SERMONS, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [England, late 12th or early 13th century]

SERMONS, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [England, late 12th or early 13th century]

An apparently unique English monastic survival: an unpublished and unstudied collection of mostly unidentified medieval sermons.

c.275 x 200mm, ii + 87 + ii leaves, complete, foliated in ink in medieval arabic numerals, 2 columns of 40 lines of regular protogothic bookhand, in two main sections by different scribes, the first consisting of ff.1-40v on leaves ruled with single vertical lines and pairs of lines ruled the full width of the page at top, bottom, and middle, ruled space: c.195 x 145mm, with the remains of signatures in roman numerals; the second usually with prickings in the inner margins, ruled with an extra vertical line between the columns and without full-width lines in the middle of the page, empty spaces for almost all rubrics, ruled space: c.195 x 140mm, with the remains of catchwords; each section opens with a large puzzle initial, the first 6-lines-high of green and red and the second of red with elegant pen-work flourishing of blue, sermons usually open with a 3-line initial alternately red or green, sometimes larger or smaller and sometimes with decoration of the other colour, a decorative stepped tailpiece at end, medieval bookmark formed of a very thin slip of parchment in the lower margin of f.24 and remains of another cut from the lower margin of f.60 (small dark stains to outer corners of f.1, other minor marginal darkening, stains and spots, smudging of red ink on opening initial and offsetting from some other red initials). 17th-century English binding of red silk velvet over pasteboards, with a dentelle border tooled in blind (boards and flyleaves reattached, velvet very worn and traces of paper pasted over spine).

Provenance: (1) Written in England, apparently for monastic use: one marginal guide to the rubricator appears to read ‘I[n] Annu[n]ciat[io]ne dicit[ur] ad Claust[ro]’ (f.59). (2) The margins annotated with distinctiones by at least one 13th-century hand (e.g. ff.16v, 54). (3) Annotated by at least two 14th-century English hands including, in the upper margin of the first page, the famous epitaph from Peter Comestor’s tomb: ‘Petrus eram quem petrategit dictusque comestor nunc comedor vivens docui nec cesso docere’. (4) 18th(?)-century bookseller’s code and 19th-century ‘4/’ on verso of first flyleaf.

Text:
A collection of sermons, apparently in two series; the first for Advent (ff.1, 1v, 2v), Christmas (ff.3v, 5, 6v, 8), Septuagesima (f.8v), ‘De misericordia et iudicio’ (f.9), the first Sunday after Pentecost (f.11), John the Baptist (f.13v), Peter & Paul (ff.17, 18r), Mary Magdalene (f.20), the Annunciation (ff.22, 23r), the Assumption (f.23v, 24, 28v, 31v, 33v), Peter (f.35v), the dedication of a church (f.38), and Vincent (f.39v). The first sermon begins ‘Sermo magistri Petri Comestoris de Adventu domini. Ecce dominus veniet et salvabit nos […]’; only one other indicates its author: ‘Omelia magistri Petri Comestoris de beata Maria’ (f.24), but these attributions appear to be incorrect.

The second part begins ‘Primo tempore alleviata est terra Zabulon […]’ (with heading ‘In vigilia nativitatis domini’ added in the margin) (f.41), followed by sermons for Epiphany (f.43), Lent (f.44), the Annunciation (f.46), Palm Sunday (f.47v), the Litania Maior (f.50), Mary Magdalene (f.53), Christmas(?) (f.56), Purification (f.57v), Annunciation (59), Maundy Thursday (f.60v), ‘Ad prelates in dominica passionis’ (f.62), Epiphany (f.64), Purification (f.67v), Trinity (f.71), Lent (f.73), Palm Sunday (ff.74, 74v), John the Evangelist (f.76), unidentified feast (f.77v), Easter (f.79r), Ascension (f.80r), Pentecost (ff.82, 83v), unidentified feast (f.84v), Trinity (f.85), Lent (f.86v).
The occasions on which such sermons were preached sometimes varied so, in the absence of original rubrics, identifications of many of those suggested here depend on the medieval marginalia. The feasts for which two sermons were intended remain unidentified (ff. 77v and 86).

The series does not appear to belong to any of the collections by individual authors studied in J. B. Schneyer’s Repertorium der lateinsichen Sermones des Mittelalters fur der Zeit von 1150-1350 (1969-90), and Wegweiser zu lateinischen Predigtreihen des Mittelalters (1965). Of the first six, for example, only the third appears in his lists, and is attributed to Geoffrey Babion (d. 1158).

The false attributions to Peter Comestor are no doubt the result of his widespread popularity as a preacher and the surpassing dissemination of his sermon collection.

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