Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms. Lat. 9584
This copy is on parchment in small folio, 29.4 × 22 cm., and contains twenty leaves bound up in the wrong order. It was made sometime in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, from the same model as that of the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Ms. 593, a model which lacked the text and pictures from Chapter XVI c and d, to XXIV a and b. Both copies are of Italian origin and contain the interrupted text and the date of 1324 in the Prohemium, which must be the date of the model, not of the copies.
At an unknown date Ms. lat. 9584 was divided in two, and the other portion is at Oxford. In the latter the text has been cut off and only the miniatures, in line and wash, remain. The two parts were reproduced together in a facsimile in 1926, and the presence of a miniature for Chapter XLV, from the Oxford portion, shows that the inscription of the complete manuscript was intended.[18]
II-4.
a. The Fall.
b. The Expulsion.
Speculum humanæ salvationis , Chapter II.
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Ms. lat. 9584, fol. 5 verso.
II-5.
c. Adam Tills, Eve Spins.
d. Noah's Ark.
Speculum humanæ salvationis , Chapter II.
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Ms. lat. 9584, fol. 6 recto.
The script is an Italian Gothic of the middle of the fourteenth century, and according to Bernard Berenson, the miniatures in pen and wash are Florentine from the last quarter of the century (figs. II-2, 3). He finds them the work of a miniaturist who had travelled widely and included, in his images, architecture with a Byzantine influence and armor in the French style. The clothing of persons in the mode of the day does not seem to appear in Tuscan art earlier than 1370, but it can clearly be seen in this manuscript (e.g. the angel in fig. II-4).
It is curious that in the miniature of Adam digging while Eve spins, a new baby is lying in a cradle beside Cain and Abel. Presumably the artist did not know that Seth was born long after the murder of Abel by Cain (fig. II-5).