Le Scriptorium de la Guilde
La Bibliothèque des Manuscrits
Explorez 54 notices de manuscrits et de livres historiques, avec références et attributions provisoires signalées.
The Luttrell Psalter
British Library, London
A richly illustrated English psalter made for Sir Geoffrey Luttrell. Its devotional text shares the page with scenes of rural work, animals and extraordinary hybrid creatures.
The Smithfield Decretals
British Library, London
A manuscript of the Decretals of Gregory IX with commentary: a collection of canon law. Its English marginal decoration includes elaborate animal stories, notably rabbits reversing the usual roles of hunter and hunted.
The Macclesfield Psalter
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
A small East Anglian psalter with inventive marginal scenes and hybrid creatures. It resurfaced in 2004 and was acquired by the Fitzwilliam Museum in 2005. Its original owner has not been securely identified.
The Gorleston Psalter
British Library, London
An East Anglian psalter whose decorated pages combine religious imagery, animals and marginal humour. Its name records an association with Gorleston; the original patron is uncertain.
The Rutland Psalter
British Library, London
An English psalter with plentiful marginal animals, hybrid figures, musicians and scenes of daily life. Many of its imagined creatures resist any precise identification.
Bodleian MS Bodl. 264 (The Romance of Alexander)
Bodleian Library, Oxford
A composite volume containing Alexander romances and later additions, including Marco Polo. The fourteenth-century Alexander section was illuminated by Jehan de Grise and his workshop; its margins include games, performers and animals.
The Aberdeen Bestiary
Aberdeen University Library
An English illustrated bestiary of about 1200, now University of Aberdeen MS 24. Animal lore is interpreted through Christian moral teaching. Its close relationship to the Ashmole Bestiary makes the two especially rewarding to compare.
The Ashmole Bestiary
Bodleian Library, Oxford
An early thirteenth-century English bestiary closely related to the Aberdeen manuscript. Its animal illustrations include cats on folio 35v. The proposed connection with Peterborough remains uncertain.
The Rochester Bestiary
British Library, London
An English Latin bestiary associated with Rochester, preserved as Royal MS 12 F XIII. It combines descriptions of animals with religious interpretation and illustrated animal narratives.
The Westminster Abbey Bestiary
Westminster Abbey Library, London
A late thirteenth-century English bestiary belonging to the Third Family of bestiary texts. Its illustrations include birds, serpents and composite beasts.
The Northumberland Bestiary
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
An English bestiary illustrated with coloured drawings. Its name comes from later ownership by the dukes of Northumberland, not an identified medieval commission. The Getty acquired it in 2007.
The Worksop Bestiary
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York
An English bestiary made about 1185, possibly in Lincoln or York, and later associated with Worksop Priory. Its illustrated animal lore offers an early example of the English bestiary tradition.
The Metz Psalter-Hours (MS 1588)
Bibliothèques-Médiathèques de Metz
Metz MS 1588 is a lavish psalter-hours associated with female lay devotion in the diocese of Metz. Its decorated borders include marginal figures and creatures. The precise identification of our cropped piper image remains under review.
The Hours of Joanna I of Castile
British Library, London
A Book of Hours for the Use of Rome made in Bruges for Joanna I of Castile. Its decoration includes portraits of Joanna, architectural frames and borders populated by flowers and small animals.
The Maastricht Hours
British Library, London
A devotional Book of Hours associated with the Liège region. Its margins contain animals, scenes from Reynard the Fox and apes imitating human activities.
The Hours of Catherine of Cleves
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York
A richly illuminated Book of Hours made around 1440 for Catherine of Cleves. The anonymous artist is known as the Master of Catherine of Cleves. Its unusually inventive borders reward close looking.
The Queen Mary Psalter
British Library, London
An early fourteenth-century English psalter named for its later owner, Mary I. A sequence of marginal bestiary pictures appears on folios 85v–130r, without an accompanying bestiary text.
