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Detailed record for Royal 20 C VI
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| Title |
Lancelot du Lac |
| Origin |
England, S. (Oxford?) |
| Date |
Last quarter of the 13th century, after 1282. |
| Language |
French |
| Script |
Gothic |
| Artists |
Attributed to William of Devon group by Morgan |
| Decoration |
2 miniatures in colours and gold, and 2 foliate initials with hybrids and dragons, in colours and gold (ff. 3, 150). 2 marginal drawings in ink of knights and two hybrids (ff. 4v, 11). Puzzle initials in red and blue with red and blue pen-flourishing. Initials in red with blue pen-flourishing, or in blue with red pen-flourishing. Line-fillers in red and blue. |
| Dimensions in mm |
380 x 255 (245 x 175) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 187 (+ 3 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and at the end; f. 1 is a medieval parchment flyleaf) |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
Post-1600. Royal Library parchment binding. |
| Provenance |
Added entry for 1283 in the 'Brut' chronicle, beginning 'E pus fist le rey / asemler vn g[ra]nt parlement a Syrovesbyri', and ending 'de la t[ra]ysun ke il awe/yt fet a sun sengur' (f. 187v).
Added titles: 'une part de lancelot' (f. 3), 'Icy finit la mort Arthur', and 'Genealogia Regu[m] Brytonu[m] / et anglo[rum]' (f. 186v), 15th century.
The Old Royal Library (the English Royal Library): included in the catalogue of 1666, Royal Appendix 71, f. 11, or 11v.
Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library. |
| Notes |
Contains the Lancelot du Lac (ff. 3-113) including the Queste del Saint Graal (ff. 113-149v), and the Mort Artu (ff. 150-186v), and the French prose 'Brut' chronicle, ending with the rebellion of Llewelyn in 1282 (ff. 186v-187v).
A table of contents (f. 2) divides the text of the three sections into 76 sections lettered (a-z, &, aa-&&, aaa-&&&, aaaa-dddd) and numbered (i-lxxiiii, with several mistakes in numbering). These divisions are indicated by larger initials and Arabic numerals written in the margin.
Catchwords, quire signatures at the end and at the beginning of each quire, and bifolium signatures. |
| Select bibliography |
H. Oskar Sommer, Le Roman de Merlin or the Early History of King Arthur (London: Privately printed, 1894), p. xxiv.
H. L. D. Ward and J. A. Herbert, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols (London: British Museum, 1883-1910), I, H. L. D. Ward, pp. 350-51.
H. Omont, 'Les manuscrits français des rois d'Angleterre au château de Richmond', in Etudes romanes dédiés à Gaston Paris (Paris: É. Bouillon, 1891), pp. 1-13 (p. 10).
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, p. 372.
Millard Meiss, with Sharon Off Dunlap Smith and Elizabeth Home Beaton, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Limbourgs and Their Contemporaries, 2 vols (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), I, p. 379, etc.
Diana B. Tyson, 'An Early French Prose History of the Kings of England', Romania, 96 (1975) 1-26 (p. 7) [an edition of the text].
Adelaide Bennett, 'A Late Thirteenth-Century Psalter-Hours from London', in England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1984 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by W. M. Ormond (Grantham, 1984), pp. 15-30 (p. 26).
Nigel Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, 2 vols, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 4 (London Harvey Miller, 1982-1988), II: 1250-1285, pp. 155, 191-92.
Alison Stones, 'Arthurian Art since Loomis', in Arthur Rex, ed. by W. van Hoecke, G. Touroy, W. Verbecke, Acta Conventus Lovaniensis 1987, 2 vols (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1991), II, pp. 21-79 (pp. 28-29, fig. 3).
Alison Stones, 'Nigel Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, 2 vols, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 4 (London Harvey Miller, 1982-1988), I: 1190-1250, II: 1250-1285', Speculum, 69 (1993), 213-16 (p. 214) [review].
Diana B. Tyson, 'Handlist of Manuscripts Containing the French Prose Brut Chronicle', Scriptorium: Revue internationale des études relative aux manuscrits, 48 (1994) 333-44 (p. 340).
The Libraries of King Henry VIII, ed. by J. P. Carley, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7 (London: The British Library in association with The British Academy, 2000), p. 23.
Michelle P. Brown, The Life of St. Fursey: What we know; Why it Matters (Norwich: Fursey Pilgrims, 2001), p. 17.
Pamela Porter, Courtly Love in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2003), pp. 52-56.
Roger Middleton, 'The Manuscripts' in The Arthur of the French, ed. by Glyn S. Burgess and Karen Pratt , Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, 4 vols (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), IV, pp. 8-92 (pp. 46, 55). |
| Last revised: 19 September 2009 |
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f. 3
Agravain riding |
f. 4v
Hybrids and a knight |
f. 11
Knight and a hybrid |
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f. 150
Guinevere |
f. 150
Guinevere |
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