3 - Images of Franciscans and Dominicans in a Manuscript of Alexander Nequam's Florilegium (Cambridge University Library, MS Gg.6.42)

Summary

Abstract

MS Gg.6.42 is a manuscript from the mid-thirteenth century containing a unique text of the Florilegium of Alexander Nequam (1157–1217), a collection of extracts from Nequam's own works, some of which do not survive elsewhere. It seems that the manuscript was produced at the Augustinian house of Cirencester, of which Nequam was abbot, but moved to the Benedictine house of Malmesbury at an early date. A leaf has been inserted in the manuscript containing a tinted drawing of St Francis with a companion and, on the dorse, another of St Dominic with a companion. Their date is roughly the same as that of the manuscript, and they are amongst the earliest depictions of their subjects in English art. The chapter compares them with contemporary work. It is argued that the drawings are relevant to the texts which surround them, and are likely to have been inserted into the manuscript at an early date.

Keywords: Franciscans, Dominicans, drawings, Alexander Nequam

J.R.H. Moorman's Church Life in the Thirteenth Century was published by Cambridge University Press in 1945 and almost immediately reprinted. As its title suggests, it is concerned with the social, rather than the institutional, history of the Church. One strength of the book is its detailed attention to the parish and the parochial clergy, while the two final chapters cover a topic close to Moorman's heart, the mendicant orders. It is an original, ambitious, and readable book, characterized by a use of architectural and artistic, as well as textual, evidence. The present chapter is devoted to the drawings of two Franciscans and two Dominicans which survive in a manuscript of the works of Alexander Nequam and which have not been discussed in detail in the secondary literature. While being no more than a recondite contribution to the wide subject covered in Moorman's book, it is offered here to honour the memory of a distinguished historian and churchman whom I met only once but to whose numerous publications I owe a great deal.

MS Gg.6.42 in Cambridge University Library (henceforth cited as G) was written in England in the mid-thirteenth century and contains a unique text of the Florilegium of Alexander Nequam (also called Neckam or Neckham). Nequam was born in 1157 and studied at Paris and Oxford.