Medieval Manuscripts in Cambridge Libraries: Cambridge, University Library, MS Dd.1.16

Historical compilation

Introduction: During the medieval period, history did not officially form part of the curriculum taught at universities. However, it fulfilled an important ancillary role to theology, one of the higher faculties of study. According to the writings of Hugh of St Victor (c. 1096-1141), a canon of the abbey of St Victor in Paris, there were three approaches to reading the Scriptures: historical, allegorical and tropological. Hugh reasoned that history - in the sense of the correct sequence of past events, but also the literal sense of any narrative, and both with specific reference to the Bible - was the foundation upon which must rest any subsequent figurative interpretation of the Bible as a source of moral guidance. To this end, Hugh advocated the training of one's memory and the use of mnemonic techniques. These were complemented by simultaneous changes in the presentation of texts in manuscripts: specifically, the creation of paratextual apparatus and visual cues to facilitate the accessing and comprehension of the text they accompanied, or another to which it referred, by their readers. The individual contents of this manuscript, their selection for compilation within a single volume, and the manner in which they were presented illustrate the development and dissemination of these new intellectual and bibliographical trends. It comprises three texts, the first two of which were composed to aid the understanding of biblical history: the Historia scholastica of Peter Comestor (d. 1187) and the Genealogia historiarum (or Compendium historiae in genealogia Christi) of Peter of Poitiers (c. 1130-c. 1205). The third text, the Allegoriae in uetus testamentum, was written by Richard of St Victor (d. 1173), a pupil of Hugh's, and exemplifies the figurative modes of reading the Bible by describing the allegorical meanings to be found in the names of people, places or events related in the Old Testament. The Historia scholastica occupies the bulk of this manuscript, and the text represents an attempt to put Hugh of St Victor's ideas into practice. Comestor organised his narrative according to the order of the books of the Bible, with each of its constituent histories corresponding to a biblical book or collection of books, and thus providing the reader with a historical foundation for the study of the scriptures. In many places, the Historia was presented using parallel columns, which enabled Comestor to accommodate his incidental observations without interrupting the framework of the events narrated in the Bible. In this manuscript, these take the form of improvised sub-columns, their text demarcated from the rest by rubricated lines that appear to have been drawn freehand and after the text had been copied (see f. 16r for extensive examples in both columns, and note how the rubricated line frequently runs over parts of letters). Similar experimentation with layout is found in the first text in this manuscript, the Compendium historiae in genealogia Christi of Peter of Poitiers. The two authors were close contemporaries - Comestor served as Chancellor of Notre Dame and Dean of the cathedral school, before being succeeded by Peter of Poitiers in 1169 - and their two texts commonly accompanied one another in manuscripts. Although in this manuscript the Compendium is apparently of separate production - on a separate quire of six leaves (constrasting with the quires of eight found in the rest of the book), its text copied by a different hand, and decorated with a different set of pigments that have in places corroded the parchment (such damage not being found elsewhere) - there is no reason to suppose that they were not produced around the same time and with the intention from the outset or at an early stage that they should be bound together in a single volume. Poitiers' work is essentially a family tree: it condenses Old Testament history in order to illustrate Jesus's descent from Adam. In this manuscript, the names of individuals are enclosed in roundels, the most important being picked out in gold, and their relationship to one another is shown by interconnecting coloured lines. Interspersed among the parts of the genealogy are multiple columns of text, providing the reader with additional information concerning specific people, places or historical events. There are also schematic diagrams: first of Noah's ark (one derived from description in the Book of Genesis; and one from the 1st-century Jewish historian Josephus's Antiquitates iudaicae), then the three mansions in the desert and the Tabernacle, and finally the habitation of the king and priests of Israel. In keeping with Hugh of St Victor's precepts, these illustrations - and the genealogical diagrams as a whole - were intended as aids to memory, providing visual points of reference for the mental arrangement of historical information transmitted to the reader in the text. The close association of these two texts appears to have led at an early stage to the expansion of the Compendium with material from the Historia scholastica as well as other sources (the range of illustrations also varied in later, expanded versions). This manuscript is notable as perhaps the earliest extant copy of the 'interpolated' version of the Compendium made in England. Dating to the late 12th century, it furthermore illustrates the rapid dissemination of these new intellectual currents from the University of Paris to centres of scholarship elsewhere in Europe. Dr James Freeman| Medieval Manuscripts Specialist| Cambridge University Library

Language(s): Latin

1. ff. 1r-6r

Compendium historiae in genealogia christi Genealogia historiarum Peter of Poitiers

Incipit: 1r: [...] hystorie sacre prolixitatem

Explicit: 5v: electi inter diem ascensionis et pentecostes

Folio 6v is blank.

