Lot 36: A fifteenth century collection of mystical religious texts

[MANUSCRIPT]

Four works bound together. Consists of [Ad I]: SUSO, HEINRICH. Horologoum Eterne Sapientiae [Catch title]; [Ad II]. GIOVANNI DI FIDANZA [ST. BONAVENTURE] Dyalogus Cardinalis Bonaventure [Catch title]; [Ad III]. Incipit Liber Conscientiae [Catch title]; [Ad IV]. [A poem on spiritual love] Comment JHS lami at espoux de lame denote et contemplative. Almost certainly Low Countries or Germany for the first three: second or third quarter of the fifteenth century. Mid-18th century speckled calf, all edges sprinkled red and brown. 7 3/4 x 5 1/8 inches (19.75 x 14.5 cm); 168 ff. on paper, the first three works with Latin text, written in a single column of 34 lines, brown ink in an elegant bâtarde script, with the chapter headings with initials in shell gold and colors, paragraph marks throughout in red, and capitals heightened throughout in yellow; the final work appended at a slightly later date, written in French in a pale gray ink in a very fine bâtarde, unadorned but for versal capitals beginning some lines; the first three works minutely scribally signed at the foot of f. 166 verso (reading apparently "Liber [...]/B. de Sto[contraction mark].. v[it]?)." Generally in excellent condition, other than a marginal wormhole in the first forty leaves, this defect small and insignificant even at its largest extent, a very few extremely neat marginalia noted. The bookplate (dated 1751) of Francois Ferdinand; notations on the front free endpaper in ink by a 19th-century collector regarding the works contained in the volume. noting the final work as unrecorded (but not discussing the terminal poem).

An elegantly written textual manuscript, of which the first 110 leaves are taken up with [Ad I] Suso's popular devotional text, manuscripts of which are moderately numerous institutionally (with 33 examples known) but altogether very uncommon at auction or the larger market. The work was completed in about 1330 by Henricus Suso, a Dominican associated with the great mystic Meister Eckhart. Suso experienced visions from childhood on, and his writings explore the visionary experience, but interestingly the expression of his mysticism follows the minnensinger tradition of literary romanticism. For Suso, the soul's love of Wisdom and of Christ was akin to the knight's devotion to his lady; he writes of a form of divine marriage, and the present work was intended to guide the reader towards a spiritual union with Wisdom and with God.

The second text present here [Ad II], the Dialogus of Bonaventure, was another popular spiritual work of the period; Bonaventura (d. 1274), a Franciscan and a mystic, was also a practical man who was by all accounts a good administrator as a General Minister, a Cardinal and a Bishop. There is a French edition of 1499 of the work (printed by Guy Marchant and Jean Petit) that appears to follow the text here fairly closely (though by no means identical); the present earlier recension is certainly worthy of study.

The third text [Ad III] is similarly mystical, but (as the nineteenth-century commentator indicates on the endpaper) the Liber Conscientiae is possibly unrecorded.

The terminal manuscript [Ad 4] is apparently a contemporary reader's expression of craving for the mystical marriage described by Suso, which the writer speaks of as an "amour espirituellement" (see the subtitle of the poem). We have not been able to establish if this four-page poem is recorded, but it is a substantial piece of vernacular verse and of exceptional interest.