Breviary, of Dominican Use, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment [Germany (probably Bohemia, perhaps western border with Germany), dated 1494]

Breviary, of Dominican Use, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment [Germany (probably Bohemia, perhaps western border with Germany), dated 1494]

300 leaves (including 3 original endleaves at back, but plus an additional one more modern endleaf at front and 2 more at back), perhaps wanting a singleton or so from end of the Sanctoral, else complete, collation: i12, ii9 (last a singleton), iii9 (last a singleton), iv-vii8, viii10, ix-xxvi8, xxvii10, xxviii-xxxiv8, xxxv10, xxxvi8, some catchwords, single column with 18 lines in an angular late gothic bookhand, often with ornamental penwork cadels in upper and lower margins, some ending in foliate penwork, capitals touched in red, rubrics in red or underlined in red, initials in alternate red or blue, twelve large illuminated initials, the larger of these with purple penwork infill and with extensions into margin formed of thin coloured acanthus leaf fronds with gold bezants, line-drawn lamb in bas-de-page on fol. 161v, some originally blank leaves with early eighteenth-century additions of prayers in a German hand, a nineteenth-century printed devotional image of St. Catherine of Siena pasted to last but one endleaf, some slight water damage to leaves at each end, slight cockling throughout, slightly trimmed at top and bottom, dark spots on last few leaves from clasp attachment on back board, some offset from last leaf to adjacent endleaf (but without affect to text), overall good condition, 89 by 64mm.; sixteenth- or seventeenth-century red velvet over pasteboards (surfaces somewhat rubbed and worn, cracked at spine, and the whole refreshed and restored with new endleaves added and boards supported with modern pasteboard inserts), working brass clasp

Provenance:

1. Written and illuminated in 1494 for a Dominican, most probably in Bohemia: the Calendar is distinctively Dominican, with feasts for SS. Thomas Aquinas (7 March), Vincent Ferrer (5 April), and Dominic (feast 5 August, as patris nostri in dark blue, and translation 24 May); and the presence of the rare saint, Wenceslaus (28 September) in the Calendar points to Bohemia, while St. Wolfgang of Regensburg in the Litany might suggest the border country between southeastern Germany and western Bohemia. The volume is dated Anno domini 1494 in red at the end of the text. The tiny size of the volume suggests it was made for use by an itinerant preacher.

2. Maria Catharine Constra(?): with a lengthy record in German in a scrawling hand on fol. 21r, recording her gifting of the book in 1705 (the same hand makes devotional additions to blank leaves throughout).

Text:

The volume comprises: a Calendar (fol. 1r), followed by tables with signs of the zodiac and favourable days for blood-letting and similar; the Temporal, from the first Sunday in Advent to the twenty-fifth after Pentecost (fol. 22r), followed by the Office for Consecration; the Santoral (fol. 115r); the Common of the Saints (fol. 194r); the Office of the Dead (fol. 250r) and a Litany (fol. 267r).