St John's College MS 131
Psalter and Hours of the Virgin
Contents
Language(s): Latin
the calendar, use of Rome, with numerous additions s. xvi3/4 and ex. (see Provenance below). References to popes routinely cancelled but Becket rewritten after being erased. On fol. 6v, a catch-rubric to connect to item 2.
The Psalter, in an order which is partly liturgically based. I am grateful to Cristina Dondi, of the Bodleian Library Incunable Project, for sharing information about the MS.
The canticles: Benedicite, Benedictus, Magnificat, Nunc dimittis, the Athanasian creed, Te deum, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Paternoster.
The litany, with associated prayers. Included under martyrs are Eadmund and Ansane?.
With two additional prayers at the end. Fol. 103rv is blank, except for a catch-rubric to connect to item 6, but ruled.
Fol. 113rv is blank but ruled.
Fol. 118v is blank but ruled.
The explicit occurs in an added ‘Oratio ualde vtilis’ (fol. 132v), ‘Colter qui circumdisti sacrosanctam carnem cristi reseca nocentia […] ’ Fol. 134rv is blank but ruled.
Fol. 141v is blank but ruled.
The explicit occurs in an ‘oratio ualde utilis’, ‘Domine ihesu criste salus mundi qui elegisti et constituisti religionem nostrum […] ’ Fol. 149v is ruled but blank.
Fol. 155rv is ruled but blank.
Most of fol. 157 and fols. 157v–9v are blank but ruled.
In this portion, ochre-slashed capitals. The remainder of the MS, fols. 169–72, v–vi were originally blank but ruled. Fol. viv is unruled and shows signs of having been a pastedown in an earlier binding.
Physical Description
Collation
Layout
In long lines, 31 lines to the page. No prickings; bounded and ruled in violet ink.
Hand(s)
Written in gothic textura rotunda. Punctuation by point and double point.
Decoration
In the Psalter, which provides the decorative standard for the whole, headings in red; individual psalms introduced by alternating 2-line lombards, gold leaf on purple flourishing and blue on red flourishing.
Verses divided by similar lombards, 1 line high.
Larger psalter divisions are marked by champes with floral sprays (more colourful than English examples).
These also appear at the head of the abbreviated Psalter (fol. 96v), of the Hours (fol. 104, etc.), and of the Offices for specific hours within the various sets.
After fol. 114, a floral column border typically accompanies such initials at major breaks.
There is one fully illuminated page, at the head of the Psalter (fol. 7): a full border of lacy foliage and flowers, with putti hunters (one certainly an angel with trumpet) and animals; a historiated initial with David and his harp; and two roundels, one unfilled, the second David beheading Goliath.
Six historiated initials with bar borders the height of the page in the style of fol. 7; these initials, all but the first and last lines high, alternate with the champes in marking divisions of the Psalter into nocturns: David with his harp (fol. 19, 8 lines); similarly (fol. 26v); fool with a watching angel (fol. 34); David calling from the waters (fol. 41v); David with his harp (fol. 51v); the enthroned Virgin and child with a kneeling suppliant in sackcloth (fol. 160, 9 lines).
See AT, no. 967 (101) and plate lxviii (fol. 7), ascribing the work to the Neapolitan painter Cola Rapicano.
Binding
Modern replacement. Bound on three thongs. At the front, a marbled paper leaf, two modern paper flyleaves, and a medieval vellum flyleaf at the rear, two modern paper flyleaves and another marbled paper leaf (vii–ix).
History
Provenance and Acquisition
Additions to the calendar, associated with the recusant Westons of Buxton (Leics.), presumably in the hand of William Weston. He married in 1560 Helen, daughter of John Story who was executed in 1571 (see 13 May and 1 June); their child Edward Weston, a Catholic writer, was still alive in 1633 (his birth in 1566 under 30 October). These added entries cover 1557–96 (the last, under 21 November, for the death of William Weston). These relationships are explicated by s. xix notes, based on Antony Wood’s researches (fol. iirv). An earlier William Weston (d. 1540) had been a knight Hospitaller, who fought in the siege of Rhodes 1522 and was Lord Prior of the order in England 1527–40.
Latin verses ‘debetur summo gloria summa deo’; ‘A domino solo pendet mea vita salusque │ ipse regat solus me ac mea cuncta sibi’ (fol. iiiv, s. xvi ex.; the second distich repeated at the top of fol. 1), neither in Walther.
‘Liber Collegij Divi Johannis Baptistae Oxon’ ex dono Domini Gulielmi Paddei Militis et ejusdem Collegij olim Convictoris 1634’ (fol. 2, upper margin).
Record Sources
Availability
For enquiries relating to this manuscript please contact St John's College Library.
Bibliography
Funding of Cataloguing
Conversion of the printed catalogue to TEI funded by the Thompson Family Charitable Trust
Abbreviations
View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.
Last Substantive Revision
2023-07: First online publication