Contents

Data Source: Mmmonk

• Manuscript 533 is a twelfth or thirteenth-century copy of the Institutiones Grammaticae, an exposition on Latin grammar by the early sixth-century author Priscian. This was the standard textbook for the study of Latin grammar at the time. The complete work consists of eighteen books. Books I-XVI deal with sounds, word-formation and inflexions, while books XVII-XVIII discuss syntax. Due to the size of the last two books, almost a third of the entire work, they were often copied apart. Books I-XVI were known as the 'Larger Priscian' (Priscianus maior); the other two as the 'Smaller Priscian' (Priscianus minor) or 'On Construction' (De constructione). This copy contains the Priscianus maior. The text is written in a protogothic script in a single column per page. Decoration throughout is limited to red and blue lombards. There is no hierarchy; initials that introduce new books have not been executed differently from those that introduce chapters. The main exception is the decorated initial at the beginning of the prologue. This is an elaborately decorated letter C, portraying two connected animals, possibly griffins, the mouth of one of which produces flower ranks. Its empty areas have been coloured in with red and light blue ink. Throughout the manuscript marginal annotations are found, both contemporary and in a later, 15th-century, hand. That the manuscript was still in use by that time, is also shown by an inscription on the last leaf: 'Liber beate Marie de Dunis sub custodia Bernardi Valke anno 1481'. Valke was a cantor at the abbey at that time. The custodia is difficult to explain; possibly Valke brought the book with him to the abbey upon entering, donated the book (as monks could not possess anything), yet was allowed to keep it for use. In any case, by 1481 the book had come into the possession of Ten Duinen. Furthermore, this leaf contains some notes in Hebrew, possibly probationes pennae. The manuscript is bound in a seventeenth-century binding of the 'Campmans' type. [Summary by Dr. Mark Vermeer]