Collection of sermons and confessional treatises, most by unidentified authors; Summa confessorum; five Marian exempla; Summa de vitiis brevis; Lenten sermons; medieval manuscript on parchment by John of La Rochelle, Thomas of Chobham, William Peraldus, and Thomas Aquinas

MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPT IN LATIN ON PARCHMENT, Central Europe (Southern Germany or Austria?), c. 1250-1275. 130 x 90 mm. 144 folios, preceded and followed by a single flyleaf, complete (collation, i8 ii7 [of 6, with singleton added after 6] iii-v8 vi7 [of 4, with three singletons added after 3] vii2 viii-xix8), written in approximately twelve different hands, all early forms of Gothic textualis libraria/currens on 26-34 long lines, ruled i hard point throughout, headings occasionally added in a late medieval Gothic hybrida, single heading in red ink (p. 98), otherwise without rubrication, spaces left for initials throughout, 2-line red initials (pp. 98, 99, 140, and 141) and 2-line black initials consistently on pp. 1-24, occasionally thereafter, and almost completely absent by p. 63. BINDING: Fifteenth-century binding of brown leather over beveled wooden boards, spine with two band and remnants of white paint, white leather fore-edge strap attached to metal pin fixings (almost certainly a modern addition) and hole in rear board where a chain has been removed, parchment pastedowns, now detached from the boards, cut at front from a manuscript of Donatuss grammar copied in a large Gothic textualis formata and at rear from a later fourteenth-century charter, now wrapped (during restoration?) around the final quire. TEXT: This is an extensive and early Franciscan or Dominican collection of sermons, sermon exempla, and texts related to confession. Along with 93 sermons probably by Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) and copied during his lifetime, it contains 96 other sermons, all but a handful by unknown authors and identified only in this manuscript. These render this manuscript of considerable scholarly importance. Also notable among this manuscripts contents are the Summa confessorum of the English theologian Thomas of Chobham (d. 1233/36), among the most successful pastoral handbooks of the central Middle Ages, and a number of other confessional treatises by unknown authors. Rounding out the collection are five Marian exempla, short narratives that were often incorporated into sermons to reinforce moral points, though the colorful tales often resisted the morals they were explicitly intended to support. PROVENANCE: Evidence of script and subsequent provenance supports an origin in Central Europe, most likely Southern Germany or Austria, in the third quarter of the thirteenth century. The number of hands, the small format of the book, and the nature of the texts all suggest that this may well have been produced in and for a mendicant friary. May have belonged to the Abbey of Benediktbeuern, in Upper Bavaria, as indicated in a twentieth-century note loose within the volume and as further suggested by the charter pastedown, issued by a provincial minister of the province of Bavaria and Bohemia in the late fourteenth century. CONDITION: Leather of binding now much abraded, near total loss of text on p. 1 through abrasion, otherwise in good condition. Full description and photographs available (TM 762).