Guide to THE FRENCH­LANGUAGE MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS IN THE KONINKLIJKE BIBLIOTHEEK [NATIONAL LIBRARY OF THE NETHERLANDS], THE HAGUE on 35 mm microfilm by Anne S. Korteweg Curator of Manuscripts Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague Moran Micropublications, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Specifications Location: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague Size: 58 reels of 35 mm positive silver microfilm Order no.: MMP113 Price: please inquire Finding aids: Guide in English by Anne S. Korteweg Availability: Available Also available Catalogue of French­language Medieval Manuscripts in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek and Meermanno­Westreenianum Museum, The Hague Compiled by Edith Brayer, Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes, Paris Size: nearly 1,600 pages on 18 positive silver microfiches with a printed guide in English by Anne S. Korteweg Order no.: MMP102 Price: please inquire Orders & inquiries Moran Micropublications Singel 357 1012 WK Amsterdam The Netherlands Tel + 31 20 528 6139 Fax + 31 20 623 9358 Email: [email protected] Internet: www.moranmicropublications.nl Guide to THE FRENCH­LANGUAGE MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS IN THE KONINKLIJKE BIBLIOTHEEK [NATIONAL LIBRARY OF THE NETHERLANDS], THE HAGUE on 35 mm microfilm by Anne S. Korteweg Curator of Manuscripts Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague Moran Micropublications, Amsterdam, The Netherlands © 2006 Moran Micropublications, Amsterdam, The Netherlands CONTENTS Publisher’s preface..........................................................................................................5 Introduction by Anne S. Korteweg...................................................................................7 Inventory of the French­language medieval manuscripts in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek by Anne S. Korteweg....................................................... 11 Bibliography by Anne S. Korteweg................................................................................ 63 PUBLISHER’S PREFACE Catalogue published In early 2003 Moran Micropublications published Edith Brayer’s previously unavailable typewritten catalogue of the French­language medieval manuscripts in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) and Meermanno­Westreenianum Museum in The Hague on 18 microfiches (Moran order number MMP102) with an extensive printed guide written by Anne S. Korteweg, curator of manuscripts at the KB. Now the KB’s complete collection of 118 manuscripts and four collections of fragments has been made available for research by Moran (order number MMP113) in two microform editions, one on 35 mm roll film and the other on microfiche. The microfilms The microfilms published here were made for Moran Micropublications by a professional micrographics laboratory in the Netherlands using 35 mm input films supplied by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. The collection is organized by the shelf­mark assigned to each manuscript by the library, the first, for example, being manuscript 66 B 13, in which the first number indicates the bookcase in which it is kept, the letter indicates the shelf within the case and the last number is the serial number on the shelf. For convenience sake the publishers have given consecutive numbers to each manuscript running from MMP113/1 to MMP113/122. There are 58 reels of film numbered 1/58 to 58/58. The labels on the microfilm boxes give the shelf marks and MMP numbers of the manuscripts contained on the reel. The present guide This guide has been adapted by the publishers from that produced by Anne Korteweg for micropublication of the Brayer catalogue cited above. It contains her introduction to the history of the collection and the vicissitudes of its cataloguing through the years. There follows a complete inventory of the collection giving a description of each manuscript including information on its author, date, place of origin, material used, binding, decoration and provenance with bibliographical references to the relevant literature. The extensive bibliography closes the guide, which is also available in electronic format on our website. 5 6 INTRODUCTION: THE FRENCH­LANGUAGE MANUSCRIPTS IN THE KONINKLIJKE BIBLIOTHEEK by Anne S. Korteweg The French­language manuscripts of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek form a small but interesting part of the institution's collection of medieval manuscripts. Most of them were acquired in the four decades following the founding of the library in 1798. The nucleus of the library, the book collection of the former stadholders, contained a large number of medieval manuscripts from the southern Netherlands and France that had been in the possession of the counts of Nassau, the ancestors of the present royal family. The new institution grew rapidly in its early days due to the strong support given by two kings, Louis Napoleon and William I, and a number of important collections originally built up in the southern Netherlands entered the library as a result of the union of the Netherlands and Belgium in one kingdom between 1816 and 1839. The first decades