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

MS. Canon. Liturg. 99

Summary Catalogue no.: 19258

Contents

Book of Hours, Use of Bourges
(fol. 1v)

Additional prayers in French

(fol. 5)

Calendar in French, a saint for every day

(fol. 17)

Pericopes from the gospels

(fol. 24)

Office of the Virgin

(fol. 66)

Offices of the Cross and the Holy Ghost (fol. 69)

(fol. 72)

Penitential Psalms with litany (fol. 81)

(fol. 84v)

Office of the dead

(fol. 108)

Obsecro te and O intemerata (fol. 111v)

(fol. 113)

Commemorations

(fol. 122)

Prayers to the Virgin on Saturday (Missus est Gabriel angelus).

Language(s): Latin and Middle French

Physical Description

Form: codex
Support: parchment
iii (paper, fols. i-iii) + 130 + iv (paper, fols. 127b-130) leaves
Dimensions (leaf): 203 × 125 mm.
Dimensions (written): 120 × 80 mm.
Foliation: i-iii, 1-3, 4a-4c, 5-22, 23a-b, 24-126, 127a-b, 128-130

Layout

17 lines

Decoration

By various hands. (Pächt and Alexander i. 813, pl. LX)

Good miniatures. (At the beginning of each part, and Hours of the Lady office; in the calendar the labours of the months)

Good borders.

Good initials.

Binding

16th century?, French?, perhaps not the original binding since the edges are trimmed too close to and badly cropping the major illuminations: wood boards with inside bevel. Re-covered with new red velvet, late 19th or 20th century, Bodleian; the earlier plain red velvet covering and worn spine are preserved inside, showing traces of two lost fore-edge clasps (filigree?). Edges gilt, with possible faint traces of gauffering; paste-downs and endleaves of coarse, 16th-century paper. 216 × c. 135–6 × c. 45 mm. (book closed).

History

Origin: c. 1500 ; French, Bourges

Provenance and Acquisition

On fol.72 a coat of arms: azure, on a fess argent, between three staves raguly or, three roses gules (?).

Matteo Luigi Canonici of Venice (1727 – c. 1806), but not from the libraries of Soranzo or Trevisan.

Giuseppe Canonici , -1807

Bodleian Library: bought in 1817 from Canonici’s nephew Giovanni Perissinotti.

Record Sources

Adapted (May 2025) from the following sources:
B. C. Barker-Benfield, Bookbindings of Canonici manuscripts : a survey of early and non-standard bindings, mostly Italian, in the Canonici collection of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (Oxford, privately printed, 2020).
Otto Pächt and J. J. G. Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, I (1966), no. no. 813, pl. LX
S. J. P. van Dijk, Latin Liturgical Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, vol. 4: Books of Hours (typescript, 1957), p. 40b
Summary Catalogue (1897)

Digital Images

Digital Bodleian (12 images from 35mm slides)

Bibliography

    Printed descriptions:

    S. J. P. van Dijk, Latin Liturgical Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, vol. 4: Books of Hours (typescript, 1957), p. 40b

Last Substantive Revision

2025-05: Incorporate all information from printed catalogues.