Low Countries.- Five leaves from a collection of the letters of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, including the Epistola Lugdunensis, manuscript on paper, text in Latin and Dutch translation, five leaves, each with single column of 35 lines of a late medieval bookhand, capitals touched in red, red rubrics and paraph marks, three large decorated initials in red, some stains, folds and small holes to paper in places, else in fair and legible condition, each leaf approximately 265 by 196mm, Low Countries (probably the Netherlands), [fifteenth century] (5)

*** Bernard of Clairvaux was perhaps the most important theologian and mystic of the twelfth century, who co-founded the Knight’s Templar and more famously through his reform of the Benedictines of Cîteaux, set in motion the monastic movement that became the Cistercian Order. The original parent manuscript of these leaves probably came from a Cistercian foundation in the Northern Netherlands.