Handschrift Vanden Stock. Hs. Brussel, KBR, II 116

The Vanden Stock Manuscript (Brussels, KBR, II 116) is a small fifteenth-century manuscript counting 39 leaves made of paper with eight different watermarks, and can be divided in three codicological units, all written by the same scribe in an idiosyncratic hand. An examination of this hand and its corrections in the margins suggests that all units were copied for private use. The first unit (f. 1-22) – which lacks the first and eighth leaves of the first quire, and therefore the beginning of the first text – contains three clusters of texts: first three lists (questions and answers, advice on table manners and an excerpt from Seghelijn van Jherusalem); second three texts on the final judgement (memento mori) and the apocalyptic events surrounding it (a.o. an excerpt from Lucidarius); third several groups of sayings in which religious topics are present but not the main focus. Another text about the finality of life (Van tijtverlies) closes this unit. The second unit (one bifolio: f. 23-24) contains another group of sayings. The third unit (f. 25-37) contains a verse translation of the seven penitentiary psalms. Only after it was decided that the three units should be bound together, the final bifolio (f. 38-39), containing a single text, was added to the codex. This text, a so-called abc-darium, is the only prescriptive text in the codex, stressing its overall function: a collection of texts containing useful information concerning everyday life and the afterlife. The name giver of this codex, Olivier vanden Stock, was a sixteenth-century owner of the manuscript who wrote his name in de lower margin of f. 5r.