[Parva Catechesis].
Saint Theodore Studites (759-826)
Category
Manuscripts and documents
Date
circa 1150 - circa 1200
Materials
Measurements
342 x 252 x 60 mm
Place of origin
Greece
Collection
Peckover House, Cambridgeshire
NT 3225297
Summary
Full description
Orientation: Vertical Text Substrate: hairsheep parchment arranged hairside to hairside Ink/Pigment: text written in a carbon ink, with headings and initials in a purply red ink. Some annotations in an intense black ink Type: BOUND BOOK Binding Type: Inboard binding, recessed supports & hollow Date of Binding: ca 1900 Binder's Name: English - Birdsall of Northampton End Leaves: Sewn single bifolium of goatskin parchment with a red morocco joint pasted on top of the outermost leaf. Structure: All along on four recessed cords Edges: Cut edges from the previous binding Spine Lining: Glued, rounded and backed, with 90° joints and a paper hollow tube End Bands: Worked 1/1/1 in green, red and yellow silk with a front bead from left to right over flat leather cores with three tiedowns only. The cores are cut at the joints Bookmark: None Boards: Paper boards, material u nknown Covering: Red tanned goatskin Tooling Spine: 4 false bands and two false kettlebands, blind-tooled in 16th-century style with central lozenge of 4 impressions of a knotwork tool. Title tooled direct in gold in panel 2. Tooling Sides: thin/thick/thin border and single panel with cording darts. Turn-ins tooled in gold. Furniture: None Enclosure: None Binding Notes: Bookplate inside front cover of John Roland Abbey
Bibliographic description
ii,181,ii leaves. 330x225mm. Some early side notes and many signs of use. Imperfect: tear in lower corner of fol. 8 affecting some words; minor flaws in fols. 1, 17 and 67 repaired with blank vellum. Provenance: (1) Signed in a long colophon on fol. 181 in 12 lines of do-decasyllabic verse by the scribe Ambrosius of the conspicuous monastery of Chortaites, just outside Thessalonica in Macedonia (an abandoned ruin in 1214, when it was re-founded by the crusaders as a Cistercian abbey. (2) [Kontaris Barsamis, of Kition in Macedonia] scribbled mss. notes on fo. 181v. dated 2nd December 1598. (3) Sotheby's sale catalogue notes it as "In the possession of Mordtmann in Constantinople in 1885". (4) Brought to England in 1892 by James Rendel Harris (1852-1941), biblical scholar and orientalist, and described in an enclosed letter from him to "My dear Friends" [presumably Peckover] reporting his safe return from his Eastern wanderings and his acquisition of a few Greek manuscripts for himself and friends, including this one then deposited in Cambridge University Library, 5th June 1892. (5) Alexander Peckover (1830-1919), first and only Baron Peckover, of Bank House, Wisbech. (6) On front pastedown are the initials and date, 1920, of the Hon. Alexandrina Peckover (1860-1948), second daughter of Baron Peckover. (7) Sold by Sotheby's on 4th April, 1949 (lot 196) to Quaritch, acting on behalf of Major J.R. Abbey. (8) Bought by the National Trust, with the aid of a Pilgrim Trust grant on the 19th of June, 1989, from the Sotheby's sale of the collection of Major J.R. Abbey (JA. 4266), lot 3007 (pp. 6-7). Binding: Nineteenth-century red morocco by Birdsall of Northampton (1894), slight worm damage at end. The 1894 rebinding, for Baron Peckover, is described in and enclosed letter from Birdsall the younger, and it includes a fragment of the original Greek binding.
Makers and roles
Saint Theodore Studites (759-826), author