The Curious Colophon: Some Observations of HRC 44 in the Ransom Center
By Micah Erwin
Micah Erwin is a student in the School of Information at The University of Texas at Austin specializing in rare books and special collections librarianship. He earned a masters degree in medieval studies, and his research interests include the preservation and cataloging of medieval manuscripts and early printed books. He shares some discoveries he made about a medieval manuscript in the Ransom Center’s collections. HRC 44 is the unique number assigned to this particular manuscript in the Center’s Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts Collection. Early manuscripts in the Ransom Center’s collections are often identified by a unique number called a shelfmark that is assigned during the cataloging process.
There were many manuscripts produced in the Middle Ages whose scribes remained anonymous. For this reason, it is interesting when one stumbles upon a manuscript text that can be attributed to a particular scribe. The best form of evidence for the origin of a manuscript and its creator is a scribal colophon—that is, an inscription that a scribe writes at the completion of a manuscript in which he or she provides information about when, where, and by whom it was created. An early sixteenth-century northern European manuscript in the Harry Ransom Center presents just such a case. Although in this case, the identification of the scribe based upon the colophon happens to be a particularly tricky task.
HRC 44 contains a single, complete text in Latin: Tractatus de Preparatione ad missam Johannis Bonaventure. The well-known author of the original work of this text is St. Bonaventure, a doctor of the Catholic Church (1221-1274). St. Bonaventure is known for his great philosophical and mystical writings. Tractatus de Preparatione ad missam is a short treatise on how properly to prepare oneself for the reception of the Eucharist at Mass—a relevant topic at the time that HRC 44 was produced, as the Reformation was just beginning to take hold in Europe.
A number of factors allow us to conclude that this manuscript was produced no later than the year 1520: a watermark is located in the center of the gutter of every other leaf that can be identified with paper produced in Paris between 1468 and 1515; the text is written in a hybrida or semihybrida script, which was developed and popularized in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and the scribal colophon itself contains a date. The unusual part about the manuscript is that it contains not one, but two colophons.
The first colophon is written in a Late German cursiva hand, and there is a strange zoomorphic doodle around it . Curiously the text has been literally scribbled over. No date is legible:
Here is a translation of the first colophon:
“Here ends the tract on the preparation for the mass by the seraphic master Johann Bonaventure[…………..]”
The second colophon appears to be much like the first, except for one very important difference: the addition of a name and a date. It is written in a secretary hand—an even later script than the first colophon. The translation is as follows:
“Here ends the Tract on the Preparation for Mass by the seraphic master Johann Bonaventure written by me, brother Johann Laenstein a Carmelite of Boppard, [in the] year 1520.”
The work of Franze-Bernand Lickteig, an extensive study of German Carmelites in medieval universities, records a certain “Joannes Laynstein de Boppardia” as a monk who studied at Cologne between 1520 and 1522. It is possible that he copied the colophon from the exemplar manuscript, realized his error, and perhaps later wrote a new colophon with his name and the date of its completion.
Based on the above evidence, HRC 44 was therefore produced by a Carmelite monk named Johannes Laenstein from Boppard, Germany, in 1520. It was either copied in Paris (where the paper was made), Cologne (where Laenstein studied), or at the priory of Boppard itself. If we are not convinced of the date 1520, then we can use the watermark evidence to suggest that it was produced no earlier than 1468.
I believe that HRC 44 represents a fascinating example of manuscript book production post-1450. Scholars interested in the production of manuscript books after the invention of the printing press will likely benefit from an examination of HRC 44 and should conduct further research to identify other works produced by its scribe. Additionally, the presence of three different types of script (the text and two colophons on folio 11v) on the same page make this an excellent manuscript for students of paleography.