The four texts in this manuscript are all designed to teach the reader by means of example. The Dit des Philosophes, brief biographies of and sayings attributed to two dozen "philosophers," was originally compiled by Mubashshir ibn Fatik, an 11th-century Arabic philosopher. It was translated into Spanish in the 13th century, and then into Latin. The Latin translation made its way to France, where it was translated into French by Guillaume de Tignonville, Provost of Paris and Chamberlain to King Charles V around the year 1403. The anonymous French prose Life of Apollonius of Tyre in this manuscript is that published by C. Lewis in 1915, although the explicit he gives varies significantly from this copy, with which he was unfamiliar. The Griseldis is a French translation of Petrarch's Latin version of the tale of patient Griselda and has been shown to have been the source of Chaucer's "Clerk's Tale" (see Severs). Of the manuscripts used in Lewis' edition of Apollonius, BnF fr. 20042 (dated 1432) and Chartres Bib. Mun. 419 (dated 14th century) also include the Griseldis. The two manuscripts are quite far apart in the stemma for the Griselda text given by Severs (p. 188) and Golenistcheff-Koutouzoff (p. 97), suggesting that their inclusion of both texts may have been an independent decision made by two different scribes, rather than a simple copying of one manuscript from the other. The Boston copy has not yet found a place on the Griseldis stemma, however, so the full story of the relationship between these three manuscripts has yet to be told. As for the final text, Munsterberg associates it with the Speculum Peccatoris once attributed to St. Augustine (Munsterberg, p. 321).

Ms. codex

In French

Bibliographic record created by BPL staff based on description by Dr. Lisa Fagin Davis and by Walter Cahn's entry in the 2016 Beyond Words exhibition catalog.

Secundo folio: ... estre brehaine que aporter ..

Collation: Parchment, fol. ii (parchment) + 102 + i (first and final blanks are formerly pasted down free flyleaves) ; 1-5⁸ 6¹⁰ 7-8⁸ 9² 10-13⁸ 14² ; some signatures preserved as tallies in red ink in the lower right corner recto of the first half of each gathering. Catchwords for quires 1-9 only (Dits des philosophes), lower right corner of final verso of each gathering, in partial red border. Modern arabic pencil pagination, upper outer corner of each page.

Layout: Two columns, 33 lines. Bounding and ruling lines in blind or light plummet

Script: Written in bâtarde in brown ink with red rubrics by two hands (fol. 1-68 and fol. 69-101).

Decoration (primary): 23 eight-line grisaille miniatures, some with colored wash backgrounds, at least some by the same artist as Paris, BnF fr. 811. 12-line grisaille miniature on fol. 1 with crimson and gold diapered background and full border of gold leaves and spindly vines (for further explanation of the identities of the depicted persons, see notes in Schofield and in Sutton). Miniatures: fol. 1: Presentation miniature, the scribe/author kneeling and presenting the book to his patron (possibly Guillaume de Tignonville presenting the work to King Charles VI, to whom he was chamberlain and advisor) -- fol. 2v: Hermes holding an astrolabe and addressing a crowd -- fol. 7v: Tac (the Egyptian god Toth?) holding an unfurled unwritten scroll -- fol. 8: Zalquaquine (Aesculapius, son of Apollo?) holding an unfurled unwritten scroll and addressing a crowd -- fol. 8v: Homer holding an unfurled unwritten scroll -- fol. 9: Zalon (Solon, an Athenian statesman) seated before a crowd, holding a book -- fol. 10: Zabyon (Zenon (or Zeno) of Citium (c. 344-c. 262 BC)) being brought before the king -- fol. 10v: Hippocrates holding a flask and addressing a group of students -- fol. 12v: Pythagoras at a lectern addressing a seated crowd -- fol. 15v: Diogenes addressing a crowd -- fol. 27: Plato holding an unfurled unwritten scroll and addressing a crowd -- fol. 36v: Aristotle seated with a book on his lap, teaching a standing crowned youth (presumably his student Alexander of Macedonia) before two seated courtiers -- fol. 42v: Alexander of Macedonia enthroned, holding a raised scimitar, before a crowd of standing courtiers -- fol. 52v: Ptolemy crowned and seated, striking a stone below a bell with two mallets -- this was an experiment actually conducted by Pythagoras that is in this image incorrectly attributed to Ptolemy -- fol. 53v: Assaron (an unidentified philosopher) addressing a crowd -- fol. 54v: Logmon (at left, the proverbial Loqman the Sage) counseling his master (standing within the tower) regarding the bet he has lost requiring him to drink all of the water in the nearby river -- fol. 58v: Onese (an unidentified philisopher) seated, addressing a crowd -- fol. 58v: Macdaage (an unidentified philospher) standing, addressing a crowd -- fol. 59: Thesile (poss. St. Basil) standing, holding an unwritten unfurled scroll -- fol. 60: Pope Gregory the Great enthroned, holding an unwritten unfurled scroll and addressing a crowd -- fol. 60: Galen holding a flask -- fol. 61v: A group of philosophers debating -- in the foreground, a man kneels before an open case removing a bag (of gold?) (illustrating the final chapter of the Dits, a miscellaneous collection of sayings of various philosophers) -- fol. 69: King Antiochus and Appolonius (for The Life of Apollonius of Tyre) -- fol. 94: Monk preaching to a group of laymen (for Le Mireon des Pecheurs).

