Item Summary

Descriptive Information

Title
Mirror of the blessed life of Jesus Christ / Nicholas Love.
Call Number
Princeton MS. 186
Identifier
ark:/88435/dc4q77g557v
Publisher
[London, England] : [producer not identified], [between 1400 and 1425]
Language
Middle English
Date Created
1400-1425
Extent
1 volume (22 leaves) : parchement ; 30 cm
Provenance
Princeton MS. 186 is of unknown early and intermediate provenance. The London antiquarian bookseller Bernard Quaritch offered the manuscript in Catalogue 321 (December 1912), no. 259, and Cat- alogue 344 ( July 1916), no. 3. Prof. David Rolston Bitzer (d. 1938) purchased the manuscript from the London and Florence antiquarian bookseller Davis and Orioli (Irving Davis and Giuseppe Orioli) in 1935. Bitzer was teaching at the Union Theological Seminary (Richmond, Virginia) at the time. By 1937, he was teaching at the Marion Institute (Marion, Alabama) and owned another medieval manuscript (a 13th-century Greek Gospel lectionary purchased from J.& J. Leighton). The present manuscript was presumably inherited by his son David C. Bitzer. The Princeton University Library purchased the manuscript at Swann Auction Galleries, December 2004 (Acc. no. 2005-54).
References
Medieval & Renaissance manuscripts in the Princeton University Library, volume 2, pages 464-466.
Rights Statement
Copyright Not Evaluated
Contents
1.1r-22v: “ || and resurrexionne soo þat a symple soule þat can not þengke bot bodies or bodely þinges ...” Explicit: “Of þe myracle done at þe brydale of water turned in to wyne. Byfell þat daye twelf moneþ þat oure lorde ihesus was baptized as it is sayde||”
Notes
Title from printed catalog.
The text is an early 15th century Middle English translation by Nicholas Love, prior of the Carthusian Abbey of Mount Grace, Yorkshire, from Pseudo-Bonaventure, Speculum vitae Christi.
Script: Anglicana formata. One scribe was responsible for fols. 1r-14v and another for fols. 15r-22v.
Decoration: There are six 3-line blue initials with red pen work decoration. Rubrics, running titles, marginal chapter numbers, and Latin headings in red ink. Paraph marks in red and blue.
Binding Note
United States, 21st century. Rebound in the Preservation Office, Princeton University Library, by Mick LeTourneaux, 2005. Formerly in a 19th-century English binding of red morocco over paste-board, the remains of which are housed with the rebound manuscript. Spine title: “BONAVENTURA. MYRROUR OF THE LIFF OF CHRISTE. XV CENT.”

Discovery Information

Subject
Manuscripts, English—England
Manuscripts, English—New Jersey—Princeton
Manuscirpts, Medieval—England
Manuscirpts, Medieval—New Jersey—Princeton
Illumination of books and manuscripts
Jesus Christ—Early works to 1800

Physical Characteristics

File Count
54

Institutional Information

Collection
Medieval and Renaissance Mediterranean Manuscripts
IIIF Manifest URL

https://figgy.princeton.edu/concern/scanned_resources/0be5bfcc-26c1-4467-b69c-0b413efd61f3/manifest