ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM

HISTOIRE ANCIENNE JUSQU'À CÉSAR.

      - [France, Brittany], 1474 345 x 250mm. 376 leaves: 1-478, COMPLETE, catchwords along the inner ruled vertical in the lower margin of final versos, irregular modern pencil foliation, two columns of 41 lines in brown in a cursive bookhand between four verticals and 42 horizontals ruled in pink, justification: 250 x 168mm, rubrics, text capitals touched yellow, paragraph marks and line-endings in red or blue, two-line initials alternately of blue or red, guide letters often remaining, THIRTY-THREE HISTORIATED INITIALS with single burnished gold bars and partial borders of hairline tendrils with terminals of leaves and disks in burnished gold and painted leaves and flowers between larger sprays of painted fruit and flowers, initials 4-9 lines high, staves usually of gold on grounds of pink and blue patterned with white, THIRTY-FOUR SMALL MINIATURES framed in liquid gold or pink-red with single burnished gold bars and partial borders, mostly placed outside the text block in the lower margins, ONE LARGE ARCH-TOPPED MINIATURE IN SIX COMPARTMENTS divided and framed in burnished gold with FULL-PAGE ARMORIAL BORDER and historiated initial (opening folios, including large miniature rubbed, slight flaking in a few miniatures, lower corners missing ff.2-5). 18th-century English calf gilt. Beginning at the Creation this great chronicle incorporates Biblical history into narratives of the empires of Babylon, Ninevah, Thebes, Troy, Macedon and Rome. Its anonymous author, writing for the châtelain of Lille between 1208-1213 also directly points the moral lessons to be drawn from the past by didactic poems that introduce and then intersperse his prose narrative. He intended to bring his history up to the present day but his task was never completed: the text ends abruptly during Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars as he erects a temple to Jupiter. The work proved enormously popular, fuelling and satisfying the burgeoning demand for classical and middle-Eastern history in the vernacular, essential knowledge for an educated gentleman of the day. There are about 70 manuscripts that preserve the text in whole or part and it was printed in Lyon c.1480. Extraordinarily, there is no complete modern edition of this work that was so important in popularising ancient history and interpretating the classical past (M.-R. Jung, 'La légende de Troie' en France au moyen âge, 1996, pp.334-357).This copy is of considerable interest in preserving the original text comparatively intact. The prologue and 22 chapters in verse, known from 13th-century copies in Paris (BnF, Ms fr.20125) and Vienna, (ÖNB, cod.2576) were rapidly dropped to focus on the narrative history; most unusually, this copy still has some moral verse commentaries. The continuing desire for the past to inform the present is shown by the scribe's interpolations of his own reflections: on f.195v he relates the destruction of Rome by Brennius to le temps ou vous estes maintenant. mil iiijc. lx et. xiiij, showing that he was at work in 1474. A further distinctive feature of this recension is the retention of Book I -- from the end of the 13th century, the material from Genesis was commonly omitted -- and the abrupt termination of Book XI. From the 14th century, this was standardly replaced by the Livre des faits des romains to continue the history of the Roman Empire to a more logical termination. This manuscript can be added to the six listed by Jung as having Books I-XI without the Livre des faits des romains either present or intended; of these only the copy in the Pierpont Morgan Library, MS 212-213 can be dated to the 15th century. It is, therefore, likely that this manuscript was copied from a much earlier exemplar, as borne out by the miniatures which preserve the antique charm of an earlier age.The ms's first owner, Tanguy du Chastel also owned a profusely illustrated 14th-century copy, with no verses and Book XI replaced by the Livre des faits des romains, which may have come from his wife's family (L