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Detailed record for Harley 273
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Author |
Richard de Fournival, Robert Grosseteste, etc. |
Title |
Miscellany, including a calendar, Psalter with prayers and Hours of the Virgin, imperfect, Bestiaire d'amour; Rules, and the Chronicle of Turpin (see Notes) |
Origin |
England, S. W. (Ludlow, in part ?) |
Date |
between 1314 and 1328 |
Language |
French |
Script |
Gothic; Gothic cursive |
Scribe |
Written by more than one scribe |
Decoration |
Drawings in brown ink illustrating the text (ff. 70-81). Initials in blue with red pen-flourishing (f. 70). Large puzzle or decorated initials in red and blue with penwork decoration in red and blue. Initials in brown, red or blue, some with penwork decoration. Cadels, some in the form of animal or human heads (e.g., ff. 18v, 48v, 137, 138v, 155v, 156). Rubrics in red. Paraphs in red. Marginal drawings in red or brown ink of hybrids (ff. 58, 59, 95v). Diagram of a hand in red and brown (ff. 111, 112). |
Dimensions in mm |
220 x 135 (165 x 105 (in two columns) from ff. 199-202v in three columns |
Official foliation |
ff. 217 ( + 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and at the end) |
Form |
Parchment codex |
Binding |
BM/BL in-house. |
Provenance |
Written by a cleric or scribe from Ludlow, southern Shropshire: the dedication date of the parish Church of St. Laurence at Ludlow written in red ink at 13 February, 'Dedicacion de la eglise seint Laurence de Lodelawe' ('lodelowe') (f. 1v) (see Revard, p. 82). Added texts of two indulgences by Popes Innocent Urbanus IV and John XXII (f. 7), a correction to Grosseteste's Rules (f. 82), a few charms (ff. 85v, 112v, 213-213v), a marginal table (f. 116v), the last portion of the Manuel des péchés (ff. 181v-191v) with the addition of a table of sins (ff. 190v-191), and most of the Purgatoire de S. Patrice (ff. 191v-197v). Added texts including prayers, poems and recipes for making colours and dying textiles in Gothic scribe in Latin with initials in red (ff. 204-212v). John Clerk, grocer and apothecary to Edward IV, warden of the London Company of Grocers in 1467 and 1475: inscribed 'Iste liber constat John Clerk grocero apocethario regis Edwarde quarti post conquestum' (f. 1*). 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 |
Contents: Calendar (ff. 1-6v), which includes the date of the dedication of the Ludlow parish church of St. Laurence, French Psalter followed by other liturgical prayers (ff. 8-53v, 53v-59), Hours of the Virgin and of the Dead (ff. 59v-67v, 68-69v, imperfect), Richard de Fournival, Bestiary of love (ff. 70-81), Robert Grosseteste, Rules (ff. 81-85), Rules of Friendship (ff. 85-85v), Pseudo-Turpin, Chronicle (ff. 86-102v), Guide to nightly and daily meditations with diagrams (ff. 110v-112v), William of Waddington, Manuel des péchés (ff. 113-190v), Purgatoire de S. Patrice (ff. 191v-197v), Nicholas Bozon, La Pleinte d'Amour (ff. 199-203). ff. 216-217 are parchment leaves with various inscriptions. Shares the same scribal hand (the 'Harley Scribe') as Harley 2253 (ff. 49-141v) and Royal 12.C.xii. This scribe was active in Ludlow from c. 1314 to c. 1346 (see Revard 2000, pp. 21-109; Fein, p. 8). |
Select bibliography |
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), I, no. 273.
Walter de Gray Birch and Henry Jenner, Early Drawings and Illuminations: An Introduction to the Study of Illustrated Manuscripts (London: Bagster and Sons, 1879), p. 8.
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, 587-89; II (1893), 471-74; III, J. A. Herbert, pp. 272-84.
J. Vising, Le Purgatoire de S. Patrice des manuscrits Harley 273 et fonds français 2198 (Göteborg, 1916).
C. H. Talbot, ‘A List of Cistercian Manuscripts in Great Britain’, Traditio: Studies in Ancient and Medieval History, Thought and Religion, 8 (1952), 402-18 (p. 410).
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. 221.
