Ɵ Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum, in Latin, manuscript on parchment [France, 12th century]

Ɵ Two leaves with Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive originum, book 20, with readings on wine, and Pubilius Syrus, Sententiae, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment[Northern France (most probably Cercamp, Amiens), third quarter of the twelfth century] Bifolium, each leaf with double column of 44 lines of a small and precise proto-gothic bookhand, written above topline and without biting curves, faded red rubrics, one-line initials of capitula for next book on second leaf in alternate pale green and red, large pale and green initials with foliate penwork decoration, reused on a binding in late medieval period and with folds across middle of leaves, corners of blank margins clipped away and slight damage through heat exposure to upper outer corner of first leaf, else good condition, each leaf 395 by 285mm.; in cloth-covered card binding Provenance: 1. Most probably written for use in the Cistercian Abbey of Cercamp, diocese of Amiens, founded 1141 with monks from Pontigny, ransacked in 1415 during Agincourt, but re-established before being forcibly converted to stables and a military hospital in the 1630s during the Thirty Years' War, then seized for military use again in 1710 by the troops of Field Marshal d'Harcourt. At the Secularisation there was little left to suppress. By the nineteenth century the buildings were in use as a wool factory, and later became the residence of the Barons de Fourment. This bifolium certainly reused there at the end of the Middle Ages, and with a sixteenth or early seventeenth-century ex libris of the house, upside down at the foot of the rectos of both leaves: "Abbey de Cercamp", most probably from reuse there around a set of accounts. No other manuscript or fragment of one from this medieval library can be traced by us.2. André Simon (1877-1970), wine merchant, gourmet and one of the most important twentieth-century authors on wine, who voraciously collected books on the same subject. 3. Sotheby's 6 December 1993, lot 5. 4. Schøyen Collection, London and Oslo, their MS 1777, acquired in Sotheby's. Text and script:This bifolium is from an elegant monastic copy of the most important encyclopedia produced by the Middle Ages. Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636) was part of the intellectual renaissance in the seventh-century Visigothic court, and was notably close to King Sigebut (c. 565-620/1), to whom the first version of this work was dedicated. It has been suggested that he composed it as a form of summa for his recently-civilised barbarian masters, but it quickly found other more conventional readers in mainland Europe and became the most widely consulted scientific reference work of the Middle Ages. It survives today in nearly a thousand manuscripts (Barney et al., Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, 2006, p.24), and by the year 800 copies of it could be found in almost all the cultural centres of Europe. The leaves here contain discussions of food, oils and greases, beverages (prominently including wine) and vessels for food. The second leaf contains the entries from 'M' to 'T' of the Sententiae of Pubilius Syrus (fl. 85-43 BC.), a Syrian slave freed by his Roman master due to his talent as an author and playwright. All that now remains of his work is this text: a series of moral maxims in iambic and trochaic verse arranged in alphabetical order. He was admired greatly by Seneca the Younger, quoted by Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing, sc. 1: "if she did not hate him deadly, she would love him dearly"), and his work is the origin of the expression "a rolling stone gathers no moss".