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Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
Medieval Manuscript Leaf. The Bohun Family Bible.
England [?East Anglia], circa 1350.
Oversized folio-format single parchment leaf, taken from an original four-volume set perhaps commissioned by Edward III's eldest son, called the Black Prince (1330-1376), and associated with the house of the Carmelite Order supported by him in Chester; written in two columns in brown ink with one large two-line gilt initial on recto with leafy extensions in the margin between the columns, chapter number and headlines in red and black, later leaf number 97 in ink, upper right corner; this leaf from the end of Ecclesiasticus chapter XXX, and the beginning of chapter XXXI; the initial V begins the section, "Vigilia honestatis tabefaciet carnes, et cogitatus illius auferet somnum," "Watching for riches consumeth the flesh, and the thought thereof driveth away sleep"; 18 x 12 1/8 in.
The leaf-by-leaf dispersal of the Bohun Bible began as early as the 17th century; ultimately, the Bible was dismembered by Myers & Co. on Bond Street in London, who sold individual leaves beginning in 1927. [cf. Christopher de Hamel, ‘The Bohun Bible Leaves,' Script & Print 32:1 (2008): 49-63; and Lucy Freeman Sandler, Illuminators and Patrons in Fourteenth-Century England: The Psalter and Hours of Humphrey de Bohun and the Manuscripts of the Bohun Family. Toronto, 2014.]
