Isidore of Seville, Sententiae, III, 18-21, on monasticism, in Latin

Isidore of Seville, Sententiae, III, 18-21, on monasticism, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment[England, early fourteenth century] Single leaf, with single column of 37 lines of English gothic bookhand (textualis libraria), with numerous abbreviations and lateral compression, 2-line initials in red or dark-blue with contrasting penwork in red or turquoise-blue, edges stained and slightly cockled, else in good condition, 190 by 130mm.; in Salt's fascicule-like paper binding Provenance:1. Written most probably for use in an ecclesiastical setting in an early fourteenth-century English monastery or cathedral library. The small size of the parent manuscript may suggest that it was used by an itinerant ecclesiastic, perhaps a Dominican or Franciscan.2. A.N.L. Munby (1913-1974), bibliographer (especially of the Phillipps collection), librarian of King's College, Cambridge, J.P.R. Lyell Reader in Bibliography in Oxford University and Sandars Reader in Bibliography in Cambridge University. On Munby's collecting see A.S.G. Edwards, 'A.N. L. Munby's Collecting of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 15.3 (2014), pp. 57-72.3. Dr. George Salt (1903-2003) of Cambridge, entomologist, calligrapher and collector: his calligraphic notes on the paper binding of this fragment recording its gift by Munby on 15 January 1948; this his MS 3. Sold in Sotheby's, 17 December 1991, lot 8(c) as "leaf from a small manuscript of monastic rules". 4. Schøyen Collection of London and Oslo, their MS. 1556. Text:No other encyclopedic text in the West has had anything like the impact of that written by Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636). He was part of the intellectual renaissance in the seventh-century Visigothic court, and was notably close to King Sigebut (c. 565-620/1), to whom the first version of this work was dedicated. It has been suggested that he composed it as a form of summa for his recently-civilised barbarian masters, but it quickly found other more-conventional readers in mainland Europe, and became the most widely consulted reference work of the Middle Ages. It survives today in nearly a thousand manuscripts (S.A. Barney et al., Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, 2006, p. 24), and by the year 800, copies of it could be found in all the cultural centres of Europe. Published: C. de Hamel, 'The Life of Saint Martin', in Papyri Graecae Schøyen (PSchøyen II): essays and texts in honour of Martin Schøyen, 2010, pp. 117-122.