Illuminated manuscript on vellum. 106 leaves (of 130 according to period foliation). Justification 10x6¼. There are nearly 200 foliate initials: 159 3-line initials, 27 5- or 6-line initials, and 6 initials from 7-10 lines each. Each initial in colors on gold grounds with long, foliate extensions, often the length of the text and into upper and lower margins, all in colors, gold, and white tracery. Running headers in blue and red with red and purple penwork, rubrics and foliation in red, red and blue paragraph marks, capitals touched in yellow. An incipit leaf for this text is laid in, in a different hand, with an 8-line initial in colors on gold ground and a floral quarter border. 14x9½, old (17th century?) blind-stamped morocco.
Sumptuous, medieval illuminated manuscript on vellum, possibly of German or Italian origin. John of Wales was a 13th century Franciscan scholar who "contributed significantly to the preaching explosion of the later Middle Ages, devoting his scholastic energies to the production of encyclopedic preaching aids for the growing number of the devout and learned emerging from the new universities...his writings appealed to young preachers and the popular imagination. His works seem to have been an important source of classical material for European literary texts of the period, and therefore [pertaining to] the survival and transmission of Greek and Latin literature." (CUP, see Jenny Swanson's John of Wales, 2002 ed.) According to ABPC, the present is the first John of Wales illuminated manuscript to be sold at auction in the past 25 years. Provenance: From the Library of Arthur M. Ellis.
Condition:
Spine worn, some wear and worming to covers; some dampwrinkling with associated smudging to approximately a dozen initials and pale staining, a few leaves remargined with old vellum, last two leaves loose, fol. 93 with ¾" closed tear, foliation occasionally trimmed. The missing leaves appear to be primarily from the beginning, a few were more recently excised. Overall in extremely good condition; generally the vellum is quite clean and the many elaborate illuminations are bright.