François Avril, La technique de l’enluminure d’apres les texts medievaux: Essai de bibliographie, Reunion du Comite de l’Icom pour les laboratories de musees et du sous-comite de l’Icom pour le traitement de peintures, Bruxelles 1967 (Paris: Bibliotheque nationale Cabinet des manuscrits, n. d.), p. 19 [with additional bibliography].
C. A. Robson, 'Vernacular Scriptures in France', in The Cambridge History of the Bible, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963-1970), 2: The West from the Fathers to the Reformation, ed. by G. W. H. Lampe (1969), pp. 436-52 (pp. 440, 530).
Carter Revard, 'Richard Hurd and MS Harley 2253', Notes and Queries, 224 (1970), 199-202 (p. 200, n. 2).
R. N. Walpole, The Old French Johannes Translation of the 'Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle'. A Critical Edition (Berkeley, 1976), p. 2.
Carter Revard, ‘Three more holographs in the hand of the scribe of MS Harley 2253 in Shrewsbury’, Notes and Queries (1981), 199-200 (p. 200).
Pierre Rézeau, Répertoire d'incipit des prières françaises à la fin du Moyen Âge: addenda et corrigenda aux répertoires de Sonet et Sinclair; Nouveaux incipit, Publications romanes et françaises, 174 (Geneva: Droz, 1986), p. 465.
C. Paul Christianson, ‘Evidence for the Study of London’s Late Medieval Manuscript-Book Trade’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375-1475, ed by Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 87-108 (p. 104 n. 12).
T. Hunt, Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 88-89.
Adelaide Bennett, 'A Book Designed for a Noblewoman, in Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence, ed. by Linda l. Brownrigg, Proceedings of the Second Conference of The Seminar in the History of the Book to 1500, Oxford, July 1988 (Los Altos Hills, California: Anderson-Lovelace, 1990), pp 1163-181 (p. 179 n. 2, 180 n. 21).
S. H. A. Shepherd, 'The Middle English Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle', Medium Aevum, 65 (1996), p. 32 n. 26.
Ruth J. Dean and Maureen B. M. Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts, Anglo-Norman Text Society, Occasional Publications Series, 3 (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1999), p. 241.
Carter Revard, ‘ 'Annote and Johon', MS Harley 2253, and The Book of Secrets’, English Language Notes, March 1999, 5-19 (p. 12, n. 273).
Carter Revard, 'Scribe and Provenance', in Studies in the Harley Manuscript: The Scribes, Contents, and Social Contexts of British Library MS Harley 2253, ed. by Susanna Fein (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), chapter 1 (pp. 22, 26, 32, 58, 65, 67-71, 82-86).
Carter Revard, ‘Oppositional Thematics and Metanarrative in MS Harley 2253, Quires 1-6’, Essays in Manuscript Geography: Vernacular Manuscripts of the English West Midlands from the Conquest to the Sixteenth Century, ed. by Wendy Scase (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 95-112 (p. 95, n. 1, p. 102).
Catalogued for the Harley Medical Manuscripts Project [http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/manuscripts/INDEX.asp], accessed 29 May 2008.
Rodney M. Thomson and others, 'Technology of production of the manuscript book', in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain (Cambridge: University Press, 1999- ), II: 1100-1400, ed. by Nigel Morgan and Rodney M. Thomson (2008), pp. 75-109 (p. 273).
The Medieval Bestiary: Animals in the Middle Ages, ed. by David Badke, [http://bestiary.ca/manuscripts/manulocshelf.htm] [accessed 14 August 2009]. |
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f. 1* Ownership inscription |

f. 1v Dedication |

f. 11 Coloured initials |
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f. 12 Coloured initials |

f. 23v Puzzle initials |

f. 58 Litany |
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f. 70 Teaching |

f. 71 Animals |

f. 72v Bird and lion |
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f. 74 Animals |

f. 75v Animals |

f. 78 Animals |
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f. 80 Dragon and Elephant |

f. 81 Bird |

f. 111 Hand |
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