Motets / Sampson and Benedictus de Opitiis. [notated music manuscript]

Title

Motets

Creator

Sampson and Benedictus de Opitiis.

Place of Publication/Creation

England

Type of Material

notated music manuscript

Date Created

1516

Issuance

monographic

Languages

Latin.

Physical Description

Parchment codex, ff. 17 (+ 2 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and at the end, f. 1 is a medieval parchment flyleaf) ; 495 x 345 mm. (390 x 260 mm.)

Table of Contents

Contains Motets by Richard Sampson, bishop of Chichester 1536, of Coventry and Lichfield 1543-1554, and Benedictus de Opitiis, preceded by a hymn in honour of Henry VIII, with musical notation.

Notes

Script: Gothic cursive.

Decoration: 1 half-page miniature in colours and gold of the Tudor rose (f. 2). 2 miniatures in colours and gold of red roses of Lancaster surrounded by couplets with music inscribed on two circular staves (ff. 2v, 3). 1 historiated initial in colours and gold of the Virgin and Child (f. 10v). Illuminated initials in gold on coloured grounds, some with red roses. Calligraphic initials.

Ownership

Petrus de Opitiis, Flemish merchant of Italian origin, prepared under his supervision for Henry VIII: inscribed 'Me fieri et componi fecit P. O. 1516' (f. 1v); includes a motet by his son, Benedictus de Opitiis, mentioned in royal accounts as 'player at organs' of the king in 1516-1522 (see Backhouse 1993). Henry VIII (b. 1491, d. 1547), king of England and Ireland, presented to him: allegorical miniature of the Tudor rose incorporating a Latin poem celebrating the House of Tudor, with banners of the royal arms of England, George and Castile, with a plant of pomegranate for his wife, Katherine of Aragon (b. 1485, d. 1536), daisies for his sister, Margaret of Scotland, and marigolds for his sister, Mary of France (f. 2). Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library.

Publications

George F. Warner and Julius P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections, 4 vols (London: British Museum, 1921), I, p. 260; Anglo-Flemish Art under the Tudors: An Exhibition held in the Department of Prints and Drawings (London: British Museum, 1954), no. 25; A. Dunning, Die Staatsmotette 1480-1555 (Utrecht, 1970), pp. 122-23; Andrew G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 700-1600 in The Department of Manuscripts: The British Library, 2 vols (London: British Library, 1979), I, no. 887; Arthur Searle, Music Manuscripts (London: British Library, 1987), pp. 2-3; Arthur Searle, A Canon in Honour of Henry VIII, A.D. 1516 (London: Pleiades Folios, 1990) [facsimile]; Janet Backhouse, 'A Salute to the Tudor Rose', in Miscellanea Martin Wittek: Album de codicologie et de paléographie offert à Martin Wittek, ed. by Anny Raman and Eugène Manning (Louvain: Peeters, 1993), pp. 1-13 (pp. 1-13, figs. 1, 2); Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting in the British Library (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), no. 206; Scot McKendrick, Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts 1400-1550 (London: British Library, 2003), pl. 111; James P. Carley, The Books of King Henry VIII and His Wives, preface by David Starkey (London: British Library, 2004), pl. 104; Joe Flatman, Ships and Shipping in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2009), pl. 4; Henry VIII: Man and Monarch, ed. by Susan Doran (London: British Library, 2009), no. 98 [exhibition catalogue]; Music for King Henry: BL Royal MS II E XI, ed. by David Skinner, with commentary by Nicolas Bell, 2 vols. (London: The Folio Society, 2009) [facsimile].

Electronic resource

http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=7527

Repository

British Library

Last Updated: 10-19-2010