Leaves from an English pocket Bible with a human drollery and a large illuminated initial, in Latin, manuscript on parchment [England (probably Oxford), second half of thirteenth century]

Leaves from an English pocket Bible with a human drollery and a large illuminated initial, in Latin, manuscript on parchment [England (probably Oxford), second half of thirteenth century]

8 continuous leaves (a gathering, modern pencil foliation 405-12), with double column of 44 lines of professional and spiky English early gothic bookhand, capitals touched in red, red rubrics, versal numbers in pale blue, simple initials in same with red penwork, one large half-page initial P on first leaf (opening Primum quidem sermonem …, the opening of the Acts of the Apostles), body of initial in blue, enclosing swirls of foliage on burnished gold, the whole on a russet frame with gold bezants set at its edges, and with coloured foliate tendrils extending up and down the margin terminating at their foot in curled leaves and at their head in a humorous human-drollery formed of a tonsured monk in a cowl with lions legs, some oxidisation to parts of monks face and scratches to body (these perhaps intentional and by an inmate of a monastic house who once owned the book), trimmed at edges with losses of running titles, else good condition, 195 by 140mm.

From the same manuscript as the previous lot.