Memoriale de Prerogativa Imperii Romani

Type: Manuscript

Date: 1457-1490

Setting: Germany, Rhineland [Cologne?]

Produced By/For: Alexander de Roes

Contents: Memoriale de Prerogativa Imperii Romani (Reminder of the Prerogative of the Roman Empire)

Shelf Mark: Ms.Lat.9

Location: Call no. DD126 A44 1457

Description from Vendor

Introduced by an illuminated frontispiece of Emperor Frederick III enthroned and surrounded by his electors, this volume is an example of a book copied in Germany that includes a text in Middle English, an almost unique phenomenon. Its compiler(s) exhibit a sophisticated interest in history, especially the history of the Holy Roman Empire, with an emphasis on Cologne. Its contents include abbreviated chronicles (mostly quite rare) and catalogs of bishops, archbishops, and ruling princes, numerous epitaphs, and the English Act of Accord of 1460. After copying, it was annotated and perfected by later hands until the end of the fifteenth century. Why and for whom it was made, and its exact relationship to a historical miscellany now in Hamburg with similar contents, are just some of the questions that remain to be answered.

Bound in deerskin over wood boards, back sewn on four bands (not its original binding, although binding is a period binding, here reused), front and back covers worn, cracking along the upper joint. Damaged in the upper and inner margin, opening folio and edges of many leaves damaged, small tear upper margin ff. 62-63, but overall fair condition with the text undamaged and legible. Written in a variety of hands, mostly in very small formal cursive gothic bookhands ... contemporary marginal annotations and early additions throughout, some dated, often copied on small strips of paper bound in, red rubrics, some red paragraph marks, some guide letters, numerous capitals stroked in red, one-to five-line initials alternating red and blue, approximately 35 small colored armorial shields found in the margins, ... two small miniatures ... one heraldic composition with 8 colored armorial shields (f. 17v), one full-page wash-colored pen drawing of Emperor Frederick III surrounded by the seven imperial electors and with armorial shields and inscriptions.

Full description available through Lesenluminures.com.

Provenance: Purchased from Les Enlumieres with the Special Collections fund, the Rainer Library Endowment Fund, the Gwladys Downes bequeathment fund, the John & Irene Dorn Memorial Endowment Fund, and the MSSF fund, 2018.

Transcription

Transcription* of fol. 15r (start of the 25 October 1460 Act of Accord) by Shaylene Keddy, as part of coursework for a manuscript studies course with Dr. Adrienne Williams Boyarin (ENGL), December 2018, is available here. Also includes transcription, presentation, and notes for fol. 17v (annotated heraldic shields showing lineage of Richard, Duke of York) by Jessica Eisner, December 2018.

* Transcription conventions follow those set out by Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, “How to Transcribe Middle English,” in Opening Up Middle English Manuscripts: Literary and Visual Approaches, edited by Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Maidie Hilmo, and Linda Olson (Ithaca, 2012), pp. 2-5 and xxxi-xxxii (including the “Note on Transcriptions and Transcription Symbols”). Work has been checked and lightly edited throughout by Dr. Adrienne Williams Boyarin.

Images

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