Original leaf from an English manuscript pocket Bible. From a Bible illuminated at the workshop of William de Brailes - one of the few 13th century English illuminators known by name! (De Brailes maintained an active workshop at Oxford c. 1238-52. He was illuminator of the Oxford Bible). (185x135mm) .
Written with brown ink in Latin gothic script on animal vellum. Rubricated chapter numbers, initials & marginalia in red & blue. 54 lines of text in double columns (10 lines per inch!). For sister leaf see Blackburn Collection, Cleveland Museum of Art, pl. 4.
Produced in Oxford, c. 1240 A.D.
This leaf contains Luke 11:52 - 13:25: ''Legis...'' (Woe to you lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge...Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? Yea, the very hairs of your head are all numbered...Consider the lilies, how they grow: they labor not, neither do they spin. But I say to you, not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of these...Be you then also ready: for at what hour you think not, the Son of man will come...Ye hypocrites, doth not every one of you, on the Sabbath day, loose his ox or his ass from the manger, and lead them to water? ...).
This leaf, from a ''portable'' Bible during the Crusades period, would have been used in the abstract study of theology or preaching of the Gospel around the medieval countryside.
Shipped in archival 14x11'' mat.
