[Incipit:] De la creation du monde iusques ala fondacion de romme

[Tours or Paris], 1480. Mid-16th-century gilt-ruled vellum with overlapping edges over thin flexible paper boards (minor soiling), azured oval central ornament of interlacing strapwork and an open center, flat spine gilt with fleurons and foliage rolls, spine lined with a fragment of a 16th-century vellum document in French, two recent gilt-lettered black morocco labels, all edges gilt, evidence of four green silk ties, early manuscript title on the front cover. Manuscript on vellum. In a single Gothic hand (cursiva formata or bâtarde) in black ink, 23 lines per page, text block c. 160 x 105 mm., ruled in red ink, OPENING HALF-PAGE ILLUMINATION OF THE VERMANDOIS COAT OF ARMS SUPPORTED BY TWO LIONS RAMPANT on a field of vines, flowers and fruit on gold ground, enclosed in a FULL ILLUMINATED BORDER OF VINES, FLOWERS, FRUIT, BIRDS AND IMAGINARY CREATURES ON DIVIDED WHITE AND GOLD GROUND; one four-line and two five-line illuminated initials in blue ink on red ground with penwork decoration en camaïeu d'or, paragraph marks in gold ink on alternating red and blue ground, majuscules stroked in yellow throughout, vertical catchwords, occasional calligraphic flourishes on the first line of text, slightly later marginal annotations in a different hand.

          ONLY COPY KNOWN OF THIS UNRECOGNIZED VERNACULAR WORLD HISTORY FROM CREATION TO 1315, decorated in the style then fashionable in Tours and Paris and especially close to works by the ateliers of Jean Poyer and the Master of Jacques de Besançon.
    A member of the House of Vermandois and partisan of Louis XI of France (1423-83) commissioned this manuscript, adding to an ever-growing genre. By the previous century, historiography had replaced verse epic as "a form of ethical reassurance to an intended audience of aristocratic auditors and readers...an ideologically motivated assertion of the aristocracy's place and prestige in medieval society" (Spiegel). Accordingly, the anonymous compiler sought to legitimize his work by following the medieval tradition of universal chronicles and by drawing on authoritative texts across natural history, philosophy, theology and history. HIS FOCUS, HOWEVER, BECOMES NARROWER AND HIS POLITICAL SYMPATHIES CLEARER AS THE NARRATIVE PROGRESSES.
           His mainstay is Sébastien Mamerot's Croniques Martiniennes (1458), a vernacular version and extension of the popular 13th-century Latin chronicle of Martinus Polonus, a synchronic account of political and religious history composed for students and preachers. Though he adopts Orosius' calculation of 5199 years between Creation and the birth of Christ, the author dispatches this period in the first eight leaves then shifts his focus to persons and events more closely connected to France.
           The steady drip of scholarly name dropping hardly obscures the chronicle's primary objective, which is to entertain - livening conversation as much as edifying readers and listeners. The writer's consistently idiosyncratic abridgement of Mamerot frees him to shape the chronologic, diplomatic, military and religious landscape to his purpose, relying on accident, personality, tragedy and triumph to hold the attention of his audience. Among the marvelous, the legendary, the scandalous, the shocking and the anecdotal, we find the miraculous flatulence of the wife of St. Gangulphus, Pope Joan, the Holy Grail, Crusader cannibalism, the fall of the Knights Templar, a Polish count eaten by rats, a woman with two torsos, ecstatic visions, feats of civil engineering, a pig with a human face, the discovery of holy relics, a hairy fish with the tail of a lion, "Halley's" comet, the mass slaughter of heretics.... The scribe's original observations mostly address legal and linguistic matters.
           At about the year 1240, the compiler abandons the Croniques Martiniennes, as the manuscript was "no longer in my possession" (f. [92]r, tr.). Thereafter the account is his own invention. Despite his sensationalist bent, the respect for the historical method is evident. For instance, HE PROUDLY RECOUNTS CONSULTING THE AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT OF GUILLAUME DURAND'S SPECULUM IURIS, now BnF ms. Lat. 4255: "I saw the original, written in the hand of the author" (f. [99]r). This, together with his use of an uncommon source on the Mongol invasion of Eastern Europe, Roger of Torremaggiore's Carmen Miserabile, may help identify where our compiler actually penned the present text.
           The last event reported is the 1315 execution of Philip IV's disgraced minister Enguerrand de Marigny. In a moralizing finale, the author compares Marigny's fate to the demise of royal chamberlain Pierre de Brézé (c. 1410-65), who rose to power under Charles VII and contentiously served his son, Louis XI, some "thirty years ago" (tr., f. [117]r). This reference helps date the manuscript.
           THE SCRIBE WORKED ON LOOSE SHEETS RATHER THAN ON PRE-FOLDED GATHERINGS. This is the only possible explanation for the accidental swap of text between two non-consecutive non-conjugate leaves in quire [8], a blunder a binder could not physically commit. Still more revealing, the catchword on the quire's final verso correctly matches the first word of the following recto, notwithstanding the inconsistency of the immediately preceding text. This indicates THE CATCHWORD WAS INSERTED AFTER THE TEXT WAS WRITTEN, TO AID THE BINDER RATHER THAN TO GUIDE THE SCRIBE.
           In good condition, faded 16th-century inscription on the final verso mentioning mons. de Longueval, avocat. From the libraries of Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872) and of bookseller and bibliophile William A.W. Foyle (1885-1963; gilt morocco bookplate).
Phillipps, Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum 6926; see Busby's "Vernacular Literature and the Writing of History in Medieval Francophonia" and Spiegel's "The Textualization of the Past in Thirteenth-Century French Historical Writing" in Imagining the Past in France edd. Morrison & Hedeman 27-51 and Avril & Reynaud's Les Manuscrits à peintures en France 255-324.