This manuscript is a small but thick mid-fifteenth-century Latin prayer book with numerous prayers to Christ, Mary, and the saints. Twenty rather primitive miniatures depict events or objects from the Gospels and portraits of saints. It was written in Germany in textualis script, with a few prayers in Low German at the end (fols. 259v-261r) in a different hand. Its flyleaves are fragments from an earlier manuscript on paper of Aristotle's Metaphysics, but the volume was rebound in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.
Support: Parchment; Extent: i+264+i; 108 x 76 mm bound to 117 x 80 mm; Foliation: Modern foliation in pencil, upper right recto; four folios foliated as 71 bis, 75 bis, 134 bis, 208 bis; flyleaves, which are fragments from another manuscript are labeled as folios, but they are not included in the collation model
One column of fifteen lines; prickings visible on some leaves; written area: 70 x 48 mm
Gothic--textualis semi-quadrata
Twenty miniatures in gold and colors with trilateral floral borders; seven decorative initials with similar borders; capitals, some more elaborate in gold and colors, others in plain gold or red and blue; rubrication in red
For a full list of Decorations in this manuscript please see the Content and Decorations section by clicking on the [i] button in the top left corner of the image viewer above.
Front and back flyleaves: Fragments from an earlier, possibly 13th-century, manuscript on paper of Aristotle's Metaphysics (modern foliation 1 (Metaphysics Book 15, Chapters 22 and 24) and 262 (Book 7, Chapters 3 and 4))
Small paper manuscript fragments perhaps used as bookmarks now between fols. 217-218 and 253-254 are from the same Aristotle manuscript as the flyleaves and not included in foliation
Cologne?, Germany
Circa 1450
Late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century vellum over wooden boards stamped with woodcuts by William Harcourt Hooper; two clasps; bound for William Harcourt Hooper
Latin; Low German, Low Saxon
Made for a woman named Katherine whose coat-of-arms is at the foot of the Cross in the miniature of the Descent (bend chequered azure and gules, fol. 183v) and whose name is in the prayer beginning on fol. 104v; William Harcourt Hooper sale, Sotheby's, London, July 15, 1912, no. 185; to Lewine; obtained from Voynich by John Frederick Lewis, Philadelphia, 1916; given by his widow, Anne Baker Lewis, to the Free Library of Philadelphia in 1936
Cologne?, Germany
Circa 1450
Latin; Low German, Low Saxon
Made for a woman named Katherine whose coat-of-arms is at the foot of the Cross in the miniature of the Descent
This manuscript is a small but thick mid-fifteenth-century Latin prayer book with numerous prayers to Christ, Mary, and the saints. Twenty rather primitive miniatures depict events or objects from the Gospels and portraits of saints. It was written in Germany in textualis script, with a few prayers in Low German at the end (fols. 259v-261r) in a different hand. Its flyleaves are fragments from an earlier manuscript on paper of Aristotle's Metaphysics, but the volume was rebound in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.
Front and back flyleaves: Fragments from an earlier, possibly 13th-century, manuscript on paper of Aristotle's Metaphysics (modern foliation 1 (Metaphysics Book 15, Chapters 22 and 24) and 262 (Book 7, Chapters 3 and 4))
Small paper manuscript fragments perhaps used as bookmarks now between fols. 217-218 and 253-254 are from the same Aristotle manuscript as the flyleaves and not included in foliation
Gothic--textualis semi-quadrata
Twenty miniatures in gold and colors with trilateral floral borders; seven decorative initials with similar borders; capitals, some more elaborate in gold and colors, others in plain gold or red and blue; rubrication in red
For a full list of Decorations in this manuscript please see the Content and Decorations section by clicking on the [i] button in the top left corner of the image viewer above.
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