Case 2: Provenance
The two manuscripts in this case have been selected because they have notable provenance. MS 192 was formerly in the collection of an influential English playwright, while MS 32 can be traced as it moved from Italy to Spain and finally England. In an intriguing symmetry, both of the manuscripts in this case are connected in some way with libraries that suffered devastating fires. Digitizing MSS 32 and 192 will make these books — and indeed their fascinating journeys — easier to access and appreciate.
What is Provenance?
Provenance, i.e. previous ownership, helps us to situate a book in its particular historical context. Reconstructing the journey that a book has been on also allows us to see what makes the object unique.
Much provenance evidence is internal to the book itself, such as stamps, inscriptions, bookplates, and coats of arms. Below, we have included a range of examples from our manuscript collections.
Evidence of prior ownership can also be recorded by external sources. For example, the benefactor’s book (MS 374) records donations of books to St John’s College Library. The section reproduced here records the manuscripts donated by John White in 1555.
Stamps
Book ownership can be asserted through the use of inked stamps. The examples here are from MS 151, a sixteenth-century manuscript containing a number of texts including Ulugh Beg’s astronomical and chronological tables (zīj). There are two owners’ stamps on folio 133a, one of which has not made a complete impression on the page.
Inscriptions
Inscriptions are handwritten expressions of ownership. An example can be seen in MS 26, a glossed copy of Isaiah and Daniel produced in England in the 12th century: ‘Liber Collegii Sanctj Iohannes Baptistae Oxon’ ex dono Venerabilis virj Richardi Butler Doctoris Theologiae Archidiaconi Northampt procurante Reuerendo in Christo Patre Iohanne Episcopo Roffensi 1613’ (folio 2, upper margin).
From this inscription, we can establish that the book was given to St John’s College by Richard Butler, Archdeacon of Northampton (d. approx. 1612), a donation facilitated by John Buckeridge, the Bishop of Rochester (1562-1631). There was possibly once another inscription on the previous folio but the top margin has been cut away. Unfortunately, provenance evidence was sometimes destroyed when books changed hands over time.
Bookplates
Bookplates are paper labels pasted into books, often in the front endpapers. The example shown here is a St John’s College bookplate found in MS 40, a late fifteenth-century copy of Al-Battani’s De Scientia astrorum. This bookplate features the college crest.
Coats of arms
Heraldry can be an important provenance clue, for example in the form of armorial decorations on bookbindings. The binding shown here belongs to MS 181, an English Part-Book from the seventeenth century. This contemporary calf binding is decorated with borders, flower ornaments, and the Stuart Royal arms. The manuscript may have been intended for use at the Chapel Royal (see Tiley 2018, which will soon be available online).
MS 32
MS 32 is remarkable for having a near-unbroken chain of provenance that can be traced from Venice to Madrid, Granada, the Royal Library of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, and – of course – St John’s College Library.
At the heart of this journey lies Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1503-1575), a diplomat who was Charles V’s ambassador to Venice between 1539 and 1547. While in Italy, Mendoza collected many books in Greek. Mendoza’s inventory mentions a copy of ‘Eusebius de preparatione evangelica libri XV, med. vol’.
How do we know this is identical with MS 32, our manuscript of Eusebius’s Preparation of the Gospel? One important piece of internal evidence is provided by the paper on which the manuscript is written. Early paper can be identified and classified with the help of watermarks, which derive from wired shapes used in paper manufacture. Notably, some of the paper in MS 32 (such as folio 343, shown here) has a watermark that is found in many other manuscripts copied for Mendoza in Venice.
Mendoza later took his book collection with him to Madrid and then Granada. Upon his death in 1575, Mendoza bequeathed his manuscripts to King Philip II of Spain. The collection subsequently entered the Royal Library at the monastery of San Lorenzo at El Escorial. Disaster struck El Escorial in the late seventeenth century when a fire caused serious damage to the building. In the aftermath of the disaster, various books strayed from the library – likely including MS 32 and also MS 41, another sixteenth-century Eusebius manuscript with links to Mendoza. MSS 32 and 41 ‘probably passed through a series of owners in Spain, Venice, and London, before they ultimately entered St John’s College.’ (Sosower 2007, p. 22). The two Greek books were certainly in St John’s College Library by 1697, at which point they were listed in an inventory made by Edward Bernard.
The summary above is largely informed by Sosower 2007, pp. 8-22. The folios on display in case 2 (54v-55r) were written by the Venetian scribe Valeriano Albini, who has been identified by his handwriting.
MS 192
And why to me this, thou lame Lord of fire,
What had I done that might call on thine ire?
(An Execration upon Vulcan, lines 1-2).
So begins a poem penned by Ben Jonson (1572-1637) following a fire in his personal library in 1623. The influential English poet and playwright -who is perhaps best remembered for plays such as The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fair (1614) – goes on to lament that the contents of his library incited such a ‘ravenous’ appetite in Vulcan, the Roman God of Fire (line 86).
oil on canvas circa 1617. NPG 2752 © National Portrait Gallery, London. Image reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
In spite of this fire, there is still much evidence of Ben Jonson as a book collector – including two medieval manuscripts now in St John’s College Library. One of these is MS 87, a fifteenth-century copy of Terence’s Comedies (see the special collections website for a blog post by Nadia Azimikorf). The other, MS 192, is on display in case 2. Produced in Italy in the mid-fifteenth century, MS 192 contains copies of Juvenal’s Satires and Horace’s Ars poetica. The influence of these and other ancient authors on Ben Jonson is well known; as Victoria Moul puts it, ‘Jonson’s “classicism” is a critical commonplace, and by ‘classicism’ is meant, among other things, self-conscious imitation of the style and form of Greek and Roman writers’ (Moul 2010, p. 2, n. 1).
We can identify that Jonson formerly owned MS 192 by means of an inscription at the top of folio 1r: ‘Sum Ben Jonsonij ex dono D Jo Radcliffe equ Aurati’. This inscription also reveals that the book was given to him by Sir John Radcliffe (1582–1627), the subject of one of Jonson’s other poems (To Sir John Radcliffe).
Sian Witherden
