Thu, 09 Jan 2025 13:13:26 GMT

I'm a bit skeptical about the idea of cursed manuscripts, but if there are any, Valenciennes BM 792 is a strong contender. Judge for yourself:

In 1860 and 1894, French librarians described the manuscript, but they failed to notice it contained a unique copy of the Gesta Stephani (even though the text had been published in 1619 by André Duchesne and reprinted later).

In the early 1950s, R.A.B. Minors, preparing a new edition of William of Malmesbury's Gesta regum Anglorum, identified the Gesta Stephani but didn't quite accurately establish the type of William of Malmesbury's text in the manuscript.

In the 1980s, Julia Crick, in her Herculean catalogue of Geoffrey of Monmouth's manuscripts, described the manuscript in some detail but, incredibly, failed to identify the Gesta Stephani, listing it as an unknown anonymous text.

As a result, the first fully adequate description of the manuscript was made only by Clara Wille in her publication of Explanatio in Prophetia Merlini Ambrosii by Alanus Flandrensis (2015).

But the misadventures didn't end there. The manuscript was completely digitized as part of the Bibliothèque numérique de l'IRHT project, but due to errors in the existing foliation, an accident occurred. The image of fol. 75bisr is missing, and instead, the image of fol. 76r appears. This has compromised the order and numbering of the following images.

The manuscript itself, however, is an extremely interesting collection of historical materials, collected at the beginning of the 14th century in the Flemish abbey of Vicoigne, and deserves much more attention than it has received so far.

The link:https://arca.irht.cnrs.fr/ark:/63955/md429880z31h