Two leaves including the start of Regula pastoralis in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [Southern France, late 12th century].

Gregory the Great (c.540-604)
Two leaves including the start of Regula pastoralis in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [Southern France, late 12th century].
A handsome Romanesque leaf from a collection of works by one of the Church Fathers.

Each leaf c. 310 × 210mm. Pricked in both margins, ruled in plummet, written in southern French script (with very unusual form of ‘x’) in 2 columns of 29 lines, with 20th-century foliation ‘12’ and ‘16’, the text comprising the end of Epistola 54 and beginning of the Regula pastoralis (‘sed libenter doceas […] Incipit liber regule pastoralis beati Gregorii pape […] Incipiunt capitula libri reguli pastoralis’) and part of chapters 26–28 (‘de alieno negocio requirendi sunt […] quia apud curam solli[citudinis]’), decorated with three large initials alternately in red with reserved designs and blue penwork, or vice versa, one incorporating a dragon emerging from a man’s mouth, another with a hybrid dragon creature (some mild cockling; the inner margin of one leaf cropped)

Provenance:
Colker MS 147; acquired in 1968 and 1971 from Maggs.

The text variously known as the Cura Pastoralis, Regula Pastoralis, or in English The Book of Pastoral Rule, was written by Gregory shortly after becoming pope in 590. It lays out the responsibilities of the clergy, and the standards that could be expected of them. It was immensely popular and influential, being translated into Greek at the behest of the Byzantine Emperor Maurice, and into Old English by Alfred the Great.

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