Prayerbook: MS 270

Titles

Prayerbook

Maker(s)

Binder: Proctor, Robert

Entities

• Other

Categories

• Illuminated manuscript
• Manuscript

Description

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Parchment, iii modern paper flyleaves + contemporary parchment flyleaves + 161 fols. + iii modern paper flyleaves, 140 x 90 (110 x 70) mm, 23 long lines, ruled in faint brown ink.

BINDING: brown goatskin over wooden boards (retained from earlier binding), Robert Proctor, Fitzwilliam Museum, 1993; gold-tooled brown leather covers of earlier, eighteenth-century binding preserved with manuscript.

CONTENTS: fols. 3r – 11v Penitential Psalms and Litany; fols. 11v – 20v Prayers to God the Father, Christ, the Virgin, and the holy sacrament ; fols. 21r – 42v Memoriae to Saints Anne, Peter, Paul, Michael, the Guardian Angel, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Lawrence, Francis, Martin, Anne, Mary Magdalene, Catherine, Barbara and Margaret; fols. 42v – 54r Devotions for Palm Sunday; fols. 54v – 56r Lord’s Prayer, Ave Maria, Apostles’ Creed, Ten Commandments, Seven Deadly Sins, Five Senses; fols. 56r – 86v Devotions to Christ; fols. 87r – 113v Henry of Suso, Meditations ; fols. 114r – 125r Litany
fols. 126r – 134v Devotions to Christ; fols. 136r – 152r Marian devotions
fols. 152r – 158r Prayer to St Anne; fols. 158r – 160r Prayer to the Lord
fols. 160r – 161r Prayer to Christ.

DECORATION: Five engravings pasted on blank pages and illuminated:
fol. 2r Crucifixion, by Heinrich Aldegrever (Hollstein 1954-, I, 26), the lower edge with the date (1553), the artist’s initials and a Greek inscription has been trimmed; fol. 21r St Elizabeth of Hungary standing within portal with military trophies, holding a book with a crown resting on it, and giving clothes to a beggar at her feet, signed ‘M’ in lower left corner (Hollstein 1949-, XIII, 91); fol. 35r St Anne and the Virgin enthroned with the Christ Child between them; fol. 135r Flight to Egypt, copy of Dürer’s woodcut B.89 (Hollstein 1949-, XIII, 71), signed ‘L’ on post in foreground, inscription in gold ink below engraving: Surge et assume puerum et matrem illius et fuge in Aegyptum (Matthew ii.13); fol. 157r Adoration of the Child, by Frans Crabbe van Espleghem (Hollstein 1949-, V, 66).

ORNAMENTATION: Red penwork initials [1 – 5 ll.]; capitals highlighted in red.

Notes

History note: Ownership inscriptions on fol. 1r: ‘May Allen, from her father’, ‘Given to John H. Allen, Ap. 14. 1904’; presented to the Museum by John Higgins Allen (1841 – 1917), MA Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1908.