Pronosticque historial de la félicité future de l’an mil cincq cens et douze (Exemplified Foretelling of the Future Joy of the Year Fifteen-Hundred-and-Twelve)

Pronosticque historial de la félicité future de l’an mil cincq cens et douze (Exemplified Foretelling of the Future Joy of the Year Fifteen-Hundred-and-Twelve)

The Walloon poet and historiographer Jean Lemaire de Belges (ca. 1473–ca. 1525), wrote this autograph copy of a unique text produced for the Queen of France, Anne of Brittany (1477–1514). This copy is likely the sole surviving exemplar of this unpublished and unknown work. Anne, to whom the work is dedicated, was an extraordinary political leader and a great patroness of the arts. She has the distinction of being the only French sovereign to have been twice crowned, first as the wife of King Charles VIII and then, after his sudden death in 1498, as the consort of Charles’s successor and second cousin once removed, Louis XII. The first page opening includes the year in Roman numerals as well as the queen’s Castilian motto “NON MUDERA,” which she inherited from her Spanish mother.

Scribe: Jean Lemaire de Belges

January 1512

Manuscript on parchment, 16 fols., 188 × 126 mm (written area: 133 × 80 mm; bound to 195 × 134 mm) Binding: 18th- or 19th-c. red calf, gilt tooled and blind stamped

The Rosenbach Museum and Library, MS 232/11

Paris, France