Évrart de Trémaugon?
A leaf from the Somnium Viridarii, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [France, final third 14th century].
The earliest surviving witness to the Latin version of the Songe du Vergier - the monumental treatise of political doctrine drawn up at the request of King Charles V of France.

247 x 151mm. 44 lines in two columns, ruled space: 203 x 59mm., the text from Book I, CXXXVII-CXL, beginning ‘[...] Ade debeamus dampnari [...]’ and ending ‘ex antiqua c[on]suetudi[n]e’, initials and headers alternately in red or blue with blue or red penwork, rubrics in red, line-fillers in red and blue (one margin tightly cropped but not affecting text, some staining from use as a binding fragment).

Provenance:
Colker MS 482; acquired in 1998 from Maggs.

The Somnium viridarii, or Songe du vergier, is a monumental work of political doctrine structured as a dialogue between advocates of temporal and ecclesiastical power, represented by a knight, ‘miles’, and a cleric, ‘clericus’. Authorship is uncertain (it has been variously attributed to Philippe de Mézières and Charles de Louviers), but academic consensus has coalesced around Évrart de Trémaugon. The Latin version likely predated and served as a model for the 1378 French edition (Charles V’s own manuscript, now London, British Library, Royal 19 C IV). The Colker leaf was unknown to Marion Schnerb-Lièvre, who published the Latin text (M. Schnerb-Lièvre, Somnium viridarii, Paris, 1993-1995). The editor was aware of only seven manuscripts of the Latin version, of which the earliest is at the Bibliothèque Mazarine, Ms 3522, datable to the final years of the 14th century (others are Harvard University, Houghton Library, Typ 127H; and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, latin 3180 C and 3459). The present fragment is earlier than the Mazarine copy.

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