Book of Hours, Latin. France (Paris), 1408

3 leaves (a bifolium and single leaf). 267 by 175mm, and 175 by 130mm. Single column, 15 lines, ruled in ink, written space 95 by 61mm; gothic liturgical hand.

Text: (leaf 17a) part of Lauds in the Office of the Dead. (leaf 17b) part of Matins in the Office of the Dead.
Decoration: One- and 2-line initials and line-fillers in ivy-leaf and arabesque designs in colours and burnished gold; full borders comprising broad coloured and burnished gold ivy-leaves with tiny penwork flourishes; rubrics in red.
Provenance: From a dispersed 187-leaf manuscript dated ‘1408’ on f. 158v. The first Reed leaf is foliated 136, and the bifolium 146 and 149. The manuscript was owned by John Boykett Jarman (d. 1864) when it was damaged in floods in London in August 1846, traces of which damage are visible on the Reed leaves. It was sold in the Jarman sale, Sotheby’s, 13 June 1864, lot 47, and purchased by Edward Arnold. The manuscript was lot 240 in the Arnold sale, Sotheby’s, 6 May 1929, and bought in September 1929 from Leslie Chaundy, Oxford, by Sir Alfred Chester Beatty (1875–1968). It was lot 58 in the Beatty sale, Sotheby’s, 24 June 1969, where it was purchased by A. G. Thomas. The leaves were acquired from Thomas’s catalogue 24 (1970), no. 7. 
References: Manion, Vines, de Hamel no. 80; Reed Early Bibles no. 41; The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand edited by Bronwyn Stocks and Nigel Morgan (South Yarra, Victoria: Macmillan Art Publishing, 2008), no. 51 (part). 
Shelfmark: RMM Fragment 17a. 17b

Description reproduced from Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in New Zealand Collections (London, 1989) by permission of the authors (Christopher de Hamel, Margaret Manion, and the family of Vera F. Vines).