Raymund de Peñafort presenting his book to a Dominican
MS Add.3471, f. 11r
Raymund de Peñafort, Summa de casibus penitentiae et matrimoniae
East Anglia, Cambridge?, ca 1240–1250

This copy of Raymund’s Summa de casibus also contains a short Summa as a pastoral manual for confessors by Richard of Wetheringsett, the first recorded chancellor of Cambridge University (ca 1222– ca 1232). The figure style of the artist’s work can be paralleled in a Psalter, London, BL MS Lansdowne 431, made for an East Anglian house of Augustinian canons, and a Bible, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Auct. D.4.8, which later in the thirteenth century belonged to the Benedictines of Norwich Cathedral Priory. This copy of Raymund’s work seems fairly certainly to have been made in East Anglia and possibly even in Cambridge in view of it containing Richard of Wetheringsett’s Summa. It is the first illuminated book that can perhaps be considered as written in the new university city. The Dominicans were established in Cambridge in 1238 and presumably would soon have acquired a copy of Raymund’s Summa de casibus completed by 1235. The initial at the beginning shows Raymund presenting his book to a Dominican with the artist using dark blue rather than black for their cloaks. Blue is sometimes used as an alternative colour for the black habits of Benedictines.