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Detailed record for Harley 941
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| Author |
Honorius Augustodunensis , John Lydgate, Johannes de Sacro Bosco , Heinrich von Langenstein |
| Title |
A literary and scientific miscellany, including the third version of the Latin Brut Chronicle of England (ff. 1-3v); Honorius's 'Imago mundi' (ff. 6-21); 'On the Times', a rhymed macaronic complaint lyric (ff. 21v-23v); Lydgate's 'Dietary' (ff. 24-25); Sacro Bosco's 'Tractatus de sphaera' (ff. 30-49v); Langenstein's 'Expositio terminorum astronomiae' (ff. 51-58, 58-61v); Decembrius's 'Liber de Historia peregrina', Book 1, 'Cosmographia' (ff. 72-79v) |
| Origin |
England |
| Date |
2nd half of the 15th century |
| Language |
English and Latin |
| Script |
Gothic cursive (Secretary) |
| Decoration |
Round diagrams representing the orbits of the sun and the planets and the signs of the zodiac in brown and red (ff. 27-28, 29, 50v, 62v-63). Volvelle for calculating Easter and other movable feasts in red and brown, with a figure (a lady?) in the centre (f. 29v). Initials and paraphs in red. |
| Dimensions in mm |
145 x 100 (95/105 x 65/70) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 1* + 120 (f. 1* was an original parchment flyleaf; + 2 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and the end). |
| Collation |
Leaves individually mounted on guards. |
| Form |
Parchment and paper codex |
| Binding |
BM/BL in-house. 19th century; marbled endpapers. |
| Provenance |
An added abbreviated table of contents, 17th century (f. 1*).
John Edward[s], 16th century: his name (ff. 49v, 101v).
Edward Stillingfleet (b. 1635, d. 1699), bishop of Worcester and theologian: manuscript 237 in his library inventory, now Harley 7644 (see Wright 1972).
Edward Stillingfleet (b. 1661, d. 1708), physician and Church of England clergyman, son of the former; sold in 1707 to Robert Harley (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.
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 |
A table of the manuscript contents can be found in the description provided for the Harley Medical Manuscripts Project accessible at [http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/manuscripts/INDEX.asp]. |
| Select bibliography |
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), I (1808), no. 941.
Harry L. D. Ward and John A. Herbert, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols (London: British Museum, 1883-1910), 1: Harry L. D. Ward (1883), p. 201.
Henry Noble McCracken, The Lydgate Canon. Appendix to the Philological Society's Transactions 1907-1909 (London: The Philological Society, 1908), pp. iii-xlvi (p. xiii).
V. Zaccaria, 'Sulle opere di Pier Candido Decembrio', Rinascimento, 7 (1956), 13-74 (pp. 18-20).
Lynn Thorndike, 'Notes on Some Less Familiar British Astronomical and Astrological Manuscripts', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 22 (1959), 157-71 (pp. 158-59).
Cyril E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright, The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), I: 1715-1723, pp. xix, xxviii.
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. 143, 316, 388.
Laurel Braswell-Means, 'The Vulnerability of Volvelles in Manuscript Codices', Manuscripta, 35 (1991), 43-54 (p. 44, fig. 1).
James Carley and Julia Crick, ‘Constructing Albion's Past: an Annotated Edition of De Origine Gigantum' in Arthurian Literature, 13, ed. by James P. Carley, Felicity Riddy (1995), 41-114 (pp. 45, 49).
Lister M. Matheson, The Prose 'Brut': The Development of a Middle English Chronicle, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 180 (Tempe, Arizona: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998), pp. xxi, 38, 47.
Catalogued for the Harley Medical Manuscripts Project [http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/manuscripts/INDEX.asp], accessed 22 June 2009. |
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