A catalogue of Western manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries and selected Oxford colleges

MS. Bodl. 113

Summary Catalogue no.: 1971

Contents

Language(s): Latin with some rubrics in Middle English

Book of Hours, Use of Sarum
1. (fol. ii)
Added prayers
2. (fol. iv)
Calendar,

. St David (1 March) and St Erkenwald (30 April) are in red.

3. (fol. 1)
Fifteen O’s
4. (fol. 12v)
Commemorations.

St Catherine and Margaret (fol. 8v), St Ann, St Ursula, St Erasmus and some added salutations

5. (fol. 14)
Office of the Virgin, with Hours of the Cross worked in

Ending abruptly at none. At lauds a set of commemorations (fol. 34) was added on inserted leaves, the first two of which are in honour of St Wulstan (‘Ave pater Wolstane pastor’) and St Oswald (‘Exultet spiritus moster in deo salutari’)

6. (fol. 54)
Penitential Psalms
7. (fol. 59)
Gradual Psalms
8. (fol. 62)
Litany
9. (fol. 71)
Office of the dead
9. (fol. 115)
Commendatio animarum
11. (fol. 133)
Prayers

For grace before and after meals: ‘Here begynnyth the hole grace boke with alle the gracys of the year’, rubric in English

12. (fol. 141v)
Additional psalms

Several leaves missing after fol. 53, one after fol. 70.

Physical Description

Form: codex
Support: parchment
Extent: i + 8 + 144 + 2 + i fol.
Dimensions (leaf): 213 × 140 mm.
Dimensions (written): 125 × 75 mm.

Layout

16 long lines

Decoration

Fine borders.

Initials. (Pächt and Alexander iii. 922, pl. LXXXVI)

Illuminated initials at the Hours of the Lady office and the commendation; the others are missing.

On fol. 13v, originally blank, is pasted a woodcut (see below).

Binding

Early eighteenth-century blind-tooled inboard binding for the Bodleian Library, retaining the sewing from an earlier binding. Sprinkled brown tanned leather over heavy millboard. 225 × 146 × 47 mm. The binding retains an earlier all-along sewing on six raised tawed supports, though only the first and last are laced into the boards. The spine has an earlier gold-tooled shelfmark ‘NEċBċ2ċ6’ to the second panel.

History

Origin: 15th century, second quarter ; England, London (?)

Provenance and Acquisition

St Erkenwald in the calendar may suggest London.

Richard Hyggyns, 15th century, fol. ii.

Henry Himbleton, d. 1588, monk and sacrist of Worcester Cathedral: ‘Hunc librum inveni in cista Henrici Himbleton et inde accepi June 13, 1588, G⟨ulielmus⟩ Thornhill’, fol. ii verso.

William Thornhill, d. by 1626, prebendary of Worcester Cathedral (see above).

Probably acquired between 1613 and 1620.

MS. Bodl. 113, fol. 13v, woodcut

Contents

Language(s): Latin

Beneath the image a Latin antiphon and prayer based on the doctrine of the immaculate conception, occupying eight lines: ‘Aue sanctissima maria mater dei regina celi porta paradisi domina mundi tu es singularis virgo pura tu concepta sine peccato concepisti iesum sine macula tu peperisti. creatorem et saluatorem mundi in quo ego non dubito ora pro me iesum dilectum filium tuum et libera me ab omnibus malis Amen:. J. C.’. The prayer, which is commonly associated with the devotion to ‘Maria in sole’ and presented as a composition of Pope Sixtus, is printed at [a4r], as an appendix, in the Copie bullarum concilii Basiliensis et Pape Sixti quarti in materiam conceptionis beatissime Marie virginis (Heidelberg: [Heinrich Knoblochtzer, c.1500]; C-412); Hortulus animae, ed. Sebastian Brant and Jakob Wimpfeling (Strasbourg: Johannes Wehinger, 1503), sig. l iiiv; see Paulus, Geschichte des Ablasses, III 297; Haimerl 57 and index s.v. Sixtus IV.

The lower border contains the usual indulgence of 11,000 years said to have been granted by Pope Sixtus IV (1471–84): ‘A sixto papa quarto xj .m. ann(i) conced(untur)’.

Physical Description

Form: sheet
Support: paper, One eighth of a chancery sheet. 155 × 104 mm. 105 × 75 mm. Chain-lines vertical. No watermark visible. Printed in black ink in a press on one side of the paper. Uncoloured.

Decoration

The Madonna and Child in a Glory with the Instruments of the Passion. The Virgin Mary, half-length and with one breast exposed, and Christ child, both with haloes surrounded by a glory, positioned in a double-contoured roundel within a square frame. The Virgin is standing on the crescent moon, and her halo is ornamented with twelve stars. The Christ child is holding the host. In the four corners the bleeding Sacred Heart and instruments of the Passion. The upper and outer borders are made up of clouds and wavy or serrated lines.

History

Origin: England (?) or Netherlands (?); c. 1480–1500

Provenance

Attributed to the Netherlands by Nicholson, to England by Dodgson and others.

Stitching holes indicate that the print may once have been sewn into a different book. The prickings visible above, at the top of fol. 13v, are likely to have been for a protective curtain to separate the print from the gold illumination on fol. 14r.

Just how early it came to be pasted into the manuscript is not at all clear, for the theme of mariological devotion would still have been of interest to a recusant owner in the later sixteenth century.

Additional Information

Record Sources

Description adapted (March 2019) from the following sources:
Bod-Inc XYL-27 [pdf] (2005; by Nigel Palmer, binding description by Andrew Honey) [woodcut, binding, provenance]
S. J. P. Van Dijk, Handlist of the Latin Liturgical Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library Oxford Vol. 4: Books of Hours (typescript, 1957), p. 156 [contents, physical description]
Otto Pächt and J. J. G. Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, III (1973), no. 922 [date, origin, decoration]
The Summary Catalogue (1922) [provenance, acquisition]

Digital Images

Digital Bodleian (full digital facsimile)
Digital Bodleian (4 images from 35mm slides)

Bibliography

    Woodcut:

    Pr 52; Schreiber, Manuel, I 315; Schreiber, Handbuch, II 126; Dodgson, Ashmolean, 35 (Bodl.23); Hind II 738; Dodgson, ‘English Devotional Woodcuts’, 97 and 103–4 (no. 10, ill.); Dodgson, English Woodcuts, 10 and ill. fig. 17; STC 14077c.19; Griese (in preparation); Nicholson no. 13; Sheppard no. 9.

Last Substantive Revision

2019-03-18: Description revised with reference to van Dijk, SC, Pächt and Alexander, and Bod-Inc.