Homiliarius Doctorum de tempore et de sanctis a Paulo Diacono collectus.Speyer: Peter Drach, 7 September 1482.

A COPY ORGANISED FOR USE AT AN EARLY STAGE

Woodcut printer's shields below colophon on penultimate leaf. Initials, paragraph marks and capital strokes supplied in red.

Folio (295 x 210mm). [395]ff (last blank) plus 4ff manuscript index. Double column, gothic type. Contemporary blindtooled calf over wooden boards, covers divided by repeated fillets forming a cross, outer border and intersecting diagonal lines, repeated small stamps including a dragon, palm leaf, clover, rosette and ornaments, upper cover with paper label with ms title in brown and red ink (rebacked, lacking metal furniture, scuff to upper cover, general wear, pastedowns renewed).   

Speyer: Peter Drach, 7 September 1482.

The first dated edition, third in all, of Paul the Deacon's compilation of homilies from the Church Fathers, made at the request of Emperor Charlemagne. Paul the Deacon, a native of Lombardy and monk of Monte Cassino, was a member Charlemagne's court and an important figure of the Carolingian Renaissance. His collection drew on the homilies of Saints Gregory the Great, Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, Bede and others. Charlemagne ordered its use in the Carolingian Empire in a capitulary issued between 786 and 800. The purpose of the work was to provide readings for the night office of the liturgy, but it also served as a manual of preaching for parish priests.

A copy organised for use at an early stage. The contemporary manuscript index bound at the front opens on the otherwise blank first folio with the title and brief list of authors which is followed by a full five-page index on three leaves in a neat hand, in brown and red ink, in double columns of 32-19 lines. As well as the usual rubrication, quire numbers 1-50 in red often survive intact in the blank lower margin, leaves foliated in upper blank margin, 1-88 in brown ink, 89-393 in red, with some omissions, mistakes and corrections. Folios S3/4 misbound with notes in red ink at foot of S3/4/5 verso noting the error.  

Two fragments of binder's waste, loosely inserted, from a 14th-century manuscript.

Provenance: the Augustinian Canons of the Abbey of St. Nikola in Passau, Bavaria, inscribed on blank recto of first leaf inscribed “Iste liber est Monasterii Sancti Nicolai Pat[avien]sis”, founded in 1070 the monastery was suppressed in 1803.

Light dampstain to upper margin of last few leaves, otherwise a clean and crisp copy.

ISTC ih00316000. HC 8790*. BMC II, 492. Goff H-316. Bod Inc, H-144.

Stock Code: 244845