The ‘Lanthony Secunda Augustinian Rule’, with commentary.

Provenance:

1. Written and illuminated for, and most probably at, the Priory of Lanthony Secunda, almost certainly by one of the community’s own inmates. The house was founded in 1136 by the English statesman Miles de Gloucester, 1st Earl of Hereford and constable of Gloucester, as a refuge for the monks of Llanthony Priory founded c. 1108 in the Vale of Elwas, Monmouthshire (which fell within his lordship as one of the lords of the Welsh Marches), after repeated attacks by the local Welsh. The monks received significant local support from both the family of Miles de Gloucester and the well-known Bohun family, and the two houses of Llanthony continued in coexistence with Llanthony Priory drawing its revenues from its Welsh estates, Llanthony Secunda drawing its revenues from its West Country estates and an amicable division made of the occasional payments to come from their Irish properties. Both were suppressed together in 1538, and the lands and buildings of Lanthony Secunda were sold to Arthur Porter, a local landholder who had previously been under-steward to the priory. The present volume is item 175 in the community’s library list, printed by H. Omont in Centralblatt für Bibliothekwesen, IX (1892), and reprinted by T.W. Williams, ‘Gloucestershire Medieval Libraries’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, XXXI (1908), p. 148, where it is recorded it was kept on the second shelf of the third ‘armarius’ or bookcase in the library there. Antiquarian interest in the library seems to have been strong and come early and approximately 160 manuscripts of the house or fragments of them can be traced today (see the MLGB3 website) in a variety of English institutions. The present volume would appear to be the sole manuscript from the house still in private hands.
2. John Anstis (1669-1744), politician, antiquarian and Garter Principal King of Arms, a gift from Richard Graves (1715-1804), cleric, poet and novelist of Mickleton Manor, near Campden in Gloucestershire (the gift recorded in an inscription on front pastedown). Both Anstis and Graves were both thanked profusely by John Stevens in the introduction to his 1722 update of Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum), the first as he who “laid the first stone in the Foundation of this Structure [the updated Dugdale]”. This volume most probably that in his sale with Samuel Baker (predecessors of Sotheby’s), 12 December 1768, lot 130.
3. Richard Blyke (d. 1779), Exchequer officer, F.S.A., and Herefordshire antiquary. This volume in his sale with Baker & Leigh (predecessors to Sotheby’s), 11 May 1776, lot 10, for £10, 8 shillings, 6 d. (inscription on front pastedown).
4. Most probably George Scott (1720-80) of Woolston Hall, Essex landowner and antiquarian, described in his sale as “St. Augustin’s Works, with the Founders of the Abbey of Llanthony, near Gloucester, to which House this Book formerly belonged” (Leigh & Sotheby, 12 March 1781, lot 94, to ‘Jackson’ with the price achieved there agreeing with that on foot of front pastedown).
5. Dr Andrew Gifford (1700-84), FSA., Baptist Minister, the British Museum’s first numismatist and also its first assistant keeper of manuscripts: his armorial bookplate pasted to first front endleaf. His coin collection was purchased by King George II and his books, manuscripts and curiosities passed to Bristol Baptist Academy.
6. Bristol Baptist College (founded 1679, and the oldest Free Church college in the world): their bookplate, pressmark ‘Z.d.5’ in red ink on front pastedown, red-brown panels on spine gilt-tooled with “Aug: Reg: Tertia” and “Mus. Bapt. Bristol”. The book was described in situ by N. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, 1977, II: 190-91. 
7. Subsequently sold and recorded in the Supplement to the Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries series (A. Watson, 1987) as in a private collection.
8. Recently re-emerging in an American private collection.

Text:

The main text here is that of the Augustinian Rule, under the title (“De vita clericorum cum expositione”; pp. 1-95), with the commentary usually ascribed erroneously to Hugh of St-Victor, and more recently to the early Polish Augustinian, Andreas of Trzemeszno (these sections marked as “expositio” follow the individual chapters of the Rule). St Dominic and his companions, having received from Pope Innocent III authorisation to choose a role for their new order, adopted that of St Augustine, which became one of the great foundations of the religious life in England. At the time this manuscript was written, there were more than 50 Dominican priories in England following this rule of life, including very influential ones in Oxford, Cambridge, and London.

To these, a number of medieval scribes across the next century added (i) a list of the hereditary constables of England (an office held in the Middle Ages by the Earl of Hereford) from 1067 to the late fourteenth century, with a handful of references to Lanthony and Gloucester, on the front endleaves; (ii) a short exposition on Dominican prayers (unidentified; but opening with title: “Expositio brevissimia oracionis dominice”, and incipit: “Pater; quia speramus nos a te ad vitam …”) on endleaves at end of text; these followed by (iii) excerpts predominantly from devotional texts ascribed to Augustine, but also from others such as Peter Comestor and the Bible; and (iv) lists of the founders of the abbey, titled “Nomina fundatorum ecclesie beate marie lanthon’ extra Gloucestr’ defunctorum et in domo capitulari ibidem quiescentum”, arranged according to the tombs of the dead as they were in the chapter house of the community, including Margaret de Bohun and Matilda countess of Hereford, as well as the Earls of Hereford (and thus constables of England) from Humphrey IV de Bohun, 2nd Earl of Hereford, 1st Earl of Essex (1204-75) to Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford, 6th Earl of Essex, 2nd Earl of Northampton (1342-73). The verso of the final endleaf contains further extracts from works ascribed to Augustine and short Biblical quotations above pentrials.

Monastic rules are surprisingly rare survivals in manuscript, and as the most central codices of the life of the community (here augmented by some of their most treasured records) they were perhaps used until they fell to pieces.

Decoration:

The volume opens with a large historiated initial ‘h’ (opening “Hec sunt que ut observetis …”) in dark blue with tessellated white designs overlaid, enclosing the saint, seated and writing his text in an open book on a pedestal, in medieval fashion with a pen in one hand and a knife in another, drapery flecked with clusters of white dots and skilfully picked out in soft wash strokes, and all on a ground perhaps once silver, but now oxidised, the initials terminating in coloured ivy-leaves and within a soft-brown frame marked with clusters of white dots. 

If, as seems most likely, this book was produced within the south-west of England, and probably within Lanthony itself, then this is a magnificent example of regional English medieval art, echoing the skills seen in a Book of Hours produced before 1323, and now Cambridge University Library, Dd.4.17 (P. Binski & P. Zutshi, Western Illuminated Manuscripts: A Catalogue of the Collection in Cambridge University Library, 2011, no. 141).