Manuscripta

This article examines a description of a passional in Thomas Elmham’s list of books in the early library of St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, included in his fifteenth-century Speculum augustinianum. The main proposal is that the passional described contained the collection of apocryphal acts of the apostles known as the Virtutes apostolorum. By situating the description of the passional among other identifications of books in Elmham’s booklist and knowledge of the influence of the Virtutes apostolorum on early English scribes and authors, this article brings together evidence pointing to the existence of a manuscript of the collection of apocryphal acts once held in the library of St. Augustine’s. Since there is no surviving manuscript known to have been in England before 1100 that contained the full Virtutes apostolorum, Elmham’s description provides substantial evidence for a material witness to the collection of apocryphal acts in St. Augustine’s before the Norman Conquest.

This article reexamines the books and reading habits of Isabeau de Bavière, queen of France (r. 1385–1422). Since Auguste Vallet de Viriville’s 1858 work on the queen’s library, relatively little attention has been devoted to furthering our understanding of what the queen read and her participation in literary communities. In revisiting the queen’s book collection, I have two aims: first, to consider what the content and chronology of her reading reveals about Isabeau as a participant in the literary culture of her time; and second, to explore in greater depth how Isabeau used books and literature to establish relationships and form a community. Contextualizing the queen’s reading practices with those of her contemporaries’ also allows us to estimate the true size of her book collection. This closer scrutiny of Isabeau’s books sheds new light on her active role in her reading community at the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century.

London, British Library, Additional MS 12228 is a royal, deluxe version of the Old French chivalric romance Meliadus de Leonnois. The manuscript was begun in Naples after May 1352 in the workshop of Cristoforo Orimina, probably commissioned for the coronation of Queen Giovanna I of Anjou and Prince Louis of Taranto but only completed ca. 1450. The manuscript ends incomplete at fol. 352v, col. 1. Its first 259 folios employ a consistent mis-en-page of double-column text, generally illustrated in framed narrative scenes across the entire bas-de-page. These reveal a consistent iconography and projection of Louis as Meliadus to reinforce his claims to rule Angevin Naples. The work falls into two parts: the first follows the adventures of Arthur’s Round Table and their forbearers among the Tavola vecchia; the second involves the affair between Meliadus and the queen of Scotland, setting off a Trojan-like war before the walls of Leonnois. Orimina and workshop finished the illustrations to fol. 259r, leaving the last third of the manuscript unillustrated but laid out with space for images. At fol. 259v there is an abrupt change to an unidentified quattrocento artist who uses the topography of Naples as a stand-in for Arthurian Leonnois and abandons Orimina’s mis-enpage. Based on both heraldic and stylistic analysis of these later illustrations and their similarities to other works, this article proposes that their creator was the famed artist Pisanello (ca. 1394–1455) under the patronage of Aragonese King Alfonso I of Naples (r. 1442–58). It compares Pisanello’s chivalric frescoes in Mantua to his other works in Naples ca. 1448–50 and concludes that the manuscript’s completion was among the primary motives for Alfonso’s patronage. Pisanello’s reimagining of Add. 12228 reflects broader changes in Alfonso’s court culture and in the role of chivalric works in the Aragonese renovatio of the Angevin kingdom.