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LES PONTIFICAUX MANUSCRITS DES BIBLIOTHÈQUES PUBLIQUES DE FRANCE.
Leroquais, Abbé V.
4 Volumes

- Paris : (Protat Frères) 1937 - 4to. - original stiff paper wrappers with glassine wrapper; fourth volume is a cloth-backed board portfolio containing the plates. - (iv),cliv,304; (iv),462; (iv).161,(2); xiii pages + 140 leaves of plates in black and white - ISBN none / Order Nr. 109425 - Price: $ 2,000.00 View Slideshow (requires Flash Player 9)

First edition. A multi-volume work surveying pontifical manuscripts held in the public libraries of France (Besterman 3572). An introduction (over 150 pages long) helps establish for the reader the significance of pontifical manuscripts. After defining the term "pontifical" as a liturgical book containing all the rituals and ceremonies, culled from a variety of predecessor sources and collated together into one convenient book, that might be performed by a bishop, with the exception of the Mass and the Divine Office, the introduction proceeds into specific investigation of the arrangement of such books, the different types of ceremonies contained therein (e.g., ordinations for those distributing communion during the Mass, for readers, exorcists, acolytes, subdeacons, deacons, and priests; episcopal consecration; and dedication of churches), ways to identify and date such a book, and typical decoration. The descriptive catalogue of the 233 pontifical manuscripts from the ninth through the eighteenth centuries (beginning in Volume One and continuing through the end of Volume Two) offers in-depth informative entries arranged according to place of location. A separate section in Volume Two deals with those books that are not properly called "pontificals" (sacramentaries, breviaries, missals, etc.), but that contain similar kinds of information. Volume Three contains a table of contents, in the form of a list of manuscripts, arranged alphabetically according to present location; a list of churches and abbeys thought to be the places of generation for the manuscripts; and a general index. The portfolio, numbered volume four, illustrates many of the volumes discussed in the preceding volumes in its 140 black and white plates. Overall, a compendious and complete work for its chosen subject matter and date of creation. Printed on laid paper. Bottom of spine of volume one is partially chipped away. Bookplate. Unopened copy.

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> BIBLIOGRAPHY
> FRANCE
> MANUSCRIPTS
> RELIGION
> VATICAN
> ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS

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> Pike, Kermit J., GUIDE TO SHAKER MANUSCRIPTS IN THE LIBRARY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

THE POEMS OF OSSIAN, TRANSLATED BY JAMES MACPHERSON, ESQ. by MacPherson, James (translator) (Graesse V, 59-60). According to notes in the Princeton University catalogue, this work was in fact largely written by Macpherson, and was the first collected in two volumes as the 3rd editon of "The Works of Ossian." Identified on title as "a new edition." Two "dissertations," on the "Era of Ossian" and "On the Poems of Ossian" included in the second volume. Through the years, a debate has raged about the authenticity of the Ossian epic with Samuel Johnson, Horace Walpole, and David Hume among the early critics. See the laid in essay from the University of Delaware's Special Collections website. Front board of first volume detached. Boards rubbed and scuffed at edges and along spine. Bookplates on front pastedowns. Endpapers and text lightly tanned.