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Detailed record for Harley 5557
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| Part 1 |
ff. 2-26v |
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| Title |
Menologion |
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| Origin |
Eastern Mediterranean |
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| Date |
14th century |
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| Language |
Greek |
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| Script |
Greek minuscule |
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| Decoration |
Initials in red. |
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| Dimensions in mm |
180 x 150 (125 x 95) |
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| Part 2 |
ff. 27-293 |
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| Title |
New Testament (ff. 27-293) |
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| Origin |
Eastern Mediterranean |
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| Date |
2nd half of the 12th century |
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| Language |
Greek |
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| Script |
Greek minuscule |
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| Decoration |
Headpieces with geometric and foliate decoration in colours and gold (ff. 97, 98, 105, 131, 159v, 206v, 216v, 226v, 234, 240, 246, 250v, 258v, 264v, 268v, 270). Title in display capitals in gold (f. 98). Zoomorphic initial in colours and gold (f. 118v). Decorated lines, large initials and rubrics in gold, now mostly lost and showing the red preparation. |
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| Dimensions in mm |
180 x 150 (130 x 95) |
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| Official foliation |
ff. 294 (ff. 1 and 294 are former paper pastedowns; + 4 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and the end, and one blank modern paper leaf after f. 16). |
| Form |
Parchment codex. |
| Binding |
Post-1600. 'Harleian' binding of gilt-tooled red morocco by Christopher Chapman; marbled endpapers; rebacked in 1893. |
| Provenance |
John Covel (b. 1638, d. 1722), chaplain of the Levant Company in Constantinople, 1670-1676, and later Master of Christ's College, Cambridge: owned in 1675 at Constantinople, his Greek manuscript XLIV; his inscription '3' (f. 2) and onwnership note (f. 27); sold, together with Covel's other manuscripts, to Edward Harley for £300 on 27 Feb. 1715/6 (Diary 1966; Wright 1972).
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 Cavendish, née 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 |
Fragments from a 14th-century manuscripts of the Psalms [(64(65):3-14 and 67(68):2-13)] used as former paper pastedowns (ff. 1, 294). |
| Select bibliography |
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), III (1808), no. 5557.
The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by Cyril E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), I: 1715-1723, pp. xxxiv-xxxvi; II: 1723-1726, p. 211 n. 1.
Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 113-17, 459.
Kurzgefasste Liste der griechischen Handschriften des neuen Testaments, ed. by Kurt Aland, Arbeiten zur neutestamentlichen Textforschung, 1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1994), no. 321.
Summary Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts (London: British Library, 1999- ), I, p. 109. |
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Part 2
ff. 27-293 |
| New Testament (ff. 27-293) |
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f. 234
Decorated headpiece |
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