[ST BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX, ST AUGUSTINE, GERARD DE FRACHET ET AL.] - photo 1
[ST BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX, ST AUGUSTINE, GERARD DE FRACHET ET AL.] - photo 2
[ST BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX, ST AUGUSTINE, GERARD DE FRACHET ET AL.] - photo 3
[ST BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX, ST AUGUSTINE, GERARD DE FRACHET ET AL.] - photo 4

[ST BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX, ST AUGUSTINE, GERARD DE FRACHET ET AL.]

Lot 24
13.07.2022 10:30UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 16 380
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 794382
Lot 24 | [ST BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX, ST AUGUSTINE, GERARD DE FRACHET ET AL.]
Estimate value
£ 5 000 – 8 000
[ST BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX, ST AUGUSTINE, GERARD DE FRACHET ET AL.]

A compilation of Patristic texts, including St Bernard of Clairvaux and St Augustine, with the addition of GERARD DE FRACHET (1205-1271), Vitae fratrum Praedicatorum, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [France and Spain?, second half 14th century]

A quintessential 14th-century monastic production in its contemporary binding, containing a range of patristic texts, begun in France but likely completed in Spain with the addition of a history of the Dominican order, and owned at the end of the 14th century by Lazaro Martin de Bordalba, later dean of Huesca and papal nuncio in France.



146 x 100mm. 149 leaves, complete, collation: 130 (i pasted-down), 2-516, 614, 7-816, 98, 102 (ii pasted-down), early foliation 1-149 followed here, catchwords and prickings survive, two principal scribes working in a neat, minute, heavily abbreviated 14th-century hand, concordances on ff.143v-147 compiled by Lazaro Martin de Bordalba in 1391, early 15th century additions, ff.1-27v with a single column of 46 lines, ruled space: 116 x 73mm; ff.30-134 with two columns of 41 lines, ruled space: 109 x 35mm, penwork initials alternating red or blue with blue or red flourishing, initials in red with flourishing in brown ink, rubrics in red (some worming to final leaves, opening leaf stained, marginal thumbing and staining, else in good condition). Contemporary medieval blind-tooled leather over wooden boards, 5 brass star-shaped bosses (lacking 5 bosses, catches and clasps, some worming to upper and lower boards, spine rubbed and frayed).



Provenance:

(1) The alphabetically-arranged table of concordances beginning on f.143v was composed by ‘Lazaro Martini de Bordalba’ at Claremont Abbey in October 1391. This is doubtless the same Lazaro Martin de Bordalba who was dean of Huesca and papal nuncio in France and who in 1410 left a manuscript Bible to his brother Roiz, all his grammar and philosophy books to his nephew Garcia de Borau and a Nicholas de Lyra and other Biblical glosses to the Cathedral of Huesca (Archivo de la Catedral de Huesca, 2-9-548). The first part of the book (ff.1-95v) is certainly French, but the contemporary addition of the De Frachet text on the Dominicans looks to be Spanish, and it is plausible that Lazaro Martin de Bordalba had brought the book back to Spain with him.

(2) Later, ?18th-century inscriptions in Spanish, ‘Opusculo de San Bernardo y cronica de la orden de Predicadores año 1326’.



