Among the Libraries most frequently used collections by faculty and students is our superb collection of medieval and renaissance manuscripts, excellent sources for teaching medieval life and thought. Notable in our collection are several beautiful books of hours, compilations of prayers and texts intended for lay people, especially women, to follow and worship during the liturgical season.
Crispin 21 was copied after 1471, as Pope Sixtus IV is mentioned in an indulgence. This manuscript is composed of parchment leaves of beautifully calligraphed text, ornately decorated initials and pen work. The text includes a calendar of feasts, Hours of the Virgin, Long Hours and Short Hours of the Cross, Psalms, prayers, and the Office of the Dead. In the image below you can see that the binding is 15th century; the central image blind-stamped on both front and back is the Virgin and Child. The clasps are original as well. In the late 19th century the manuscript’s spine was rebacked in morocco by Zaehnsdorf, one of Europe’s notable fine custom binders, which you can see along the spine of the volume.
Pictured here are leaves 10-11, the beginning of the Hours of the Virgin:
The Crispin Collection of exquisite examples of early bookmaking and fine binding was given to Honnold Library by Dr. Egerton Crispin during the 1950s and early 1960s. Nearly fifty Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, including 12th century sermons, 13th century Bibles, 14th and 15th century books of hours, missals, psalters and antiphonals are among the contents of the Crispin Collection.
Denison Library on the Scripps College campus, and the library at the Claremont School of Theology also hold significant collections of medieval and renaissance manuscripts. These collections are cataloged definitively in Dutschke and Rouse, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Claremont Libraries (University of California Press, 1986), call number Z 6621 .H5814 1986