Beschreibung:

Maurice of Ireland, Distinctiones, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum 219 leaves, 257mm. by 189mm., lacking 4 leaves after fol.3, 2 leaves each after fols.89 and 168 respectively, whole gatherings after fols.111, 127 and 185, and an unknown number of leaves at end, else apparently complete, collation: i6 [presumably of 10, lacking iv-vi], ii-iv10, v8, vi-viii10, ix10+1 [fol.82 added], x8 [of 10, lacking v-vi], xi10, xii8, lacking a gathering, xiii16, lacking a gathering, xiv-xvi12, xvii10 [of 12, lacking v-vi], xviii12, lacking a gathering, xix-xx12, xxi10, with horizontal catchwords, a small extra leaf bound in after fol.54, double column, 44-52 lines (slowly decreasing as the book progresses), written-space 195mm. by 130mm., second leaf begins “It’ in cubiculo”, written in grey-brown ink by more that one scribe in a variety of gothic scholastic bookhands, some chapter numbers in red, chapter initials and running-titles throughout alternately red and blue, sometimes with minor flourishing, fifteen illuminated initials in simple leafy designs in blue and pale brown with white tracery and heightening infilled with burnished gold, initial on first page with long marginal extension around two margins in brown, yellow and orange, very many marginal notes and additions in many hands from the late thirteenth to the sixteenth century, including cross-references, biblical citations and a very extensive numbering system mostly in arabic numerals, many pages thumbed and rubbed, many stains and signs of use, an oval stamp erased from first page, old ‘No.41’ on last page, bound in limp leather cut from the cover of a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century blind-stamped binding