Month: May 2025

A manuscript from the “Abbey of the Red Valley” – Rookloster, Rooklooster, Rouge-Cloître, Rougeval, or Rubea Vallis?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In the electronic version of the Bollandist preface to the “Life” of St Botulf or Botolph, we find the following words about manuscripts used:

Eamdem Vitam olim Ioannes Capgravius, omisso Prologo redactam in compendium, Legendæ suæ inseruerat: & ejus partem potiorem jam pridem habebamus ex duplici Ms. altero Canonicorum Regularium Rubeæ-vallis prope Bruxellas, cujus ecgraphum curaverat Rosweidus: altero Coloniensi, unde aliud Bollando transmiserat Grothusius etiam noster.

The same Life was inserted into his Legenda by John Capgrave, omitting the prologue, and reduced to a compendium: and we had long had the more important part of it from two manuscripts, one of the Canons Regular of Rubeæ-vallis near Brussels, of which made a copy: the other from Cologne, from which another was transmitted by our own Grothusius to Bolland.

Here is the printed version:

In fact I was quite unable to find out where this might be, until a kind commenter came to my assistance.  I thought that a quick post with the varying names of this place might help others, googling hopelessly.

The Latin name of the place is “Rubea Vallis”.  So this refers to the canons regular of “Rubra Vallis”, the “Red Valley.”   But I have also seen “Rubra Vallis.”  There is another place of this name in Picardy in France, so it is correctly qualified as “proper Bruxellas”, “the one near Brussels”.

In literature in French the place seems to be  known usually as “Rouge-Cloître.”  But “Rougeval” is also used sometimes – i.e. “red valley” -, again qualified with “Brussels” to distinguish from Rougeval in France.

In Dutch the place seems to be known usually as “Rooklooster,” although the Wikipedia article also  gives “Roodklooster” or even “Rood klooster”.

In German the place seems to be referred to as “Rookloster” –  no doubt under the influence of German “Klöster”.   Thus we see “Rookloster bei Brüssel” here. This spelling also makes its way into articles in other languages.

This was an Augustinian Priory near Brussels, which was closed in 1782 by the reforming Austrian Emperor Joseph II.  The manuscripts ended up in the Austrian National Library, but with a few bumps along the way.

In fact there is a fascinating website about Rooklooster and its manuscripts: The Rooklooster Register unveiled.  From this I learn the following:

Rooklooster boasted an important library and an active scriptorium as a result of the many authors, copiists, miniaturists and binders that worked in the priory.

And:

When emperor Joseph II, ruler of the Austrian Netherlands, decreed the suppression of the monasteries of most contemplative monastic orders in 1783-1874, the Rooklooster Register and many other manuscripts ended up in the Chambre Héraldique (“Heraldic Chamber”) of Brussels.

When French revolutionaries occupied the Netherlands in 1792/94, the chairman of the Chambre Héraldique, Ch. J. Beydaels de Zittaert (†1811), took the codices of his society with him as he roamed around the Northern Netherlands and Germany. After his peregrination, he eventually offered them to emperor Franz I of Austria in 1803. Parts of the manuscripts ended up in the so-called Familien-Fideikommiss-Bibliothek, the personal library of the emperor.

Being a bibliophile himself, the emperor believed he had a right to the book collection. After Franz’ death in 1835, the manuscripts remained in the possession of the imperial family.

The Rooklooster Register was kept in the library as reference number 9373. A year after the Imperial and Royal Court Library of Vienna was transformed into the National Library in 1920, the manuscripts formed a Series nova, in which the Rooklooster Register was given the book number 12694.

So the first place to look for a Rooklooster manuscript is in Austria.  But …. this last bit of the article holds a trap for the unwary.  The shelfmark for these manuscripts is NOT “12345”, or “Ser. n. 12345” but “SN12345”.  If you don’t know this, you will search manuscripta.at in vain.

So where is our manuscript, after all that?  It is SN12814, online here, where it has the shelfmark Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (ÖNB), Cod. Ser. n. 12814, and the page states:Vorbesitzer: Rooklooster (Rougecloître) bei Brüssel!

Sanctilogium
Johannes, Gielemans, 1427-1487 [VerfasserIn]
Rooklooster bei Brüssel: 1470. – 273 x 208 mm. – Handschrift; I+231+I Bll.

Apparently there is a digitised microfilm available.  As ever, you have to know the trick in order to download it.

