Title from incipit. Probable range of dates based on early rigid page format used between 1130 and 1150, which resulted in gaps between glosses, creating the impression of being incomplete. By about 1170, a more flexible layout had been adopted, in which the format was adjusted from page to page according to the relative length of text to gloss, thus eliminating gaps and blank areas. Biblical text, written in a large proto-gothic bookhand in brown ink on vellum leaves lightly ruled in gray, and arranged in a narrow central column of 23 lines per page; accompanying marginal gloss in a smaller hand of up to 50 lines per page, also in brown ink; capitals touched in red; headlines, chapter numbers, and explicit in red; prickings visible along outer margins. Later ms. additions and corrections in black ink indicate that the ms. was in use up to the sixteenth century. Signatures: [1]8 (-[1]3) [2]-[10]8 [11]4; lacking a single leaf after leaf [2]; quire numbers preserved on final versos of gatherings [7] and [10]. Sixteenth-century inscriptions on verso of leaf [76]: "Nicolas de Feustden [?] a l'abbae monsieur St. Eloi le Noion", presumably a reference to a monk of the Benedictine abbey of St. Eloi in Noyon; and verso of leaf [42]: "Ce present livre appartient a jaque lemaire." Illustrated bookplate of George Horace Johnstone ("G.H.J.") and his wife, Alison Johnstone ("A.J."), dated 1933; center medallion is an engraving of the Hawkins/Johnstone estate in Cornwall, Trewithan [Trewithen]. Ownership inscription in pencil on front endpaper of the library at Bignor Park, the Sussex estate once owned by George Horace Johnstone's great-great uncle, John Hawkins (fl. 1829-1839), and purchased by Lord Mersey in 1926. It was John Hawkins who oversaw the planting of the holm-oaks in the Great Park at Trewithen from acorns collected at Bignor Park.
Do you have more information to share with the Holding Institution about this manuscript or would you like to suggest a correction? Contact information is available for member institutions via our member directory.
