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Detailed record for Harley 2772
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| Author |
Macrobius |
| Title |
Commentary on Cicero's Somnium Scipionis, fragment |
| Origin |
Germany |
| Date |
11th century |
| Language |
Latin |
| Script |
Caroline minuscule |
| Decoration |
Zodiac wheel with the earth at the centre in ink (f. 61v). Round diagrams of the heaven (ff. 63v, 69) and of the earth (f. 67v) in ink. Round map of the earth in ink (f. 70v). Title in display rustic capitals (f. 64). Marginal diagrams in ink. |
| Dimensions in mm |
275 x 200 (205/210 x 150/155) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 90 (+ 6 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and 4 at the end) |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
BM/BL in-house. |
| Provenance |
Another small portion of the same copy of Macrobius's text can be found in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibiothek, Clm 23486, ff. 1-2.
Johann Georg Graevius (b. 1632, d. 1703), German classical scholar and critic: his manuscripts numbered 18 (Virgil), 19 (Juvenal), 40 (Sedulius), 23 (Macrobius), and 31-32 (Commentary); sold to Wilhelm in 1703 with the rest of his library (see Clark 1891; Wright 1972).
Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine (b. 1658, d. 1716), owner of a library in Düsseldorf: bought the entire Graevius library in 1703 (see Wright 1972).
Giovanni Giacomo Zamboni (d. 1753), resident in London for the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt (c. 1723-1753), friend of Michael Mattaire, the classical scholar and historian of printing: bought the Wilhelm library sometime before 1724 through Johann Büchels (b. 1659, d. 1738) (Wright 1972); sold to Edward Harley on 20 October 1725 (see Wright and Wright 1966; 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, ‘20 die mensis Octobris, A.D. 1725’ (ff. 1, 16, 28, 44, 75, 83).
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 |
The volume is a collection of miscellaneous fragments of different date and origin with no significant decoration, including:
Virgil , Aeneid, fragment of Books 7, 8, 10, and 11, 11th century, with initials in red (ff. 1-15v);
Juvenal , Satires , fragment of Books 11-14, 11th century (ff. 16-25v);
Juvenal, Satires, fragment of Books 13-14, 11th century, with initials in red (ff. 26-27v);
Caelius Sedulius, Carmen paschale, fragment of Books 1-3, 11th/12th century, with initials and rubrics originally in silver now showing the red ground (ff. 28-43v);
Macrobius, Commentary on Cicero's Somnium Scipionis, (ff. 44-74);
Commentary to Juvenal's Satires, fragment, 11th century (ff. 75-82v, 83-90v). |
| Select bibliography |
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), II (1808), no. 2772.
Albert C. Clark, 'The Library of J. G. Graevius', The Classical Review, 5 (1891), 365-72 (p. 370) [pamphlet no. 1651].
Wilhelm Köhler, 'Die Karolingishen Miniaturen', in Zweiter Bericht über die Denkmäler Deutscher Kunst (Berlin: Reimer, 1912), pp. 52-77 (p. 57).
Michael C. Andrews, 'The Study and Classification of Medieval Mappae Mundi', Archaeologia, 75 (1926), 61-76, (p. 71, pl. X, fig. 2).
Herbert Thoma, 'Altdeutsches aus Londoner Hss.', Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutscher Sprache und Literatur, 73 (1951), 197-271 (pp. 251-52, 255).
E. M. Sandford, 'Juvenalis, Decimus Junius' in Catalogus translationum et commentariorum : Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin translations and commentaries ed. by Paul Oskar Kristeller, F. Cranz and Virginia Brown, 9 vols (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1960-2011), I (1960) p. 183.
The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by Cyril E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), II: 1723-1726, pp. 385 n. 6.
Cyril E. Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 169, 367, 416.
Robert D. Williams and Thomas S. Pattie, Virgil: His Poetry through the Ages (London: The British Library, 1982), pp. 134-35.
B. Munk Olsen, L’Étude des auteurs classiques latins aux XIe et XIIe siècles, 3 vols (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1982-1989), I (1982), pp. 573, Juvenalis nos. C. 56-57; 596, Iuvenalis no. Cc. 5.
Bruce C. Barker-Benfield, 'Macrobius', in Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics, ed. by Leighton D. Reynolds (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 222-32 (pp. 225, 228).
B. Munk Olsen, L’Étude des auteurs classiques latins aux XIe et XIIe siècles, 3 vols (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1982-1989), II (1985), p. 732, Vergilius no. C. 102.
Carl P. E. Springer, The Manuscripts of Sedulius: A Provisional Handlist, Transaction of the American Philosophical Society, 85 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1995), pp. 62-63.
Macrobe, Commentaire au Songe de Scipion, ed. by Mireille Armisen-Marchetti, Collection des Universités de France, 2 vols (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2001-2003), I, p. xvii (as 'H').
Alfred Hiatt, 'Blank Spaces on the Earth', The Yale Journal of Criticism, 15 (2002), 223-50 (p. 226 fig. 1) .
Bruce Eastwood and Gerd Grasshoff, Planetary Diagrams for Roman Astronomy in Medieval Europe, ca. 800-1500, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 94, part 3 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2004), fig III.2, p. 62.
Rolf Bergmann and Stefanie Stricker, Katalog der althochdeutschen und altsächsischen Glossenhandschriften, 6 vols (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2005), II, pp. 884-85 no. 417 (I-II) [with further bibliography].
Richard Talbert, Tom Elliott and Nora Harris, Rome's world : the Peutinger map reconsidered (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 148.
Mapping our World: Terra Incognita to Australia (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2013), pp. 14-15 [exhibition catalogue]. |
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f. 5
Text page |
f. 14
Coloured initials |
f. 70v
Map of the oceans |
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f. 70v
Map of the earth |
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