Christus homo factus Wm Cleue prosperet actus: Examining a Provenance Mark with Suggestions About the Later Ownership of the Paris Apocalypse (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 403)

Abstract

Abstract (Lang: English):This annotation explores an unremarked upon provenance feature of the Paris Apocalypse (Paris, BnF Ms. fr 403), a mid-thirteenth-century illustrated Anglo-Norman Book of Revelation. While early scholars, such as Delisle, Meyer, and James, concerned their scholarship primarily with establishing a stemma to relate the Apocalypse manuscripts to each other, modern scholarship on the Apocalypses, such as that of Lewis, Emmerson, and Morgan, interests itself in using the Apocalypses to better understand reading habits and the culture surrounding them.This annotation offers an examination of a short ownership rhyme included on the back coverboard of the Paris Apocalypse which reads "Christus homo factus; W(illel)m prosperet actus." This rhyme appears in Oxford Bodl. Ms 110, an early fifteenth-century English composite manuscript of 184 leaves containing a collection of medieval Latin works of Christian instruction and preaching. After a comparison of the paleographic features, I fit the owner, William Cleve, into the known provenance narrative of the Paris Apocalypse and find that his brief ownership of the book was in fact likely.