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Detailed record for Royal 13 E VI
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| Author |
Ralph de Diceto |
| Title |
Series causae inter Henricum regem et Thomam archiepiscopum, Abbreviationes chronicorum, and Imagines historiarum |
| Origin |
England, S. (St Albans?) |
| Date |
c. 1199/1200-1209 |
| Language |
Latin |
| Script |
Gothic, written below the top line |
| Decoration |
Marginal images and signs in colours, in colours and gold, or in colours and silver, referred to adjacent fragments of the text (ff. 16, 24v, 25v-29v, 31v, 32, 34, 34v, 36-37, 49v, 40, 44-45, 46v-47v, 70v, 112, 121, 122), with a table explaining their meaning (f. 1). Initials in gold with red and blue pen-flourishing, in green with red pen-flourishing, or in red with blue pen-flourishing. Small initials in red or green throughout the text. |
| Dimensions in mm |
414 x 300 (310 x 225) |
| Official foliation |
ff. i + 137 (+ 3 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and at the end; 1 blank parchment leaf after f. 51) |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
BM/BL in-house. Rebound in 1982. |
| Provenance |
The Benedictine abbey of St. Albans: the St Albans library shelfmark 'A 6 g[ra]d[us] 2 p' (f. i); obits of abbots (e.g., f. 125v) and other entries related to the abbey of St Albans, added in the margins, e.g. 'In inventio sancti Albani et rege Offa' (f. 23), a note of the dedication of St Albans in 1116 (f. 45), a note of the controversy between the abbey and Lincoln cathedral in 1152 (f. 56v); marginal image of King Lucius (f. 11) and notes (ff. 11, 40v, 41) by Matthew Paris (b. c.1200, d. 1259), monk of St Albans.
Added entries covering a period between 1200 and 1215 (ff. 136-137v).
Borrowed by Richard de Mores (Morins), prior of the Austinian house at Dunstable in 1209-1210, from which he made excerpts: see Lucas 2006.
Thomas Wolsey (b. 1470/71, d. 1530), royal minister, archbishop of York, and cardinal: 'TC' monogram, perhaps for Thomas Cardinalis (see Carley 2000, p. xxxiii), 16th century (f. i).
The Old Royal Library (the English Royal Library): Westminster inventory number 'no. 1044' (f. i), included in the inventory of books in the Upper Library at Westminster of 1542; in the list of works noted by John Bale in c. 1548, no. 18.; and in the catalogue of 1666, Royal Appendix 71, f. 21.
Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library. |
| Notes |
Includes 3 works of Ralph de Diceto (d. 1199/1200), chronicler and ecclesiastic, dean of St Paul's, London (1180-1199/1200):
Series causae inter Henricum regem et Thomam archiepiscopum, written in a different hand that the rest of the volume (ff. i recto-i verso);
Abbreviationes chronicorum (ff. 1-48);
Imagines historiarum, with a table of contents (ff. 49-136). The text ends with the coronation of John in 1199.
According to Stubbs 1876, this manuscript was copied from Lambeth Palace, 8, considered to be the author's own copy. Royal 13 E VI includes Ralph's pictorial indexing system (later imitated by Matthew Paris, see f. 11), in the use of a number of marginal signa, pictorial devices employed to indicate the presence in the adjacent text of particular subjects, such as councils, royal unction, disputes between king and church.
Quire signatures. |
| Select bibliography |
Radulfi de Diceto decani Lundoniensis opera historica, ed. by W. Stubbs, 2 vols., Rolls Series, 68 (London: Longman, 1876), p. xci.
George F. Warner and Julius P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections, 4 vols (London: British Museum, 1921), II, pp. 112-13.
Richard Vaughan, 'The Handwriting of Matthew Paris', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 5 (1953) 376-94 (pp. 377, 381, 391).
Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. by N. R. Ker, 2nd edn, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 3 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1964), p. 167.
Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England, 2 vols (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), I: c. 550 - c. 1307, pp. 230-36, pl. VII.
Beryl Smalley, Historians in the Middle Ages, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), pp. 114-19.
Rodney M. Thomson, Manuscripts from St Albans Abbey 1066-1235, 2 vols (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1982), no. 38.
Suzanne Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris in the 'Chronica Majora' (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1987), pp. 44-45.
The Libraries of King Henry VIII, ed. by J. P. Carley, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7 (London: The British Library, 2000), H2.1044, H4.18, p. xxxi.
Peter J. Lucas, 'Borrowing and reference: access to libraries in the late middle ages', in The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, ed. by Elisabeth Leedham-Green and Teresa Webber, 3 vols (Cambridge: University Press, 2006), Vol I: To 1640, pp. 242-62 (p. 260 n. 110).
Joanna Fronska, 'Turning the Pages of Legal Manuscripts: Reading and Remembering the Law', in Meaning and Motion: The Semantics of Movement in Medieval Art, ed. by Nino Zchomelidse and Giovanni Freni (Princeton: Department of Art and Archeology, Princeton University, 2011), pp. 191-214 (p. 206). |
| Last revised: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 |
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f. i
Coloured initials |
f. 1
Table of signs |
f. 1
Table of signs |
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f. 1
Table of signs |
f. 11
Lucius |
f. 25v
Spear and crown |
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f. 26
Swords |
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