The Provenance, Date, and Patron of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 308

Abstract

This article addresses fundamental questions about the exact provenance, purpose, and possible patron of the manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 308 (D308), starting from new syntheses of older scholarship, and proceeding to fresh hypotheses via additional new evidence. Such new evidence includes refinements to the identification of individuals named in the jeux-partis in D308, and the recognition of a previously unremarked piece of gilding in the manuscript’s copy of Jacques Bretel’s Le Tournoi de Chauvency, which seems to draw attention to a significant name. A Chiny/Lorraine wedding in 1313 is explored as a possible occasion for the manuscript’s commissioning. Ultimately, the manuscript exists among the significant relations between the noble Houses of Bar, Lorraine, and Chiny in the period between the conflict between France and Flanders that ended with the Treaty of Bruges in 1301, through the civil war in Metz in 1306–7, to the aftermath of Henry VII’s fatal imperial campaign in Italy.