St Paul, Epistles, Vulgate Bible, with the Glossa ordinaria by Anselm of Laon

Fols. 1r-151v. The Epistles of Saint Paul in a Vulgate translation .

Fols 1r-24v. Opening abruptly at Romans 4:11 .

Fols 24v-56r. 1 Corinthians .

Fols 56v-75r. 2 Corinthians; first few words of Chapter 1 are missing because of the excised initial at the bottom of the recto.

Fols 75v-85v. Galatians.

Fols 85v-94v. Ephesians; the text ends abruptly at 6:21 because a folio has been lost after fol. 94v.

Fols 95r-100v. Philippians; the text begins at 1:13, owing to the loss of a folio between fols 94r and 95r .

Fols 100v-106r. Colossians.

Fols 106r-111v. 1 Thessalonians.

Fols 111v-114v. 2 Thessalonians.

Fols. 114v-121r. 1 Timothy.

Fols 121r-126r. 2 Timothy.

Fols 126r-129r. Titus.

Fols 129r-130r. Philemon; part of the text at the top of fol. 130r was lost (verses 17-18) when the opening initial of Hebrews (on the verso) was excised.

Fols 130v-150v. Hebrews; part of the first four lines were lost when the opening initial was excised. The text breaks off abruptly on fol. 150v at Hebrews 12:18. A few words only of Hebrews 13:2-3 are visible on the mutilated fol. 151v. One folio of the Epistles has been lost at the end of the manuscript .

The Epistles are accompanied by commentaries from the Glossa ordinaria. These begin and end abruptly in accordance with the breaks in the text of the Epistles. The text of the Epistles is much corrected throughout, as are the glosses; at times whole sections of the gloss have been erased (as on fols 10r-v, 15v, 46v). There are multiple levels of glossing, with some glosses themselves being glossed (as on fol. 57r). The later glosses are sometimes written in triangular patterns (as on fol. 10v), and there are interesting 'Nota' signs throughout (e.g. on fol. 105r).

The manuscript has been trimmed, so that some marginal glosses have been lost.

Ink: primary text and glosses in black ink, interlinear glosses in brown ink.

One- and two-line red and blue capitals occur throughout the text; cues for the rubricator are found next to the text of the gloss (e.g. on fol. 51r). Nine decorated, and one historiated, initials ‘P’ introduce the separate Epistles. These initials (ranging from 45 x 45 mm.to 25 x 25 mm.) are painted in yellow, on blue or red grounds, with red outlines. Their interstices contain curving Romanesque vine interlace with some zoomorphic motifs. This decoration is rendered mainly in white, with red and green contours and stroking, on contrasting blue or red grounds. The elongated tail of the ‘P’ usually terminates in a curving foliate motif; on fol. 126r a long-necked bird drawn in the same colours holds the initial stem in its beak. On fol. 59v, the decoration trails into the bottom margin and terminates in a fish. Sometimes letters in the last line of a folio have extended descenders in a dot and dash pattern (as on fols 81v, 82r-v, 83r). The shaft and body of the initial are normally decorated with simple designs of horizontal red bands and dots. The ‘P’ on fol. 114v is more elaborate, with a series of solid patterned bands being let into the shaft; the curve of the letter is opened up against the contrasting ground and a knot at the top of the shaft further indicates the more dynamic and flexible shape of the letter as a whole. In the historiated initial on fol. 8v blue, red and yellow still predominate.

Program of Decoration and Illustration

Decorated initials ‘P’ introduce the Epistles as follows: fol. 24v, 1 Corinthians; fol. 75v, Galatians; fol. 85v, historiated initial, Ephesians; fol. 100v, Colossians; fol. 106r, 1 Thessalonians; fol. 111v, 2 Thessalonians; fol. 114v, 1 Timothy; fol. 121r, 2 Timothy; fol. 126r, Titus; fol. 129r, Philomen. In its present state, only the Epistle to the Ephesians is introduced by an historiated initial – an author portrait of St Paul in which the figure is depicted in bust form. It is probable that originally there were three more decorated or historiated initials introducing Romans, 2 Corinthians and Philippians, sections of the text, which are now incomplete.

330 x 210 mm., late eighteenth century, quarter-bound in sheepskin over paste boards with leaf-patterned paper, and buff-coloured primary-worked head bands. Textblock is sewn on five fibre cords with top and bottom kettle stitching. The spine has in gilt lettering: ‘XXIV/ EPI. CANO/ CUM GLOS/ INTERL/ MS.’. Soiling at the start of the second gathering (fol. 9r) and the final folio (fol.151r) indicates that the manuscript was unbound for a period of time during which the first gathering was detached. The final folios have creasing extending in from the top and bottom sewing stations which support this conclusion.

