Bound in parchment, this Premonstratensian ordinary was copied on paper, probably in the 16th century. It begins with a short prologue (Br), followed by a table of contents (Br-Cv). Next is the text of the ordinary, which corresponds to the edition of Pl. F. Lefèvre (L'ordinaire prémontré d'après des manuscrits du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle, Louvain, 1940). Several notes of ownership allow us to reconstruct the work's route. According to a signature dated 1610 (Br), it belonged to the Bellelay canon and prior of la Porte-Du-Ciel, Jean Grosjean de Porrentruy († 1617). In the 19th century it was successively owned by Father Grégoire Voirol - Recuperavit ao 1802, G. Voirol, ? - , by P. Migy - ex-libris P. Migy, parochi Bruntruti, 1809, and then by L. Vautrey, par. Delemont (pastedown). (rer)

Online Since: 06/14/2018

Begun in 1620 by Jean Henri Vest when he was living in Freiburg-im-Breisgau (p. 1), this collection was originally conceived as a Stammbuch (family book) recording the genealogy and the marriages of the Vest family, with corresponding coats of arms. The enlarged coat of arms granted honorifically by Emperor Rudolph II in 1582 to the Count Palatine Jean Vest, father of Jean Henri, is repeated many times. Humbert Henri Vest brought the collection to Porrentruy in 1667; after the marriage of his daughter, Marie Hélène Vest (1693-1761), the last member of the local branch of the family, to Fréderic François Ignace Xavier Grandvillers (1690-1727) in 1716, the collection passed into the hands of the Grandvillers family. The Grandvillers added their coat of arms and those of related families (pp. 51-85 and 138-139, etc.). Born and died in Delémont, the lawyer Conrad de Grandvillers (1813-1880), great-great-grandson of Marie Hélène Vest, and the last to carry the name, was the last of his family to possess this volume, as the signature “de Grandvillers avocat” indicates (p. 1). Perhaps he is the one who, in the nineteenth century, added some other coats of arms without a family connection (pp. 277-281), possibly with the idea of transforming the volume into a liber amicorum or, more broadly, into an Armorial jurassien, as stated in the title added on the binding, probably in the nineteenth century. The fact that some coats-of-arms connected to the Vest family have been cut out and glued on other pages (pp. 89-95) suggests a major working of the volume at an unknown date. (ver)

Online Since: 09/06/2023

According to the preface (pp. 5-8), the Jesuit François-Humbert Voisard (1749-1818) wrote the Abrégé as the first history in French of the bishops of Basel and dedicated it to his students. Entirely focused on the ecclesiastical history of Basel and Porrentruy, the text's structure reveals its pedagogic nature: a short question introduces each chapter, and the text that immediately follows provides a more or less lengthy reply to the question. According to Gustave Amweg's Bibliographie du Jura bernois, Voisard's Abrégé survives in five copies and has not been published to this day. This manuscript has been corrected, annotated, and ends with an index of the bishops and the clerical institutions of the Basel episcopacy (pp. 459-460). Ownership notes inscribed on the front pastedown document its provenance: “Ce livre appartient à Henri Joliat, étudiant en rhétorique. Porrentruy, le 3 mai 1819 / Et / Schwartzlin Père / et /à l'abbé Vautrey à qui il a été remis par M. l'abbé Marquis en 1813”. (rou)

Online Since: 12/14/2022