On the Beatitudes Leaf from William Perault (d.1271), Summa de virtutibus, C14th Germany

On the Beatitudes – Leaf from William Perault (d. 1271), Summa de virtutibus, in Latin, manuscript on parchment

Fragmentary leaf, c. 333 × 200 mm, nearly complete, with especially wide upper and lower margins, but the four corners cropped; ruled in ink with the 1st, 3rd, and 5th lines from the top, and the 1st and 3rd from the bottom, ruled the full width of the page; written in two columns of 37 lines in gothic script in very black ink, one rubric in red, paraphs alternately red or blue; the text beginning in the middle of the short section “Quare mundi corde sunt beati”, 13 lines before a section with the rubric “xii. Que faciunt ad commendationem mundice” and ending just before the beginning of the beginning of the section “De partibus munditie”, beginning and ending: “dicit. Glosa. id est Christum in maiestate … Si radix est sancta et rami. Duodecim”; recovered from use as a book-cover, with consequent creases, stains, small holes, etc., and one side darkened, but still almost entirely easily legible.

William/Guillaume Perault (Latinised as Guilelmus Peraldus), first wrote a treatise on vices and the deadly sins, and later a complementary book about virtues, the Summa de virtutibus; they typically circulated together as a single volume and were enormously popular, with hundreds of manuscripts (and many incunable editions) surviving.

The section on the beatitudes is divided into 12 parts, of which part 10 is De munditia cordis (Purity of the heart).