While the original provenance of the manuscript is not known for certain, the binding and a number of inscriptions provide clues. On fol. 1r is written ‘3.6 Glossa interlinearis epistolarum ad Romanos’ in a seventeenth-century hand. On the back pastedown is written ‘foglie N.151, Iniziali N.14, Segnato N.AP’ in an eighteenth-century hand. These inscriptions relate the manuscript to a group of thirteen others formerly in the collection of the Hispanic Society of America, sold at Christie’s in London in 2008. [ii] All of these manuscripts have at least one of the following four characteristics: a seventeenth-century inscription on the first (and sometimes the second) leaf with a shelf mark and brief title; an inscription on the back (and sometimes the front) pastedown describing the number of folios and any significant decoration, and ending with ‘Segnato N. AP’; a loose slip of paper with an inscription similar to the title on the spine, presumed to be an instruction for the binder; and a loose piece of paper with a short nineteenth-century description of the manuscript in French. Other common features of the manuscripts are the bindings of eighteenth-century half sheep and paper (?) with a repeated leaf pattern over pasteboards, and the fact that they are often missing folios at the beginning and end; also, many have suffered a degree of water damage, as is the case with the Melbourne manuscript.

As one of the ex-Christie’s manuscripts (Commentary on Book IV of the Sentences of Peter Lombard, lot 22) has a fifteenth-century inscription indicating that it belonged to the Dominican convent of San Domenico at Gaeta in Italy, it has been presumed that the whole group probably has the same provenance, although, as some of the manuscripts are clearly French in origin, the library at San Domenico must have acquired manuscripts, as well as possibly making them. In favour of the hypothesis that this group of manuscripts as a whole came from the convent at Gaeta is the fact that most of the texts are religious in nature, and several of them are by Italians. Four of them for example, are works of the Italian Dominican theologian St Thomas Aquinas. The convent was suppressed in 1806.[iii] It seems that most or all of the manuscripts were in France at some point in the nineteenth century. There is a gap, however, in their provenance before they were acquired, probably by Archer M. Huntington (1870–1955), for the Hispanic Society of America, sometime in the early twentieth century. Neither the 1983 catalogue of the Society’s medieval manuscripts nor the 2008 Christie’s catalogue indicates where or when Huntington acquired his manuscripts.

On the inside front cover of the Melbourne manuscript in a nineteenth-century hand is written in pencil: ‘from the Imperial Russian Library, St. Petersburg’ and fol. i has an extract from entry no. 1 in William H. Robinson’s catalogue of 1932.[iv] While this catalogue lists the Melbourne manuscript as no. 1, it does not specify its provenance, unlike a number of manuscripts in the catalogue that are recorded as coming from the Imperial Library of St Petersburg, such as no. 13, a volume of Aristotle, described as marked on the title page with the stamp of the Imperial Library of St Petersburg and which has the Library’s bookplate on the inside cover. The Epistles of St Paul do not have such a stamp or bookplate, nor are they listed in Antonio Staerk’s 1910 catalogue of the Library’s Latin manuscripts from the fifth to the thirteenth centuries.[v]

The manuscript was acquired from William H. Robinson by the State Library of Victoria through the Felton Bequest in 1933, on the advice of the Librarian A.B. Foxcroft. Formerly it had the shelf mark *f096/B47E .

[William H. Robinson Ltd] Illuminated Manuscripts, Incunabula, and Other Valuable Books from the Libraries of the Czars of Russia: Including Beautiful Volumes from the Famous Hermitage Collection, the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg, the Private Library of the Czars at Tsarkoe Selo, with a Selection of Books from Other Sources, Offered for Sale by William H. Robinson Ltd, London [1932], pp. 1–2, no. 1.

[A.B. Foxcroft] Manuscripts and Books of Art Acquired under the Terms of the Felton Bequest, Melbourne, 1938, p. 17.

K.V. Sinclair, Descriptive Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Western Manuscripts in Australia, Sydney, 1969, pp. 356–8, no. 215.

M.M. Manion and V.F. Vines, Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts in Australian Collections, London, 1984, p. 27, no. 2, pl. 2.

