Alexander of Villedieu (ca 1170-1240) - photo 1
Alexander of Villedieu (ca 1170-1240) - photo 2
Alexander of Villedieu (ca 1170-1240) - photo 3
Alexander of Villedieu (ca 1170-1240) - photo 4

Alexander of Villedieu (ca 1170-1240)

Lot 108
12.12.2022 00:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 12 600
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 869515
Lot 108 | Alexander of Villedieu (ca 1170-1240)
Estimate value
£ 6 000 – 9 000
Alexander of Villedieu (c.1170-1240)
Doctrinale puerorum, in Latin, partly glossed, manuscript on paper [Italy, c.1400].
A rare survival of one of the most important educational texts of the Middle Ages - Alexander de Villa Dei’s mnemonic guide to Latin grammar for medieval schoolchildren - including emendations and glosses by a contemporary grammarian.

211 x 142mm. ii + 55 + ii leaves, collation: 17 (of 8, lacking i), 2-78, modern foliation in pencil, 22 lines of text, with extensive interlinear glosses to the opening 5 leaves, ruled space: 150 x 92mm, vertical catchwords survive, spaces for large decorated initials left blank (lacking opening leaf with the proemium and vv.1-44 and likely 3 leaves at end, with vv. 2545-2645, first few lines somewhat faded, some marginal staining and thumbing, opening edges a little frayed). 19th-century blind-tooled crushed blue morocco gilt by James Macdonald of New York (spine and edges a little scuffed).

Provenance:
(1) Apparently lot 467 in an unidentified sale.
(2) Sold by George D. Smith & Co., New York, 16 May 1928, I, lot 197 (according to de Ricci).
(3) J.E. Zahn, Denver, Colorado (de Ricci, Census, I (1935), p. 154).
(4) Colker MS 14, with his ownership inscription on f.i: ‘Sum ex libris Marci Leonardi / 1943’; acquired from Stonehill in 1943; Faye & Bond, Supplement to de Ricci’s Census (1962), p. 517.

Content:
Alexander of Villedieu, Doctrinale (lacking beginning and end), opening in v.45: ‘versibus his nota fit declinatio prima’ and ending with v.2544: ‘Atque pronomia [sic] sarcosmos [sic] ac ironia [...]’, ff.1-55v. Chapters 1-7 address Latin declensions and conjugations; chapters 8-9 agreement and syntax; chapter 10 prosody; and chapters 11-12 deal with figures of speech and faults of style. For an edition of the text, see D. Reichling, ed., Das Doctrinale des Alexander de Villa-Dei: Kritisch-exegetische Ausgabe, Berlin, 1893.

Alexander of Villedieu wrote this grammatical mnemonic guide for children - a 2645-line verse treatise in hexameters - at the end of the 12th century. A teacher and a poet, Alexander was born at Villedieu-les-Poêles, in Normandy, studied at the University of Paris, and later taught in the service of the Bishop of Dol, in Brittany. The Doctrinale was a medieval bestseller, surviving in more than 300 manuscripts, although it is exceptionally rare on the market. It draws on grammatical authorities from antiquity like Donatus and Priscian (and is often only intelligible to the modern reader when read alongside its original sources - on this see Lucie Doležalová, Obscurity and Memory in Late Medieval Latin Manuscript Culture: The Case of the ‘Summarium Bible’, 2012, pp.35-7), while taking into account the changes Latin had undergone in the intervening centuries. From the 13th century onward the text was frequently copied with the emendations and additions of glossators.
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