Peter Riga (d. 1209)

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£ 1 134
Auction dateClassic
12.12.2022 00:00UTC +01:00
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CHRISTIE'S
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United Kingdom, London
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ID 869509
Lot 102 | Peter Riga (d. 1209)
Peter Riga (d. 1209)
A leaf from Aurora in the first redaction by Aegidius of Paris, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [England, second half or late 14th century].
From an unusual copy of a popular text, with a distinguished provenance.

c.290 × 195mm. 32 lines, written as verse, the text comprising: ‘Mentis in excessu fit. celum vidit apertum […] [catchwords:] Quod tres Herodes’ (ed. P.E. Beichner, Aurora: Petri Rigae Biblia Versificata (Notre Dame, 1965), II, pp. 645–48 lines 483–547 in the Evangelium), chapters with marginal titles/summaries in red, decorated with blue initials with red penwork flourishing (minor staining, but generally fine)

Provenance:
(1) Apparently from an English monastic library: the parent volume (see below) is recorded to have had a 16th-century inscription on the penultimate leaf including the words ‘huius monasterii’.
(2) Hugh Grosvenor (1879–1953), 2nd Duke of Westminster: sold by the Trustees of his will at Sotheby’s, 11 July 1966, lot 229 (then consisting of 267 leaves, but apparently already missing the first gathering, 13 other leaves, and the initials from three more leaves; it had only six illuminated leaves out of an original total of at least 20); bought for £320 by:
(3) Francis Edwards, London bookseller, who presumably dismembered it.
(4) Colker MS 156; acquired in 1969 from Maggs or Roten.

The parent manuscript was doubly unusual: the vast majority of manuscripts are French and 13th century: this is English and 14th-century. One other English 14th-century copy is San Marino, Huntington Library, HM 31189. Because the text is composed in short lines of verse, copies are sometimes in a tall, narrow, ‘holster’ format (cf. [MLC 361] lot 69).

We are grateful to Eric Johnson for information about the provenance and sister leaves, one of which was Quaritch, Bookhands of the Middle Ages VIII (2007), no 96 (col. ill.); two are at Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI; one is at the University of South Carolina; and another is at Ohio State University.
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