YALE UNIVERSITY
BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY
GENERAL COLLECTION OF RARE BOOKS AND
MANUSCRIPTS
PRE-1600 MANUSCRIPTS
Beinecke MS 246 Flanders [?], s. XVI^^1
Acts of the Apostles and Revelation (in Greek)
1. ff. 1r-61v [Greek]. [Greek]. ff. 62r-64v ruled, but blank
Acts of the Apostles; E. Nestle and K. Aland, eds., Novum
Testamentum Graece, ed. 26 (Stuttgart, 1979) pp. 320-408.
2. ff. 65r-95v [Greek]. [explicit:] [Greek]. f. 96
ruled, but blank
Revelation; Nestle and Aland, op. cit., pp. 632-80.
Paper (mutilated watermarks consisting of column [?] flanked by
fleur-de-lis), ff. 96, 143 x 95 (103 x 69) mm. Written in 22 long
lines, ruled in ink; double [?] vertical bounding lines, prickings at
lower edge.
I-XII^^8. Quire missing at beginning of manuscript. Catchwords
located at lower edge, verso; signatures, on recto, in lower right
corner for first four folios of gathering, consisting of majuscule
letter for quire number plus minuscule letter for leaf number and
preceded by a paragraph mark in pale red.
Written by a single person in a small neat minuscule script.
Initial on f. 1r painted in blue and outlined in red. Illuminated
initial on f. 65r in gold, on blue square serving as background;
partial border at bottom of page: pink flowers in gold rectangle
outlined in black. Running titles throughout.
Binding: Probably ca. 1530. Bruges? See Weale's description of a
very similar binding, South Kensington, v. 2, p. 195-96, no. 419, and
also p. 18, no. 91; p. 264, no. 702. Sewn on four single, tawed thongs
laced twice in and out of pasteboards. The tawed cores of the beaded
endbands are also laced twice. Half bands divide the end sections of
the spine. The bookblock is remarkably clean and the leaves flat.
Covered in brown calf with panel stamps of Saint John the Baptist and
Saint Michael in arches with a line of dancing figures and a piper in
between. Heavily repaired.
Written in Flanders [?] in the first half of the 16th century;
early provenance unknown. Belonged to Sir Thomas Phillipps (no. 4527,
on spine; his purchase from Pierre-Philippe-Constant Lammens, librarian
of the University of Ghent). Purchased from Laurence Witten with funds
from the Jacob Ziskind Charitable Trust in 1957 (MS 17).
Bibliography: Faye and Bond, p. 45, no. 246.
Ziskind Catalogue, p. 47.
K. Aland, Kurzgefasste Liste der griechischen Handschriften des
Neuen Testaments, v. 1 (Berlin, 1963) p. 200, Gregory Nr. 2619 (where
MS 246 is dated to s. XVIII).
Barbara A. Shailor