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

MS. Laud Misc. 191

Summary Catalogue no.: 1038

Iacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea. Germany, s. xiv1/4.

Contents

Language(s): Latin

This description is abbreviated from Daniela Mairhofer, Medieval Manuscripts from the Mainz Charterhouse in the Bodleian Library, Oxford: A Descriptive Catalogue (Oxford, 2018), pp. 613–625. For purposes of scholarly citation, reference to the printed catalogue is requested.

(fols 1ra–281vb)
Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea

With prologue (ed.: Graesse; Maggioni, 2 vols; Kaeppeli 2154, citing the present MS.; Fleith, Studien, 589). With interpolations: see printed catalogue for full listing.

(fol. 1ra–vb) List of saints, in their order.

Physical Description

Form: codex
Support: parchment; (fols 151, 178, 180, 253 & 274) remnants of medieval repair (stitching holes); (fols 159, 272 & 273) stitching preserved in natural-coloured thread. Bookmarks to Silvester, Cathedra s. Petri, Emissio spiritus sancti, Ad vincula s. Petri, Quatuor coronati/Theodorus, and Dionysius et soc.: red-coloured, folded leather strips, pasted to both sides of the outer margins of fols 27, 64, 110, 155, 200 & 245; all damaged now.
ii (17th-cent.) + 281 + ii (17th-cent.) leaves
Dimensions (leaf): c.168–76 × 120–25 mm.
Foliation: i, ii, 1–283, in modern (19th-cent.) pencil.

Collation

i 8+1 | ii & iii 8 | iv 10 | v & vi 8 | vii 12-2 | viii 12 | x 8-2 | xi–xv 8 | xvi 10 | xvii 8 | xviii 10 | xix 8 | xx 10-1 | xxi 12 | xxii & xxiii 10 | xxiv & xxv 8 | xxvi–xxviii 10 | xxix 8 | xxx 10 | xxxi 10-1 | xxxii & xxxiii 2.

Layout

Ruling in ink, two columns (except for fols 64–71: one column) of mostly 33 lines. Ruled space c.132–38 × 93–96 mm.

Hand(s)

German textualis, s. xiv1/4, mainly by one scribe. Majuscules occasionally decorated, the ones on the top line frequently elaborated and ornamented, with human, often crowned, heads, for example. Corrections and marginal notes in hands of s. xiv.

Decoration

(fol. 2ra & va) Flourished initials in red.

Coloured initials in red.

Rubrication.

Binding

Brown tanned calf over laminated pulpboard for Archbp. Laud, 1637–1639

History

Origin: 14th century, first quarter; Germany

Provenance and Acquisition

Mainz, Carthusian abbey of St Michael: three 15th-cent. ex-libris inscriptions, in the same hand, at the head of fol. 2r and in the lower margins of fols 97r & 281v: ‘Iste liber est fratrum Carthusiensium prope magunciam’.

William Laud, 1573–1645: Ex-libris inscription of Archbp. Laud, dated 1638, at the lower half of fol. ii verso.

Given to the Bodleian as part of his third donation, dispatched on 28 June 1639.

Record Sources

See above. Previously described in the Quarto Catalogue (H. O. Coxe, Laudian Manuscripts, Quarto Catalogues II, repr. with corrections, 1969, from the original ed. of 1858–1885).

Digital Images

Digital Bodleian (full digital facsimile)

Bibliography

    Published descriptions:

    Daniela Mairhofer, Medieval Manuscripts from the Mainz Charterhouse in the Bodleian Library, Oxford: A Descriptive Catalogue, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2018), pp. 613–625

Last Substantive Revision

2025-04-23: Sebastian Dows-Miller. Removed empty p element in physDesc.