Layout: 1 column, 28 lines (first booklet), 27 lines (second booklet) Script: Gothic hybrida script; cursive Gothic script Decoration: red rubrics (ff. 1-9v), biblical references underlined in red, capitals highlighted in red, one-line red paraphs (ff. 10-31), one-line plain red initials, with guide letters visible (ff. 1-9v), blank spaces for one- to two-line initials, two with guide letters (ff. 30v. 26. 28v), two- to four-line red initials, ff. 1, 8, and 10 Binding: Bound in twentieth-century brown leather, blind-stamped with rectangular frame formed from two sets of double fillets with flowers stamped in corners of frame and along the edge closest to the spine and arabesques stamped inside of it, all over beveled wooden boards Binding: Spine with five raised bands, red leather label on upper board with gilt inscription, “DISPUTATIO DE ANIMA EX SS. / AUGUSTINO ET HIERON. / ET ARNOLDI DE NOVA VILLA / DE / CONSUMATIONE ET / TEMPORE ANTICHRISTI.”, marbled pastedowns, edges tinted red Some marginal annotations by the two scribes and at least one additional contemporary hand, identifying inscription in modern hand at the top of f. 10, slight soiling of final blank leaves, but otherwise in excellent condition. This composite manuscript comprises two distinct booklets. Evidence of script and watermarks suggest that both booklets were copied in the Low Countries in the final quarter of the fifteenth century, c. 1475-1500. The scribe of the first booklet has provided more conclusive dating for his stints, noting the year in which each was finished (1487 and 1488), and, in one case, the precise date of completion (9 February 1487). It is possible that the second booklet predates the first, judging from watermark evidence, but there is no indication of when, precisely, it was copied or joined with the first booklet. These booklets were once both part of a larger volume produced in the late fifteenth century for the use of the Augustinian canons at Roodklooster (Rouge-Cloître), in south-eastern Brussels, and likely copied there as well; the volume was still intact when it was described by John Cochran, 1837. Provenance: Purchased from Les Enluminures, 2018 Provenance: Part of the stock of John Cochran, London bookseller; no. 132 in his Second Catalogue of Manuscripts in Different Languages ... of Various Dates from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century, Many of Them upon Vellum, and Adorned with Splendid Illuminations, London, 1837 (p. 38). Provenance: At the time of this sale, the two booklets in the present manuscript were part of a much larger collection comprising at least fifteen texts. Provenance: Passed into the hands of John Leslie, London bookseller specializing in theological works, after the death of John Cochran; no. 2774 in his Catalogue of English and Foreign Theology, ... also, a Few Valuable Manuscripts and Works of Rare Occurrence, Including the Entire Stock of the Late Mr. John Cochran, Bookseller ..., London, 1840 (pp. 177-178) Provenance: The larger manuscript that once included these two booklets was probably broken up during the second half of the nineteenth century, given the fact that a copy of Petrus de Rosenheim’s Roseum memoriale, now Southern Methodist University, Bridwell Library, BRMS 94 (formerly Les Enluminures TM 77), is in now in a late nineteenth-century binding. The two booklets in this composite manuscript each contain theological treatises organized around a clear theme. The texts of the first booklet offer three perspectives on the origins of the soul, while the apocalypse – and, more specifically, the possibility of calculating its date – dominates the second booklet. These were both once part of a larger volume, which ranged in its contents from works of a clear theological character – including Augustine’s Soliloquies, Petrus de Rosenheim’s Roseum memoriale, and Lothario dei Segni’s De miseria humanae conditionis – to saints’ lives and a version of the popular medieval tale of Apollonius of Tyre. Considered in both its earlier and its current context, the second booklet in the present manuscript is a particularly important survival, valuable for what it can tell us about how apocalyptic texts were circulating and being read in the late Middle Ages. The Apocalypse loomed large in this period. People anticipated the imminent coming of the Antichrist and final judgment, and they interpreted political and ecclesiastical upheavals in this light. Anthologies of prophecies were not uncommon during this time (see Lerner, 2008, pp. 89-103) – for example, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Library, MS 404, the fourteenth-century prophetic anthology of Henry of Kirkestede, librarian at the Benedictine monastery of Bury Saint Edmunds, brings together a number of prophetic texts concerned with the coming of the Antichrist – but it is more unusual to find a collection of prophetic texts bound alongside such a miscellaneous collection of works, many of which were far more theologically orthodox. It is even possible that the placement of De mysterio in the middle of the book was a part of a deliberate effort to conceal it among more common and less controversial texts. Previous shelfmark: Disputatio de anima
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