YALE UNIVERSITY
BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY
THE JAMES MARSHALL AND MARIE-LOUISE OSBORN
COLLECTION
MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE MANUSCRIPTS
Osborn a1
Psalter, in Latin, with calendar and canticles; Middle English
carol and Old French chanson. Flanders; 4th quarter of the 13th
Century.
ff. 1r - 6v Calendar
ff. 7r - 144r Psalms
ff. 144r - 157v Canticles
Parchment. i (parchment) + 157 + i (parchment). 142 x 97 mm. 1 column,
21 lines.
I (6 + 1), II-XIX (8), XX (10), XXI (6 leaves). Lacks IV (7); VIII
(3, 6); IX (8); XII (1, 8); XIII (8); XV (8); and at least one folio
between quires I and II (calendar and Psalms).
Gothic script. Gold, blue and rose initials used for chapter
headings, blue and red alternate for verse headings; one half-page
initial on f. 43r at Psalm 39. Six other half-page initials have been
cut from the manuscript, before folios 29, 56, 67, 83, 96, and 111. 12
illustrations in the calendar, representing the different occupations
of the month. Rubrications in certain listings in the calendar. Bound
in dark brown calf skin over pasteboards (sixteenth or seventeenth
century).
Purchased from Laurence Witten, 1965 (Catalogue 5, lot 47).
Bequest of James M. Osborn, 1976.
Comment: On the calendar page for December, St. Thomas of
Canterbury's name has been erased from its place, indicating English
ownership at least in the sixteenth century. The back flyleaf has, in
two fourteenth century hands, a French song "Une bon chanson ay troue"
and a Middle English carol "Mayde and moder, glade thou be." The front
flyleaf has musical exercises in the same hand as the English carol.
Bibliography:
Cvetko, Dragotin, ed. Report of the Tenth Congress of the International
Musicological Society, Ljubljana, 1970, pp. 304-5.
Greene, Richard L. The Early English Carols, Oxford, 1976, p. 335.
"Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at Yale: A Selection," Yale
University Library Gazette 52 (1978) pp. 192-93, no. 20.
To request this material for use in the Beinecke reading room, please go to Orbis, the Yale University Library catalog.