The Belleville Breviary
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
A Parisian breviary associated with Jean Pucelle and his collaborators. A breviary contains the texts for the Divine Office. This work survives in two volumes, BnF Latin 10483 and 10484.
The Ormesby Psalter
Bodleian Library, Oxford
An English illuminated psalter associated with East Anglia and later given to Norwich Cathedral Priory by Robert de Ormesby. Its elaborate decoration includes animals and marginal figures.
De Arte Venandi cum Avibus ("The Art of Falconry")
Vatican Apostolic Library
Frederick II’s treatise on birds and falconry combines observation with practical instruction. Vatican Pal. lat. 1071 is an illustrated thirteenth-century copy associated with his son Manfred.
The Harley Bestiary
British Library, London
An English Second Family bestiary of the thirteenth century, sometimes associated with Salisbury. It brings together illustrated accounts of beasts, birds and serpents with Christian interpretation.
The Bern Physiologus
Burgerbibliothek Bern
A ninth-century illustrated Latin Physiologus preserved in Bern. It is an early witness to the tradition of reading animal stories as Christian allegories, which helped shape later bestiaries.
Roman Arthurien (BnF Fr. 95)
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
A northern French manuscript of Arthurian narratives, including the History of the Holy Grail and the History of Merlin. Its margins contain hunting scenes and hybrid figures. “Mignon” is our nickname, not a medieval species or manuscript title.
Oki Products Illustrations (attribution under review)
Japan (reported attribution)
A provisional record for Japanese natural-history imagery circulated as illustrations of Oki products dated 1735. This attribution has not yet been matched to an institutional catalogue record. If the circulated date is correct, the work is Edo-period and early modern, not medieval.
The Morgan Dioscorides (De Materia Medica)
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York
A mid-tenth-century manuscript of Dioscorides’ De materia medica made in Constantinople (modern Istanbul). This is a medical and natural-history work, rather than a Western moralized bestiary.
Book of Hours, Use of Rome (Morgan MS M.282)
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York
A Book of Hours made in Paris around 1460 for the Use of Rome. The Morgan attributes its miniatures to followers of the Master of Jean Rolin and the Master of the Munich Golden Legend.
The Verdun Breviary (Breviary of Renaud de Bar)
British Library, London
The winter portion of a breviary for the Use of Verdun, dated 1302–1303 and associated with Renaud de Bar. Its decoration includes elaborate marginal imagery.
The Bodley 764 Bestiary
Bodleian Library, Oxford
An illustrated Latin Second Family bestiary. This manuscript offers another English witness to the animal lore found in the Aberdeen and Ashmole traditions.
The Breslau Psalter (Psałterz wrocławski)
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge / Biblioteka Uniwersytecka we Wrocławiu
A monumental thirteenth-century illuminated psalter produced in Silesia. It is celebrated across Central European manuscript studies for its exceptionally vibrant and eccentric marginal droleries, aggressive hares, hybrid musicians, and satire.
The Nuremberg Chronicle (Liber Chronicarum)
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich
Hartmann Schedel's monumental illustrated biblical paraphrase and world history. Celebrated for its iconic woodcut folios depicting monstrous human races, Blemmyes, cynocephali, and mythical beasts.
The Hours of Saint-Omer
British Library, London
An extraordinarily playful northern French Book of Hours filled with bas-de-page scenes of animals mimicking humans, tournament hares, battling snails, and hybrid creatures.
The Taymouth Hours
British Library, London
An English Book of Hours with an almost unbroken sequence of lively marginal illustrations along the lower margins, featuring wild men, domestic beasts, combat hares, and romance legends.
The Peterborough Psalter
Bibliothèque royale de Belgique (KBR), Brussels
Commissioned by Abbot Godfrey of Crowland for Peterborough Abbey, this lavish psalter contains intricate border decorations filled with apes, predatory birds, and fantastical creatures.
