Contents

Data Source: Mmmonk

• Manuscript 170 is a collection of works by Richard of Saint-Victor (d. 1173), an important pre-Thomistic theologian: (ff. 1r-30v) De contemplatione sive Beniamin maior; (ff. 30v-32v) De Trinitate; (ff. 64r-69r) De potestate ligandi et solvendi; (ff. 69r-70v) De spiritu blasphemiae; (ff. 69v-73r) De iudiciaria potestate; (ff. 73r-74v and 75v-76v) two fragments of the Declarationes nonnullarum difficultatum scripturae; and (ff. 75r-v) Quomodo Spiritus Sanctus est amor patris et filii. Roughly half of the leaves (ff. 33r-64r) contain sermons by the late eleventh-century Benedictine William of Merula. The manuscript is written in the fourteenth century. The text is written in two columns, with initials alternately in red and blue ink, with decorative penwork in the other colour. Larger and more elaborate initials are found at the beginning of each text, and rubrics are available in red ink. Not all leaves are present, between ff. 32 and 33 several leaves have been missing at least since the seventeenth century, containing the end of De Trinitate and the beginning of the sermons. An interesting provenance is connected to this manuscript. According to an inscription on the last verso leaf, the book had been in the possession of the abbey of Clairvaux before it found its way to Ter Doest. The manuscript is thus a witness to the monastic networks found throughout medieval Europe, and to the dissemination of knowledge through these links. [Summary by Dr. Mark Vermeer]