Beschreibung:

RICHARD ROLLE (c.1300-1349). Translation and Commentary on the Psalter with the Lollard Interpolations: Psalms 82-113, in Middle English, DECORATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM [southern England, early 15th century] 400 x 275mm. 135 leaves: 1-16 8 , 17 7 (of 8, lacking vii), catchwords towards the inner vertical of final versos, two columns of 52 lines written in a gothic bookhand in black ink by three scribes, between two verticals and 53 horizontals ruled in ink, justification: 295 x 185mm, lemmata underlined in red, one-line initials alternately of red and blue (not supplied after gathering 15), two-line initials of blue with extensive flourishing of red open each Psalm, spaces left for five- and seven-line illuminated initials to open Psalms 97 and 109 not supplied (staining to margin edges of first few folios). Modern antiqued brown vellum. THE LOST SECOND PART OF ROLLE'S PSALTER FROM THE LIBRARY OF HENRY VIII PROVENANCE: This is the second part of a manuscript which has been in the royal library since the reign of Henry VIII: BL, Royal 18 D I, Rolle's Translation and Commentary on Psalms 1-79, was in the Upper Library of the Palace of Westminster when it was recorded as no 1285 in the 1542 inventory: James Carley, The Libraries of Henry VIII (2000), p.213. The size and page lay-out of Royal 18 D I and the present manuscript are identical, and any doubt that they were originally intended to be a single integral volume is dispelled by a comparison of their respective end and beginning. Royal 18 D I finishes in the middle of Psalm 79 with a catchword on the final verso, and the present manuscript begins on the first leaf of a gathering, written in the same distinctive hand as the end of the Royal manuscript, in the middle of Psalm 82. A single missing intervening gathering must have carried the text from the end of Psalm 79 to the beginning of Psalm 82. The scheme and type of decoration -- the flourished two-line initials and the allowance for illuminated initials that were never supplied -- are continuous across the two sections. The dissolution of the monasteries resulted in an enormous expansion of the King's holdings; if Royal 18 D I was acquired in that way it may have been then that it became separated from its second half. It is, however, impossible to be certain from the inventory description -- Psalterium Ricardi Hampole -- that the volume was not then intact and still included the present manuscript. Carley discusses the various ways in which volumes left the Westminster library ( op. cit. pp. lxxvii-lxxxi): interestingly, one such manuscript was the first part of another copy of Rolle's Psalter commentary which went to Lambeth Palace (now Ms 34) while the second part (Royal 18 C xxvi, and inv. no 1274) remained in the royal collection. CONTENT: Richard Rolle, Translation and Commentary on the Psalter, Pss 82-113 ff.1-135v, lacking the opening half of the commentary on Ps.82, one folio within the commentary on Ps.112 and all but the opening column of the commentary on Ps.113 Richard Rolle was one of the major mystical writers of the 14th century. The call to become a hermit led him to abandon his studies in Oxford and return to Yorkshire: the rest of his life was devoted to contemplation, ecstasy and devotional writing. He died at Hampole and it was to one of his followers from the Cistercian nunnery there that he addressed a number of his major works. He wrote in Latin and Middle English -- in a vigorous and direct northern dialect which was tempered in copies, like this one, made in the south. In his English Prose Treatises Rolle recommends the 'Sauter -- a sekyr standarde that will noghte faile: who so may cleue therto he sall noghte erre'. His earliest commentary on the Psalms was in Latin (published Cologne, 1536: Adams R.678) and the translation was the earliest of his English works, probably begun around 1340. A manuscript in the Bodleian (Laud Misc. 286), copied in the reign of Henry VI, has prefatory ver