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Detailed record for Harley 2737
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| Part 1 |
ff. 1-103 |
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| Author |
Ovid |
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| Title |
Metamorphoses, imperfect |
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| Origin |
Germany |
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| Date |
Last quarter of the 12th century or 1st quarter of the 13th century |
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| Language |
Latin |
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| Script |
Protogothic, written above top line |
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| Decoration |
Large initial and red and brown ink with penwork decoration in the same colours (f. 104). Large initials in red, some with pen-flourishing in the same colour (ff. 1, 7v, 13, 19v, 26v, 32v, 39, 46v, 54v, 60v, 74, 95v, 110v). Initial in brown with penwork decoration in brown and red (f. 79v). Partly effaced drawing of a man in brown ink in the lower margin (f. 50). |
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| Dimensions in mm |
225 x 100 (185 x 60) (ff. 1-103) |
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| Part 2 |
ff. 104-118 |
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| Author |
Ovid |
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| Title |
Excerpts from Fasti, Book I (ff. 104-115v) followed by a calendar for January (ff. 110r-v); calendar for March-June (ff. 116-117); ending with notes on Ovid |
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| Origin |
France |
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| Date |
1st half of the 13th century |
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| Language |
Latin |
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| Script |
Protogothic, written above top line |
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| Decoration |
Large initial in red (f. 110v). |
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| Dimensions in mm |
210 x 95 (175 x 50) |
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| Official foliation |
ff. i + 118 (+ 1 unfoliated paper flyleaf at the beginning + 1 unfoliated parchment flyleaf and 1 unfoliated paper flyleaf at the end) |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
Post-1600. 'Harleian' binding of gold-tooled red leather (restored); marbled endpapers. |
| Provenance |
Inscribed 'NICOLAI DE ?RICIIS', medieval (f. 118v; now faded but transcribed by Gilson in Slater 1927).
Numerous annotations in a 14th-century Italian hand.
Added inscriptions, medieval and post-medieval (ff. 103r-v).
Conyers Middleton (b. 1683, d. 1750), Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1706, head librarian of the University Library at Cambridge (1721-50), head librarian of the University Library at Cambridge (1721-50); sold on 25 February 1724/5 to Edward Harley (Wright 1972; Diary 1966).
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, inscribed as usual by their librarian, Humfrey Wanley ‘25 die Februarij, A.D. 1724/5’ (f. 1).
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 |
f. i is a parchment flyleaf. f. 118 is an unwritten flyleaf.
2 leaves missing after f. 11, 1 after f. 59 (see Munari 1957).
Some outer margins have been excised.
Quire marks. |
| Select bibliography |
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), II (1808), no. 2737.
D. A. Slater, Towards a Text of the Metamorphoses of Ovid (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1927), p. 37.
Hilda Buttenwieser, 'Manuscripts of Ovid's Fasti: the Ovidian Tradition in the Middle Ages', Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 71 (1940), 45-51 (p. 46).
Franco Munari, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Supplement 4 (London: University of London Institute of Classical Studies, 1957), no. 168.
The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by Cyril Ernest Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), II: 1723-1726, p. 343 n. 5.
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. 239.
E. H. Alton, D. E. W. Wormell, E. Courtney, 'A Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Ovid's Fasti', London University Institute of Classical Studies Bulletin, 24 (1977), 37-63 (p. 47).
B. Munk Olsen, L’Étude des auteurs classiques latins aux XIe et XIIe siècles, 3 vols (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1982-1989), I (1982), pp. 211-13 no. C. 245; II (1985), p. 145, no. C. 69. |
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Part 1
ff. 1-103 |
| Ovid Metamorphoses, imperfect |
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