Gospel Book: MS 241

Current Location: In storage

Titles

Gospel Book

Entities

Other

Description

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Parchment, i paper flyleaf + 109 fols. + i paper flyleaf, 283 x 191 (204 x 136) mm, 2 columns, 32 lines, ruled in plummet, running headers.

BINDING: 18th century, brown calf over pasteboards, partially erased arms of Park Abbey, Louvain, gold-stamped on both covers

CONTENTS: fols. 1v – 34v Gospel of St Mattew, with prologues, capitula, and argumentum; fols. 34v – 53v Gospel of St Mark, with prologue and capitula; fols. 53v – 85v Gospel of St Luke, with prologue and capitula; fols. 85v – 109r Gospel of St John, with prologue and capitula.

DECORATION: Historiated initial [L, 32 ll.] framed and occupying left-hand text column: fol. 7v St Matthew’s Gospel, Four medallions with busts of Evangelists, the second holding a book, the other three with scrolls.

ORNAMENTATION: Multicoloured initials formed of and filled with coiled foliage, hybrid beasts, and human heads on gold grounds, and accompanied by the first words of text in gold or alternate blue, red and green capitals, occupying full page at the beginning of St John’s Gospel (fol. 87v), one text column at the beginning of St Marc’s Gospel (fols. 36r; initial for St Luke’s Gospel on fol. 55v cut out), and 8 – 25 lines at prologues (fols. 1v, 2v, 4r, 5r, 5v, 34v, 85v); blue, red and green penwork initials [1 – 4 ll.] with pen-flourished ornament in alternate colours.

Notes

History note: Park Abbey, Leuven (eighteenth-century pressmark ‘J. theca .ii.’ verso of flyleaf at front); among the 374 volumes sold by Park Abbey in 1829 (sale catalogue, 38, no. 15); Abbey of St Peter, Ghent (inscription inside upper cover); Pierre-Philippe-Constant Lammens (1762 – 1836), librarian of the University of Ghent (ex-libris inside upper cover, his catalogue, II, 393, no. 8); Jean de Meyer; his sale, Ghent, 2 Nov. 1868, sale catalogue, 17, no. 67; purchased by Muller for 500 fr.; Pierre-Henri Gélis-Didot (1853 – 1902) (bookplate inside upper cover); his sale, Paris, 12 – 13 April 1897, lot 2; purchased for the Museum from Messrs Maggs in 1897.