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Detailed record for Harley 4980
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| ff. 1-2v |
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| Author |
Augustine |
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| Title |
Fragment of a copy of De civitate dei (The City of God) |
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| ff. 3-75 |
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| Author |
Bede |
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| Title |
Various religious texts, including Bede's Commentary on Acts |
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| ff. 76-143 |
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| Author |
Alcuin |
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| Title |
Alcuin's De Trinitate and other works, and Latin verses and a letter addressed to Eulalia (i.e. Gundrada, cousin of Charlemagne), imperfect at the end |
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| Origin |
France, N. E. (Corbie ) |
| Date |
c. 800 |
| Language |
Latin |
| Script |
AB Corbie minuscule |
| Decoration |
No significant decorative features. |
| Dimensions in mm |
240 x 175 (190 x 140) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 143 (+ 4 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and at the end) |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
BM/BL in-house. Rebound in 1964. |
| Provenance |
The cathedral church of St Nazaire, Carcassone: its ownership inscription, 'Iste liber est ecclesie sancti Nazarii Carcassonnensis. Quicunque eum furatus fuerit vel alienaverit vel hunc titulum deleverit, anathema sit' (f. 3).
The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts.
Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta, née Cavendish Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d. 1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library. |
| Notes |
Ruled in hardpoint.
Quire signature: VII (f. 2v).
Lasitner (1936) argues that 'textual and orthographic peculiarities' in this copy of Bede's Commentary on Acts are due to the fact that the scribes copied a Visigothic exemplar. |
| Select bibliography |
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), III (1808), no. 4980.
[E. Maunde Thompson and G. F. Warner], Catalogue of Ancient Manuscripts in the British Museum, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1881-1884), Part II Latin, p. 52.
Wilhelm Köhler, 'Die Karolingishen Miniaturen', in Zweiter Bericht über die Denkmäler Deutscher Kunst (Berlin: Reimer, 1912), pp. 52-77 (p. 58).
Codices Latini Antiquiores, ed. by E. A. Lowe, 11 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934-1966), II: Great Britain and Ireland (1935), no. 201.
M. L. W. Laistner, 'The Spanish Archetype of MS Harley 4980 (Bede's Exposition of Acts)', Journal of Theological Studies, 37 (1936), 132-37.
Patrick McGurk, 'Citation Marks in Early Latin Manuscripts', Scriptorium: Revue internationale des Études relatives aux manuscrits, 15 (1961), 3-13 (p. 10) [mention of ff. 1-2].
H. Rochais, 'Fragments du "De civitate Dei": Bibliothèque de l'Institut Catholique de Paris (ms latin 55, VIes.), Revue des Études Augustiniennes, 17 (1971), 293-98.
Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), p. 96.
Pierre Salmon, 'Livrets de prières de l'epoque carolingienne', Revue bénédictine, 86 (1976), 218-34.
David Ganz, Corbie in the Carolingian Renaissance, Beihefte der Francia, 20 (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1990), p. 50.
E. Ann Matter, 'A Carolingian Schoolbook? The Manuscript Tradition of Alcuin's De Fide and Related Treatises', in The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany, ed. by Stephen Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 145-52.
Paul E. Szarmach, 'A Preface, Mainly Textual, to Alcuin's De Ratione Animae', The Man of Many Devices who Wandered Full Many Ways: Festschrift in honour of Ja´nos M. Bak, ed. by Bala´zs Nagy and Marcell Sebok (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), pp. 397-408 (p. 404).
Berhard Bischoff, Katalog der festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts (mit Ausnahme der wisigotischen) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998-), II (2004): Laon-Paderborn, ed. by Birgit Ebersperger, p. 122. |
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ff. 76-143 |
| Alcuin Alcuin's De Trinitate and other works, and Latin verses and a letter addressed to Eulalia (i.e. Gundrada, cousin of Charlemagne), imperfect at the end |
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