publication of 1777. These witnesses are: (i) Vatican, MS. Reginensis 316 (once owned by Queen Christina of Sweden, and carried by her to Rome at the end of her life) + Paris, BnF., latin 7193, fols. 41-56, the prime witness, produced in Merovingian Gaul in the mid-eighth century and forming the basis of all editions (see H.A. Wilson, The Gelasian Sacramentary: Liber Sacramentorum Romanae Ecclesiae, 1894, and L.C. Mohlberg, Liber sacramentorum Romanae aeclesiae ordinis anni circuli, 1960); (ii) Rheinau, MS. 30 (now in Zürich, Kantonsbibliothek), including a Sacramentary of c. 800 with Gelasian readings with later revisions; and (iii) San Gallen, MS. 348, a tenth-century Sacramentary with Gelasian readings with later revisions. The early fragments are: (iv) British Library, Additional MS. 37518, fols. 116-117, the so-called 'Baumstark fragment', an eighth-century binding fragment of English origin or produced in an Insular Continental centre (see A. Baumstark, 'Ein altgelasiansiches Sakramentarbruchstück insularer Herkunft', Jahrbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft, 7 , 1927, pp. 130-136); (v) BnF. lat. 10837, fols. 42-43, the so-called 'Bannister fragment', an English witness of the eighth century (see H.M. Bannister, 'Liturgical Fragments: A. Anglo-Saxon Sacramentaries', in Journal of Theological Studies, 9, 1908, pp. 406-411); and (vi) four eighth-century leaves in Cologne City archives, of English origin or produced in an Insular Continental centre (see H.M. Bannister, 'Fragments of an Anglo-Saxon Sacramentary', Journal of Theological Studies, 12, 1911, pp. 451-454). To these must be added (vii) a liturgical index in Reims, Bibliothèque municipale, MS. 8 (C.42), with extracted readings, and (viii) a lost manuscript recorded by Dom Martin Gerbert, abbot of St. Blaise in the Black Forest, in his attempted edition of 1777. Gerbert used the Rheinau and San Gallen manuscripts noted above, as well as a manuscript he identifies as "Sangalliensis olim nunc Turicensis" (of San Gallen, but now of Zürich), and of the tenth century, and having parallel versions of the Gelasian, Gregorian and Ambrosian rites (on this manuscript see Wilson, pp. xx-xxi). It seems to have been based on the San Gallen manuscript but with readings improved for sense. Despite a nineteenth-century identification of this last witness as Zurich C. 389, that manuscript does not contain a Sacramentary, and modern scholarship has failed to trace the lost witness.  The leaf here shows strong textual affinity to the San Gallen manuscripts, with the strongest to the lost manuscript, but while it has many apparent scribal errors it does not share all the reported corruptions of that lost witness. Most probably, it was produced within the same Carolingian mileau, which appears to have had an antiquarian interest in earlier liturgical practises. The text here contains part of I:35 of the text, opening with a variant rubric reported only by Gerbert for his lost witness ("[Et dum hoc cantat, semper manum super caput infantibus tenet: hoc finito iterum accipiens alter acolytus ex ipsis in]fantibus feminam ut [sic] supra, et interrogat presbyter ...") followed by a paragraph truncated down to a few short lines and apparently in a different order to that found in the Vatican manuscript, before the rubric "[Hoc e]xpleto prosequitur [sic] presbyter his verbis" is followed by the text opening "Haec summa est ...", with much of that section underneath the discolouration on the reverse. Read more...

Isidore of Seville, Sententiae, III, 18-21, on monasticism, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment[England, early fourteenth century] Single leaf, with single column of 37 lines of English gothic bookhand (textualis libraria), with numerous abbreviations and lateral compression, 2-line initials in red or dark-blue with contrasting penwork in red or turquoise-blue, edges stained and slightly cockled, else in good condition, 190 by 130mm.; in Salt's fascicule-like paper binding Provenance:1. Written most probably for use in an ecclesiastical setting in an early fourteenth-century English monastery or cathedral library. The small size of the parent manuscript may suggest that it was used by an itinerant ecclesiastic, perhaps a Dominican or Franciscan.2. A.N.L. Munby (1913-1974), bibliographer (especially of the Phillipps collection), librarian of King's College, Cambridge, J.P.R. Lyell Reader in Bibliography in Oxford University and Sandars Reader in Bibliography in Cambridge University. On Munby's collecting see A.S.G. Edwards, 'A.N. L. Munby's Collecting of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 15.3 (2014), pp. 57-72.3. Dr. George Salt (1903-2003) of Cambridge, entomologist, calligrapher and collector: his calligraphic notes on the paper binding of this fragment recording its gift by Munby on 15 January 1948; this his MS 3. Sold in Sotheby's, 17 December 1991, lot 8(c) as "leaf from a small manuscript of monastic rules". 4. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 1556. Text:No other encyclopedic text in the West has had anything like the impact of that written by Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636). He was part of the intellectual renaissance in the seventh-century Visigothic court, and was notably close to King Sigebut (c. 565-620/1), to whom the first version of this work was dedicated. It has been suggested that he composed it as a form of summa for his recently-civilised barbarian masters, but it quickly found other more-conventional readers in mainland Europe, and became the most widely consulted reference work of the Middle Ages. It survives today in nearly a thousand manuscripts (S.A. Barney et al., Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, 2006, p. 24), and by the year 800, copies of it could be found in all the cultural centres of Europe. Published: C. de Hamel, 'The Life of Saint Martin', in Papyri Graecae Schøyen (PSchøyen II): essays and texts in honour of Martin Schøyen, 2010, pp. 117-122.

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto XXV, in Italian, the underlayer of a manuscript palimpsest on parchment, the leaves later reused to produce a manuscript breviary[Italy, mid fourteenth century (perhaps 1330s or 1340s), and fifteenth century]To view a video of this lot, click here. Two leaves, the first leaf a palimpsest with remains of the foot of a single column in upper part of leaf, with 7 lines of fine Italian vernacular hand (a vernacular rotunda) on recto and 11 lines in same on verso (these easily readable with UV light, and visible in margins in ambient light), with initials offset in margins as common for medieval verse, the later breviary text added over that in the fifteenth century and in a single column of 23 lines of a squat late gothic bookhand (textualis formata) with much lateral compression, rubrics in red, initials in red or dark blue; the second leaf as before but without palimpsest underlayer, some areas of discolouration through use, scuffing to ink on recto of second leaf, else in good condition, 135 by 97mm.; both in separate fascicule-like paper bindings (these added for Salt, see below) Almost certainly one of the very earliest witnesses to Dante's Divine Comedy, written within a decade or so of the composition of this grand and important work; here offered on the 700th anniversary of the poet's death Provenance:1. The Dante manuscript here was copied in Italy, probably soon after after the author composed the work. The text was completed in 1321, and the professional scribal hand with its broad nib and simple angular initials ornamented with hairline strokes, most closely resemble those of Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ashburnham 828, dating to 1335 and the earliest extant manuscript of the text, as well as Piacenza, Biblioteca Comunale, MS. 190, which was copied in Genova in 1336. Moreover, one variant reading on a leaf from the same parent manuscript now in King's College (see below) suggests the inclusion of the parent manuscript in Petrocchi's group 'c' of the antica vulgata manuscripts, almost all of which trace their origin to a lost early version of the text (Salt, p. 473). Then in the fifteenth century these leaves were partly scrubbed clean and bisected laterally and reused as bifolia in the production of a Breviary, with saints such as Abundius (fifth-century bishop of Como) in its Litany, suggesting use in the northern Italian border region.2. Frank R. Brown, of Histon, bookseller based in Cambridge, in business in the 1930s and 1940s.3. Dr. George Salt (1903-2003) of Cambridge, entomologist, calligrapher and collector, these leaves his MSS. 14 and 15: his calligraphic notes on the paper bindings of these fragments, including the information that he bought the entire Breviary in a dilapidated state from Brown in Cambridge on 18 April 1936. Salt published a short report in 1985 on the underlying palimpsest text visible on approximately 56 leaves of that codex, after gifting the bulk of the volume to King's College, Cambridge (their Salt collection, codex 3, given on 21 January 1983). However, he retained the present two leaves, noting the palimpsest leaf here as "A single leaf of the breviary ... remains in my own collection, its conjoint missing". These two leaves in Sotheby's, 17 December 1991, lots 6 and 7 (the latter part of item k there).4. The Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 1543. Text:Dante Alighieri (c. 1265-1321), the foremost poet of the Italian language, stands at the head of a small and select gathering of medieval literary authors of sublime importance and impact. He is the most important medieval Italian author and his works all but founded the modern Italian language. This cutting here is from the grand and exquisitely beautiful Divine Comedy, probably the most important literary work of the entire Middle Ages. It was completed by 1321 in the last months of the author's life and found immediate fame. Literary echoes of it are legion and found throughout European literature from the fourteenth century to today, from Boccaccio's evident devotion in his Trattatello in laude di Dante, to T.S. Eliot's statement "Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third". Jorge Luis Borges declared it "the best book literature has achieved". That preserved here is Canto XXV:118-126 and 145-151, describing the eighth circle of hell, and thus the sins and punishment of thieves.Over 800 medieval manuscripts and fragments have now been recorded by the 'Dante online' project, but they are of extreme rarity in private hands, and no codex has appeared on the open market now in nearly forty years. Fragments and cuttings are still far from common, with Sotheby's selling a damaged leaf with a miniature that was recovered from a binding, on 1 December 1998, lot 16. Another text leaf recovered from a binding was sold in our rooms, 4 December 2018, lot 29, and most recently yet another text leaf recovered from a binding emerged in 2017 in the London trade and then sold by Christie's, 14 July this year, lot 8, for £87,500. Published:G. Salt, 'An Unrecorded Palimpsest of Dante's Inferno', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 8:4 (1985), pp. 471-476.

Leaf from Johannes de Lana, Quaestiones de anima humana, a commentary on Aristotle, De anima, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment [Italy (probably Bologna), fourteenth century] Single large leaf, with double column of 82 lines of an Italian gothic university hand (littera textualis), paragraph marks in red or blue, 2-line initials in same with elaborate and densely curled penwork in contrasting colours, probably recovered from a binding and hence with edges trimmed, small stains and some light cockling, but overall in good and presentable condition and on heavy parchment, 304 by 216mm.; in Salt's fascicule-like paper binding Provenance: 1. Doubtless written and decorated for use in a university setting by a student of philosophy, and in particular the works of Aristotle.2. A.N.L. Munby (1913-1974), bibliographer (especially of the Phillipps collection), librarian of King's College, Cambridge, J.P.R. Lyell Reader in Bibliography in Oxford University and Sandars Reader in Bibliography in Cambridge University. On Munby's collecting see A.S.G. Edwards, 'A.N. L. Munby's Collecting of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 15.3 (2014), pp. 57-72. 3. Dr. George Salt (1903-2003) of Cambridge, entomologist, calligrapher and collector: his calligraphic notes on the paper bindings of this fragment noting its acquisition from Munby on 25 February 1950 in exchange for "Astle" (most probably a copy of Thomas Astle, The Origin and Progress of Writing, 1784); this Salt's MS. 4. Sold in Sotheby's, 17 December 1991, lot 7(f).4. The Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 1548.  Text:Johannes de Lana (c. 1276-c. 1347) was an Augustinian hermit in Bologna, where he had previously studied theology before perhaps going on to study in Paris. He appears to have returned to Bologna to teach, but c. 1327, had resigned academic office to become the prior of the convent of San Giacomo there. His commentaries on Aristotle's Physica and Peter Lombard's Sententiae, are lost, but the text here survives in two versions, with twenty-two 'questions' in Chigi E VIII 247, and eighteen in Oxford, Balliol College, MS. 63. As part of his short biography of the author, D. Gutierrez lists another seven fourteenth-century manuscripts in his edition of the text ('De Fratre Ioanne de Bononia Qui Dicitir Lana', Analecta Augustinana 19, 1945, pp. 180-209), but no survey of the extant witnesses has yet been published. Published: C. de Hamel, 'The Life of Saint Martin', in Papyri Graecae Schøyen (PSchøyen II): essays and texts in honour of Martin Schøyen, 2010, pp. 117-122.

