Boston Public Library, MS q Med.31
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Metadata
- DS ID:
- DS3536
- Shelfmark:
- MS q Med.31
- Title:
- Le livre de la fontaine de toutes sciences.
- Sidrac, active 13th century
- Place:
- France]
- Date:
- between 1300 and 1350
- Language:
- fre
- Physical Description:
- Extent: 76 leaves : parchment ; 250 x 150 (180 x 100) mm bound to 26 cm
- Former Owner(s):
- Aldridge, George, active 17th century
Barrois, Joseph, approximately 1785-1855
Ashburnham, Bertram Ashburnham, Earl of, 1797-1878
Cockerell, Sydney Carlyle, Sir, 1867-1962
- Note:
- Ms. codex.
In French.
Title from opening rubric.
Bibliographic record created by BPL staff based on description by Dr. Lisa Fagin Davis.
Secundo folio: ...coes soulement a dieu...
Collation: Parchment, fol. i (later parchment) + 76 + i (later parchment) ; 1-512 6-78 ; signatures in modern arabic pencil, lower margin, first recto of each quire. Catchwords lower right corner, last verso each quire. Modern arabic pencil foliation, upper outer corner, each page.
Layout: 1 column, 42 lines. Bounding and writing lines in brown ink, top and bottom writing lines ruled to outer edge.
Script: Written in a gothic textualis in brown ink with red rubrics.
Decoration: Introduction (fol. 1) and text (fol. 12v) begin with 5- to 7-line blue and red "puzzle" initial with red and purple filigree; 2-line initials in blue with red filigree throughout.
Binding: 19th-century crimson morocco over boards, gilt-fillet and -stamped corners, spine in compartments, title gilt on spine "SIDRAC," gilt fillet board edges and turn-ins, all edges gilt, vellum endpapers and conjugate flyleaves front and back. Outer margins of fol. 1-4 trimmed away, replaced by early paper with partially-visible countermark on fol. 2.
Origin: Written in the first half of the fourteenth century in northern France. An abbreviated version of the encyclopedic Livre de la fontaine de toutes sciences, a series of hundreds questions posed by a mythical King Bochus and answered by the philosopher Sidrac, on topics ranging from philosophy to theology, from science to love. This is the abbreviated version of what Weisel calls the...
Provenance: The manuscript was in England by the fifteenth century, as evidenced by several inscriptions in English from that period (prayers and other notes), on fol. 5, 13, and 25. Seventeenth-century signature of "George Aldridge of Boothby Pagnal" (i.e. Boothby-Pagnell, Lincolnshire), fol. 47. Owned by Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Barrois (1784-1855), his 1849 sale (n. 76) to Bertram, the Fourth...
Immediate source of acquisition: Ashburnham sale, Sotheby's London, 10 June 1901, lot 546 to Sydney Cockerell for the Boston Public Library (Cockerell's notes and Sotheby's lot number inside front cover). BPL bookplate inside front cover, BPL embossed stamp on fol. 1 and 2.
Call number: MS q Med.31.
Former call number: MS G.31.60.
Bibliography: B. Weisel, "Die Überlieferung des 'Livre de Sidrac' in Handschriften und Drucken," Wissenliteratur im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit (Wiesbaden, 1993): 53-66. - Keyword:
- Institutional Record:
- https://catalog.mbln.org/Polaris/search/title.aspx?ctx=12.1033.0.0.5&pos=1&cn=8444903
- IIIF Manifest:
- https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/1c18hj31w/manifest
- Holding Institution:
