Original leaf from an English manuscript pocket Bible. From a Bible illuminated at the workshop of William de Brailes - one of the few 13th century English illuminators known by name! (De Brailes maintained an active workshop at Oxford c. 1238-52. He was illuminator of the Oxford Bible). Written with brown ink in Latin gothic script on animal vellum. (185x135mm)
Rubricated chapter numbers, initials & marginalia in red & blue. 54 lines of text in double columns (10 lines per inch!). For sister leaf see Blackburn Collection, Cleveland Museum of Art, pl. 4.
Produced in Oxford, c. 1240 A.D.
Line 2 begins John 11:53 - 13:36: ''Ab illo ergo die...'' (From that day therefore they devised to put him to death...The poor you have always with you; but me you have not always...Whilst you have the light, believe in the light, that you may be children of the light...I am come a light into the world; that whosoever believeth in me, may not remain in darkness...A new commandment I give unto you: That you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another...).
This leaf, from a “portable” Bible during the Crusades period, would have been used in the abstract study of theology or preaching of the Gospel around the medieval countryside.
Presented in an archival 14 x 11'' mat
