Contents

Data Source: Mmmonk

• Manuscript 125, dating from the fourteenth century, consists of six units: five textual units and an index. The title, taken from the fenestra (now pasted on the first endleaf) identifies most of the texts as florilegia and excerpts from primarily Bernard of Clairvaux and many other authoritative figures. The first text (ff. 1r-163v), named Flores Bernardi, is the largest collection. The Dominican theologian William of Tournai (Guilielmus Tornacensis) gathered this collection from the writings of Bernard thematically in ten books of authorities. The next two unita, Capitula quarundam collectarum de opusculis beati uiri Bernardi abbatis continentium uerba quedam melliflua de beatissima uirgine Dei genetrice Maria (ff. 163v-167r) and Auctoritates quedam memoria digne excepte de opusculis beati Bernardi (ff. 167r-168r) are also collections, with the subject of the former being the Virgin Mary. The fourth unit (ff. 168r-168v) contains four letters: two written by Ignatius of Antioch to John the Evangelist; one by Ignatius to the Virgin Mary, and the fourth by Mary to Ignatius. All letters are apocryphal and might have been translated from Greek to Latin by Robert Grosseteste. The final textual unit is a poetic discussion between the Virgin Mary and the Holy Cross, that was supposedly held as Christ was hanging from the latter. A sixteenth-century imprint of a work on elocution (Lodovico Carbone de Costacciaro' De elocutione oratioria libri IIII, Venice 1592, p. 1006), ascribes this text to a frater Iacobonus, possibly the Franciscan Jacobonus de Tuderto. The index at the end is a searching aid on the Flores and a fixed attachment to this text; it is also found later in printed copies (e.g. Koelhoff's 1482 Cologne edition). The manuscript is written in a Gothic textualis script, and is heavily decorated throughout, with rubrics lombards, and decorated initials in red and blue penwork. The text is presented in two columns per page, the outer margins have been used to add - in red ink - references to the location of an excerpt in Bernard's work. The illuminator has made an intriguing error: while adding the running title to the ten books of the Flores, he did not stop at the end of the text, but kept putting 'L(iber) X' to all subsequent pages. The manuscript is bound in a modern full leather binding. It was originally part of the library of Ten Duinen, as the cross-shaped stamp of the abbey is found on the first and final leaves. [Summary by Dr. Mark Vermeer]