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Detailed record for Royal 15 A XVI
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| Part 1 |
ff. 1-73v |
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| Author |
Iuvencus; Aldhelm; Bede |
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| Title |
Libri evangeliorum quattuor; Aenigmata; De arte metrica (extract) |
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| Origin |
France, N |
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| Date |
4th quarter of the 9th century |
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| Language |
Latin |
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| Script |
Caroline minuscule |
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| Decoration |
Large initial in red and brown and outline drawing of a flower (f. 2v). Page-fillers in the form of inverted triangles (f. 59). Highlighted initial at the beginning of each line. |
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| Dimensions in mm |
215 x 140 (180 x 95/125) |
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| Part 2 |
ff. 74-84 |
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| Title |
Scholica graecarum glossarum |
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| Origin |
England |
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| Date |
10th century |
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| Language |
Latin |
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| Script |
Caroline minuscule |
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| Decoration |
Initial and rubric in red (f. 74v). Added in the 11th century: full page outline drawing of a romanesque building with towers (f. 84 upside down). Interlace patterns and drawing of a knight in profile (f. 84v). |
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| Dimensions in mm |
215-140 (180 x 80/105) |
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| Official foliation |
ff. 84 (+ 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and at the end). |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
Post-1600. Red leather with gold tooling; arms of George II; gilt fore-edges; marbled endpapers. |
| Provenance |
Two leaves and several lines of part 1 (ff. 7-7v, 59, 67) are lost and have been replaced in an English hand of a similar date and on the same parchment as part 2 (see Warner and Gilson 1921).
Drawing on f. 84 is from the second quarter of the 11th century (2 towers are 16th century additions): the style is close to Harley 603 and the Utrecht psalter (see Wormald 1952).
The Benedictine abbey of St Augustine, Canterbury: the manuscript was there in the 13th century and was perhaps used as a monastic schoolbook (according to Rella 1980). Included in the late 15th-century library catalogue of the library of St. Augustine's abbey, no.1438, with the shelfmark D.xi Gii (see James, The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover (Cambridge, University Press, 1903) and Barker-Benfield 2008).
The Old Royal Library (the English Royal Library): seal of a ship (f. 1) and Westminster inventory number 'no.413' (f. 2); included in the inventory of books in the Upper Library at Westminster of 1542 (f. 30) and in the 1698 catalogue of the library of St James’s Palace (see [Edward Bernard], Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae (Oxford: Sheldonian, '1697', but 1698?), no. 8611.
Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library. |
| Notes |
Numerous Latin glosses and two Old English glosses (ff. 73, 76v).
Text is unjustified at right margins with the following arrangement:
ff. 1-59v: bold capitals arranged vertically at the beginning of lines
ff. 60-71: bold capitals project into left margin at beginning of chapters with chapter-headings in half-uncial script in margins
ff. 74v-83v: bold capitals at the beginning of sentences within text, more right-justification, text narrows at bottom of ff. 82, 83. |
| Select bibliography |
Walter De Gray Birch and Henry Jenner, Early Drawings and Illuminations: An Introduction to the Study of Ilustrated Manuscripts (London: Bagster and Sons, 1879), p. 3.
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. 146.
R. Priebsch, The Heliand Manuscript: Cotton Caligula A VII in the British Museum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), p. 17.
Francis Wormald, English Drawings of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London: Faber & Faber, 1952), pp. 44-45, 72, pl. 25a.
N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), no. 267.
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. 45.
Mathias Thiel, 'Gurndlagen und Gestalt der Hebraischkenntnisse des fruhen Mittelalters', Studi Medievali, 10 )1969, 3-212 (p. 153).
J. H. Pitman, The Riddles of Aldhelm, Yale Studies in English, 67 (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1970). [on the text of the Aenigmata].
Elzbieta Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts 900-1066, Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 2 (London: Harvey Miller, 1976), no. 85.
F. A. Rella, 'Continental manuscripts acquired for English centers in the tenth and early eleventh centuries, a preliminary checklist',Anglia, 98, (1980), 105-16 (p. 112).
Aldhelm, The Poetic Works, ed. by Michael Lapidge and James Rosier, (Cambridge: Brewer, 1985), pp. 59-94 [notes and translation of the text of the Aenigmata].
Mary Catherine Bodden, 'Evidence for the knowledge of Greek in Anglo-Saxon England', Anglo-Saxon England 17, (1988), 217-46 (p. 219, 221n., 230n., 233).
Patrizia Lendinara, Anglo-Saxon Glosses and Glossaries (Ashgate: Variorum, 1999), pp. 149-53, 165n., 292.
The Libraries of King Henry VIII, ed. by J. P. Carley, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7 (London: The British Library, 2000), H2.731.
Helmut Gneuss, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 241 (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001), no. 489.
Richard Gameson, ‘L’Angleterre et la Flandre aux Xe et XIe siècles: le témoignage des manuscrits’, in Les Échanges culturels au Moyen A^ge, Série Histoire Ancienne et Médiévale, 70 (Paris: Sorbonne, 2002), pp. 165-206, (p. 183).
Andy Orchard, 'Enigma Variations: the Anglo-Saxon riddle-tradition', in Latin Learning and English Lore, I: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, ed. by. Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe and Andy Orchard, Toronto Oldby English Series, 14 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 284-303.
Carin Ruff, 'The Place of Metrics in Anglo-Saxon Latin Education: Aldhelm and Bede', The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 104.2 (2005), 149-170), [on the text].
St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, ed. by B. C. Barker-Benfield, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 13, 3 vols (London: British Library, 2008), BA I.1438, pp. cii, n. 103, 406, 413, 938, 1378, 1710. |
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Part 1
ff. 1-73v |
| Iuvencus; Aldhelm; Bede Libri evangeliorum quattuor; Aenigmata; De arte metrica (extract) |
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f. 2v
Initial with decoration |
ff. 6v-7
Text page |
f. 74v
Text page |
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f. 84
Romanesque building |
f. 84v
Interlace patterns |
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