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Detailed record for Egerton 618
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| Title |
Bible, in the early Wycliffite version: New Testament, with lessons (ff. 160-177) |
| Origin |
England, S. (London) |
| Date |
last quarter of the 14th century or 1st quarter of the 15th century |
| Language |
English |
| Script |
Gothic |
| Decoration |
21 full borders and large initials with foliage decoration in red and or pink, white, and blue on gold grounds, knots, buds in red and green, at the beginning of most books (ff. 1, 22, 35v, 57v, 74, 95v, 97v, 101, 105v, 105v, 121v, 127, 129v, 132v, 134v, 136, 138, 139, 141v, 144v, and 150v), some with masks or hybrid creatures (ff. 1, 74, 10, 129v, 141v, 144v). Small initials in gold on red blue grounds with foliate decoration, including gold, red, or blue leaves. Paraph in gold with purple penwork decoration or in blue with red penwork decoration. Catchwords decorated with brown penwork, including sometimes heads (e.g. ff. 5v, 93v, 101v). Line-fillers in red and blue. Running headers in red. |
| Dimensions in mm |
440 x 290 (310 x 190 (in two columns) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 177 (+ 2 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and at the end); old foliation 224-400 continues from Eger5ton 617 |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
Post-1600. Brown leather with gold tooling. |
| Provenance |
Formerly bound with Egerton 617 to form the second volume of a two-volume Bible.
? Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester (b. 1355, d. 1397), the youngest son of Edward III and husband of Eleanor de Bohun: probably his arms (Egerton 617, f. 2, upper border); probably corresponding to an entry in his inventory (see reference in record for Egerton 617) ; or his nephew, Humfrey or Humphrey of Lancaster (b. 1390, d. 1447), duke of Gloucester (called Good Duke Humphrey), prince, soldier, and literary patron: see discussion of the heraldic evidence in Sandler 1986 II p. 165.
Removed coat of arms (Egerton 617, f. 2); suggested by Sandler that it could have been that of Eleanor de Bohun.
Dr. John Hunter: inscription in Egerton 617, f. 1v.
Dr. John Fell: see record for Egerton 617.
Adam Clarke (b. 1762, d. 1832), Wesleyan Methodist minister and scholar: his catalogue no. 22 (see Notes); inscribed 'No.22' (f. [i] verso).
Bought on 1 February, 1837 from Straker by the British Museum, using the Bridgewater fund (£12,000 bequeathed in 1829 by Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater (b. 1756, d. 1829). |
| Notes |
This is the continuation of Egerton 617.
ff. 103, 114, 143, are modern parchment blank leaves.
Spaces left for all prologues except for the Gospels
After his death, Adam Clarke's library passed to his son, Rev. J. B. B. Clarke. He auctioned the printed books at Evans's on 18 February, 1833, and published a detailed catalogue of the manuscripts in 1835. According to Frederic Madden's annotations in the Department of Manuscripts copies of the catalogues, the manuscripts were bought by the booksellers Baynes & Straker (or Baynes & Son), who first issued a catalogue with fixed prices in 1836, and then offered them for sale by auction at Sotheby’s on 20 June, 1836. Almost all the lots were bought in, and re-offered at Sotheby’s on 21 May, 1838, but the auction was stopped at lot 5 'in consequence of no bidders appearing'. A selection of manuscripts were then purchased privately by the British Museum for £126 19s. 6d. (Egerton 628-709), and a further 17 lots were purchased subsequently for £2 9s. 6d. (Egerton 710-730). |
| Select bibliography |
List of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1836-1840 (London: British Museum, 1843), 1837, p. 55.
The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal Books, in the Earliest English versions made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his Followers, ed. by Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden, 4 vols (Oxford: University Press, 1850), I, p. xliii, no. 32 (as 'G').
