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MS. Laud Misc. 275

Summary Catalogue no.: 1255

Gregory the Great; South-West Germany/Würzburg?, s. ix1/4

Contents

This description is abbreviated from Daniela Mairhofer, Medieval Manuscripts from Würzburg in the Bodleian Library, Oxford: A Descriptive Catalogue (Oxford, 2014), pp. 600–6. For purposes of scholarly citation, reference to the printed catalogue is requested.

Fols. i recto–ii verso blank, except for a Bodleian shelfmark on fol. ii verso.

(fols. 1r–118r)
Gregory the Great, Homiliae XL in euangelia

Between fols. 54/55 a quire missing with loss of text.

2. 21–40

Language(s): Latin
Glosses

Likely ninth century, Main-area; marginal pen glosses in Old High German, and glosses in Latin. Marginal drypoint inscriptions in Latin.

Language(s): Old High German (East Franconian) and Latin

Fol. 118v blank, except for an ex-libris inscription, and several pen trials from s. ix or x.

Physical Description

Form: codex
Support: parchment
i (17th-cent. paper) + i (17th-cent. parchment) + 118 + i (17th-cent. paper) leaves
Dimensions (leaf): c. 322–25 × 235 mm.
The margins trimmed (affecting often prickings and partly quire signatures; sometimes also (minimally) marginalia). The original quire viii now missing, with loss of text.
Foliation: i–ii, 1–119

Layout

Ruling in hard point; one column of c. 22–25 lines. Ruled space c. 237–50 × 172–87 mm.

Hand(s)

German Insular minuscule, s. ix1/4, by several hands.

Decoration

Fine initial in early Carolingian style on fol. 1r. Good initials of pre-Carolingian tradition. (Pächt and Alexander i. 3, pl. 1). The pericope of the first homily in gold uncial; at the beginning of a pericope and homily), a scribal initial in pre-Carolingian style, often with interlace.

Marginal drypoint sketches on fols. 3v and 4r, 6v and 114v.

Red rubrics.

Binding

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

History

Origin: 9th century, first quarter ; Germany, South-West, Würzburg (?)

Provenance and Acquisition

Features point to a South-west German centre with Insular traditions, likely Würzburg, s. ix1/4; certainly since the 9th century in Würzburg (corrections and glosses).

Würzburg, Domstift St Kilian: the 12th-cent. ex-libris inscription, f. 118v; a 15th-century shelfmark of the Domstift, f. 1r.

William Laud, 1573–1645: his ex libris, 1637, fol. 1r.

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).
Quarto Catalogue, cols. 225–6
Quarto Catalogue, p. 555
Summary Catalogue, vol. 2, part 1, p. 54

Digital Images

Digital Bodleian (full digital facsimile)

Bibliography

Abbreviations

View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.

Last Substantive Revision

2019-07-18: Description revised for Polonsky digitization project to include additional information from Mairhofer catalogue.