Stegmüller 6778

Moore (1936)

2. 7r-249v

Historia scholastica Peter Comestor

Incipit: 7r: Reuerentissimo patri et domino suo Willelmo dei gratia senonensi archiepiscopo

Explicit: 249v: et in loco magis honorabiliari scilicet in cathacumbi

Final rubric: 249v: Petrus eram quem petra tegit dictusque comestor / Nunc commedor uius docui nec cesso docere / Mortuus ut dicat qui me uidet incineratum / Quod sumus iste fuit erimus quandoque quod hic est

Closing rubric added by a different, perhaps later hand.

PL 198: 1053-1722

Stegmüller 6543-6565

Walther 14050

3. 249v-285r

Allegoriae in uetus testamentum Liber exceptionum Richard of St Victor

Incipit: 249v: In precedentibus premissa descriptione originis et distinctionis arcium

Explicit: 285r: Qui cum patre et spiritu sancto uiuit et regnat [...] Per [...] secula seculorum . Amen

Printed among the doubtful works of Hugh of St Victor (PL 175: 633-750)

Part II, Books I-IX of the Liber exceptionum

Stegmüller 3847

Châtillon (1958), 213-373

Physical Description

Secundo Folio: 8r Placuit inessencia

Form: codex

Support: Parchment (HFFH)

Extent: Codex: iii + 2 + 285 + 2 + iii leaves. 215 × 145 mm.

Foliation:

Mid-20th-century foliation:

[a-c] + i-ii + 1-285 + iii-iv + [d-f]

Numbering in pencil in the upper right-hand corner of the rectos.

Collation

Quire 1⁶ (ff. 1-6)
Quires 2-35⁸ (ff. 7-278)
Quire 36^8-1 (ff. 279-286: 8th leaf cancelled, probably blank)

1⁶, 2-35⁸, 36^8-1 (8 cancelled)

Quires 2-31 signed 'I'-'XXVII', 'XXIX-XXXI' on the verso of the last leaf of each quire. No text is missing between Quires 'XXVII' and 'XXIX'. The leaves of the first half of a quire are often marked in plummet in the lower margin with what appears to be an early form of bifolium signature. It consists of a 'bifolium catchword' (a word or part of a word that matches the opening word on the recto of the next leaf) and / or a symbol or lower-case letter specific to that quire and which is repeated in the lower margin of the recto of the next leaf. Catchwords, in the lower right-hand corner of the verso of the last leaf of each quire

Condition

The manuscript is grimy throughout. The red, green and blue pigment is often rubbed off or abraded in varying degrees of severity (see ff. 16r, 18r, 127v, 149r and 257r). There staining, largely in the upper part of the leaves, which worsens towards the rear of the manuscript (see ff. 261 and 278-279). There are a number of leaves with areas that have been turned in and which now protrude beyond the edges of the leaves, which indicates that the manuscript has been trimmed (see ff. 88r). The manuscript has suffered from excessive rounding and the addition of a large amount of adhesive on the spine (see, for example, ff. 102-103, which has induced a considerable amount of cockling, pleating and folding of the leaves (see ff. 240, 243 and 247). The last leaf is mutilated (f. 285), with loss of text.

Quire 1 is in a particularly fragile condition (ff. 1-6), owing to the use of verdigris in the green pigment for some of the lines of descent. In places, this has burnt through the parchment, leaving the surrounding area brittle and vulnerable to loss and tearing. Portions of the lower edges and corners are also missing, perhaps also as a consequence of burn-through.

At the time of cataloguing (January 2020), the manuscript remains unbound.

Layout

1r-6r: Pricking marks visible only in the gutter. Ruled in leadpoint, in two columns, text wrapped around genealogical diagrams, written above top line.

7r-285r: 290-295 × 185-190 mm. Ruled in leadpoint, frame and line. Two columns, 45 lines to the page, written above top line. Pricking marks visible only in the gutter.

