Book of Prayers for Jesuit use (France, late 16th century)

Creator

Preview

Creation Date

Late 16th century

Description

Prayer book, probably for Jesuit use, containing the Penitential Psalms, the Office of the Dead, and additional prayers.

A small book approximately 13.8x9.5x2.2 cm when closed. The cover is brown leather with faded gilded stamping. The binding is nineteenth-century French calf. The center of the back and front covers depicts the crucifixion of Christ with John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary on either side. The binding used to have two clasps which have been lost. The paper folia are frame-ruled, while the parchment folia are lightly ruled and lined in light brown ink.

Collation of 69 folia assembled in quires of 8, with 7 parchment quires flanked by 2 paper quires. Quires 1 and 9 both have only 7 folia; we surmise that the first folio of quire 1 and last folio of quire 9 were used as pastedowns. Quires 2-3 and 5-8 have quire signatures in red Roman capital letters at the bottom right of the recto of the first folio of the quire; with minor variation, the first half of A (2) and B (3) are labeled with lowercase Roman numerals (Ai, Aii, Aiii, Aiv), while the first half of quires 5-8 are labeled with Arabic numerals (C.1, C.2, C.3, C.4). Quire 4 has no quire signatures at all. Quire 5 has only 7 folia, with the sixth folio (between ff. 35-36 as labeled) having been cut out. Nineteenth-century pencil foliation at upper right throughout (labeled ff. 1-59) does not count blank folia: 1 folio btw ff. 22-23; 4 folia in quire 8 after f. 57; and 5 folia at the beginning of quire 9 btw ff. 57-58.

Inside the book are 59 marked folios and 10 unmarked folios. The text is written in a single column of twenty lines in brown ink and there are initial capitals and rubrics written in red. There are 35 decorated initials. They range from 1-3 colors used which vary between red, blue, yellow, black, green, and orange. They range in size from two lines high (e.g. f. 5r) to eight lines high: (ff.8, 31, 40, 45, and 50v.)

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