Leaf from Alexander Bonini de Alexandria, In Duodecim Aristotelis Metaphysicae Expositio, a commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysica, in Latin, manuscript on parchment[Italy, fourteenth century] Single large leaf, with double column of 41 lines of an informal Italian university hand (littera textualis libraria; with parts of the commentary on Metaphysica, book X), paragraph marks in red or dark blue, recovered from a binding and so with wormholes, stained at edges and scuffed on reverse (with areas there illegible), 300 by 190mm.; in Salt's fascicule-like paper binding Provenance:1. Written and decorated in an Italian centre for use by a university master or student.2. Dr. George Salt (1903-2003) of Cambridge, entomologist, calligrapher and collector: his calligraphic notes on the paper bindings of this fragment; this his MS. 5, and sold in Sotheby's, 17 December 1991, lot 7(b), as "leaf from a manuscript on physics or mathematics".3. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 1545. Text:In the sixteenth century this text was attributed to the English Franciscan theologian, Alexander of Hales (d. 1245), however, it has subsequently been identified as the work of Alexander Bonini (c. 1270-1314) instead. Alexander Bonini was a Franciscan philosopher who taught at the University of Paris, then lectured at the papal court, and rose to become minister general of the Fransciscan Order in the last two years of his life. This work was composed during his time in Bologna, in 1303-1307. The work is far from common in manuscript. F. Amerini lists only nine surviving manuscripts of the work: Cordoba, Bibl. del Cabildo, 57 and 129 Est. 3; Erfurt, Stadtbibl., Ampl. F325; Florence, Laurenziana 84, cod. 15; Krakow, Bibl. Jagiellonska, 650; Munich, Staatsbibl., Clm 11591; Naples, Bibl. Nazionale, VIII. E2 and E37; and Padua, Bibl. Antoniana, 386 Scaff. XVIII (A Companion to the Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Metaphysics, 2014, p. 317), and a critical edition is in preparation. Published: C. de Hamel, 'The Life of Saint Martin', in Papyri Graecae Schøyen (PSchøyen II): essays and texts in honour of Martin Schøyen, 2010, pp. 117-122.

Ɵ A priest during Mass and a bell-ringer, large miniature on a leaf from a copy of Gregory IX, Decretals, opening of Book III, De Vita et Honestate Clericorum, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment[most probably Italy (probably Ligurian coast or vicinity), early fourteenth century] Single large leaf, with a large rectangular miniature the width of both columns of text (140 by 175mm.), on the left an arched architectural compartment enclosing a priest in a crystalline-gold flecked robe raising the Host during the Mass before an altar with a golden cross, a chalice and two candles, to the right an acolyte holding a long candle as he kneels and pulls a bell-rope to ring the sanctus bell in the rafters of the church, all within a wide frame formed from floral tiles in red, green, blue, pale pink-grey and burnished gold, text opening with one large initial in grey and pink shades heightened with white brushwork, enclosing coloured foliage on blue and gold grounds and enclosed within gold grounds, one smaller initial in same opening corresponding gloss in margin, one- and 2-line initials and running titles ('L/III') in red or blue with contrasting penwork, red or blue paragraph marks, red rubrics, main text in double column of up to 41 lines of Italian rotunda script (Italian rotunda or littera bononiensis), encased within a main gloss (up to 94 lines, and in smaller version of same script) with further glosses added in space between the other blocks of text and in the margins (these attached to relevant parts of main text or main gloss by hairline pen symbols and circles), a few elongated manicula marks in gloss, one small 'I' +abbreviation for 'us' or 'h' in middle of bas-de-page of recto (perhaps an original quire signature) and a modern pencil '22' in lower outer corner of recto, slight discolouration at edges and some scuffing to gold, else in excellent and fresh condition, 500 by 325mm.; in cloth covered card binding  Provenance: 1. Written in an Italian university setting in the early fourteenth century, but the volume then evidently carried away and its miniatures and painted initials probably added in north-western Italy (see below).2. Dr. Arthur Simony (1854-1882) of Vienna: his small dark-blue inkstamp in upper corner of recto. Simony was a mysterious nineteenth-century collector about whom so little is known, that B.S. Cron wrote to the Book Collector in 1958 explaining he had acquired leaves from a Gratian owned by Simony and asking for any information on him (p. 188; the bifolium now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York). He was a Viennese mountaineer who climbed the Spitzmauer when only 17 years old and left a written account of the expedition, and later qualified as a medical doctor. He died at only twenty-eight years old, and his library was sold by Brockhausen & Bräuer of Vienna in 1885 (their cat. no. 8). Another leaf from the same parent manuscript as this one was sold in Köller, 24 March 2021, lot 502, for CHF 16,160.3. Dr. Rosy Schilling (1888-1971) of Frankfurt, the German art-historian who fled to London after 1937 due to her Jewish ancestry and her husband's public opposition to the Nazi party. Sold by her heirs in Sotheby's, 5 December 1994, lot 37, realising £5980.4. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS 1978. Decoration:While the script here is certainly Italian, the miniatures on this leaf and its sister leaf sold at Koller are disarming with their mix of Italian and French motifs. Of course, it was common for such volumes to be written in university centres of Italy, but have their miniatures and decoration added at the final destination of the volume, and the flux of students from across the whole Mediterranean in and out of the universities of Italy allowed for such volumes to be carried some distances. When it was in her collection, the art-historian Rosy Schilling identified the miniature here as Neopolitan in origin. When the leaf was sold at Sotheby's nearly thirty years ago that catalogue also allowed for a Spanish origin. However, the Koller description earlier this year pointed towards other possibilities: Avignon and most interestingly, the northern Ligurian coastline. Many of the individual aspects here do fit well into the art of northern Italy, and a location on the north-western Italian coastline and border with France. Wide painted frames also occur around fourteenth-century miniatures from the region (see BnF., Français 755, produced in Lombardy c. 1320-1330: F. Avril and M.T. Gousset, Manuscrits enluminés d'origine italienne, 2005, no. 1), and close matches can be found for the quadrilobed coloured flowerheads of the frame here (albeit not arranged within lines of square tiles as here) in the frames of manuscripts from Pavia (see the Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia, made there c. 1400, now BnF., Latin 5840: ibid., no. 45; and the Seneca, Tragoediae, made there in 1403: now BnF., Latin 8028: ibid., no. 46). The figures here are somewhat rustic in execution, but elements of them such as the hair defined internally by thick black brushstrokes also appears in a copy of Maurice de Sully, Sermons, attributed to either Milan or Genova and c. 1320-1330 (now BnF., Français 187: ibid., no. 66). The problem of solid attribution is perhaps one of lack of comparative material. So little survives from the Ligurian coastline and surrounding region, and our impression of the book production of northern Italy is focussed on the large centres of Milan and Pavia. If this leaf is from this region, then it adds significantly to our knowledge of book production and the book arts there in the fourteenth century.

Leaf from a Breviary, with parts of Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment[France, c. 1400] Single leaf, with double column of 31 lines of two sizes of an accomplished and professional late gothic bookhand (textualis formata) with many ornamental penstrokes and flourishes, capitals touched in yellow wash, red rubrics, 2-line initials in gold or blue with ornate contrasting penwork (one enclosing a simple flowerhead picked out with its centre and tips of its petals), verso with catchword, some small areas of discolouration to outermost edges, slight cockling, overall in excellent condition and on fine and thin parchment, 160 by 110mm.; in Salt's fascicule-like paper binding Provenance:1. The parent manuscript, a fragmentary Breviary of 113 leaves with two inserted seventeenth-century German miniatures, was sold in Sotheby's 11 April 1961, lot 148, to Alan G. Thomas. The miniatures reappeared as Thomas cat. 9 (1961), no. 37, then Sotheby's, 2 December 1986, lot 27, and the bulk of the volume was sold to the Folio Fine Art Society, who dispersed it widely, with leaves appearing initially in their cats. 5 (1961), no. 97, 13 (1963), no. 129, and 17 (1963), no. 129. M.M. Manion, V.F. Vines and C. de Hamel, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in New Zealand Collections, 1989, no. 78, give a list of known leaves (but not including this one).2. Dr. George Salt (1903-2003) of Cambridge, entomologist, calligrapher and collector: his calligraphic notes on the paper bindings of this fragment; this his MS 2; his sale in Sotheby's, 17 December 1991, lot 7(h).3. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 1550. Script:This leaf is included here as a fine example of the heights of decorative palaeography and text ornament reached by the turn of the fifteenth century. Published: C. de Hamel, 'The Life of Saint Martin', in Papyri Graecae Schøyen (PSchøyen II): essays and texts in honour of Martin Schøyen, 2010, pp. 117-122.

