|
|
|
|
|
|
Detailed record for Yates Thompson 26
|
|
|
|
| Author |
Bede |
| Title |
Prose Life of Cuthbert; extracts from the Historia Ecclesiastica (History of the English Church and People) |
| Origin |
England, N. (Durham) |
| Date |
last quarter of the 12th century |
| Language |
Latin |
| Script |
Protogothic |
| Decoration |
46 full-page miniatures, in colours and gold (ff. 1v, 2, 9 [unfinished?, only the frame and part of a horse outside the miniature field are executed], 10v, 11, 14, 16, 17v, 18, 21, 22v, 24, 26, 26v, 28v, 30, 31, 31v, 33v, 35v, 39, 41, 42v, 44, 45v, 47, 48v, 50v, 51, 53v, 54, 55v, 58v, 60, 61, 62v, 63v [half-page], 64, 66, 71v, 73, 74v, 77, 79, 80, 83, 84v); at least 7 miniatures missing after ff. 54, 61, 66, 67, 75, 78, 80. 2 large decorated foliate initials, in colours and gold (ff. 2v, 7v). 1 smaller puzzle initial in red and blue with pen-flourishing in blue and red (f. 4). 1 smaller initial in olive green with red penwork decoration (f. 87). Smaller initials in red with blue or brown pen-flourishing/penwork decoration or in blue with red pen-flourishing/penwork decoration. Small initials in plain red or blue. |
| Dimensions in mm |
135 x 95 (110 x 65) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 150 (+ 7 unfoliated parchment flyleaves at the beginning, and 5 at the end) |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
Post-1600. Blind-tooled blue leather. |
| Provenance |
The priory of Durham Cathedral: inscribed in red ink 'liber sancti cuthberti' (f. 2v); cited in Durham library catalogues of 1391 and 1416; probably borrowed and returned to Durham by Richard le Scrope, Archbishop of York (d. 1405), whose name is written beside the volume's entry in the Durham catalogue of 1416.
Inscribed in faint brown ink in a 17th-century hand 'Mary Coll'(?) (f. 150v).
Inscribed in the lower borders, upside down, in brown ink 'Mary' (f. 95v), and 'John' (f. 116v), probably the Catholic John Forcer of Harbour House, Durham (d. 1725), to whom the Durham Cathedral librarian, Thomas Rudd, implied ownership (between 1717 and 1726).
Sir Henry Lawson (d. 1726), 2nd Baronet of Brough Hall, in 1828: handwritten description by him when published by James Raine in 1828 (description [ff. iii-iv] pasted to f. [v]).
Sir John Lawson (d. 1698), 1st Baronet of Brough Hall: pink printed label 'National Exhibition of Works of Art. Leeds, 1868. Museum of Art. [inscribed: 'Sir J. Lawson Br.'] Proprietor' (label [f. i], pasted to f. [ii]); his sale, Sotheby's, 24 July 1906, lot 515; bought by Yates Thompson.
Henry Yates Thompson (b. 1838, d. 1928), collector of illuminated manuscripts and newspaper proprietor: with his book-plate inscribed '[MS] LXXXV / £bsne.e.e [i.e. £1650.0.0] / [bought through Bernard] Quaritch / Sotheby's / July / 1906' (f. [vi]); in his sale, 23 March 1920, lot 32; bought by the British Museum 'with the aid of the National Art Collections Fund and Individual Subscribers' (gold-tooled leather label inside upper cover), it became Additional 39943. It was re-numbered after the creation of the 'Yates Thompson' shelfmark, following Mrs Yates Thompson's bequest of other manuscripts in 1941. |
| Notes |
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts.
This manuscript was formerly Additional 39943.
f. 20 should follow f. 21.
A duplicate copy of the volume, but with only preliminary drawings for its miniatures, was produced at Durham around the same time and is Cambridge, Trinity College MS O.1.64.
St Cuthbert was a seventh-century, English Christian leader, renowned for his ascetic practices and the miracles attributed to him during his lifetime and posthumously. Born in Northumbria around 635, he entered the monastery of Melrose in 651, and later became guest-master at the newly founded monastery at Ripon. Cuthbert subsequently became prior of Melrose, then prior of Lindisfarne, and went on to live as a hermit on the island of Inner Farne, off the coast of Northumberland. He was consecrated as bishop of Lindisfarne in 685 but died at his Inner Farne hermitage on 20 March 687.