of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek In the wake of the French armies that entered the Netherlands in 1795, commissioners carefully searched the library left behind by the last stadholder William V for items that might be of interest to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. They missed only two of the French­language medieval manuscripts: a two­volume copy of Aristotle's Problemata in Evrard de Conty's translation and a prose version of the Vie des Pères. What remained of the stadholder's collection was transformed three years later into a National Library, which was mainly intended for the use of the members of the National Assembly and was consequently housed in the government precincts in the Binnenhof. Important collections were added to its holdings during the brief reign of Louis Napoleon (1806­ 1810), brother of the emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1807 the king himself purchased the 22,000­volume collection of the Leiden jurist and magistrate Joost Romswinckel, whose house on the Rapenburg had been partially destroyed by the explosion of a munitions barge outside its door. Dire financial straits forced him to offer his collection for sale to the king, who had it moved to the Koninklijke Bibliotheek after purchase. Romswinckel's interest in affairs of state is revealed for example by a volume of “Mirrors of princes” that contained some of the first French translations of Italian humanists such as Aurispa and Decembrio. Two years later the collection of the jurist and grand pensionary Jacob Visser of The Hague was acquired. He was an avid historian and, following the example of André Chevillier in France, compiled the first list of incunabula printed in the Netherlands. Despite his focus on things Dutch, there were among his medieval manuscripts a number in French, such as a volume of pious texts including the rare Heures de la Passion by Christine de Pisan. After the battle of Waterloo (1815) the relations among the states of Europe altered once again and the oldest son of the last stadholder returned to the Netherlands to accede to the throne as king William I. In 1816 the French were forced to return part of the stadholder' s collections and the new king had the manuscripts placed in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. Many of these books came from the collections of his ancestors, the counts of Nassau Engelbert II (1450­1504) and Hendrik III (1487­1538) at Breda Castle, and had passed in the following centuries to the princes of Orange­Nassau, the stadholders at The Hague. The manuscripts covered the wide range of subjects typical of a medieval noble library. Special items were the copy of the Mutacion de Fortune, given by its author Christine de Pisan in 1404 to the duke Jean de Berry, a volume with Miracles de Nostre Dame by Gautier de Coinci, which the French king Charles IV had ordered from the Parisian libraire Thomas de Maubeuge in 1327, and a copy of the Chronique de la Bible, the text of which was commissioned by count William X of Auvergne (1229­1247) from the Jewish author Moses ben Abraham. In 1531 Hendrik III of Nassau had acquired an important part of the collection of the southern Netherlandish knight Philip of Cleves, lord of Ravenstein, which contained the dedicatory copy of the prose translation of the Roman de la Rose that Jean Molinet had made for Philip in 1500. Three splendid manuscripts had been owned by the grandfather of 7 Philip's wife, Louis de Luxembourg, the well­known connétable who ended his days on the scaffold in Paris in 1475: a three­volume Histoire romaine by Livy, a Cité de Dieu by Saint Augustine and the first part of the Chroniques of Froissart, all of which originated in Paris around 1400. In addition King William I donated several books of hours that had been acquired by his grandfather, stadholder William IV, and safeguarded by his father when he fled the country in 1795, in particular the hours commissioned by Catherine de Medici after the death of her husband, king Henry II of France. The king also deposited various other gifts and acquisitions in the library, such as a fourteenth­century copy of the Bible Historiale Complétée by Guiard des Moulins, which had been presented to him by the booksellers of Groningen in 1814, and duke Philip the Good's own deluxe copy of the Vie de St. Hubert by Hubert le Prevost, which he had purchased in 1826. But the king's most important role was in the acquisition of some large collections in the southern Netherlands. The extensive collection of the eccentric nobleman Joseph Desiré Lupus, purchased in its entirety in 1819, was something of a cross between a religious museum and a cabinet of curiosities. First housed in the Musée Lupus in Brussels, the objects were dispersed among various museums after his death in 1822, with the medieval manuscripts going to the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague. This collection with no fewer than 150 medieval manuscripts brought unprecedented treasures into the library. In addition to numerous books of hours it contained a Glose des èchecs amoureux by Evrard de Conty and a Miroir de l’ame pécheresse, copied by the translator Jean Miélot. The collection of the historian Georges­Joseph Gérard (1734­1814) was of an entirely different nature.