A bible written in Normandy, 1279 [image 1 of 21]

Description

Latin vulgate Bible, written in Normandy, 1279. This Bible was written over a period of rather more than 3 years and was completed in 1279 by a lame monk from Fécamp whose name began with the letter 'G', on the instructions of his abbot, James [Jacobus], at (and for the use of) the monastery of St. Pierre-sur-Dives in Normandy (as a note in verse at the end of the manuscript states). Abbot James may be depicted on folio 233v. The Bible is illuminated with capitals and miniatures throughout. Neil Ker estimated that about forty leaves of the Bible are missing and only the text of Psalms 1-118 (added by another in the late 15th century) survives.
The manuscript was evidently in England by the fifteenth or early sixteenth century, apparently in the possession of the Carthusians, since English names occur at a number of points, e.g. 'W. Crofton [or Croston]' on folio 1. It would have been dispersed, along with other monastic libraries, at the time of the Dissolutions (1536-40) if not earlier. Its later provenance history is not known until it came into the possession of Thomas Burgess. The Bible came to Lampeter with the rest of his books after his death in 1847. The book was rebound at the National Library of Wales in 1947.
Further reading: N. R. Ker, 'Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, III Lampeter - Oxford' (Oxford, 1983), pp. 1-2.