Ɵ Terence, Heauton Timorumenos, in the humanist script of Giuliano di Antonio of Prato, in Latin verse, fine manuscript on parchment [Italy (probably Florence), c. 1450-1460] Single leaf, with single column of 30 lines (including Act II, Scene 2 of Heauton Timorumenos, the 'Self-Tormentor') of the fine humanist minuscule of Giuliano di Antonio of Prato, with few abbreviations or ligatures, rubrics in pale red capitals, the readings for different characters marked in same pale red capitals, occasional textual corrections (one in a contemporary hand definitely not that of the main scribe), noticeable grain pattern to parchment (as common with humanist manuscripts), small spots and stains, slight discolouration at edges, else in excellent condition, 252 by 177mm.; in cloth covered card binding Provenance:1. The parent manuscript, a collection of the works of Terence, was written in Florence, c. 1450-60. The script was first attributed by A.C. de la Mare to the Florentine scribe 'Messer Marco', but she later revised this opinion and identified it as the work of the accomplished scribe Giuliano di Antonio of Prato (see her 'A Livy copied by Giacomo Curlo dismembered by Otto Ege', Interpreting and Collecting Fragments of Medieval Books, 2000, at p. 57, n. 1).2. The codex was owned in the fifteenth or sixteenth century by a 'Petrus Colom', and the leaf with his inscription is now at Rutgers University.3. The incomplete parent volume of 103 leaves was offered by E.P. Goldsmidt, cat. 23 (1930), no. 14, then reappearing as Sotheby's, 28 May 1934, lot 100, bought by Marks (of 84 Charing Cross Road), presumably on behalf of Dawson's, bookdealers of Los Angeles.4. Otto Ege (1888-1951), who bought this from Dawson's in 1935 (see de Ricci, 1937, and Gwara, 2013), dispersed by September 1936, and apparently shared with Philip C. Duschnes.5. The present leaf re-appearing in Sotheby's, 26 November 1985, lot 78, to Quaritch, their cat. 1147, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, V (1991), no. 117.6. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, part of their MS. 648 (along with another leaf from the same parent manuscript, ex. Ferrini and sold in the Schøyen sale in Christie's, 10 July 2019, lot 456, for £1500). Text:Terence (Publius Terentius Afer, c. 190-159 BC.) was one of the great early Roman comic playwrights. This work, the Heauton Timorumenos, most probably drew on Menander's lost play of the same name, and is based on a typically Terentian comic motif of a complex deception and double plot of two young lovers whose affairs are closely interwoven. It opens with the author's famous imploring of his audience to judge a play by its merits rather than the opinions of critics, and was first performed in 163 BC. He need not have worried about its reception, and Horace (65-8 BC.) speaks of packed houses for Terence's plays, while Varro (116-27 BC.) had clearly enjoyed a performance and could describe the costume of Menedemus, one of its main characters. Parts survive of four manuscripts of the fourth and fifth centuries, and no less than five Carolingian examples. In total, approximately 650 manuscripts survive from the year 800 onwards (see M.D. Reeve in Texts and Transmissions, 1983, pp. 412-20). Script:This is a particulary finely executed and appealing example of Italian humanist script, a script created in the second half of the fourteenth century through the emulation and refinement of the bookhands of what its designers thought were 'Roman' or Classical manuscripts, with all their connotations of antiquity and textual authority, but in fact predominantly those of the Carolingian and Romanesque periods. Like Carolingian minuscule, which it chiefly emulates, the introduction of humanist script was also driven by ease of legibility, and a letter survives sent by Petrarch at the age of sixty-two and with failing eyesight to his friend Boccaccio, recording that he had commissioned his Epistles to be copied not in the usual script of the period that could tire the eyes of the reader, but in "littera ... castigata et clara" ('neat and clear letters').  Published:S. de Ricci, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States, 1937, II, p. 1947, no. 65.S. Gwara, Otto Ege's Manuscripts, 2013, his HL 78.

Augustine, Contra Faustum, cutting from a leaf copied by the fifteenth-century humanist scribe Theodericus Werken closely imitating late twelfth-century English script, in Latin, manuscript on parchment[England (probably Canterbury), c. 1470-1475] Rectangular cutting from the bottom of a leaf, preserving much of lower margin at foot, with single column of 11 lines of the late-humanist hand of Theodericus Werken (see below; the text here book 23, chs. 9:5-16 and 10:3-14), some later scribbles in margins, some discolouration in places (notably where the edge of the cutting was folded around the first or last gathering of the later book it was reused to bind, but overall in good and legible condition and on strong and flexible parchment, 110 by 160mm.; in Salt's fascicule-like paper binding A cutting with the distinctive mature hand of the celebrated scribe Theodericus Werken, formed from a fusion of a humanist hand learnt in Italy and his emulation of the pre-gothic books he found in Christ Church, Canterbury; and this the only example of his hand in private ownership Provenance: 1. Written by the virtuoso humanist scribe, Theodericus Werken (more fully "Theodericus Nicolai Werken de Abbenbroith"), towards the end of his career, probably in the 1470s. It was copied from a manuscript exemplar (the editio princeps only appeared in 1506), and in 1976 A.C. de la Mare tentatively suggested that the parent volume of this cutting may be identifiable with the manuscript recorded in 1501 in the library of Canterbury College, Oxford (p. 286; no. 78 in their inventory).2. Then most probably reused as binding material of a copy of Cicero, printed at Lyons by Sebastianus Gryphius in 1540, owned in the seventeenth century by Richard Pitts of Oxford (perhaps of the family of this name from Iffley, Oxfordshire) and then Nathaniel Clutterbuck (doubtless the same who matriculated from Pembroke College in 1650): their ex libris marks in the printed book. Two inscriptions added to the margins of the cutting in the seventeenth century detailing another academic work ("The nomenclator or Remembrancer of Adrianus Junius Physician conteining proper names translated into English by John Higgins printed London 1585") and a pentrial ("the lord is a good god").3. Charlie Stocker (d. 1978), of Cambridge.4. Dr. George Salt (1903-2003) of Cambridge, entomologist, calligrapher and collector: his calligraphic notes on the paper bindings of this fragment; this his MS 2, acquired in 1943 and liberated from the printed book by him. This cutting sold Sotheby's 17 December 1991, lot 8(e).5. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 1558. The scribe: A.C. de la Mare first identified this fragment as in the mature hand of Theodericus Werken, using the heavy and well-spaced script with larger letters that he adopted at the very end of his career in the 1470s. He was a humanist scribe from Abbenbroek in The Netherlands, and entered the service of William Gray, the bishop of Ely, in 1444 in Cologne, where he copied several manuscripts in a gothic hand for that patron (on him see de la Mare below, that adding to the work of R.A.B. Mynors, 'A fifteenth-century scribe: T. Werken', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, I, 1950, pp. 97-104). He accompanied Bishop Gray on to Italy, where he learnt humanist script, copying further works in this new hand in Padua and probably Florence in 1445. He continued in the service of Bishop Gray until 1449, when he came to England, probably in the entourage of Richard Bole, a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, who had been one of Bishop Gray's companions in the earliest stage of his European tour. He copied several manuscripts for Bole through to the 1460s, and in fact shared the copying together of a manuscript of Thomas of Ringstede's commentary on Proverbs, dated 28 February 1461 in London (Balliol College, MS. 34). A single codex of English vernacular devotional works in an English gothic script was signed by him in 1467 (San Marino, CA., Huntington Library, HM 142). Through the 1470s he copied patristic works from early print editions for the library of Christ Church, Canterbury, and the hand here and the size and spacing of the script is near-identical to those volumes. He was, as D. Rundle states, "a scribe who moved between scripts with more facility than he did between languages" (Renaissance Reform of the Book and Britain, 2019, p. 135, with an extended discussion of Werken on pp. 124-142). What is perhaps most striking here is the influence of English twelfth-century script on Werken's hand. This is not the humanist hand he learnt in Italy and used in the mid-fifteenth century, but while retaining some individual ideosyncrasies such as a tall final 's' and a z-shaped 'r' he has seamlessly assimilated the script of the books he found in Canterbury. The letters here are too angular and there is too much lateral compression, but letterforms in places are copied perfectly and other features, such as occasional biting curves, are so close that they allow us to suggest that his models came in part from c. 1180 or later. This emulation had no practical function, and was perhaps purely due to his interest in the script and his talent for paleographical mimicry. A generation after Werken's death, Archbishop Matthew Parker would record in a letter to Sir William Cecil, not only that he had a scribe named Lylye who could 'conterfeit' "fair antique writing", but also that Cecil kept his own scribe for the same purpose, "a singular artificer" (Correspondence of Matthew Parker, 1853, no. cxciv) and the copying of scripts was common in the bookish entourage of the archbishop (see both the Tudor manuscripts now in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, as well as facsimiles made by members of that entourage such as John Joscelyn for themselves, such as the material in 'Joselyn's notebook', British Library, Cotton, MS. Vitellius D.vii). This scribal mimicry, the emulation of scripts for no practical reason other than fascination with their forms, was perhaps a facet of English humanism and antiquarianism at the close of the Middle Ages and opening of the Renaissance. Published: A.C. de la Mare, 'A Fragment of Augustine in the Hand of Theodericus Werken', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, VI (1976), pp. 285-290. C. de Hamel, 'The Life of Saint Martin', in Papyri Graecae Schøyen (PSchøyen II): essays and texts in honour of Martin Schøyen, 2010, pp. 117-122.D.W. Mosser, 'Longleat House MS 30, T. Werken, and Thomas Betson', Journal of the Early Book Society for the Study of Manuscripts and Printing, 15 (2012), p. 319.

Forged charter concerning the transfer of land at Framsden, Suffolk, by Roger de Mohaut and his wife Isolde, to their heirs, in Latin, manuscript document on parchment[England (probably East Anglia), dated 7 William I (1073) but more probably thirteenth or early fourteenth century] Single-sheet document, on 16 long lines in a shaky, angular and occasionally clumsy imitation of English Romanesque secretarial hand, stains and cockling, some small splits, these causing losses to text in left-hand corner of last three lines, overall fair and presentable, 115 by 240mm.; stitched to a card with nineteenth-century notes on contents, a transcript and translation of the document and a note that "The Latin version [the transcription on the tipped on leaf] was elaborated [in archaic sense of 'to execute with great care and minuteness of detail'] before the original was placed in this book" (the card has been foliated '1' and would have appear to once have been bound in a volume) Provenance: 1. Most probably forged at the end of the thirteenth century or the opening of the fourteenth century, in order to support the claims of the de Mohaut family to the estate of Framsden (see below).2. In English antiquarian ownership in the nineteenth-century, and then stitched to the card it is presently mounted on, with inscriptions as listed above, and most probably in a large album of charters.3. Bruce Ferrini (1950-2010), of Akron, Ohio.4. Sam Fogg of London.5. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 605/1, acquired from Fogg in December 1989. Text:Although this item is a charter rather than text, it is included here among the bookhands emulating earlier script as it is a good example of the most notorious form of such emulation - medieval forgery. This charter purports to date to the seventh year of the reign of William the Conqueror, but is in a peculiarly shaky and hesitant hand that appears to be trying to copy one of the late eleventh century, but fails in that attempt. In addition, it falls down on much factual detail. This land transfer is said to have taken place at the 'abbey' of Shouldham (here "Scoudham") to the immediate south of Marham, yet the community at Shouldham was a Gilbertine priory, and not an abbey, and was not founded until the 1190s. Moreover, beyond the mention of William the Conqueror, it is hard to identify anyone mentioned here with someone who lived in the eleventh century, and the family names given seem to cluster instead in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The sole episcopal witness is that of 'Thomas, bishop of Norwich', yet the bishop of Norwich from 1070 to 1084 was Herfast, and no Thomas held the see until Thomas Blunville (reigned as bishop 1226-1236). A Roger de Mohaut did indeed hold the estate of Framsden, but he did not have a wife named Isolde, and in fact lived in the late thirteenth century (d. 1275), where he was a hereditary knight of Hawarden Castle, Flintshire in Wales, who also held estates in Middlesex, Sussex and Warwickshire. A handful of men with this name from the same family can be traced in the thirteenth century, but not before, and it is doubtful if the castle on which their name is based (Latin: Mons Altus, corrupt form: Montalt, and Norman-French: Mohaut) was even constructed by 1073. The creator of this charter did have intimate local knowledge, but it seems that again this knowledge was of the thirteenth and fourteenth century, not the eleventh. Some of the names here, such as Henricus Helmeth and Adam Wylot, are recorded as local to Framsden from the thirteenth century onwards (with an Emma Wylot even recorded as owning a seventh part of Framsden in an inquest in 1378). The final piece of the puzzle emerges in the record of a charter of 4 June 1335 (now Essex archives, D/DRg 1/36), in which Robert de Morlee, 2nd Baron Morley notes that the claims of the de Mohaut family to Framsden had been disputed by none other than Queen Isabel, the mother of King Edward III. It seems most likely that the present document was created in the fourteenth century to further the claims of the de Mohaut family to the estate, in a hand imitative of the eleventh century and with fictitious family members of the de Mohaut family and their local followers backdated some two centuries to give their claim added legitimacy. What is perhaps most fascinating here is that the de Mohaut family must have employed a professional to help them create this document, but they clearly had only scant knowledge of local details. Records exist of professional forgers in the Middle Ages, such as the twelfth-century French monk Guerno, who tearfully confessed on his deathbed to an impressive career as a monastic forger in France and England, but it is rarer to find them for the late Middle Ages, and of extreme rarity to find one produced to support secular claims, rather than those of an ecclesiastical institution.

