Beschreibung:

Petrus Riga, Aurora (the Bible in verse paraphrase), single leaf in Latin from an early decorated manuscript of the text on parchment [England (probably Oxford), first half of thirteenth century] Single leaf, single column, 50 lines in a small English gothic bookhand, rubrics in darker brown ink in a different hand, initial letters set in margin in medieval fashion for verse, small and elegantly tall initials in red or blue with looping penwork in contrasting colours, two large initials in simple red with blue penwork or red and blue variegated panels with penwork in both, quire signature at foot of verso: “vii” and occasional glossing words in near-contemporary hand (such as “allegorica”), tiny modern pencil folio number ‘51’ in upper outer corner, outer edges preserved, overall excellent condition, 235 by 118 mm. (written space 200 by 65 mm.) This is a handsome leaf from a notably early copy of the second recension of the text, broken by the self-proclaimed ‘biblioclast’ Otto Ege (1888-1951; see S. Gwara, Otto Ege’s Manuscripts, 2013, handlist no. 7). The largest single surviving section is the 12 leaves in the Schøyen collection. The Aurora of Petrus Riga (canon of Reims, d. 1209) is a poem in 15,050 lines paraphrasing the Bible in Latin verse, which became a standard university textbook. The text here is from the opening of Ruth, and is a remarkably early witness to the second of three original versions of the text, with only contemporaries or later copies recorded by Stegmüller (Repertorium, IV, 1954, pp. 380-2) or Beichner (Aurora Petri Rigae, 1965). It was written in the tall and thin format associated with scholarly books, and was almost certainly commissioned for use in a university setting.