Manuscript Prayerbook (3 results)
More imagesPublished by [Ravensburg?, ca. 1670]., 1670
- Hardcover
- Manuscript / Paper Collectible
Seller: Antiquariat INLIBRIS Gilhofer Nfg. GmbH, Vienna, A, AustriaAntiquariat INLIBRIS Gilhofer Nfg. GmbH
Contact seller5-star sellerCondition: Used
£ 7,522.75
£ 25.78 shippingShips from Austria to U.S.A.Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketSmall 16mo (85 x 100 mm). (423), (3 blank) pp. German manuscript in red and black ink on paper, written in an upright, semi-cursive gothic hand, with Lombardic initials in red, rubricated throughout. Contemporary blind-tooled pigskin over bevelled wooden boards, 2 strap fastenings with brass clasps. A charming, pocket-sized Cath…olic manuscript prayerbook in German, written in red and black, bound in contemporary blind-tooled pigskin, both manuscript and binding probably the work of a monastery in Ravensburg or the surrounding region. - The manuscript begins with prayers to the Virgin Mary on 19 leaves (a1-c3) and continues with three series of rosary prayers on 47 leaves (c3-i1), further prayers to the Virgin Mary on 28 leaves (i1-m4), prayers for various days from Palm Sunday to Easter on 18 leaves (m4-o5), prayers for the 24 hours on 56 leaves (o5-x4), further rosary prayers in five parts on 21 leaves (x4-z8), the litany of all saints on 20 leaves (z8-2c3), and the litany of specific saints, including St Augustine, on 10 leaves (2c3-2d4). - The manuscript is very regular in its structure, only a few blank leaves have been removed: the final quire used for the prayerbook text itself ends with a blank leaf, followed by stubs of 3 leaves that have been torn out. The quires that contain the text of the prayerbook collate: [a]-[2c]8 [2d]8 (- 2d6, 7, 8) = [212], [1 blank] ff. The 17th century binder trimmed most of the quire signatures (quire a probably had none), but on the first leaf of a few quires one can see the top of the letter that was shaved (confirming the collation): i, k, r, s. The top of some letter or mark, also shaved, can be seen in the same position on c3, f2 and 2d1-4, but it is not clear what they are. The endpapers appear to have been a quire of four leaves at the front and a quire of six leaves at the back, probably each with its first leaf removed and the outermost remaining leaf pasted down. - The paper is almost certainly of foolscap size, nearly all watermarked with the Ravensburg coat of arms (a castle represented as a gate between two towers, standing upon a corbel). The gate in the present watermarks probably has a door under a peaked roof, rather than a portcullis, but this and the initial(s) or other sign in the corbel are difficult to make out because each watermark is divided between four leaves with the central parts lost in trimming. The crenellated battlement of each tower is rounded, has three merlons, and sits directly on a rounded slab, the battlement having no narrower neck leading to the slab. Each tower has one window, connected to the wall on the gate side by (in most cases) two diagonal wires that form a triangle with the wall as its base and the point touching the window. We have not found an example in the literature with this triangular link, but otherwise the present watermarks resemble many from the period 1655 to 1675 (Piccard III, group IX, 171-186 & 253-259, plus many scattered throughout group VIII). Those in quires a, f and probably b and g have two initials (probably "HL") flanking the corbel; the literature shows no initials in that position before 1666. This suggests that the manuscript was probably produced in the period ca. 1665 to ca. 1675. One Ravensburg castle mark in WZIS has an HL monogram in the corbel, but not the initials flanking it, and the style of the castle is completely different: it is not clear whether it dates from 1666 or between 1686 and 1700. Not surprisingly, Ravensburg castle watermarks appear most frequently in Ravensburg (in Upper Swabia, just north of Lake Constance), but also in the vicinity (Konstanz, Weingarten, Salem, Überlingen); they are rare elsewhere. - The endpapers were probably made from one of the paper stocks used for the manuscript itself (one leaf shows one side of the foot of the Ravensburg castle watermark, with no initials flanking the corbel), suggesting that the production of the manuscript and its binding were closely tied, perh.