Royal charter of King John, for Philip, son of Wastellion, and confirming the gift of an estate named "Dunwallesland" in Wales to him in exchange for feudal service to William de Braose and a knight's fee to the tenure of Abergavenny Castle, with all its woods, fields, paths, waters, mills, fishponds and so on, in Latin, manuscript document on parchment[Welsh Marches (St. Briavels Castle in Forest of Dean), dated 5 December 1209] Single-sheet document, on 15 long lines in a fine and professional English Romanesque secretarial hand, with long and tall ascenders that lean to the left, one penwork decorated capital 'Q', seventeenth-century endorsement on reverse: "A tenure to the Castell of Abergavenny xi Joh.", with a nineteenth-century addition below that: "Dec. 5th 1210 -11a Johis", remnants of seal-tag (but seal wanting), folds and small stains, two small natural flaws in parchment, else in excellent condition, 210+41 by 230mm. Provenance: 1. Richard Henry Wood (1820-1908), FSA, of Penrhos House, Rugby, iron merchant, antiquarian and collector of charters and rare books: this item doubtless the "Charter of King John to Philip Fitz-Wastell., of the land called Dunwallesland" loaned to the museum of the British Archaeological Association in 1876 (reported in the journal of the society, vol. 32, for that year, p. 306). In fact, the descriptions of what was lent to the museum by Wood appear to have been muddled in their order in the journal, as the final item in the list lent by Wood is described as "The tenure and knight's service for the custody of his castle at Abergavenny, dated at St. Briavels, Dec. 5, 1210", which, with a very slight miscalculation of the eleventh year of John's reign (note the nineteenth-century inscription on the back of this document with the same misdating), must also be the present document.2. Sotheby's, 21 June 1994, lot 80, at which time a photograph of this charter was deposited in the National Library of Wales (Facs. 743).3. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 1857. Text:A visually attractive and remarkably early English royal charter in excellent condition. Documents with any connection to Wales survive in far fewer numbers than those for England, and rarely ever emerge on the market. Here the site of the lands named "Dunwallesland" are yet to be precisely identified, but as the Norman overlord, William de Braose, had ambushed and murdered Seisyll ap Dyfnwal, one of the lords of Gwent, on Christmas Day 1175 in Abergavenny Castle alongside other Welsh princes, they are likely to have been the ancestral lands of Dyfnwal ("Dunwall") ap Caradog ap Ynyr Fychan, the father of Seisyll. The lordship of Seisyll ap Dyfnwal and his father centred on Monmouthshire, with their main stronghold at Castell Arnalt, a motte and bailey near the River Usk to the south of Abergavenny. These same estates, then named "Donewaldeslond" were disputed in 1290, with John de Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings, then claiming their ownership and challenging the heirs of Philip, son of Wastellion. As befits a grant for military reasons to bolster the Welsh Marches, most of the witnesses here were crusaders, with William, Earl of Arundel (later justiciar of England, then crusader, d. 1221), Robert de Turnham (crusader, justiciar of Cyprus in 1191, d. 1211), Hugh de Neville (crusader, royal counsellor, d. 1222), Peter de Mauley (later traitor, who died in the Holy Land in 1241), as well as the royal agent who made this grant on behalf of the king, Robert de Vieuxpont (crusader and a nephew of Hugh de Morville who was one of the assassins of Thomas Becket, d. 1228). However, the presence of Cadwallan, son of Ivor ("Cadewallanus filio Ivor"), the son of the lord of Senghenydd, at the end of the witnesses, attests to the presence of Welsh nobles in this crucial grant and the new power structure it helped to create in early thirteenth-century Wales.

Two cuttings from a bifolium of Smaragdus of St-Mihiel, Liber comitis, including his quotation of Bede, De octo quaestionibus, quaestio II, with one of the earliest references to English illuminated manuscript ownership, in Latin, manuscript on parchment[Germany or perhaps France, third quarter of the ninth century] Substantial parts of a large bifolium, cut through the middle horizontally to use on a later binding as board supports, with sections cut out of the two halves for the thongs at the spine, trimmed at foot with loss of about 6 lines there, text showing that this once the innermost bifolium from a gathering, wanting probably a single line where bifolium was sliced through horizontally, cuttings now with remains of double column of 27 lines in a good rounded Carolingian minuscule with integral et-ligature within words, a notably long capital 'S' which sits with its midpoint on the baseline, and a distinctive 'r' with a long and undulating horizontal stroke, capitals in same pen, some offset, scuffs (especially to reverse, obscuring some areas of text there), splits and areas of discolouration, overall fair and presentable condition, in total 215 by 400mm.; set in glass on both sides, and in a large black fitted case Provenance:1. Quaritch of London; with a postcard dated 29 May 1991 from Bernard Bischoff, with his opinions on the cuttings, enclosed.2. Schøyen Collection, London and Oslo, their MS 1380, acquired from Quaritch in June 1991. Text: These cuttings contain Smaragdus of St-Mihiel's commentary on Corinthians 11, citing John Chrysostom and Ambrose (recto first leaf to verso first leaf, col. 1 and first half of col. 2), but with the text truncated at its end (compare the first half of col. 2 of fol. 1v here with that in Patrologia Latina 102, cols. 104-105), followed by Smaragdus' extensive quotation of Bede, De octo quaestionibus, quaestio II (verso first leaf, second half of col. 2 through to first half of col. 1 on recto of second leaf, this again truncated at end), and ending with Bede's commentary on Luke VIII (remaining recto and verso of second leaf). The De octo quaestionibus is by far the rarest here and deserves some individual attention. The initial publication of this text by Johann Herwagen in 1563 (reprinted from there by Migne, Patrologia Latina, 93 in 1862, and there called the Aliquot quaestionem liber) served to confuse rather than elucidate its authorship, as Herwegan used a manuscript which had interpolated non-Bede material at its end. This lead to the publication of the text by Migne among the 'dubia et spuria' and similarly among the uncertain works of Bede by M.W.L. Laistner and H.H. King in their Handlist of Bede Manuscripts (1943). Moreover, J.A. Giles went so far as to exclude it from his edition of Bede's work in 1843-1844. However, the Carolingians certainly knew of the text in a form usually described as 'eight questions' (it is cited by Smaragdus of St-Mihiel, Claudius of Turin, Hrabanus Maurus and Haimo of Auxerre, and in 852, Lupus of Ferrières sent a request to Abbot Altsig of York requesting a number of works, including 'questions by your Bede on both Testaments'), and strong academic defences of Bede's authorship of some part of this material were made by Paul Lehmann in 1919 ('Wert und Echtheit einer Beda abgesprochenen Schrift', in Sitzungsberichte der Phil.-Phil. Und der Hist. Klasse der bayer. Akad. Der Wissenschaften, Abhandlung 4) and again in 1999 and 2008 (M. Gorman, 'Bede's VIII Quaestiones and Carolingian Scholarship', Revue Bénédictine, 109, 1999, pp. 32-74; and E. Knibbs, 'The Manuscript Evidence for the De Octo Quaestionibus Ascribed to Bede', Traditio, 63, 2008, pp. 129-183). An initial core of eight 'questions' are now firmly thought to be of the eighth century, with four of these confidently ascribed to Bede (including the quaestio cited here). These cuttings here did not, however, come from a manuscript of that text in its unadulterated form, but from a copy of Smaragdus Liber Comitis, which quotes quaestio II of Bede's text. That quaestio is famous for its record, in its explanation of II Corinthians 11:24, of an illuminated manuscript brought from Rome by the most reverend and most learned Cuthwine, bishop of the East Angles (probably fl. mid-eighth century; here "reverentissimus ac doctissimus vir Chudo [in error for 'Cuduinus', which seems to have confused our scribe, leading to the erasure following] orientalium anglorum antistes", 5th to 3rd lines from end of col. 2 on fol. 1v). The brief description given by Bede of the miniatures of that volume allows the tentative conclusion that the illuminated manuscript brought back from Rome was a copy of Arator, De actibus apostolorum. However, Cuthwine may have owned more than one such manuscript. An illustrated copy of Sedulius' Carmen Paschale survives in the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, their M 17.4. It dates to the ninth century, but its scribe copied in ornamental capitals an apparent ex libris from its earlier exemplar on fol. 68v: "Finit fines fines Cuðuuini" (noted by L. Traube in 1902; see also J.J.G. Alexander, Insular Manuscripts: 6th to the 9th Century, 1978, p. 83; and M. Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, 2006, pp. 26-27). This is not the sole record of its kind (Bede also records Benedict Biscop's bringing of an illustrated Apocalypse to Monkwearmouth-Jarrow from Rome in the seventh century), but it does stand among the very earliest such accounts, and its author was most probably an eye-witness to Cuthwine's manuscript. In addition, as no manuscript of the complete text of Bede's De octo quaestionibus or Smaragdus' Liber Comitis has ever come to the market, and no other commentator on Bede's text quotes the relevant passage about Cuthwine, this is most probably the only chance to ever acquire this important early bibliophilic record in manuscript. 