The Romance of Fauvel
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
A scathing 14th-century French satirical allegory about Fauvel, an ambitious orange horse whose name forms an acronym of medieval vices, waited upon by Church and State in a world turned upside-down.
The St. Albans Psalter
Dombibliothek Hildesheim, Germany
One of the greatest surviving Romanesque English manuscripts, famous for its magnificent full-page miniatures and historiated initials populated by expressive beasts and serpents.
Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
Musée Condé, Chantilly
The pinnacle of Late International Gothic manuscript illumination created by the Limbourg brothers for John, Duke of Berry, celebrated for calendar landscapes, courtly hunts, and ornate margins.
The Hours of Marguerite d'Orléans
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
A Breton Book of Hours noted for its exuberant, densely crowded marginal droleries, containing hundreds of musicians, grotesque acrobats, and animal fables.
The Tickhill Psalter
New York Public Library
Produced and illuminated by Prior John Tickhill of Worksop Priory, featuring rich English Gothic interlace, heraldic beasts, and marginal sketches of domestic and forest creatures.
The Spiezer Chronik
Burgerbibliothek Bern
Diebold Schilling's magnificent Swiss illustrated chronicle, containing hundreds of hand-colored pen drawings of armies, bear heraldry, camp followers, and alpine beasts.
The Guta-Sintram Codex
Grand Séminaire de Strasbourg
A collaborative 12th-century Augustinian codex created by the canoness Guta of Schwarzenthann and the canon Sintram of Marbach, known for herbal drawings, bestiary entries, and astronomical diagrams.
The Breslau Psalter
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge / Biblioteka Uniwersytecka we Wrocławiu
An extraordinary 13th-century Central European illuminated psalter from Silesia, renowned for its dynamic, expressive droleries, hybrid creatures, musicians, and lively marginal grotesques battling across gold-leaf borders.
The Pontifical of Renaud de Bar
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
A monumental Gothic pontifical commissioned by Renaud de Bar, Bishop of Metz. Renowned internationally for its riotous bas-de-page marginal droleries, satire, and subversions.
The Pabenham-Clifford Hours
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
An exquisite English Gothic Book of Hours made for the marriage of Sir John de Pabenham and Joan Clifford. Created in the same East Anglian marginalia tradition as the Macclesfield and Luttrell Psalters.
Jean Corbechon, Livre des propriétés des choses
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
The French translation of Bartholomew the Englishman's 13th-century encyclopedia De proprietatibus rerum. Features dedicated books on animals, birds, fishes, and monsters.
The Pilkington Charter of Free Warren
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
A royal charter of King Edward I granting exclusive hunting rights to Sir Roger de Pilkington, uniquely decorated along the lower border with English sporting marginalia.
The Hours of Isabella Stuart
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
One of the most extensively illustrated Books of Hours in existence, illuminated by the Rohan Master workshop for Yolande of Aragon and later owned by Isabella Stuart of Scotland.
The Hours of Philip the Bold
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
The personal Grandes Heures of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Decorated with almost 200 miniatures and fine Parisian-Flemish Gothic marginal decoration.
The Primer of Claude of France
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
A deluxe manuscript ABC prayer book made for the five-year-old Princess Claude of France by command of her mother, Queen Anne of Brittany.
The Psalter-Hours of Isabelle of France
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Made for Isabelle of France, sister of Saint Louis. Masterpiece of thirteenth-century High Gothic Parisian court illumination.
Book of Hours (Fitzwilliam MS 1058-1975)
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Exuberant late Flemish illumination featuring trompe-l'œil strewn borders with hyper-realistic insects, birds, and animals cast against gold-ground margins.
The Missal of Cardinal Angelo Acciaiuoli
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
A monument of Florentine Renaissance and Late Gothic illumination featuring 66 historiated initials engulfed in lush foliage borders by the Master of the Golden Clouds.
Leaves from the Hours of Charles de Martigny
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Miniatures illuminated by royal court painter Jean Bourdichon for Charles de Martigny, Bishop of Elne and courtier of King Charles VIII.