Hand(s)

Caroline minuscule.

Decoration

1r-6r: Genealogical tables from Adam to Christ, of Jewish kings and prophets, rulers of Mesopotamia, Persia and Egypt, Alexander the Great and Roman emperors, some names encircled in gold.

Diagrams with gilding:

1r: two schematic depictions of Noah's ark, 'secundum moysen' and 'secundum iosephum'
2r: mansions in the desert and Tabernacle
4v: habitatio regis et sacerdotum

Red, green or blue initials with penwork flourishing (5-28 lines), some filled with foliage, at the beginning of each book.

Red, blue and green chapter initials (3 lines), some with penwork flourishing in alternating colours.

Human and animal heads or figures in lower margins marking run-overs and occasionally associated with the text: e.g. Adam plangens (13r), man with shield (39r), eagle (47v), goat with inscription peccata populi (60r).

Binding

Conserved and rebound at Cambridge University Library by Shaun Thompson in 2025. Alum-tawed calfskin over quarter-sawn oak boards. Sewn in half-packed herringbone with 3-ply seaming twine on six double 8-ply cord supports. Primary endbands sewn with 3-ply seaming twine through a slit tawed bonnet liner. New endleaves of two parchment bifolia, with linen and alum-tawed hinges, sewn all along.

Brown calfskin, blind-tooled, over paste-laminate boards, perhaps late 17th century.

Rebacked during the 20th century; presently disbound.

History

Origin: Fourth quarter of the 12th century. ; England.

Provenance and Acquisition

John Moore (1646-1714), bishop of Ely : no. 285 (f. i recto) in Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliæ et Hiberniæ (c. 1697).

Presented to the University Library in 1715 by George I : donation bookplate engraved by John Pine in 1736 on front pastedown.

Additional Information

Record Sources

This catalogue entry draws on the description provided by Paul Binski and Patrick Zutshi, with the collaboration of Stella Panayotova, Western Illuminated Manuscripts: A Catalogue of the Collection in Cambridge University Library (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) (used here by kind permission of Cambridge University Press), and an unpublished description of the manuscript composed between 1947 and 1970 by H.L. Pink , now held in the University Archives (ULIB 7/3/75/1).

Availability

Entry to read in the Library is permitted only on presentation of a valid reader's card. For information on eligibility and admissions procedures, see Joining the Library). For further enquiries, and to confirm the availability of the manuscript, please contact the Special Collections Reading Room.

Bibliography

The works of Peter of Poitiers, Master in Theology and Chancellor of Paris (1193-1205) Publications in mediaeval studies, Moore, Philip S. (Notre Dame (IN), University of Notre Dame, 1936)

Liber exceptionum: texte critique avec introduction, notes et tables Liber exceptionum Textes philosophiques du Moyen Âge, (Paris, J. Vrin, 1958)

Geistliche Bildung und Laienbildung: zur Überlieferung der Schulschrift Compendium historiae in genealogia Christi (Compendium veteris testamenti) des Petrus von Poitiers († 1205) in England Journal of Medieval History, Hilpert, Hans-Eberhard (11, 315-331, 1985)

Peter of Poitiers's Compendium in genealogia Christi: the early English copies Belief and culture in the Middle Ages: studies presented to Henry Mayr-Harting, Panayotova, Stella (Oxford, 327-341, Oxford University Press, 2001)

The Cambridge Illuminations: ten centuries of book production in the medieval west, (London, Harvey Miller, 2005)

Die handschriftliche Überlieferung der Werke Richards von St. Viktor im Mittelalter Bibliotheca Victorina, Goy, Rudolf (Turnhout, Brepols, 2005)

Western illuminated manuscripts: a catalogue of the collection in Cambridge University Library Western illuminated manuscripts, Binski, PaulZutshi, P. N. R. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011)

'Ista est Jerusalem': intertextuality and visual exegesis in Peter of Poitiers' Compendium historiae in genealogia Christi and Werner Rolevinck's Fasciculus temporum Imagining Jerusalem in the medieval west Proceedings of the British Academy, Worm, Andrea (Oxford, 123-161, Oxford University Press for The British Academy, 2012)

Digital Images

Cambridge Digital Library

Abbreviations

View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.

Medieval Manuscripts in Cambridge Libraries

Cambridge, University Library, MS Dd.1.16

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