Ɵ Leaf with extracts from the Testa de Nevill, a collection of original surveys of feudal landholdings, here with entries for Hereford and Gloucestershire in 1226-1228, 1235-1256 and 1250, with crossed out entries for Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire from 1244, in Latin, manuscript on parchment[England (probably London), second half of thirteenth century (after 1256)]  Single large leaf, with single column of 33/31 lines in a professional English secretarial hand, with counties and estate names set off in margin, with some entries lined through and crossed out (mostly those for Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, perhaps copied here in error by the original scribe and then cancelled) on apparent caprine parchment with heavy grain pattern and yellowing on verso (in keeping with working documents from medieval England), a few early twentieth-century pencil notes in margins (apparently linking readings here with those of one of the editions of the Liber Feodorum, small spots and stains, trimmed at edges in places without losses to text, else good and presentable condition, 235 by 210mm.; in cloth covered card binding An important historical witness to the collection of records of feudal landholdings in the English royal exchequer in the second half of the thirteenth century Provenance:1. Most probably written in London, by an exchequer scribe extracting information from the surveys in the Testa de Nevill (see below).2. E.H. Dring (1863-1928), the first managing director of Quaritch, passing in turn to his son E.M. Dring (1906-1990), himself manager of Quaritch from 1960. 3. D.C. Wilson of Cheltenham; the bulk of the Dring leaves and fragments were sold in 1983 to Quaritch, but this leaf passed instead to Wilson in 1983: with a report produced for this owner dated 20 January 1987, and a translation of the leaf, here enclosed.4. Quaritch of London, acquired by them in 1993.5. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 1696. Text:The title at the head of the recto here ("De Testa de Neuill") records that this leaf is an extract of the Testa de Nevill or Liber Feodorum, a listing of feudal landholdings compiled c. 1302 from earlier records in the English exchequer, most probably under the orders of Edward I (on this see Henry Maxwell-Lyte, Liber Feodorum: The Book of Fees commonly known called Testa de Nevill, 1920-1931). Little is known with certainty about these early records, but it has been suggested that the name Testa de Nevill refers to a large receptacle (testa = 'burnt clay' or 'earthen container', but also in medieval Latin, 'skull' or 'head', and hence modern French tête) for administrative documents, with the mark of a man named Nevill (perhaps his portrait/head), doubtless one of many members of that family who held authority over the early exchequer. An exchequer roll of 1298 seems to bear witness to this collection of documents as it mentions a "rotulus Teste de Nevill" ('small roll from the Testa de Nevill'). Some of these records survive as 500 brief written notes on estates, organised into the two vast Domesday-Book-like codices of the Liber Feodorum (Kew, National Archives, E164/5-6), with a few earlier inquiries used in the compilation of these codices now National Archives, E198. The original records appear to have been lent out to local administrative officers once these codices of the Liber Feodorum were produced, and used until they were discarded.Close comparison of the entries here with what survives in the National Archives reveals this leaf to be of some importance for the early history of this record. This leaf is written on the recto and verso and thus was once part of a codex, as opposed to a roll. Occasional deviations in the text and ordering of its components show that it is not a simple copy of the Liber Feodorum, and as it includes entries for both Gloucestershire and Herefordshire it is unlikely be a faithful witness of one of the rolls in the Testa de Nevill. The leaf here includes entries from three surveys: those of 1226-1228, 1235-1256 and 1244, and two of those entries are unique to this leaf, not being found in either the Liber Feodorum or the preparatory materials now in National Archives, E198 (the entries for Hereford in which the abbot of Wygemore is recorded as holding 3 marks, and the prior of Akleye is recorded as holding 5 marks). Thus, it is most probably a fair copy of several rolls once in the Testa de Nevill, extracted by the scribe here. It may be the last witness to an otherwise unrecorded inquiry into those counties, produced in London for the investigating government parties to take with them into the West Country. Please note that this item is subject to the Manorial Documents Rules, and as such it cannot be taken out of England and Wales without the consent of the Master of the Rolls, and future owners must inform the secretary of the Historical Manuscripts Commission of their acquisition.

Inventory of gifts and legacies from mostly secular donors to the Abbey of St. Agnes of Gemona, Udine, received between 1290 and 1426, in Latin, manuscript roll on parchment[Italy (Gemona del Friuli, near Udine), dated 1344, with additions up to 1426]  A roll, formed from two membranes joined by interweaving the cut edges of the leaves and stitching through those, evidently complete with long blank space left at end (but Early Modern 'I' at head suggesting this once the first of a series of rolls), entries in single column of secretarial hands of several dates (eight hands in total in the main document: i: a fine notarial cursive, lines 1-39 and 111-end; ii. another notarial cursive with a strong left lean, lines 40-47; iii. rounded gothic minuscule, more bookhand than secretarial, lines 49-57; iv-vi. three other secretarial hands adding short entries on lines 58-97; vii. a semi-notarial minuscule, lines 99-105; and viii. neat cursive hand, lines 106-110; plus other interlinear additions), values in roman numerals set off in right-hand margin, one large simple penwork initial at head of document, modern pencil numbers in left-hand column giving line numbers, some small erasures and some lines struck through, some tears to lowermost edge, reverse blank apart from medieval endorsement "1364 23" and Early-Modern Italian endorsement "Fedor[ico] di Pinzarno" and small areas of ink offset from rolling up scroll before ink dry or from setting it down on top of other recently copied documents, first two lines rubbed and only partly readable with UV-light, spots, stains, a few small holes and folds, overall good and legible condition, 1150 by 167mm.; in fitted burgundy cloth-covered box with copy of Rosenthal cataloguing (see below) Provenance: 1. The Abbey of St. Agnes in the mountains near Gemona del Friuli: with this scroll opening and ending with inscriptions naming the community ("Sce Agnecis de Glemo'e"), the first of those ending in the date 1344 ("mo ccco lxiiii"). The house was founded in the twelfth century as a small church on a pagan temple sitting on the pre-Roman road between Gemona and Austria, and later became a hermitage and then a nunnery, with this certainly active by 1240. Due to bitter local conflicts, the community was forced to open another site within the nearby town of Gemona, which for periods from the 1270s onwards became their principal home. It is not known what Order the nunnery followed, and indeed as they grew somewhat organically from a popular hermitage and seem to have referred to their earliest inmates with terms other than 'nuns', they may have followed no Order for their first century. Sometime in the 1270s they were taken under the wing of the Benedictines, and then converted to Augustinian devotions at the end of the thirteenth century. Somewhat confusingly, the site within the town of Gemona was overseen by Franciscans, and thus that cell were Poor Clares, following the rule of St. Clare of Assisi. The community reached its height of wealth and influence in the fourteenth century after a long period of donations from the inhabitants of the region, but then started to decline at the end of that century, and was all but abandoned by the sixteenth century.2. Fedorico di Pinzarno: his sixteenth- or seventeenth-century ex libris mark on reverse. He was probably descended from the "Federicus de Pizano", who is recorded here in lines 27-29 as leaving the community a legacy on 3 November 1282.3. Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017), of San Francisco, Califonia.4. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 1602; acquired from Rosenthal in July 1992. Text:This is one of the key working documents of this long-lost nunnery, recording a wealth of donations to the community, predominantly by the seculars of the region, and added to and corrected over the last century of the history of the community. Several of the notes end with phrases showing that these are copies from documents once in the community's archive. It was begun by a single hand, who added the entries dating from 1290 to the fourteenth century, as well as the last lines detailing payments to the community from Henricus de Boldassi of a "brayda" just outside the walls of the town (brayda or braida here meaning a farm or meadow, and a term that is peculiar to the Udine region), the abbot of Moggio and from the 'church of the common people of Gemona dedicated to St. Mary' (ie. the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta there). Then between these points single entries or blocks of them were added in the 1370s and 1380s, and then again in the 1420s. It is entirely unknown to scholarship and unstudied.

Confirmation of alms through a gift of land in "Osgotheby" (Osgodby, Selby), Yorkshire, by John de Spineto to Temple Church in the City of London (the headquarters of the Knights Templar), in Latin, manuscript document on parchment [England (Yorkshire, probably north, perhaps vicinity of Durham), first half of thirteenth century (probably first few decades)]Single tiny document, on 10 long lines of a shaky and unpractised English secretarial hand, reverse with numerous contemporary and later endorsements, some small stains and folds, else good condition, seal and seal tag wanting, 80+15 by 110mm.; loosely laid down on large cardProvenance:As noted in the previous lot, manuscripts from the far north of England are rare. Here the grantor lived in the early decades of the thirteenth century, and held land in Sneaton near Scarborough, North Yorkshire, while the principal witness is Gilbert "de Aton" (from Ayton in nearby Pickering), who is also recorded in his youth as holding half a fee of the bishop of Durham in 1166 (albeit under another name, Gilbert de Barlby) and on a grant of the 1180s or 1190s in the Selby cartulary (fol. 112d) as the son and heir of William de Aton. He must have been in his mature years c. 1200, and cannot have survived many decades into the thirteenth century. Another witness, Peter "de Kokefeld" (Cockfield, now in County Durham to the immediate north of Darlington) also suggests a far northern origin. This grant to the Temple Church of St. Mary's, built in 1185 between Fleet Street and the Thames in London as the headquarters of the Knights Templar and serving during the period this charter was written as the royal treasury, strongly suggests that John de Spineto was a member of that military order.The reverse has an inscription showing this to be MS. 28,329 in the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872); and thereafter it was owned by George Dunn (1865-1912) of Woolley Hall near Maidenhead, Berkshire, an English bibliophile whose collections were sold at Sotheby's 1913-1917. This charter sold 23 November 1917, lot 3021 (part). Thence to E.H. Dring (1863-1928), and his son E.M. Dring (1906-1990), and from them to the Schøyen Collection (their MS. 1616/4) via the London book-dealership Quaritch.

Confirmation by Henry de Leicester, prior of Coventry, of a grant by Walter Langton, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, of the Church of Condover, Shropshire, to Shrewsbury Abbey, with a note on the appointment of Henry of Lichfield and Thomas of Carnes as rectors of the church in exchange for an annual payment to Shrewsbury Abbey and another to Lichfield Cathedral for the upkeep of a chapel there to celebrate Mass for the souls for King Edward I and the bishop of Lichfield, in Latin, manuscript document on parchment[England (Coventry), dated 3 March 1315] Large single-sheet document, on 29 long lines in English secretarial hand, plaited silk ties at base for seal (the quality of the ties indicating the missing seal was probably that of Coventry Priory), several contemporary and sixteenth-century endorsements on reverse and an archival number "DLXVI", some folds and small areas of discolouration, else in excellent condition, 280+30 by 390mm.  Provenance: 1. The Benedictine Priory of Coventry was founded in 1043, and grew steadily under noble patronage. In 1221, after a costly dispute with their local bishop, they came under papal protection and continued in existence until their suppression in January 1539. Their estates were transferred to John Combes and Richard Stansfield, and the late sixteenth-century English endorsement on the reverse of this document describing its contents is perhaps in one of their hands, or one of their secretaries.2. By the eighteenth century the estate of Condover Church and this document appear to have passed to Thomas Jelf Powys (1744-1805) of Berwick House, Shropshire, a magistrate: inscription dated 1794 naming him at foot of endorsements on reverse.3. Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872); passing to his heirs and thence to the Robinson brothers of 16-17 Pall Mall, London; his sale in Sotheby's, 27 June 1977, lot 4948.4. Alan G. Thomas (1911-1992), London bookdealer.5. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 1872/8, acquired in June 1994 from Thomas' estate.  Text:This large and handsome English document details the 'tidying up' of the complex affairs of the ownership of Condover Church. The estate of Condover was owned by the king before 1066, and after the Norman Conquest it was given by William the Conqueror to Roger de Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury. Roger de Montgomery then gave the church to his clerk, Odelerius of Orléans (the father of the Anglo-Norman historian, Orderic Vitalis). Odelerius was involved with Earl Roger in the foundation of Shrewsbury Abbey, and may have gifted the church then to the abbot. Then, immediately before this grant was made, the ownership of the church was placed by Abbot William of Shrewsbury into the hands of Walter Langton, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, who in turn presented it back to Shrewsbury Abbey. The licence for the appropriation of this grant can be found in The Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward II, 1307-1313, 497, on 20 September 1312.