Decoration (secondary): Two- to five-line initials throughout in gold and colors, paragraph markers alternating blue and red

Binding: ca. 15th-century leather (goat or sheep) over printed waste pasteboards formed with uncut quarto sheets in gothic typeface, spine in compartments, free flylfeaves formerly pasted down.

Origin: Written in France in the first quarter of the 15th century

Provenance: 17th-century inscription on f. ii verso, "2/ et Monsieur le Marquis." A hand dated "25 June 1835" has transcribed most of Griseldis alongside the text, in the outer and lower margins of ff. 87v-93v

Purchased by the BPL in 1941 from A. Rosenthal (Schoenberg Database nr. 57040). BPL bookplate inside front cover

Call number: MS f Med.91.

Former call number: MS 1518.

Bibliography: (of this composite manuscript): Jeffrey Hamburger, et al., eds. Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections (Chestnut Hill: McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2016) no. 191; M. Munsterberg, "The sayings of philosophers," More Books/BPL Quarterly XVI (1941): 315-321.

Bibliography: (Les dits de philosophes): Schofield, M., ed. The dicts and sayings of the philosophers (Philadelphia, 1936); Sutton, J.W. The Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers (Kalamazoo, 2006)

Bibliography (Apollonius): C. Lewis, "Die altfranzosischen Prosaversionen des Appollonius-Roman" in Romanische Forschungen XXXIV (1915), 1-147

Bibliography (Griseldis): Golenistcheff-Koutouzoff, E. , L'histoire de Griseldis en France au XIVe et au XVe siecle (Paris, 1933); Severs, J.B. The Literary Relationships of Chaucer's Clerkes Tale (New Haven, 1942), p. 181, no. 2; Correale, R.M. Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales (Cambridge, 2002), I:137-138

For a more detailed description of the manuscript described herein, see curatorial file

1. fol. 1-68: Guillaume de Tignonville. Dits des philosphes. (Sedechias fu philosophe le premier ... / ... a autreffois este deceu. / Cy finent les dis moraulx des prophettes / Explicit / Explicit).

2. fol. 68v-86: [L'ystoire de Apollonius, roy d'Anthioche, de Thir et de Cirene] (mistakenly titled Le mireon aux pecheurs). (fol. 68v) (Cy commence le mireon aux pecheurs / (fol. 69) Un roy fu jadis appelle antioche ... / ... et laissa lautre en sa librarie).

3. fol. 86v-93v: Le livre Griseledis (fol. 86v) (Cy commence le livre griseledis autrement appelle lexemplaire des femmes / (fol. 87) A lexemplaire des femmes mariees ... / ... ceste povre famelette fist pour son mortel mari la quelle pacience nous ottroit le pere et le fils et le saint espereit / Explicit / Griseledis).

4. fol. 94-101: Le mireon des pecheurs. (Cy apres commence le mireon des pecheurs/Mes treschiers freres ... / ... laquelle nous vueille ottroyer cellui qui est benedictus in secula seculorum amen / Explicit le mirouer des pecheurs).

5. fol. 101v-102v: blank.

Bond, W.H. Supplement to the Census of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in the United States and Canada, page 209

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