Expositiones Vocabulorum Biblie
Guillelmus Brito (fl.13th century)
Category
Manuscripts and documents
Date
c. 1350
Materials
Vellum, leather, wood
Measurements
20.8 x 14.2 x 6 cm
Place of origin
Lacock
Order this imageCollection
Lacock, Wiltshire
NT 3194532
Caption
The nuns who were resident at the convent of Lacock Abbey in the 1300s would have had access to a significant library of religious manuscripts for prayer and study. This rare and remarkable surviving manuscript was part of that library and fortunately avoided destruction at the time of the dissolution of religious houses under King Henry VIII in the late 1530s. The manuscript, which is effectively a dictionary of difficult words found in the Bible, was originally written in the 13th century by William Brito, and this version was copied by various scribes onto goat, sheep and calfskin. The manuscript was almost certainly produced at Lacock, and it clearly became a working reference tool for the convent as the binding appears to have once included a chain, ensuring the book remained in a particular place.
Summary
Expositiones Vocabulorum Biblie (Lacock?, Wearmouth or Jarrow, ca. 1350?). Medieval binding of oak boards covered with goatskin, with evidence of the volume having once been chained.
Full description
This volume is believed to have been used at the Lacock Abbey convent as part of the education of aristocratic novices until the Dissolution of the convent in 1539 as part of the last wave of monastic closures under Henry VIII. The book was probably produced at Lacock, as evidence in the binding helps to confirm. Waste manuscript parchment from a Lacock compotus roll dated 1266-7 had been used as end-leaves. That inside the back cover bears the words ‘in domo de Lacolx’. The spine title and date are later, probably seventeenth-century additions, the scribe having confused Brito’s date of death in 1356 with the date the manuscript was written. The book is strongly, rather than beautifully made, intended for prolonged day-to-day use. The manuscript was bound in oak boards, covered over with an undecorated piece of white alum-tawed goatskin, a binding typical of medieval books throughout Europe. Traces of now missing copper alloy and iron pins on the covers indicates that the book was bound in England, while the evidence of chain marks on the covers suggest that Lacock Abbey once had a chained library in the Middle Ages. It has been recently suggested that a pair of recesses, one now blocked, between the Abbey’s Infirmary passage and the angle of the Cloister, may have been used for storing books.
Bibliographic description
[iii, 200, ii] leaves ;. 20 x 14 cm. Provenance: Acquired by the National Trust, at Christie's, London, from Mrs. A. D. Burnett-Brown. Inscribed “127” in an 17th-century hand in the middle of the upper margin of fol. 1r, and “Guillelmi Britonis ordinis Fratrum Minorum | Difficilium Vocabulorum Bibliæ, ex Glossis Sanctorum | Opusculum 1356” on the spine. Binding: Medieval sewing on five slit thongs pegged into slightly bevelled medieval oak boards covered with pale (tawed?) skin, partially defective; the front cover has a (replaced?) leather strap, and the back cover has a recess for a clasp at the fore-edge and the remains for a pin fastening in the centre (one pin is now kept separately in an accompanying envelope); holes and traces of green staining at the foot of each board indicate former chain-staples. The two marks from chain-staples indicate that the volume was kept in an institutional library for a considerable period of time.
Provenance
Used at the Lacock Abbey convent as part of the education of aristocratic novices; one of the very few books in England to survive the Dissolution of the Monasteries and to retain its association with the same place; purchased by the National Trust at auction at Christie's, King Street, London, on 23 November 2011 (lot 11).
Makers and roles
Guillelmus Brito (fl.13th century), author
References
Ker, N. R. Medieval libraries of Great Britain 1964. Davies 1958: G.R.C. Davies, Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain, (London, 1958) Purcell 2012: Mark Purcell, ‘Libraries at Lacock Abbey’, National Trust Historic Houses & Collections Annual (2012): 36-43