Western Manuscripts and Miniatures

An unusually large and elegant leaf from a preacher’s manual, possibly of royal Spanish patronage, associated with the Aragonese king, Martin I.

356 x 240 mm. Single leaf, original foliation ‘19’ in red in top outer corner of the recto, accompanied with a twentieth century foliation in pencil ‘11’, ruled in plummet for two columns of 48 lines (written space: 256 x 156 mm), written in black ink in a rounded gothic bookhand, capitals touched with yellow, quotations marks alternately in red and blue, rubrics in red, running-titles and chapters in red and blue on contrasting penwork in the upper margin, initials, ONE TWO-LINE DECORATED INITIAL in pink on burnished gold-ground in-filled with blue and green flowers, extending into long and curling foliate extensions made of red, blue, green, pink, and burnished gold ground, terminating in acanthus scrolls and hairline tendrils with gold bezants (minors stains in the upper margin, minor loss of pigment in the blue initials, else in excellent condition).

This elegant leaf comes from a richly illuminated copy of the Communiloquium of John of Wales (Johannes Gallensis), a vast handbook for preachers that was divided into seven sections, comprising a total of 43 distinctions and 229 chapters in total. This leaf, identified by its original foliation as f. 19 of the parent manuscript, is identified by the running headings as part of Part I, Distinction 2. The text reads from the end of the second chapter on the recto, to the beginning of the third on the verso. This chapter is introduced with a refined initial in burnished gold, extending into delicate swirling foliage across the lower margin, and terminating in acanthus scrolls and hairline tendrils charged with flower heads and gold bezants.

A Franciscan scholar active in the second half of the thirteenth century, John of Wales held one of the mendicant chairs as regent master in the University of Paris. Documented in Oxford in 1259-1260, he was in Paris in 1270 and might have died around 1285. John of Wales is mostly known for a series of pastoral handbooks for preachers, of which the most successful was the Communiloquium. This book became a major source gathering quotations from ancient authors, especially from Cicero and Seneca. Although around 144 manuscripts survive from Western Europe (see Swanson 2002), illuminated copies, such as the parent manuscript, are exceedingly rare, for almost all of them were functional copies made for the use of preachers. 

Provenance
Private collection, California, USA, MS 294.

Parent manuscript
1. The parent manuscript could have been illuminated for King Martin I of Aragon (r. 1396-1410), considering that its illuminator has been related by Christopher de Hamel to that of a Valerius Maximus now in the Archives of Barcelona (MS L/26; see Alturo i Perucho 2000, pl. 1), but made for the Spanish court. Martin I’s juggler is also reported to have commissioned a copy of this precise work for the king (see Swanson 1989, p. 210).
2. It was held in a Spanish monastery up until 1930, when acquired by:
3. Arthur M. Ellis (1875-1930); with the manuscript already lacking leaves, further dispersed by Ellis (see Kidd 2014); by descend to his heirs and sold by them at:
4. PBA Auctions, San Francisco, 12 June 2003, lot 55; the remnant of the manuscript bound in a seventeenth-century calf binding, and subsequently dismembered.
 
Sister leaves
Sister leaves have been sold by Sotheby’s, London (18 December 2003, lots 17-18), Maggs Bros (Catalogue 1366, 2004, nos. 28-29), Phillip J. Pirages (Catalogue 49, no. 114; Catalogue 51, no. 128; Catalogue 57, no. 75.3), and more recently Bloomsbury (6 July 2021, lot 114). 

LITERATURE
On the parent manuscript and sister leaves, see: Peter Kidd, “A Dispersed Copy of John of Wales’s Communiloquium,” Medieval Manuscripts Provenance, online, 2014; Bloomsbury, 6 July 2021, lot 114. Further literature, see Jenny Swanson, John of Wales: A Study in the Works and Ideas of a Thirteenth-Century Friar, 1989; Jesús Alturo i Perucho, El Llibre manuscrit a Catalunya. Orígens i Esplendor, Barcelona, 2000.

Freeman’s | Hindman thank Senior Consultant Sandra Hindman and Elliott Adam for their assistance in preparing this sale.