Once downloaded, it is worrying to find that it has only 239 pages.  For the Legendiers Latins entry says that Botulf is on “ff.960r-961r”.  Luckily there  is a table of contents at the front, with the saints in alphabetical order:

So what do these numbers refer to?  Well, it looks as if there are two sets of folio numbers.  At the top of PDF page 25, folio 21r, is the numbering “928”.  Clearly this manuscript has been rebound.  And in due course, on folio 63r (page 67 in the PDF) we find the Vita Sancti Botulfi.

Sadly the microfilm is not going to do my eyes any good.  But… we got there!

Phew, that was hard work!

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Editing the Latin text of the “Life” of St Botolph? Do I want to?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A couple of days ago, I completed a draft translation into English of the “Life” of St Botolph by Folcard of St Bertin.  So far, so good.  I made the translation from the 1701 text in the Acta Sanctorum (=AASS) for June 17th (in “June”, vol. 3), which is “annotated by Daniel Papebroch” – some careful phrasing there, which implies that he did not edit the text.

Since then I have started to look at the Latin text, and compare it with the 1672 text in the Acta Sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti,(=AASSOSB) by D’Achery and  Mabillon.  This is supposed to be a copy of the MS. Paris BNF lat. 13092, originally from S. Evroul in Normandy (S. Ebrulfi Uticensis).  I have a PDF of a rotten b/w microfilm of this.

Also at my disposal is another manuscript, acquired when I was looking at St Nicholas: MS British Library Harley 3097.  This is a modern colour reproduction, also in PDF, and a pleasure to use.

In fact, as I was writing this, I went to look at the list of manuscripts and saw that MS Cambridge Corpus Christi College, Parker Library, MS. 161, was listed – and I happen to know that the Parker Library are all online.  It took little time to locate that either, so I have just acquired another witness to the text.

Ms. Cambridge CCC Parker 161, ff. 61v-62r (excerpt)

Four more manuscripts are listed in my notes, all in England:

  • another MS in Cambridge, this time MS St John’s College 209;
  • MS Lincoln Cathedral Library 7, which won’t be online, but might be possible to visit and photograph, and where I might conceivably have a connection through a relative;
  • MS London, Gray’s Inn Library 3, owned by the legal profession.
  • MS British Library Cotton Tiberius E. 1, which was a copy of John of Tynemouth’s collection of saints’ lives, but partly destroyed by fire.

Finally there is a manuscript in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, fonds principale, ser. no. 12814, a very late 15th century.

The Bollandists used two more manuscripts, one from the “red valley” near Brussels, wherever that might be; and the other from Cologne.  These started at chapter 4, omitting the opening material which was mainly about St Adulph, Botolph’s cousin.  Where they might be now I do not know.  The Bollandist “Legendiers Latins” site, which replaces the BHLms, does not list them.

The English bias of the manuscripts is obvious, and unsurprising since the author, Folcard, was the abbot of Thorney Abbey in Cambridgeshire.

I have begun to collate the witnesses available to me.  This went reasonably well for the first three chapters, where the Bollandist editors only had Mabillon’s edition.

So in chapter 1, we had a single word attested differently, but only in the Harley MS.  In chapter 2 we had half a sentence missing from the Bollandist text, but found in all the others.  That looks bad: it can only be a copying mistake by the unknown Bollandist editor, who lost most of a line from the edition of d’Achery that he was copying.  Chapter 3 has one word different in the Bollandist text from all the other witnesses: presumably an emendation.

But chapter four, where the Bollandists have these MSS from the “red valley” and from Cologne… oh my!  There are slight word-order differences in various places, all of which make the text harder to understand.  Extra words are found, or not found.  The text is clearly somewhat different, although not enough to affect the meaning.  Exactly the same happens in chapter five.

The impression that I am getting is that these are not copyist variants on a common text.  This is a somewhat different recension of the text.

There are different recensions around.  There are two separate epitomes listed in the Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina.  The two Bollandist manuscripts certainly differ, in that they omit chapters 1-3.  It is, I think, defensible that they represent an edition, made on the continent, and somewhat altered by the editor.  If so, the English text will be more authentic.  Unfortunately, without access to either of the Bollandist manuscripts, it is hard to tell whether some of this is just the carelessness of the Bollandist editor, or whether this hypothesis is correct.

It is hard work, making a collation.  Do I want to do this?  Do I want to simply leave these textual issues alone, and issue a translation of the AASS text?  After all, I set out to make a translation, not grapple with the textual history.

Decisions, decisions.

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