Beschreibung:

The Property of the Downside Abbey General TrustJAMES OF MILAN, TRANSLATED BY WALTER HILTON(?) The Prickyng of Love, and Pore Caitif, illuminated manuscript in Middle English, and short texts in Latin [England (London area?), 15th century (2nd quarter)] vellum, c.235×170mm, i (paper) + 2 (medieval, the first formerly a pastedown) + 173 + i (paper) leaves, foliated ‘a’ (a wide stub), I–III, 1, 1*, 2–174; written in a professional anglicana script, with 30 lines per page in a ruled space c.170×100mm (except ff.94–101, quire 13, which has 31 lines in a ruled space c.175×110mm), rubrics and running headings in red, quotations underlined in red, paraphs alternately red or blue, complete, with catchwords and leaf signatures, in 22 quires each of 8 leaves except that the 6th & 7th (blank) leaves of quire 12 have been excised after f.93 (the central bifolium of this quire, ff.91–92, is also upside down and back to front, a binder’s error that predates the 17th(?)-century foliation), quire 13 is contemporary but was apparently added as an afterthought, as it has different parchment, script, ruling, and number of lines of text; illuminated with two foliate borders springing from large gold and foliage initials, and decorated with two-line initials in blue with red penwork flourishing throughout; with typical thumbing, stains, scribbles, etc., but generally in good condition throughout, with wide margins, and entirely legible. Sewn on five (medieval?) bands and bound in plain brown 17th(?)-century calf over pasteboards, with plain blind fillets and no spine title, the edges of the leaves speckled red, the joints repaired (the final page with a note recording ‘Spine repaired by Fifield of the Bodleian, 1961’), the bands and most of the spine leather broken between ff.87 and 88. A COMPLETE 15TH CENTURY MANUSCRIPT IN MIDDLE ENGLISH BY A NAMED SCRIBE, STEPHEN DODESHAM: ONE OF ONLY TEN COMPLETE COPIES OF AN IMPORTANT WORK OF RELIGIOUS MEDITATIONS IN ENGLISH AND THE ONLY ONE REMAINING IN PRIVATE HANDS. PROVENANCE (1) From the only Dominican nunnery in England, at Dartford, in Kent, which was founded immediately after the Black Death in the mid-14th century (for a history of the house, see A History of the County of Kent, 2 (VCH: London, 1926): inscribed in the early 16th century, ‘This book is youe to Betryce Chaumbir’. And aftir hir decese to sustir Emme Wynter. and to \sustir/ Denyse Caston’ nonnes of Dertforthe. And so to abide in the saam hous of the nonnes of Dertforthe for euere. To p(ra)y for he(m) that yeue it’ (f.IIIv). Curiously, for a text that does not exist in many copies, one other surviving example also comes from Dartford, and was owned by Alice Brainthwaite, who was prioress in the 1460s. Of the eight books known to have been owned by the house, one is a Book of Hours, and five others are in English, including a Brut chronicle, the poems of John Lydgate, and the Rule of St Augustine (which the Dominicans followed). The house was dissolved in 1539, and the inhabitants pensioned-off; perhaps one of them took the present manuscript with her. (2) Owned by 16th-century female members of the Haberley family; inscribed ‘Ellen Haburlaie est verus possessor’ (f.III), and ‘Marye Haburley’ (f.53v) (Ker cites H. Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, vols. 1, 5, 8, and Catholic Record Society, 51, 8). (3) Late 16th(?)- and 17th-century inscriptions on the front flyleaves include the names ‘William Richardson’, ‘William Emelaw’(?),‘Richard Baxter’, ‘John Vavasour’, and ‘Ald: Metcalfe’, and (f.3v) ‘Roberte’; these suggest that the book was in Yorkshire. (4) ‘It is believed that the Manuscript found its way to Downside from the ancient family of Holme-upon-Spalding Moor in the East Riding [of Yorkshire]’ (Watkin, 1941, p. 83). (5) Dom Odo Langdale, né Marmaduke Joseph Grattan Langdale (1861-1934), Benedictine monk of Downside from 1880, whose family had lived at Houghton near Beverley in Yorkshire since at least the