Writ from Master Firmin de Lavenham to the Court of Canterbury about their mandate of 23 March 1330, following a petition from named parishioners of Seething about the rebuilding of the belfry of Seething Church by William Ayermine, bishop of Norwich, at the instigation of the Master and Brothers of the Hospital of St. Giles in Norwich, in Latin, manuscript document on parchment[England (Norwich), dated 2 April 1330] Single document, in 22 long lines in English secretarial hand, the text filling almost all of the available parchment, contemporary endorsements on reverse, one partial green wax seal attached to a seal tag cut horizontally from the foot of the document (with a figure kneeling before St. Catherine), small spots and stains, some folds, else good condition, 142 by 265mm. Provenance: 1. Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), with his inscription "Seething" in pencil on reverse; passing to his heirs and thence to the Robinson brothers of 16-17 Pall Mall, London; his sale in Sotheby's, 27 June 1977, lot 4913a.2. Alan G. Thomas (1911-1992), London bookdealer: with his cataloguing enclosed; acquired from his estate by the Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 1872/7. Text:Firmin de Lavenham was the rector of Cressingham-Magna, who held additional offices as archdeacon of Sudbury in 1329-1346 and as chancellor of Norwich from 1328. The church itself is in its earliest standing elements Norman, with substantial additions of the fourteenth century. No other record of this act of charity through the combined efforts of the parishioners of the church, the local bishop and the Hospital of St. Giles in Norwich, has been traced by us, and this may well be the last surviving witness.

Four charters of London interest, in Latin, manuscript documents on parchment [England, first half of thirteenth to sixteenth century] Four documents: (i) indenture between Margaret FitzRobert of London and William Matthew, barber of London, for the lease of a shop in Thames Street, on 22 long lines, one calligraphic initial, indentured at head, seal and seal tag wanting, 170+25 by 270mm., dated 3 February 1461; (ii) agreement concerning a house in Southwark between Adam Duke, John Swofeham and Henry Bylney, and William Causton and Alinore, his wife, on 10 long lines, apparently without ever having seals, seal tags or turn-up, endorsed "Ingr" at foot, 90+ by 270mm., dated 'XV Henry VII' so 1499 or 1500; (iii) quitclaim of John Clune, citizen and seed farmer of London, to his mother, Frideswide Clune, for land in Warwick Lane, on 28 long lines, important words in larger script, ascenders in uppermost line with ornamental cadels and opening with calligraphic initial, signed by issuer on turn up through stem of seal tag, seal tag present (but no seal), 240+30 by 370mm., dated 20 November 1582; (iv) royal grant of Henry VIII to John Lambard, clothier of London, of the manor of Heddington in Wiltshire, formerly the property of the Augustinian Abbey of St. Mary, Lacock (founded 1232, and surrendered to the crown in 1538), together with the advowson of the rectory of Heddington, on 54 long lines, opening words and crucial phrases in enlarged script, seal and seal tag wanting, 480 by 640mm., dated "Terlynge" (Terling Hall, Essex, an occasional residence of Henry VIII) 28 October 1543; all with small spots, stains and folds, else good condition, and all laid down on large cards Item (v) here was once in the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps, and came to the Schøyen Collection from the London book-dealer Alan G. Thomas. The first three documents here were owned by E.H. Dring (1863-1928), and his son E.M. Dring (1906-1990), and passed from them to the Schøyen Collection via the London book-dealership Quaritch.

Collection of nine English medieval charters from the Phillipps collection, in Latin, manuscript documents on parchment[England, thirteenth and fourteenth century] Nine documents: (i) charter of William de Moreville, Elena his wife and Eudes his heir, conveying to Alured Finke land at Bridport on the manor of Bradpole, Dorset, and for a further mark of pasture rights for two cows and a horse, 12 long lines by Robert the chaplain, 110 by 180mm., Dorset, early thirteenth century; (ii) conveyance by Hugh of Porton, Wiltshire, to Walkelin de Rosche, of land beside that formerly of John of Burcombe, 12 long lines, 90 by 150mm., Wiltshire, c. 1250; (iii) conveyance by John the son of Ralph of Sneinton, Nottinghamshire, to John the son of Roger de Croperhull of Nottingham, of land in "le Kyrke Meduwe", 16 long lines, 120 by 210mm., Nottinghamshire, 14 July 1284; (iv) legal judgement on the urgently needed repairs to the Cattawade Bridge, 'which horses and carts used to be able to cross', and for the upkeep of which Hugh, late rector of East Bergholt, Suffolk, had left land which had subsequently been sold, with lists of the landholders in Bergholt, all of whom were to contribute to the repairs, 16 long lines, 110 by 240mm., Suffolk, c. 1300; (v) lease by Sir Robert de Tuddenham (who owned Tuddenham Hall, Wisbech St. Mary, and was executed on the accession of Edward IV) to William le Bustlere of Hildersham, Cambridgeshire, and Margaret his wife, of the manor of Little Abington, 19 long lines, 160 by 220mm., Eriswell, Suffolk, 29 September 1307; (vi) conveyance by Lucy, daughter of John of Otley, to John de Atleburg and Mary his wife, of land in Seething, which she and her sister inherited from their father, 13 long lines, armorial seal with inscription "S. LVCIE:FIL:IOHANIS:D", 120 by 200mm., Suffolk, early fourteenth century; (vii) conveyance by John, son of John of Beckenham, to John of Beckenham and Alice his wife, of lands inherited from his father in Cranbrook and Biddenden, both in Kent, 13 long lines, with seal tag cut from an older document (but no seal), 110 by 240mm., Beckenham, Kent, 1324-1325; (viii) conveyance by Edward Robelard of Lacock to Edward Dodyng, of land in Lacock and elsewere, 19 long lines, with a pencil note by Phillipps: "Copied in Libro Cartarum", 160 by 220mm., Lacock, Wiltshire, 28 October 1334; (ix) conveyance by Sir William de Rellyston to John Woderove, John Amyas junior, Master Robert Woderove, and John Snytall the chaplain, of his share in the manor and lands of Meltham, Yorkshire, 10 long lines, seal tag cut from an older document and with red wax armorial seal, inscribed "SIGILLVM. WILE[...]", 110 by 260mm., Yorkshire, 1388-1389; all with folds, small spots and discoloured areas, else good condition This clutch of English documents was built up over a long period of time by Alan G. Thomas (1911-1992) from the sales of the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps' charters. Only item (iii) ever had a Phillipps acquisition number ("29216", and that indicating an origin in the collection of the nineteenth-century Bradfield antiquary John Wilson [1719-1783] of Broomhead Hall), and was acquired by Thomas in Sotheby's, 27 June 1977, lot 4927. The rest were acquired through the same Sotheby's sale (lots 4860, 4974a, 4957, 4843, 4913b, 4889b and 4974d), apart from item (ix) which was acquired by Thomas directly from the Robinsons of Pall Mall. This group of charters then acquired by the Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, from Thomas' estate in 1994.

Ɵ Large cutting from a bifolium of a commentary on Matthew, drawing material from lost parts of Frigulus' commentary on the same, in a mixed Carolingian-Insular minuscule, in Latin, manuscript on parchment[northern France, mid-ninth century] Cutting from the bottom half of a bifolium (trimmed at upper and both vertical edges), each leaf with parts of a single column of 25 lines of a rounded Carolingian minuscule with Insular letterforms and abbreviations (see below), discussing Matthew 4:18-5:37, capitals larger in same ink, one natural flaw in parchment, a few wormholes and stains to reverse from leather from reuse in a later binding, overall in good condition on fine and supple parchment, total size: 150 by 330mm.; in cloth-covered card binding An important fragment containing a witness to the lost sections of the eighth-century theologian Frigulus; here in a hand blending elements of Insular script with Carolingian minuscule  Provenance:1. Copied in a French scriptorium in the mid-ninth century, either by a scribe who came from Ireland or England, or in a Continental house founded by missionaries from that region. The early medieval missionaries responsible for these foundations focussed their attention on Germany, and any such centres in France were few and now obscure.2. Philip Bliss (1787-1857), registrar of the University of Oxford and principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford; this leaf from an album of leaves and fragments assembled by him from Oxford bindings and elsewhere. The album sold at Sotheby's, 21 August 1858, lot 119.3. Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), the single greatest manuscript collector to have ever lived; the Bliss album his MS. 15,659, and passing to his heirs after his death, and thence to the Robinson brothers of 16-17 Pall Mall, sold in Sotheby's, 24 April 1911, lot 390, to "Quaritch" (in fact E.H. Dring).4. E.H. Dring (1863-1928), the first managing director of Quaritch, passing in turn to his son E.M. Dring (1906-1990), himself manager of Quaritch from 1960.5. Quaritch of London, acquired alongside the vast Dring fragment and charter collection in 1983; this then Quaritch, cat. 1036, Bookhands of the Middle Ages (1984), no. 78. 6. Bruce Ferrini (1950-2010), manuscript-dealer of Akron, Ohio; his cat. 2 (1989), no. 2. The second bifolia of the Quaritch catalogue sold by Ferrini to The International Christian University, Tokyo.7. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 110. Text:The text here, as well as that of the sister-leaves now in Tokyo, was edited by Löfstedt in 1997, and that publication allowed Forte in 2004 to detect the close connections between Frigulus' commentary on Matthew and the text here. Frigulus' commentary survives in part only as quotations in later authors' works, and a single ninth-century Italian manuscript in Quedlinberg Gymnasium, Qu. Cod. 127 (Die Handschriften der ehemaligen Stifts-und Gymnasialbibliothek Quedlinburg in Halle, 1982, pp. 218-220; the text of that edited by Forte in Corpus Christianorum, 2018). Forte concluded that the present leaves and those in Tokyo are the last surviving part of a set of recensiones of Frigulus' commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, and fill sections of the text that are missing from the Quedlinberg manuscript (about a third of its original leaves are wanting). Thus, these are the last remaining record of this lost text.Little is known of Frigulus. In the early ninth century, Smaragdus of St-Mihiel listed him as one of his sources in his Liber Comitis (see lot 4), and from that it has been surmised that he most probably lived and wrote in the late eighth century, most probably during the first flush of the Carolingian renaissance. Bischoff thought him Irish due to the links between his work and Insular texts ('Wendepunkte in der Geschichte der lateinischen Exegese im Frühmittelalter', Sacris Erudiri, 6, 1954, pp. 189-279), but recently this has been questioned due to lack of concrete evidence (M.M. Gorman, 'Frigulus: Hiberno-Latin author or Pseudo-Irish phantom?', Revue d'Histoire Ecclésiastique, 100 (2005), pp. 425-456). Script:The hand here is a rare early form of Carolingian minuscule, retaining traces of Insular influence. Despite conforming to Carolingian script norms, the scribe occasionally lapses into Insular forms (note some of his open 'a's, and the form of his 'g' particularly in his ligatures) as well as using characteristically Insular abbreviations for "est", "con" and "enim". Bischoff studied the Continental houses producing Insular script, noting that the majority were German scriptoria and only a tiny handful were in France (B. Bischoff, Mittelalterliche Studien, III, 1981, pp. 5-38). This impression has been confirmed by a recent project based at the University of Leicester, which surveyed surviving examples of Insular script. However, such practices outside of the larger centres of Germany do not appear to have survived the script reforms of the early Carolingian era, and by the early ninth century Insular script appears to have been kept on only in the scriptoria of Lorsch, Echternach and St Gall, and "[f]rom 820 on, Fulda is the only stronghold of Anglo-Saxon script in Germany" (B. Bischoff, Latin Palaeography, 1990, p. 94). French examples are of the utmost rarity (but note a fragment of Bede's Homilies in our last Schøyen sale, 8 July 2020, lot 18). The presence of these paleographical influences might suggest that our scribe came from Ireland or England, or at least his house had been founded by missionaries from that region. It may not be a coincidence that this text was available to scribes working within an Insular environment and with probable ties to Ireland and England, and these leaves may yet have thir part to play in the debates about Frigulus' origin. Published:B. Löfstedt, 'Fragmente eines Matthäus-Kommentars', Sacris Erudiri, 32 (1997), pp. 141-161.A.J. Forte, 'Bengt Löfstedt's Fragmente eines Matthäus-Kommentars: Reflections and Addenda', Sacris Erudiri, 42 (2003), pp. 327-368.A.J. Forte, Friguli Commentarius in evangelium secundum Matthaeum, 2018.