He was elevated to sainthood in 698 when his body was reinterred in a new wooden coffin. This coffin was subsequently removed from Lindisfarne by the community of St Cuthbert and was carried with them as they travelled around the North East in the wake of Viking raids in the ninth and tenthh centuries. At the end of the tenth century, the community took Cuthbert's coffin with them to Durham and settled there. |
| Select bibliography |
James Raine, St Cuthbert: With an Account of the State in which his Remains were found upon the Opening of his Tomb in Durham Cathedral, in the Year 1827 (Durham: Humble, 1828), p. IV.
National Exhibition of Works of Art, at Leeds, 1868: Official Catalogue (Leeds: published by the Executive Committee, 1868), p. 192 no. 521.
W. Forbes-Leith, The Life of St Cuthbert (Edinburgh, 1888) [facsimile].
A Descriptive Catalogue of Twenty Illuminated Manuscripts, Nos. LXXV to XCIV (Replacing Twenty Discarded from the Original Hundred) in the Collection of Henry Yates Thompson (Cambridge: University Press, 1907), no. LXXXIV, pp. 79-90.
Illustrations from One Hundred Manuscripts in the Library of Henry Yates Thompson, 7 vols (London: Chiswick Press, 1907-18), IV: Consisting of Eighty-Two Plates Illustrating Sixteen MSS. of English Origin from the XIIth to the XVth Centuries (1914), pp. 3-7, pls. IV-XV.
Bertram Colgrave, 'The History of British Museum Additional MS. 39943', English Historical Review, 54 (1939), 673-77.
Bertram Colgrave, Two 'Lives' of Saint Cuthbert: A Life by an Anonymous Monk of Lindisfarne and Bede's Prose Life (Cambridge: University Press, 1940), no. 22, pp. 31-32.
F. Wormald, 'The Yates Thompson Manuscripts', The British Museum Quarterly, 16 (1952), 4-6 (p. 5).
André Grabar and Carl Nordenfalk, Romanesque Painting from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Century (Lausanne: Skira, 1958), p. 148.
Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. by N. R. Ker, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 3, 2nd edn (London: Royal Historical Society, 1964), p. 73.
[Derek Howard Turner], Illuminated Manuscripts Exhibited in the Grenville Library (London, British Museum, 1967), no. 10, p. 25.
Josiah Q. Bennett, 'Portman Square to New Bond Street, or, How to Make Money though Rich', The Book Collector (1967), 323-39 (p. 332).
J.J.G. Alexander, Norman Illumination at Mont St Michel 966-11000 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 141 n. 2.
Larry M. Ayers, 'A Miniature from Jumièges and Trends in Manuscript Illumination around 1200', in Intuition und Kunstwissenshaft: Festschrift für Hanns Swarzenski, ed. by Peter Bloch and others (Berlin: Mann, 1973), pp. 115-40 (p. 127, fig. 17).
C.M. Kauffmann, Romanesque Manuscripts 1066-1190, Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 3 (London: Harvey Miller, 1975), p. 67.
Malcolm Baker, 'Medieval Illustrations of Bede's Life of St Cuthbert', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 41 (1978), 16-49 [cited as YT].
Andrew G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 700-1600 in The Department of Manuscripts: The British Library, 2 vols (London: British Library, 1979), I, p. 168 [rejected].
Richard Marks and Nigel Morgan The Golden Age of English Manuscript Painting, 1200-1500 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1981), pp. 9, 40, 43, pls. 1-2.
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, no. 12 (a), pp. 57-59, pls 38-43.
English Romanesque Art 1066-1200: Hayward Gallery, London 5 April-8 July 1984 (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1984), no. 81, p. 131.
Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. by N. R. Ker, Supplement to the Second Edition, ed. by Andrew G. Watson, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 15 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1987), p. 126.
Francis Wormald, Collected Writings, ed. by J.J.G. Alexander, T.J. Brown, and Joan Gibbs, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1984-1988), II: Studies in English and Continental Art of the Later Middle Ages, p. 55.
Walter Cahn, Romanesque Manuscripts: The Twelfth Century (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), II, 167.
Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting in The British Library (London: British Library, 1997), no. 51, p. 70.
Janet Backhouse, Pictures from the Past: Using and Abusing Medieval Manuscript Imagery, Medieval Research Centre: Text and Studies, 1 (Leicester: University of Leicester, 1997), p. 13, pls 7-8.
Dominic Marner, St Cuthbert: His Life and Cult in Medieval Durham (London: British Library, 2000), [partial facsimile of this manuscript]
Michelle P. Brown, The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe (London: British Library, 2003), p. 209, figs 78, 173.
Michelle P. Brown, Painted Labyrinth: The world of the Lindisfarne Gospels (London: British Library, 2003), pl. on p. 14.
Greg Buzwell, Saints in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2005), pp. 40-42.
Deirdre Jackson, Marvellous to Behold: Miracles in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2007), pl. 36.
Sacred: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and their Sacred Texts (London: British Library, 2007), p. 187 [exhibition catalogue].
Richard Gameson, ‘Bede in Durham Cathedral Library: Notes on Material Exhibited on 7 August 2008’ ([n.p.]: [n. pub], [n.d.]), p. 7.
Joe Flatman, Ships and Shipping in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2009), pls 15, 38.
Richard Gameson, Manuscript Treasures of Durham Cathedral (London: Third Millennium, 2010), p. 90.
Watercolour, ed. by Alison Smith (London: Tate Publishing, 2011), no. 1 [exhibition catalogue]. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
f. 1v
Cuthbert |
f. 2
Seated scribe |
f. 2v
Decorated initial |
| |
f. 2v
Decorated initial |
f. 7v
Decorated initial |
f. 7v
Decorated initial |
| |
f. 9
Blank frame |
f. 10v
Cuthbert praying |
ff. 10v-11
Cuthbert and two monks praying |
| |
f. 11
Two monks praying |
f. 14
Cuthbert's horse finds him food |
f. 16
Cuthbert welcomed by Boisil |
| |
f. 17v
Cuthbert washing an angel's feet |
f. 18
Miraculous loaves |
f. 18
Miraculous loaves |
| |
f. 21
Cuthbert speaking to Boisil |
f. 22v
Cuthbert preaching |
f. 24
Cuthbert praying in the sea |
| |
f. 26
Cuthbert at sea |
f. 26v
Cuthbert with a dolphin |
f. 28v
An eagle brings a fish to Cuthbert |
| |
f. 30
Cuthbert extinguishing a fire set by a demon |
f. 31v
Cuthbert extinguishing a fire set by a demon |
f. 33v
Cuthbert healing the wife of Hildemaer |
| |
f. 35v
Cuthbert teaching at Lindisfarne |
f. 39
Cuthbert building his hermitage |
f. 41
Cuthbert digging with a monk |
| |
f. 42v
Cuthbert expelling birds |
f. 44
A crow bringing lard to Cuthbert |
f. 45v
Cuthbert discovering a roof beam |
| |
f. 47
Cuthbert speaking to a crowd |
f. 48v
Aelfflaed being cured by Cuthbert's girdle |
f. 50v
Aelfflaed meets Cuthbert |
| |
f. 51
Ecgfrith visiting Cuthbert |
f. 53v
Cuthbert at a synod |
ff. 53v-54
Cuthbert being elected bishop, and performing a healing miracle |
| |
f. 54
Cuthbert blessing water |
f. 55v
Cuthbert and Ecgfrith's widow |
f. 58v
Healing of a gesith's wife |
| |
f. 60
Cuthbert healing a girl |
f. 61
Cuthbert healing a man |
f. 62v
Cuthbert healing a child |
| |
f. 63
Text page |
f. 63v
Man falling from a tree |
f. 64
Cuthbert's vision |
| |
f. 66
Cuthbert's miracle of the wine |
f. 71v
Cuthbert healing a monk |
f. 73
Death of Cuthbert |
| |
f. 74vF
Monks signalling Cuthbert's death |
ff. 74v-75
Monks signalling Cuthbert's death |
f. 75
Text page |
| |
f. 79
Healing of a sick man |
f. 80
Man being healed by Cuthbert's shoes |
f. 83
Cuthbert healing a paralytic |
| |
f. 84v
Healing of a youth's eye |
|
|
|
|
