Western Manuscripts and Miniatures

A rare and previously unrecorded fragment of an influential university text displaying certain features that suggest it might have been an exemplar or study copy.
 
310 × 213 mm. Single bifolium, ruled in drypoint for two columns of fifty-four lines (justification: 228 × 170 mm), unfoliated, written in brown ink in a littera textualis script, with small glosses and marginal annotations, column numbers in top margins (197–200 and 217–220), alternating one-line red and blue pilcrows. Slightly faded with staining and physical losses around the edges, significant cockling, else in fair condition.
 
A rare and previously unknown fragment of the English philosopher, Robert Holcot’s Opus quaestionum, a commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, and an important philosophical text of the later Middle Ages. Holcot (sometimes written as Holkot) was an Oxford-educated Dominican, renowned for his scholastic contributions during the fourteenth century. In his Opus, Holcot explores and expands on theological questions presented in Lombard’s Sentences, often engaging with (and sometimes diverging from) Ockhamist perspectives. While Holcot’s commentary was widely copied and dispersed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, only forty-eight extant manuscripts and fragments are presently known. A census of Holcot’s work, completed in 1995 by Katherine Tachau and Paul Streveler, does not list this work (see Tachau and Streveler 1995).
 
The quire from this surviving bifolium can be reconstructed based on column numbers labeled 97–100 and 125–128. This numerical span (32 columns total) corresponds exactly to an eight-leaf quire (each leaf bearing 4 columns of text), indicating that this is the outer bifolium of the quires. The content on these leaves has been identified as parts of Quaestio 3 of Holcot’s Sentences commentary. A sister fragment (sold in the Dreweatts sale) bears a blue initial beginning the incipit for Quaestio 3 and the remaining portions of Quaestio 2 of the commentary. Enough remains of these bifolia to suggest the parent manuscript contained the full text of Holcot’s commentary, rather than a summary, divided into the usual questions, and that our surviving bifolium come from the middle of that text, within Book I of the Sentences commentary.
 
Provenance
(1) Created for a university milieu, probably Paris and close to the lifetime of the author (died 1349). The style of script (compressed minims, two-compartment ‘a’, non-looped ascenders) matches known scripts produced in Paris, though England remains a possibility. The presence of column numbering implies that the parent volume was likely an exemplar or study copy used for theological instruction or reference. In the pecia system, stationers often numbered columns or sections for ease of copying and reference by students. Such numbering was relatively uncommon before 1340, placing the origin of this manuscript solidly in the mid to latter half of the fourteenth century.
 
(2) Genoa, Italy, 1538–1539. The parent manuscript (or parts of it) was repurposed as archival bindings, as noted by annotations in the bottom margin of the bifolium.
 
(3) Dreweatts, London, July 10, 2018, lot 49. Offered with two additional bifolia from the parent manuscript.
 
(4) Private Collection.
 
Sister leaves
Two additional bifolia were offered in the Dreweatts sale, which contained columns 97–100, 125–128 and [193]–196, 221–224. The whereabouts of these fragments are presently unknown.
 
LITERATURE
Unpublished; on Holcot see: Friedrich Stegmüller, Repertorium Commentariorum in Sententias Petri Lombardi, 2 vols., Würzburg, 1947–1950, no. 3912; Morton Bloomfield, et al., Incipits of Latin Works on the Virtues and Vices, 1100–1500 A.D., Cambridge (MA), 1979; Katherine Tachau and David W. Streveler, “A Census of Robert Holcot’s Quaestiones super Sententias,” in Via Scienciae: Ars et Ingenium, ed. F. T. J. M. van Oostrom, et al., Hilversum, 1995, pp. 345–357; Marc Oziliou, “Le problème du savoir théologique chez Robert Holcot: Une étude sur la question initiale du commentaire des Sentences,” Doctoral Thesis, Institut Catholique de Paris, 2012; Robert Andrews, “Theology and the Limits of Language in the Quaestiones super Sententias of Robert Holcot,” Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales 82 (2015), pp. 1–42.
 
We thank Senior Consultant Sandra Hindman and Peter Bovenmyer for their assistance in preparing this sale.