Three charters most probably from the archive of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, in Latin, Middle English and Tudor English, manuscript documents on parchment[England (probably Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk), dated 20 August 1473, 12 March 1478 and 12 October 1538] Three documents: (a) charter of Robert Boteyn and William Clerk (also known as William Wolleman of Bury St. Edmunds) in confirmation of the tenure of Robert Burgeys and others, of property in Brockley, Suffolk, in 20 long lines, calligraphic penwork initial, two seal tags and one seal present (oval red wax, with head), 170+20 by 330mm., dated 20 August 1473; (b) charter of Robert Burgess of Bury St Edmunds, Henry Richard, Laurence Smyth (a "mercer"), John Salter (a "barbour") and John Mey, for Walter Thurston (a "mercer"), John Helpston (a "grocer"), and John Berywey(a "goldsmith"), for a property in Brockley, the document in Latin, with some of the names of the persons here followed by their profession in Middle English, on 26 long lines, single calligraphic initial, five seal tags and all but one with red wax seals attached (with letters 'L', a crowned 'R' and a rose), 220+20 by 340mm., dated 12 March 1478; (c) large indenture between John Reeve of Melford, the last abbot of Bury St. Edmunds before the Reformation, and John Hamond of Watlesfeld, Suffolk, and other parties, concerning land at Watlesfeld, in Tudor English, on 50 long lines, crucial words in larger script, indentured at head, endorsements on reverse including an antiquarian one dated 16 September 1615 referring to the contents of "this old leafe" and noting that it "ought ... to be carefully garded because (if I be not mistaken) the legall things ... excepted by yt Abott" (that is, the priviledges and freedoms therein for the estate might be unique and this document should be carefully protected), seal tag but no seal present, 430+30 by 500mm., dated 12 October 1538; all with folds and small stains, else good condition, all laid down on cards  The Abbey of Bury St Edmunds was founded in the early tenth century as a burial site for St. Edmund the martyr, killed by the great Viking army of 869. His cult drew vast numbers of pilgrims and patronage, and the abbey grew to have extraordinarily large land-holdings, directly owning all of West Suffolk by 1327. By the end of the Middle Ages it was among the wealthiest monasteries in England. It was surrended by Abbot John Reeve of Melford to the royal commissioners on 4 November 1539, with Reeve taking a pension alongside the prior and forty-two monks. He died the following year. This small archive would appear to have passed after the Reformation into private hands, where these perhaps remained, passing mainly by descent, until they entered the collection of E.H. Dring (1863-1928), and his son E.M. Dring (1906-1990), and from them to the Schøyen Collection via the London book-dealership Quaritch.

Small collection of documents concerning the Dukes of Burgundy, in French and Dutch, manuscript documents on paper and parchment[England and The Netherlands, dated 13 July 1411, 1470, and 3 April and 28 May 1471] Five documents (those in Dutch forming two sets of attached double documents, joined at their lefthand edges): (i) letter of 'Sauf Conduit', that is a passport giving safe passage, granted by Thomas Pickworth, lieutenant of Calais for the Prince of Wales (Henry of Monmouth, 1386-1422, later King Henry IV) to visit Thierry Gherbode, counsellor and archivist to the Duke of Burgundy, to discuss differences between the duke and the English, in French on paper, in 26 long lines of an Continental secretarial hand, elongated calligraphic cadels to ascenders of opening words, endorsed with scribal mark like an angular petalled version of the so-called 'clover' symbol at foot, embossed with red wax seal in blank margin at foot of document (30mm. diameter; with Pickworth arms with three pickaxes), endorsed on reverse in French by seventeenth- or eighteenth-century hand as well as Phillipp's number (see below), 270 by 300mm., dated Calais 13 July 1411; (ii) four letters of Charles 'the bold',duke of Burgundy, to Caius, his lord "van den Raide", on 24, 30, 13 and 21 long lines, respectively, in Dutch secretarial script, scribal mark of "Lodovicus" at foot of two of them (and all four in a single scribal hand), with red wax seals on face of documents in margin and on seal tags cut horizontally from feet, 210 by 350mm. and 240 by 360mm., both dated 1470, and 160 by 330mm. and 260 by 360mm., "Hollant" and dated 3 April and 28 May 1471; all with folds and small stains, else good condition, all laid down on three cards Item (i) here first emerged in the Southwell papers (the archive of Sir Robert Southwell [1635-1702] and his son Edward Southwell [1671-1730], both serving as secretaries of State for Ireland), these disbursed by the London bookseller, Thomas Thorpe, in catalogues issued from 1834 to 1836, with many acquired by Sir Thomas Phillipps (and thence sold by Sotheby's, 4 April 1977, lot 140, and now University of Pennsylvania). Phillipps also owned this document, and it is endorsed by him with his acquisition number: "10165", on its reverse. All three documents passed through the hands of E.H. Dring (1863-1928), and his son E.M. Dring (1906-1990), to the Schøyen Collection via the London book-dealership Quaritch.

The greater and final part of the Dring charter collection, in all 161 manuscript documents, predominantly medieval and English, and all except one on parchment[England, France, Low Countries and Spain, twelfth to eighteenth century] Some 125 English charters of the twelfth to sixteenth century from the entire breadth of the country, including one of the twelfth century, eleven of the thirteenth century, fifty-six of the fourteenth century, twenty-seven of the fifteenth century and thirty of the sixteenth century, all on parchment and many with seals, including two fourteenth-century charters from a nunnery at "Kington" or "Kynton" patronised by the Berkeley family and thus most probably the Priory of the Blessed Virgin in Gloucestershire, a small secular archive from Foxherd in Essex, a Royal Letters Patent of Queen Elizabeth I to Roland Hayward confirming his estates in Shropshire and dated 12 March 1589 and a Quitclaim of George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, for a "Heryng Workes" (most probably fishing rights) from the tenant of his manor of Walsham, Suffolk, dated 15 February 1509; plus some thirteen vernacular charters in Dutch from the Low Countries (two of fourteenth century, 10 of the fifteenth century and one c. 1500) as well as a confirmation of the privileges of the Celestines in Paris, by Bishop Gregory of Paris, in Latin and dated 15 January 1378, a Belgian charter in French dated 1394, a Spanish document dated 1568, and thirteen English charters of the seventeenth century (one of these on paper; and including an exemplification of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector, for a fine levied in the Court of Common Pleas in 1649, for land in Walsham in the Willows, dated 28 October 1651) and an eighteenth-century charter from the same small archive; medieval documents all laid down on cards, and all housed in four large green boxes This is the last part of the vast charter collection assembled by E.H. Dring (1863-1928), from a wide array of sources, and passing in turn to his son E.M. Dring (1906-1990, and then acquired by Quaritch of London, and from them to the Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo in November 1994.

'Monasteriarum totius Anglie', a list of English monasteries and their annual incomes, arranged by counties, in Latin, manuscript on paper[England (probably London or Westminster), c. 1535]To view a video of this lot, click here. 6 leaves (plus a blank leaf left at front, and 3 blank leaves at back, the outermost acting as covers), complete, entries in approximately 28 lines of a fine and professional English secretarial hand, diocesian titles offset in left-hand margin, incomes offset in right-hand margin, title and added word "Copia" in contemporary hands at head of verso of last sheet, small amount of corrections from contemporary use, some small spots, stains and folds, discoloured at outer edges, overall good and legible condition, 310 by 210mm.; stitched, but not bound, and probably not so until the eighteenth or nineteenth century (see below), remnants of that later binding at spine of booklet, in fitted burgundy cloth-covered case Provenance: 1. Almost certainly produced for an official active in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Following Henry VIII's seizure of control of the Church, one of his first acts was to tax the clergy, and to that end commissions were appointed throughout the country in 1535 to visit each institution and make a full assessment of their income from their archives. The work was performed under substantial royal pressure and at breakneck speed, with the results handed in and collated together in the royal exchequer in the summer of the same year. This produced the Valor Ecclesiasticus (now Kew, National Archives, E344, formed of 30 files and volumes). The present booklet identifies itself as a "Copia" of a document that must have been produced during this hurried exercise in data collection. We can be confidant that it was produced around 1535: the watermark of an elaborate pot topped with decorative crenulations and a cross formed of four loops is a common one (agreeing in general with Briquet 12,510-12,512, 12,517 and 12,520-12,526, ranging from 1504-1596), but is closest to Briquet 12,519 (recorded for Brussels, 1536). However, the addition of letters to the body of the pot is found in Briquet 12,819-12,840 (ranging from the 1520s-1580s), and one example of those, Briquet 12,841, is recorded in the Netherlands in 1542, 1543 and 1547, with a garbled inscription "DEL" that might just explain the presence of the letters '[L?]ED' here. That the paper here should be from the Low Countries is unsurprising, as for most of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there were almost no English paper mills engaged in the manufacture of 'white paper' for writing and printing.2. Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1972), doubtless abstracted from a larger manuscript by him, with traces of binding structures and brown leather from inside of spine adhering to the spine of booklet. The discolouration to the first and last leaves indicating that this booklet was separate for some centuries before being bound up (probably in eighteenth or nineteenth century), and before that was probably just tacketed together and folded lengthways. Passing to Phillips' heirs after his death, and thence to the Robinson brothers, of 16-17 Pall Mall; this item sold by them in Sotheby's, 26 June 1974, lot 2914: with a sheet of paper enclosed with this item with the lot number and the brief description "English monasteries 16th cent.", followed by sale date and Alan Thomas' price code.3. Alan G. Thomas (1911-1992), London bookdealer; and his sale at Sotheby's, 21 June 1993, lot 50, realising £1100.4. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 1678; acquired via Quaritch from the Sotheby's sale. Text:The approximately 160 entries in this booklet contain considerably less information than in the Valor Ecclesiasticus, with the records here pared down to a list of monasteries arranged by their region and followed by their income, and this instrument was evidently used in the calculation of grand totals for each region or indeed the whole nation. The survey is also at odds with the geographical peregrinations of the Valor Ecclesiasticus, which unlike that document begins here in the far north with the diocese of York (fol. 1r), before moving on to Lincoln (fol. 1v), Cumbria ("Karlioh"), Huntingdon, Chester (fol. 2r), Lancashire, Sussex, Dorset, Cornwall, London and Middlesex (fol. 2v), Norfolk, Northampton (fol. 3r), Bedford, Bristol (fol. 3v), Nottingham, Canterbury, Worcester, Canterbury (fol. 4r), Oxford, Essex, Leicester (fol. 4v), Suffolk, Buckingham, Hertford (fol. 5r), Gloucester, Wilton, Winchester, Durham (fol. 5v), Berkshire, Warwick, Devon (fol. 6r), and Somerset. It has a small number of contemporary corrections and was evidently in use during the Reformation.Records such as this, which played an active role in the Dissolution of the Monasteries, have been few and far between on the market since the final dispersal of the Phillipps collection, and to the best of our knowledge the only other comparable in recent years is that of a copy of the Letters Patent of the Dissolution of Ely, with other associated texts, made for the last prior of the community, sold in our last Schøyen sale, 8 July 2020, lot 74.