Content: WILLIAM BRITO or GUILLAUME LE BRETON (mid-13th century), selected excerpts from Expositiones Vocabulorum Biblie, beginning ‘Abba, sic[ut] d[icit] glo[sa] [ad] Gala[tas]’ ff.1-27v; blank f.28; PS. AUGUSTINE, Tractatus de planctu BMV, beginning ‘Quis dabit capiti meo aquam et occlis meis ymbre[m] lacrimarum […]’ ff.30-33; PS. AUGUSTINE, Liber de salute anime, beginning ‘Q[uo]ni[am] in medio laq[ue]or[um] positi sumus fac[i]le a celesti desid[er]io’ ff.33-37; ST BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX (1090-1153), Tractatus beati bernardi abbatis de conflictu babilonie et iherusalem et de obuiatione misericordie et veritatis et de osculo iustitie et pacis, beginning: ‘Int[er] babilon[i]e et ihe[rusa]l[e]m n[u]lla pax e[st]’ ff.37-40v; PS. AUGUSTINE / ALCHER OF CLAIRVAUX (12th century), De spiritu et anima, beginning ‘ Q[uo]n[iam] ut dictum e[st] ut me ipsum cog[no]scam sustinere n[on] possum’ ff.40v-54; ST BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX (1090-1153), Libelli de diligendo Deo, beginning ‘Viro illustri d[omi]no A.[imerico] romane ecclesie diachono […]’ ff.54v-62v; ST BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX (1090-1153), Apologia ad Guillelmum abbatem, beginning ‘Venerab[i]li p[at]ri Guill[el]mo […]’ ff.62v-68v; PS. BERNARD / GEOFFREY OF CLAIRVAUX (c.1115-c.1188), De colloquio Symonis Petri ad Ih[esu]m, the prologue beginning as in Migne, PL 184.437-476 ‘Ut t[ibi] dilectissi[m]e p[rae]s[e]ntes exort[ati]o[n]is’, the text: ‘Dix[it] Symo[n] Pe[trus] […]’ ff.69-81; PS. AUGUSTINE, De commendatione BMV, beginning ‘Voluit oc[culte] di[mittere] ea[m]’ ff.81-82; PS. DIONYSIUS AREOPAGITA, Epistola Beati Dyonisii ad Tymotheum, beginning ‘Saluto te dom[in]um discipul[u]m’ ff.82-84; PS. NICODEMUS, Cura sanitatis Tiberii, beginning ‘Factum est t[em]p[o]r[e]’ ff.84-85; ST AUGUSTINE (354-430), Florilegium, beginning ‘Quor[un]da[m] libror[um] glo[rio]si et i[n]c[om]p[ar]abilis doctoris Augustini’ ff.85v-95v; GERARD DE FRACHET (1205-1271), Vitae fratrum Praedicatorum, beginning ‘Cum glo[rio]sis s[an]c[t]or[um] patru[m] exe[m]plis’ ff.95v-143; Table of concordances compiled by Lazaro Martin de Bordalba, dated October 1391 ff.143v-147; ‘Recepta pro memoria’ ff.147v-148; Table of contents f.148v; Concordances ff.149-149v.



This book is typical of the compilations popular in medieval monastic communities of the 13th and 14th centuries. A significant proportion of the texts are Cistercian, with St Bernard of Clairvaux (and the anonymous Pseudo-Bernard), Geoffrey and Alcher of Clairvaux, as well as Augustine and Pseudo-Augustin. Many of the texts are often found in monastic anthologies of the period: for example, St Bernard of Clairvaux’s De Diligendo Deo, the first version of which was written in c.1124 but was then adapted to be offered to Cardinal Aimeric in c.1133-1135, is found in over 60 extant Latin manuscripts (see Sancti Bernardi Opera, vol. III, pp. 112-115); while his Apologia ad Guillelmum abbatem survives in about 68 manuscripts, not including this one (see Jean Leclercq and H. M Rochais, Tractatus et Opuscula, in S. Bernardi Opera, 1963, vol.3, pp.81-108). This latter work was written by St Bernard in c.1124-1125, at a time when the traditional monastic life represented by Cluny and its many abbeys was challenged by the new, more austere interpretation represented by the Cistercians. It is Bernard at his most eloquent, and is the defining work justifying Cistercian austerity and condemning Benedictine luxury, including the fanciful embellishments of illuminated manuscripts. Interesting among these texts is the Cura Sanitatis Tiberii, a short legendary text originally composed between the 5th and 7th centuries which supplements the Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus and is the earliest known written account of the medieval legend of Veronica’s veil.



A second, but contemporary, scribe adds Gerard de Frachet’s account of the first members of the Dominicans (the Vitae Fratrum) – a book that was written as a result of a request from the General Chapter in 1256 which was anxious to collect eye witness accounts of the doings and sayings of the early friars before the first generation of the order died. This part of the manuscript may have been written in Spain, perhaps close to the time when it came into the hands of Lazaro Martin de Bordalba, who added the table of concordances on ff.143v-147 and annotated the manuscript throughout.





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