More imagesPublished by Quanzhou,, 1582
Seller: ASHER Rare Books, t Goy Houten, NetherlandsASHER Rare Books
Contact seller5-star sellerCondition: Used
£ 30,976.02
£ 21.48 shippingShips from Netherlands to U.S.A.Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketA fascinating example of Chinese Muslim calligraphy and manuscript culture, with prayers in praise of Mohammed written out in the distinctive Sini script used by Muslim populations in China for hundreds of years, here accompanied by extensive glossing in the particularly Chinese-Muslim xiao'erjing (or xiaojing) script. The latte…r is adapted from the Arabic alphabet - with a few Persian borrowings - and used to write out various dialects of Chinese phonetically. It appears here in interlinear and sometimes even in uncommon, vertically-written marginal glosses of the text. Because xiaojing is famously flexible in adapting to various local Chinese dialects at various points in history, xiaojing manuscript survivals such as this one may serve an historical linguistic purpose: "An in-depth study of xiaojing transliterations carried out with the help of linguists while especially taking into account the unusual graph features may help to reconstruct the Chinese language spoken at the time under scrutiny" (Sobieroj, p. 182) - For a prayerbook, or indeed many sacred manuscripts such as the Qur'an, the use of xiaojing glosses was a growing manuscript tradition in 16th century China: - "A reform of the Muslim educational system in China took place in the 16th century, when the gedimu (< qadam "old") system of mosque schools with Koranic recitation under an ahong (= 'imam), was replaced by the jingtang jiaoyu "scripture hall education", in which Arabic was used pronounced with Chinese sounds, e.g., salam as sa liang mu. In this education a systematic alphabetic representation of Chinese with Arabic letters (xiaojing) was developed, which is still used irregularly by Chinese Muslims" (Versteegh, p. 498). Through dated Safar 990 Hijri (September 1582) on the colophon, this copy may in fact be a later 18th-century copy of a 16th-century text. However, if indeed a 16th-century original it would be one of the earliest extant manuscript examples of xiaojing glosses. Regardless, it is a rare and valuable example of Sino-Arabic manuscript tradition, and the Muslim history of China.Light exterior wear, binding a touch delicate.l Florian Sobieroj, "Standardisation in Manuscripts written in Sino-Arabic Scripts and xiaojing". In: Creating Standards. Interactions with Arabic script in 12 manuscript cultures, ed. by Dmitry Bondarev, Alessandro Gori & Lameen Souag (Berlin & Boston, 2019), pp. 177-216. Kees Versteegh, Arabica, Vol. 48.4, Linguistique Arabe: Sociolinguistique et Histoire de la Langue (2001), pp. 470-508. 18th-century cloth and paper wrappers. Arabic manuscript on paper. Black sini script in nine lines with red verse markers, titles in red, glossing in black. With beautifully illuminated full-page 'Unwan with Chinese influence on designs, in gold, blue, red, green, and black. Pages: 46 ll.
More imagesPublished by [Ravensburg?],, 1670
Seller: ASHER Rare Books, t Goy Houten, NetherlandsASHER Rare Books
Contact seller5-star sellerCondition: Used
£ 7,522.75
£ 21.48 shippingShips from Netherlands to U.S.A.Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketA charming little 16mo Catholic manuscript prayerbook in German, written in red and black on paper in a contemporary blind-tooled pigskin binding, the manuscript and binding probably made in a monastery in Ravensburg or the surrounding region. It begins with prayers to the Virgin Mary on 19 leaves (a1-c3) and continues with thre…e series of rosary prayers on 47 leaves (c3-i1), further prayers to the Virgin Mary on 28 leaves (i1-m4), prayers for various days from Palm Sunday to Easter on 18 leaves (m4-o5), prayers for the twenty-four hours on 56 leaves (o5-x4), further rosary prayers in five parts on 21 leaves (x4-z8), the litany of all saints on 20 leaves (z8-2c3) and the litany of specific saints, including Augustine, on 10 leaves (2c3-2d4).The manuscript is very regular in its structure, except that a few blank leaves have been removed.One or more early owners of the present manuscript have written 6 pages of further prayers on the endpapers (2 at the front and 4 at the back), most in a single contemporary hand, including "ein gebeid der Reponsori deß H: Bonaventura ."; "So du nun mirackel suchst der Godt ."; "Wo man alle nacht mit Jesu schlaffe soll, ."; "Fünff vögelen singen, daß es in den Rainen ." (five songs, numbered 1 to 5). There is also a 2-line inscription on the back paste-down. Parts of the front paste-down, which probably contained an owner's inscription, have been removed or defaced, but one can still see bits of an early inscription. The manuscript shows some minor and mostly marginal foxing, a hole in l6 and 7, a small marginal tear in l8 and insignificant ones in a few other leaves, but it remains in good condition. The binding has a hole in the pigskin covering the spine, along one of the supports, is slightly soiled and most of the blue colouring of the edges of the leaves is lost. The centrepiece on the front board does not appear to be worn, but its image (probably the Virgin Mary or a female saint) is nevertheless difficult to make out: perhaps the binder did not impress it strongly. The binding also remains in good condition. Contemporary blind-tooled pigskin over bevelled wooden (beechwood?) boards, sewn on 3 double supports, each board with a double rectangular frame of multiple fillets, the inner frame with an oval centrepiece stamp (32 x 22 mm: the front with a female figure (the Virgin Mary or a saint?) in a decorative border; the back divided by 2 diagonal double lines and 4 diagonal double arcs into 4 inner and 8 outer fields, each filled with arabesque decorations, the outer fields darkened so that the inner fields form a lighter lozenge with concaved sides), an arabesque stamp inside each corner of the inner frame and a decorative border between the inner and outer frames built up from at least 2 straight branches with leaves and at least 4 rosettes (5, 6 and 7 petalled), fillets on spine and turn-ins. In total more than 100 impressions of about 9 stamps. Further with 2 strap fastenings with brass clasps (each with an owner's(?) stamp: 1.5 mm roman capital initials "LH" above a 3 mm head in profile, facing right), catchplates and anchor plates, plain headbands, blue edges. With 27 mm roman capital initials "BR" in brown ink on the foot edge. German manuscript in red and black ink on paper, written in an upright, semi-cursive gothic hand, with so-called lombardic initials in red (a few 2-line and hundreds of 1-line), rubricated throughout. With 11 lines per page, text block 7 x 5.5 cm. Pages: [423], [3 blank] pp. plus 3 endleaves at the front and 5 at the back. Small 16mo in 8s (10 x 8.5 x 4 cm; leaf: 9 x 7.5 cm).
