The James Catalogue of Western Manuscripts

Shelfmark R.17.5
Manuscript Title

Jerome, Opera

Alternative Title

Opera S. Hieronymi. II.

James Number 991
Date Cent. xv (1478)
Century 15th
Physical Description

46 lines to a page. In the same hand as the last.

Provenance

T. Werken.

Religious House Canterbury, Kent, Benedictine Cathedral Priory (Christ Church)
Size (cm) 54.5 x 37
Folio 308 ff.
Material Parchment
Language Latin

Contents

It begins with a Preface addressed to Paul II. Then follows a list of contents.This volume contains Pars II. Tractatus III.-IV. and Pars III. Tract. I.-XIV, followed by an Appendix of Epistles, of which the last is the spurious letter of Cyril to Augustine on the miracles of St Jerome.
The Text begins on f.9.
This page has a very fine border without background, framed in plain gold. It consists of conventional flowers and has a few figures of men interspersed.
The initial has a picture on dead gold ground, of St Jerome as cardinal seated in a high-backed chair, lion at his feet, book on desk before him. A black monk kneels on R. with scroll: Sancte Jeronime ora pro me.
The general effect of this work, which is done in a dry Dutch style, is extremely good.
On the last page is the colophon in black capitals:
EUSEBII · HIERONIMI · DOCTORIS · EXIMII · SECVNDVM · EPISTOLARUM · EXPLICIT · VOLVMEN · ANNO DOMINI · 1478.
T. WERKEN.
The smaller initials throughout are very good. They are especially numerous and conspicuous in the tract De Viris Illustribus, ff.270-280.

 

Bibliography

de la Mare, A. C., and L. Hellinga, 'The first book printed in Oxford: the Expositio symboli of Rufinus', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 7 (1977-80), 184-244

Ker, N. R., Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks 3, 2nd edn (London, 1964)

Morgan, N., and S. Panayotova, et al., ed., Illuminated Manuscripts in Cambridge : A Catalogue of Western Book Illumination in the Fitzwilliam Museum and the the Cambridge Colleges. Part One, The Low Countries, Germany, Bohemia, Austria, Hungary, 2 vols., (London, 2009), vol. 1, no. 38

Mynors, R. A. B., 'A Fifteenth-Century Scribe: T. Werken', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 1 (1949-53), 97-103

Robinson, P., Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts in Cambridge Libraries, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1988), no. 359 [dated 1478, written in England]