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Detailed record for Harley 3076
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| Author |
Gregory the Great |
| Title |
Dialogi (ff. 2-108), followed by shorter texts (ff. 108v-109) |
| Origin |
Germany, W. (Arnstein) |
| Date |
2nd or 3rd quarter of the 12th century |
| Language |
Latin |
| Script |
Protogothic |
| Scribe |
Cunradus |
| Decoration |
2 large initials, outlined in red, with clasps, foliate motifs and dragons, for books 1 and 4 (ff. 2, 75v). Smaller initials in red, with some penwork decoration. Names ('Petrus' and 'Gregorius') in red. |
| Dimensions in mm |
245 x 160 (190 x 115) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 109 (+ 4 paper flyleaves at the beginning and 4 at the end - all unfoliated; f. 1 is a contemporary parchment flyleaf) |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
BM/BL in-house. Rebound in 1965; blind- and gold-tooled dark brown leather of previous binding pasted on inside covers; fragment of title plate from previous spine pasted on recto of first paper flyleaf at front. |
| Provenance |
Written by Cunradus at the Premonstratensian abbey of St Mary and St Nicholas, Arnstein, founded in 1139: inscribed with 'Liber dialogorum sancte Marie sanctique Nicolai in arnestein / quem scripsit Cunradus quidam canonicus ibidem' (f. 1, partly re-written in darker ink; for the scribe see Krings 1990, p. 248 n 75); recorded in 13th-century library catalogue as 'Dialogus' (see Krings 1990).
Nathaniel Noel (fl. 1681, d. c. 1753), bookseller, employed by Edward Harley for buying books and manuscripts chiefly on the Continent, where his agent was George Suttie (see 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, inscribed as usual by their librarian, Humfrey Wanley ‘16 die Ianuarij, A.D. 1720/21’ (f. 1); on 9 January 1720/21 Harley went to Noel and selected this and other manuscripts which Noel had 'lately brought from Germany'. The manuscripts arrived on 16 January 1720/21 (see Diary 1966).
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 |
Quire marks; ampersands; ae-caudatas. |
| Select bibliography |
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), II, 3076.
A. Kohl, 'Arnsteiner Handschriften im Britischen Museum zu London', Nassovia. Zeitschrift für nassauische Geschichte und Heimatkunde, 4 (1903), 106-08,120-21,133-34 (p. 121).
C. E. Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 53, 254.
The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by C. E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), I: 1715-1723, p. 81 n. 18.
Sigrid Krämer, Handschriftenerbe des deutschen Mittelalters, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge Deutschlands und der Schweiz: Ergänzungsband 1, 3 vols (Munich, 1989-90), I (1989), p. 26.
Bruno Krings, Das Prämonstratenserstift Arnstein a. d. Lahn im Mittelalter (1139-1527) (Wiesbaden: Selbstverlag der Historischen Kommission für Nassau, 1990), pp. 247-48 (no. 19). |
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f. 2
Decorated initial |
f. 27v
Red initials |
f. 90
Red initials |
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