"A terreal of all suche landes as Thom[a]s Yardley hathe in Beoley", a land terrier in Middle English, manuscript on a roll of parchment within its original fabric cover[England (Worcestershire), dated 1506]To view a video of this lot, click here. Roll of parchment, formed from two membranes with added headpiece, complete, including a single column of approximately 120 lines in a vernacular English hand, text opening with large calligraphic initial encased within penwork acanthus leaves and supporting a large bird on its penwork cadels, a penwork banderole emerging from side of initial with "Ao 1506", this followed by the title and another date-clause: "Ao Regis Henrici VII.22 - Ao domini : 1506", one large penwork initial 'F' formed from woody stems, reverse blank, the first membrane stitched to a rough fabric wrapper with two blue plaited cords ending in a single brown cord to wrap around the roll as a tie, some later overwriting throughout, small spots and stains, else in excellent condition, 950 by 120mm. Provenance: 1. Thomas Yardley (fl. 1506) of Worcestershire, and almost certainly from the estate of Yardley, neighbouring Bewdley and now in the south east outskirts of Birmingham, to the immediate south west of Kidderminster. This roll was probably one of several such records compiled by him for use in his estate management: with the title "Beoley" on the outer side of the fabric wrapper in same hand as main document. 2. Eighteenth- or nineteenth-century circular blue paper label with collection label with "912" in pen.3. Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), his MS. 26,566: his manuscript number added in pen to outer side of cloth wrapping; and passing to his heirs and thence to the Robinson brothers of 16-17 Pall Mall, London.4. Alan G. Thomas (1911-1992), London bookdealer.5. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 1872/12, acquired in June 1994. Text:This charming practical estate record contains a detailed description of twenty-four estates in Bewdley. It, and its fabric wrapper, are in an excellent state of preservation. This record dates to a period of the history of Bewdley for which almost no other information survives. Please note that this item is subject to the Manorial Documents Rules, and as such it cannot be taken out of England and Wales without the consent of the Master of the Rolls, and future owners must inform the secretary of the Historical Manuscripts Commission of their acquisition.

Four charters of Welsh interest, in Latin or Tudor English, manuscript documents on parchment[Wales and adjacent border regions of England, thirteenth and sixteenth century] Four documents: (i) charter of "Iewan ap Lewelin" (Ieuan ap Llywelyn) to Walter, son of John Self, for sale of an acre of arable farmland (unnamed here, and reverse without endorsement, but most probably in a Welsh border region), on 15 long lines, seal tag (but no seal), 110 by 220mm., third quarter of thirteenth century; (ii) indenture recording the sale of the manor of "Longrove" in Penarth, Glamorgan, from Erasmus Saunders of Tenby (c. 1534-c. 1597, a recusant English Catholic, who through his marriage in 1570 became one of the wealthiest men in Pembrokeshire: see F. Green, 'Saunders of Pentre, Tymawr, and Galnrhyd', Historical Society of West Wales, Transactions, II, 1913, pp. 161-188) and Jenett, his wife, to Henry Thomas ap Owen of Ilston, Glamorgan, and Rowland Dawkyn of Penarth and John Danyell of Penarth, for £200 in "good and lawfull money of England", in Tudor English, on 40 long lines, opening two words and important words in enlarged version of same, witnesses added on reverse (Philip Williams, Henry Manfield [added in his own hand], John Lawrens, John Thome John, George Franklin, "Morgan af ap Jeremie Morgan", Hopkin William ap Rees, and William ap Richard Meline), the signature of Erasmus Saunders and his wife's shaky initials added by them to the turn-up on the dorse, indentured at head, tag for a seal present (but only half of red wax seal remaining), another seal tag torn away from foot of document, seventeenth-century inscription on reverse: "Old papers belonging to R[ichard]i Coraugh", 290+22 by 48mm., dated Penarth, Glamorgan 15 July 1573; (iii) enfeoffment by David ap David Jankyn of "Berthloid" (Berthlloyd), Montgomeryshire, of David ap Rees ap John ap David, for property in "Dorowen" (Darowen), Montgomeryshire, in Tudor English (with endorsement in Latin), in 28 long lines, 150 by 500mm., dated 26 August 1577; (iv) charter of Thomas Wyne of Garth, Montgomeryshire, "Jesper ap Hugh" of "Rydeskine", Montgomeryshire, and Gylbert Homfrey of "Cletterward", Montgomeryshire, acknowledging a £600 debt to Edward Horbert, on 11 long lines, remains of four red wax seals on seal tags cut horizontally across the bottom of the document (surviving seals with letters 'W' and 'O', and a herd of cattle between two castles), 160 by 320mm., dated Acton Burrell, Shropshire, 8 January 1578; all with spots, stains and folds, but overall in good condition, all apart from (ii) laid down on cards Items (i) and (iii)-(iv) were once in the collection of E.H. Dring (1863-1928), and his son E.M. Dring (1906-1990), and passed from them to the Schøyen Collection via the London book-dealership Quaritch. Item (ii) was acquired by the Schøyen Collection in July 1994 from Jeff Towns of Dylan's Book Store, Swansea, Glamorgan. All manuscripts from Wales, or of Welsh interest, are of significant rarity, and those of the thirteenth century greatly so.

The archive of the rectory of Llanegryn, Merionethshire, Wales, five manuscript documents in English on parchment[west Wales (Merionethshire) or England, dated 1634, 1654, 1655, 1667 and 1753] Five single-sheet documents: (i) Letters Patent of Theophilus, earl of Suffolk, for the release of Francis and Margaret Herbert, concerning the rectory at Llanegryn, on 57 long lines in a late English secretarial hand, with important words in more formal display script, one large penwork initial, an oval red wax seal attached (crowned coat-of-arms of earl of Suffolk), 490 by 720mm., dated 4 November 1634; (ii) judgement of the Court of Sessions held at Dolgellau, Merionethshire, before William Littleton and Edward Bulstrode, being a final concord between Sir Henry Herbert and Richard Owen and others, concerning the rectory at Llanegryn, on 30 long lines in a late English secretarial hand, one large penwork initial, with a round black wax seal attached (the Seal of the Commonwealth, with the map of England and Ireland on reverse, and the Parliament on obverse; diameter 100mm.), seal tag partly torn through due to weight of seal, 360 by 550mm., dated Dolgellau, 9 September 1654; (iii) exemplification of a fine by Richard Herbert of the rectory of Llanegryn, on 21 long lines in a late English secretarial hand, one line in formal display script, with a printed upper border of the royal arms of Charles II enclosed by red lines, remains of a round black wax seal (the great seal of the Charles II with the royal arms; original diameter c. 100mm.), 450 by 660mm., dated Bala, Merionethshire, 15 September 1667; (iv) charter of Thomas Lloyd of Fernhill, Shropshire, acknowledging a debt to Thomas Perryn of "Dollerin" in Montgomeryshire, on 23 long lines in a late English secretarial hand, with part of red wax seal, 200 by 210mm., dated Fernhill, Shropshire, April 1655; (v) indenture between Henry Arthur Herbert, earl of Powis and Viscount Ludlow, and Richard Herbert of Oakly Park (near Ludlow), for sale of the rectory of Llanegryn, on 51 long lines in a late English secretarial hand, with printed royal arms of George II and stamped seals of earl of Powys (black wax), and others (all red wax), 640 by 75mm., dated 11 August 1753; some folds, spots and stains, all in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century wooden box lined with marbled paper, and covered with leather recovered from an earlier stamped book binding (thus cuts and scuffs visible where leather once covered the spine), this leather covering worn and damaged and coming loose at extremities, small printed number '30' on paper label pasted to front of box  Provenance:1. Francis and Margaret Herbert, and their descendants, the rectory of Llanegryn, Merionethshire, Wales. Francis Herbert was the son of Matthew Herbert, MP. and sheriff of Merionethshire (d. 1611), who himself held extensive estates in Cyfeiliog and Machynlleth in Montgomeryshire, and rights and fishing interests in the Dovey in Merioneth, as well as the tithes of Llanegryn rectory.2. Henry Arthur Herbert (c. 1700-1772) of Dolgellau and Oakly Park, earl of Powis and son of Francis Herbert, MP. for Ludlow from 1727, then Lord Herbert of Cherbury from 1743, and Baron Powis and Viscount Ludlow from 1748.3. These charters are then likely to have remained in the archive of Oakly Park, in Bromfield, near Ludlow, Shropshire, after the sale of the estate by Henry Arthur Herbert to Robert Clive (1725-1774; 'Clive of India'), whose son in turn married Henry Arthur Herbert's daughter. 4. E.H. Dring (1863-1928), the first managing director of Quaritch, passing in turn to his son E.M. Dring (1906-1990), himself manager of Quaritch from 1960: a note in the hand of E.H. Dring on a brown foolscap envelope once used to store the documents, reading, "Deeds relating to the Rectory of Llanegryn, formerly in the possession of the Herbert Family, and release of same to Mr Som. Davis in 1753. The original lease is framed in Drawing Room". Acquired by E.H. Dring in or immediately before 1918.5. Quaritch of London; this archive passing to them in 1983 along with the vast Dring fragment collection and other charters.6. Schøyen Collection, London and Oslo, their MS. 1623/1-5, acquired from Quaritch in August 1992.