Beschreibung:

ROBERT PULLEN (d.1146): Sermones de communibus sanctorum , in Latin, DECORATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM
ROBERT PULLEN (d.1146): Sermones de communibus sanctorum , in Latin, DECORATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM [France, second half 12th century]181 x 125mm. i paper + 46 leaves + i paper: 1-5 8, 6 6, 26 lines written in black ink in a proto-gothic bookhand between two verticals and above and between 25 horizontals ruled in grey, text block: 91 x 153mm, prickings for horizontals on many leaves, headings in red or green, some text capitals touched red or green, two- and three-line initials in red, blue or green, some decorated in the same or a contrasting colour (lacking final ?2 folios, staining to ff.45-46). 17th-century vellum (worn). PROVENANCE: The manuscript was produced in France and was possibly part of a larger compilation: the remainder of the final sermon probably ran on to two folios, which may have been detached within an entire quire to separate a subsequent text. Since St Bernard of Clairvaux, to whom the final sermon has been attributed, supported Robert Pullen as a lecturer in Paris in the years around 1140, Pullen's sermons survive in what are often essentially Cistercian compilations, largely from monastic libraries. The limited decoration here is consistent with the austere requirements of the Cistercian order. Pullen's authorship was significant for a very early owner, since Magister Robertus p , trimmed through the first stroke of u , l on line below, appears in a near-contemporary hand on f.1. In the 17th century the volume was bound and annotated in a way typical of the French collectors associated with the Parlement de Paris in the 16th and 17th centuries. Many of their manuscripts came from monastic libraries and were frequently divided into their component texts. A copy of the Sermons on the Communal, attributed to Robertus Pulleinus and titled Liber I de communi sanctorum , is recorded in the famous library of Alexandre Petau (d.1672), who had inherited many books from his father, Paul (1568-1613), see Casimir Oudinus, Commentarius de scriptoribus ecclesie antiquis, II , 1722, col.1120, and for the identification and subsequent history of Petau books K. de Meyier, Paul en Alexandre Petau en de Geschiedenis van hun Handschriften , 1947. Another copy, listed as 'Roberti Pulli Cardinalis Sermones de communi sanctorum', was in the Dupuy library founded by Claude (1546-1594) and expanded by his sons Pierre (d.1645) and Jacques (d.1656), see Philippus Abbeus, Nova bibliotheca manuscriptorum librorum , 1653, p.28. It has not been identified among the Dupuy manuscripts that passed to the Bibliothèque du Roi that became the Bibliothèque nationale de France and it is possibly identifiable with the present lot, titled Roberti Pulli Cardinalis Sermones de communibus sanctorum on the verso of the first paper leaf. The annotation of the number of sermons and the defective end, on the final paper leaf, and the titling in ink on the upper cover are typical of Dupuy volumes, see J. Delatour, Une bibliothèque humaniste au temps des Guerres de Religion, les livres de Claude Dupuy , 1998. In the 18th century, a scholar noted on the first paper leaf in French that the texts were unpublished and that this manuscript contained more sermons than any recorded in Cave's Scriptorum ecclesiasticorum historia literaria of 1688-98. Abbé Nicolas-Antoine-Labbey de Billy (1735-1825): armorial book stamp of the Bibliotheca Billiana on verso of first paper leaf. The Latin quotation about Pullen from Simeon of Durham on the recto may be in his hand. The Abbé de Billy began amassing his notable library as an exile in Italy during the Revolution and continued his collecting after his return to Besançon. Pullen's Sermons were an appropriate acquisition: Billy himself published educative sermons and was an historian of the university of Besançon. He had promised his books to the university but finally left them to be divided between his heirs. Daniel Rock (1799-1871): engraved bookplate as canon of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Southwark, an