Original leaf from an English manuscript pocket Bible. Written in Latin in minute gothic book-hand script, in brown ink on animal vellum. (160 x 115 mm - 6.4 x 4.6")
Rubricated chapter numbers, initials and marginalia in red and blue. 45 lines of text in double columns (12 lines per inch!). Two multi-lined illuminated initial in deep blue with delicate red penwork – extending along margin.
England, probably East Anglia, c. 1250-75.
Text begins Mark 10:30 - 12:41: ''et sorores, et matres, et agros...'' (and sisters, and mothers, and children...the Son of man also is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a redemption for many...Hosanna, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord...My house shall be called the house of prayer to all nations. But you have made it a den of thieves...Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's...And thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength. This is the first commandment. And the second is like to it; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself...).
Provenance: (Ref: Gwara hand list #245) ex-collection Otto F. Ege - Dean of the Cleveland Institute of Art & Lecturer on History of the Book in the School of Library Science, Western Reserve University. This leaf, from a “portable” Bible during the period of the Crusades, would have been used in the abstract study of theology or the preaching of the Gospel around the medieval countryside.
Presented in an archival 14x11'' mat
