Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts

MS. 44
Letters of St. Cyprian
Contents:
  1. Letters
Date of origin:Mid-15th century.
Place of origin: Languedoc-Roussillon, France

Support: Paper and parchment codex with watermarks: calf head (Briquet 14329 or 14330).
Foliation: Foliation appears in Roman numerals in ink in the top right corner of each recto. Only folia 1, 228, and 229 are not numbered. Folia 117-144 were originally misnumbered, but the numerator himself appears to have caught the error and corrected the foliation on these pages. From f. 145 to the end of the manuscript, the numeration is correct.
Dimensions:290mm x 210mm (leaves), 180mm x 118mm (ruled space)
Collation:i 1-1812 1912 (-1) 206 (-4) i. The first and last leaves of the first gathering are tipped in and have no conjugates. Quires 2-18 exhibit a regular leaf combination pattern that begins with one vellum leaf followed by four paper leaves followed by two vellum leaves followed by four more paper leaves and concluding with one vellum leaf (1-4-2-4-1). Catchwords, written vertically from top to bottom in the bottom right corner of every final verso in a quire, are present and correct throughout the manuscript.
Script:Text in littera gothica textualis media in a single hand.

Binding:Calf-skin on boards.
Additions:On i-r, in a hand that may be 17th or 18th-century, someone has written in French "lestres de st siprien et (crossout) des ouvrage/ de tertullien pere du troisieme siecle". Beginning on f. 2r, a more recent hand has inscribed titles for the letters in the top-center margin. F. 3r also has the first set of marginal glosses, in a hand in fading ink that appears to be contemporary with (or slightly later), though different from, the main bookhand. A second annotator is visible in the left margin in black ink. Beginning on f. 6r to the end of quire 4 (f. 48v), someone has written in the left margin of every recto in quadrata capitals the letters A, B, and C; likewise, on verso folia in the right margin, capitals D, E, and F are written. Occasionally, as on f. 30v line 4, a marginal note is signaled with a siglum (although this is not the main hand, it is clearly medieval and thus contemporary). Frequent marginal and interlinear corrections are observed, as on f. 32v, opposite letter F. Occasional underlining of passages within the text is visible. A curious marginal comment "de signo thau T" is accompanied by an elaborate sketch of the Greek letter on f. 61r. A new annotator is observed on f. 182v in the left margin: the script is different and the sketched hand with pointing fingers is also different. In the index (ff. 228r-229v), additional hands have added the Epistle numbers in the left margin and incipits to the different letters in the right.
Provenance: A bookplate on the front pastedown with the legend "Vernon semper viret" and the figure of a baron's coronet belongs to George John Vernon, 5th Baron Vernon (1803-1866), of Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire.