Commentary on the New Testament (perhaps by a Ludolphus, evidently unrecorded), in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment [France or French Flanders, fourteenth century]

Commentary on the New Testament (perhaps by a Ludolphus, evidently unrecorded), in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment [France or French Flanders, fourteenth century]

120 leaves (plus 4 modern paper endleaves at front and back), complete, collation: i-x12, catchwords, late medieval foliation at head of rectos (240-359, but used here for convenience), probably copied from a misbound exemplar, and with parts of the text for St. Pauls Letter to Ephesians, II Peter, I John, first lines of III John and Revelations missing from their correct place (all but end of III John appearing in tenth quire), these mistakes noted by a late medieval corrector who adds notes such as residuum uide Fo. 351 and ad hoc signum X directing reader in lower margins to leaf with continuing text (foliation thus probably added at same time to facilitate these cross-references), double column of 48-49 lines in a squat and scrolling hand influenced by university script, those in uppermost lines with ornamental cadels (some depicting figures such as a pointing man and sheep with its tongue out on fol. 324v, and the three handed manicula on 347r), Biblical quotations underlined in red, paragraph marks in red or blue, running titles and versal initials in main ink set off with red pen lines, capitals in ornamental penstrokes touched in red (and occasionally with figures, such as deers head on fol. 299v picked out in penwork), catchwords within an array of ornamental penwork boxes, ships and a crudely drawn human figure, larger initials in red or blue with contrasting penwork, notes on date in nineteenth-century blue pencil to upper outer corner of first leaf, some small spots and stains, leaves slightly cockled, last 24 leaves with inner lower corner missing (perhaps old rodent damage), 243 by 167mm.; nineteenth-century binding of marbled boards with parchment spine and corners, marbled doublures, small chips to parchment, else good condition

Provenance:

1. Written in the fourteenth century by a scribe who names himself as Ludolfus at the end of the text, most probably for a monastic community in France or French Flanders: note the spelling of Ystorie on fol. 284r. The penwork decoration of some capitals with their layered repeating strokes might point towards the Low Countries, and this would accord well with the ethnic origin of the name of the scribe.

2. Thence in a private French collection, and probably bound for that owner in the nineteenth century: with slip of paper loosely inserted at back with erroneous description of the codex in French. This collection may have been in Bordeaux, where the present book re-emerged some years ago.

Text:

A complete but unrecorded, verse-by-verse, continuous commentary on the entire New Testament in Latin prose. Despite exhaustive searching the text here defies identification, and is evidently unedited and unpublished. It may not survive in any other witnesses. A nineteenth-century slip of paper identifies it as a work of Ludolphus of Saxony, but this is based solely on the shared and common name of the scribe and is in error. The commentary is in fact drawn in the greater part from the writings of St. Gregory the Great, who is heralded as predicator egregious (illustrious preacher) on several occasions here. Large sections of the work quote verbatim or give abridgements of his Homiliae in Evangelia, his Epistolae, and his Cura Pastoralis, where each is relevant to the specific parts of the New Testament. Frequently the author added to the end of his chapters explicit references to Gregorys works or suggestions for the reader to consult the fuller text of one of his homilies or letters. Quotations of the text of the New Testament in its lemmata and explanations contain frequent variants from the Latin Vulgate, and there may be some echoes of mendicant theology, popular in the University of Paris at the time this book was written, and the author may have picked this up during a period of study there.

What is perhaps most surprising is the size and scale of this work. Many commentaries cover only a book or section of books from the Bible, but the foliation here strongly suggests that this was once part of a two volume set (with the first covering the Old Testament in 239 leaves). It would appear to have been a comprehensive work, in a stable and finished form and of significant scale, and thus its apparent absence from our scholarly record is all the more surprising. It is deserving of much further study.