Marston MS 236     Central or Southern France, s. XIII med
William of Auxerre, Summa aurea I-IV, etc.

1. ff. 1r-222r  Utrum fides possit uel debeat probari.  Fides est
substantia rerum...[Hebr. 11.1].  Sicut enim uera dileccione deus 
diligitur...Illa gaudia nobis prestare dignetur ihesus christus dominus...Amen.
f. 74v (at end of Bk. II) blank

William of Auxerre, Summa aurea I-IV; Glorieux, no. 281.  Colophon on
f. 74r (conclusion of Bk. II):  "Laudo creatorem quia finis pena laborem."
The beginning of Bk. III contains some contemporary corrections and annotations.

2. f. 222r-v   [O?] Dilecte fili dilige lacrimas noli differre eas...[Eccle.
5.5].  Qualis tibi fuit ad peccandum in...ne quid legendo respicis uiuendo
contempnas.

Unidentified text.

Parchment, ff. 222, 179 x 125 (131 x 96) mm.  2 columns, 55 lines.
Single vertical and double horizontal bounding lines, full across.  Two
additional horizontal rulings in upper margin for running headlines and 
sometimes through middle of written space.  Remains of prickings in upper,
lower and outer margins.  Ruled in lead.
I-III 16, IV 14, V 10, VI 2 (ff. 73-74), VII-XII 16, XIII-XV 12, XVI 16.
Horizontal or vertical catchwords with decorative pen designs in red
and/or blue, lower margin, under inner column or near gutter, verso.
Written by multiple scribes in small gothic bookhand, both above (e.g.,
ff. 75v-90r) and below top line.
Decoration by two distinct hands whose division of work does not
necessarily correspond to scribal changes of hand or to quire structure.
Hand I executed fine initials, split red and blue, with penwork extensions in
both colors the entire length of the page at the beginning of
Bks. I (f. 1r), II (f. 24v), IV (f. 171r), and many small flourished
initials, 4- to 2-line, with looping ascenders and descenders (ff. 1r-69r,
123r-156v, 195r-221v).  Hand II executed more modest initials for both
major (Bk. III, f. 75r) and minor (ff. 75r-122v, 171r-194v) text divisions.
Spaces for initials remain unfilled on ff. 69r-74r and are either unfilled
or filled with plain red initials on ff. 157v-170v, 222r-v.  Running headlines
in red and blue.  Rubrics both within text and in margins.  Remains of notes to 
rubricator, often perpendicular to text along outer margin.  Paragraph
marks, alternating red and blue, appear sporadically.
Binding:  France [?], s. xix-xx.  Quarter bound in brown calf over wooden
boards by the same binder as Marston MSS 119, 214 and 216.

Written in the middle of the 13th century in Central or Southern France to 
judge from the script and decoration; provenance otherwise unknown.  Purchased
in 1958 from Nicolas Rauch, Geneva, by L. C. Witten (inv. no. 2092), who
sold it the same year to Thomas E. Marston (bookplate).

secundo folio:  [com]positioni uel parti

Bibliography:  Faye and Bond, p. 91, no. 236.

Barbara A. Shailor