E. M. Thompson, Wycliffe Exhibition in the King’s Library (London: Clowes and Sons, 1884), no. 28.
Facsimiles of Biblical Manuscripts in the British Museum, ed. by Frederic G. Kenyon (London: British Museum, 1900), no. XXIV.
British Museum Bible Exhibition 1911: Guide to the Manuscripts and Printed Books exhibited in Celebration of the Tercentenary of the Authorized Version (London: British Museum, 1911), no. 24.
J. A. Herbert, Illuminated Manuscripts (London: Methuen, 1911), p. 231.
A Guide to the Exhibition of Some Part of the Egerton Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London, 1929), no. 55.
Margaret Rickert, 'Illumination', in The Text of the Canterbury Tales Studied on the Basis of All Known Manuscripts, ed. by John M. Manly and Edith Rickert, vol. 1, 'Description of the Manuscripts' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), pp. 561-605 (p. 566).
Sven L. Fristedt, The Wycliffe Bible, 2 vols (Stockhom: Almquist & Wiksell, 1953-1969), Part I: The Principal Problems Connected with Forshall and Madden's Edition, Stockholm Studies in English, 4, p. 15.
B. L. Ullman, ‘Manuscripts of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester’, in Studies in the Italian Renaissance, Storia e letteratura, 51 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e letteratura, 1955), pp. 345-355 (first publ. in English Historical Review , 52 (1937), 670-672) (p. 354, no. 16).
Sven L. Fristedt, 'A Weird Manuscript Enigma in the British Museum', Studier I modern sprakvetenskap, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm Stuidies in Modern Philology, New Series, 2 (1964), 116-121.
Sven L. Fristedt, 'New Light on John Wycliffe and the First Full English Bible', Studies in Modern Philology (1967), 61-86 (p. 84).
Sven L. Fristedt, The Wycliffe Bible, 2 vols (Stockhom: Almquist & Wiksell, 1953-1969), Part II: The Origin of the First Revision as presented in De Salutaribus Documentis, Stockholm Studies in English, 21, p. LVI.
Henry Hargreaves, 'The Vernacular Scriptures: The Wycliffite Versions', in The Cambridge History of the Bible, 2 vols, ed. by G. W. H. Lampe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), II: The West from the Fathers to the Reformation, 387-415 (pp. 388, 393, 399).
A. I. Doyle, 'English Books In and Out of Court from Edward III to Henry VII', in English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, ed. by V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne (London: Duckworth, 1983), pp. 163-82 (p. 168).
V. J. Scattergood, ‘Literary Culture at the Court of Richard II, in English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, ed. by V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne (London: Duckworth, 1983), pp. 29-43 (p. 35).
Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts 1285-1385, 2 vols, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 5 (London: Harvey Miller, 1986), I, 36; II, 164-65.
Lynda Dennison, 'Oxford, Exeter College MS 47: The Importance of Stylistic and Codicological Analysis in its Dating and Localization' 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 1998 (Los Altos Hills, California: Anderson-Lovelace, 1990), pp. 41-59 (p. 59 n. 44).
Christopher de Hamel, The Book: A History of the Bible (London: Phaidon, 2001), pp. 173-74.
Maidie Hilmo, Medieval Images, Icons, and IIlustrated English Literary Texts: From the Ruthwell Cross to the Ellesmere Chaucer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 128 n. 108, 161.
Anthony Tuck, ‘Thomas, Duke of Gloucester (1355-1397)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27197, accessed 13 Jan 2006].
The Splendor of the Word: Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts at the New York Public Library, ed. by Jonathan J. G. Alexander, James H. Marrow, and Lucy Freeman Sandler (London: Harvey Miller, 2005), p. 82 [exhibition catalogue].
Matti Peikola, ‘Tables of Lections in Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible’, in Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. by Eyal Poleg and Laura Light (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 351-378 (p. 377) [transcription of f. 173]. |
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f. 37v
Illuminated initial |
f. 57v
Detail |
f. 74
Illuminated initial |
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