Romanesque Lives of Saints
Two fragments of bifolia of the Lives of Sts Sylvester, Felix, and Marcellus in Latin, manuscript on vellum [Germany, first(?) quarter 12th century].
Written in a very fine and regular romanesque bookhand.

Each c.215 × 235mm. Up to 25 lines per page survive, written in a very fine and regular romanesque bookhand, the text comprising parts of the Lives of Sts Sylvester and Felix on one fragment, and Sts Sylvester and Marcel on the other; their feast-days were 31 December, 14 January, and 16 January (the more legible sides: ‘ut eum colatis qui dixerunt […] Explicit passio sancti Felicis presbiteri. [Incipit …] sancti Cyriaci archidiaconi sociorumque eius’, Acta Sanctorum, p. 951, and ‘autem & Torquatus sacrifican\te/s et invocantes […] gradu per planum ac luci dum iter’; ‘Maximianus. Quid vocaris? Respondit. Ego peccator Sisinnius servus servorum domini Ihesu Christi […] Et dixit ei Sisinnius diaconus. Illuminet’, and ‘uestra legem Christianam accepit […] humana cessare. Dixit ei sanctus Silvest|’) (recovered from use as pastedowns in a volume bound in tanned leather, with consequent stains, wear, etc., and cropped at the top and to one side with the loss of some text, the surviving text almost entirely legible).

Provenance:
(1) Philip Bliss (1787–1857), Under-Librarian of the Bodleian Library from 1822-1828, Registrar of Oxford University from 1824-1853, Keeper of the University Archives from 1826-1857 and Principal of St Mary Hall from 1848-1857. His collection of leaves was sold at Sotheby’s, 21 August 1858, lots 100 and 119, where acquired by:
(2) Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792–1872), English antiquary and book collector who amassed the largest collection of manuscript material in the 19th century. Bliss’s collection of leaves became at least partially MS 18133 in the Phillipps library. Sold at Sotheby’s, 24 April 1911, lot 390, where acquired by:
(3) Edmund Hunt Dring (1863–1928), the first managing director of Bernard Quaritch Ltd.
(4) Edmund Maxwell 'Ted' Dring (1906–1990), senior director of Bernard Quaritch.
(5) Bernard Quaritch, Catalogue 1036: Medieval Manuscript Leaves, Principally from a Collection Formed in the 19th Century: Bookhands of the Middle Ages [I] (London, 1984), no 88 (with full-page pl.).
(6) Colker MS 332; acquired in 1984 from Quaritch.

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