M.M. Manion, ‘Italian manuscripts in Australian collections’, in La miniatura italiana tra Gotico e Rinascimento, E. Sesti (ed.), Atti del II Congresso di Storia della Miniatura Italiana, Cortona, 1982, 2 vols, Florence, 1985, 175–88, p. 176.

B. Hubber, ‘“Of the Numerous Opportunities”: the Origins of the Collection of Medieval Manuscripts at the State Library of Victoria’, The La Trobe Journal, nos 51–2, 1993, 3–9, p. 6.

G.H.R. Horsley, ‘Classical Manuscripts in Australia and New Zealand, and the Early History of the Codex’, Antichthon, vol. 27, 1993, 60–85, pp. 61 and 63.

M.M. Manion, ‘3’, in The Book of Kells and the Art of Illumination, exh. cat., National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 25 February–7 May 2000, Canberra, 2000, p. 39, no. 3 with an unnumbered illustration.

S. Carmody, ‘Mirror of a World: William Caxton at the State Library’, The La Trobe Journal, 77, 2006, 4–22, p. 10.

S. Carmody, ‘William H. Robinson, Booksellers and the Public Library of Victoria’, The La Trobe Journal, 81, 2008, 90–105, p. 93.

B. Stocks, ‘Glossed Epistles of St Paul’, in The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia, and New Zealand, B. Stocks and N. Morgan (eds), exh. cat., State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, 28 March–15 June 2008, Melbourne, 2008, pp. 14, 22, 30, 197, 246, pl. 4 and fig. 5, no. 4.

M.M. Manion, ‘Reading the Medieval Book in an Exhibition’, in Imagination, Books, and Community in Medieval Europe, G. Kratzmann (ed.), Melbourne, 2009, 13–48, p. 15 and fig. 4.

The glosses come from an anonymous text called the Glossa ordinaria. Until well into the second half of the twentieth century it was thought that this had been written by Walafrid Strabo, a ninth-century Frankish monk and theologian. Later scholars, however, came to the conclusion that it was compiled around 1085 by the French theologian, Anselm of Laon (1050–1117).[i] More recently, there has been a tendency to attribute the redaction of the glosses for the Pentateuch, including Leviticus, to Gilbert ‘the Universal’, a master at Auxerre, who died in London in 1134.[ii] In any case, the Glossa became the authoritative interpretation of Scripture in the Middle Ages and is regularly found accompanying Paul's Epistles.The manuscript is typical of late twelfth-century Tuscan illumination.[iii]

Digital imaging and research on this manuscript were supported by the Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Australia:Researching and Relating Australia’s Manuscript Holdings to New Technologies and New Readers (2010-13). Substantial donations from the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, Catholic Church Insurance and the National Australia Bank are gratefully acknowledged. The Catholic Diocese of Ballarat, The Network for Early European Research, and Newman College, The University of Melbourne, have also generously contributed to the project .

Chief Investigators (CIs) of the ARC project were Professor emeritus Margaret Manion (The University of Melbourne), Professor Bernard Muir (The University of Melbourne), and Dr Toby Burrows (The University of Western Australia). Graduate research assistants were Alexandra Ellem, Dr Hugh Hudson, Dr Elaine Shaw and postgraduate scholar Elizabeth Melzer (The University of Melbourne). Shane Carmody was the representative of the Chief Industry Partner (The State Library of Victoria). The following curators, conservators, photographers and computer specialists at The State Library of Victoria also contributed their expertise: Katrina Ben, Des Cowley, Ian Cox, Adrian Flint, Ross Genat, Jean Holland, Shelley Jamieson, Afsana Khan, Coralie McInnes, Monika McIntyre, Helen McPherson, Peter Mappin and Sarah Mason. Before he left the project at the end of 2011, Hugh Hudson made a significant contribution to several of the entries, particularly in the area of Provenance and the updating of Bibliography. This contribution is acknowledged in appropriate endnotes. Other contributors, besides the ARC team, both in Australia and overseas, are also acknowledged in relevant endnotes.

These detailed entries draw on the information in earlier catalogues and also update it. In particular, they are based on the following: K.V. Sinclair, Descriptive Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Western Manuscripts in Australia, Sydney, 1969, M. M. Manion and V. F. Vines, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Australian Collections, London, 1984, and B. Stocks and N. Morgan, eds, The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne, 2008. Our debt to these pioneering publications and dependence on them are acknowledged here.

Margaret M.Manion on behalf of the ARC team, October, 2013.