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Add MS 62122
- Record Id:
- 032-001962442
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-001962442
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000055.0x00012f
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100059101234.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 62122
- Title:
-
St Jerome, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew; Commentary on the Book of Daniel
- Scope & Content:
-
This is one of the few manuscripts to survive from the Benedictine abbey of Saint Mary and Saint Rumon at Tavistock (Devon). This manuscript was produced in the 12th century, and contains biblical commentaries by the Church father St Jerome (b. 347, d. 420), whose writings were central to the study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. It contains several marginal notations in Latin, Greek and English.
Contents:
f. 1v: A title and ownership inscription.
ff. 3r-69v: St Jerome, Commentary on the Gospel of Jerome, with a prologue, beginning ‘Plures fuisse qui evangelia scripserunt et Lucas evangelista’.
ff. 70r-104r: St Jerome, Commentary on the Book of Daniel, beginning (after a faded rubric), ‘Contra danielem prophetam duodecimum librum scripsit porphirius’.
The manuscript contains a number of additions:
f. 2v: A list describing the weather conditions at feast days, beginning ‘the Christynmas was fayre and drye with owt enye sunne shynyng’, written in a 15th- or 16th-century script.
f. [iii] recto: a transcription of the Middle English text on f. 2v by Sir Frederic Madden.
[ff. 1r, 2r, 104v are empty].
Decoration:
2 large initials in blue, red and green on f 3r and f. 4r; 5 large initials in red or green with penwork decoration in green or red on ff. 35r, 52r, 70r, 71r, 87v (with an offset of the last on f. 81v); foliate pen-flourishing in red ink in the lower margins of ff. 102v, 103r and 104r; manicules in brown and red ink, and symbols in brown ink in the margins; the symbols include crosses, and an asterisk (‘asteriscus) and an arrow (‘obulus’) on 70v.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
England and France 700-1200 Project - Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "032-001962442", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Add MS 62122: St Jerome, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew; Commentary on the Book of Daniel" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-001962442
- Is part of:
- not applicable
- Hierarchy:
- 032-001962442
- Container:
- not applicable
- Record Type (Level):
- Fonds
- Extent:
-
A parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100059101234.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Middle
Greek, Ancient
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1130
- End Date:
- 1170
- Date Range:
- Mid 12th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 270 x 190 mm (text space: 210 x 125 mm).
Foliation: ff. 104 ( + 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 2 at the end); f. [iii] is a blue paper leaf inserted by Sir Frederic Madden; f. 1 and f. 2 originally were flyleaves; 1 black-and-white photograph of an ownership inscription on f. 1v attached to a paper stub between f. [ii] and f. [iii]; the pastedowns and flyleaves at the beginning have been numbered as a series, from ‘i’ to ‘vi’; paper repairs made to numerous folios damaged by water.
Script: Protogothic.
Binding: Post-1600. Brown leather binding, the spine inscribed in gold at the British Museum: ‘HIERONYMI COMMENTA SUPER MATTHÆUM ET DANIELEM.’; marbled endpapers.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Tavistock, Southwestern England.
Provenance:
The Benedictine abbey of Saint Mary and Saint Rumon at Tavistock (Devon), owned and possibly produced the manuscript in the 12th century: their ownership inscription, largely erased, but transcribed in pencil by Frederic Madden, on f. 2v: ‘Liber sancte Marie de tavystoke’.
An unknown 15th- or 16th-century English owner: English notes in a 15th- or 16th-century script on f. 2v and f. 19v.
Sir Frederic Madden (b. 1801, d. 1873), palaeographer and Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum, owned until 1873: his bookplate pasted on f. [i] verso; his name inscribed on f. [ii] recto (‘F. Madden British Museum’), with his entry about the manuscript's rebinding, and an entry about its date and place of production; his transcription of the Middle English text on f. 2v on a paper inserted between f. [ii] and f. 1; his sale, Sotheby’s, London, 7 August 1873, lot 413.
An unknown English owner (?), in the 19th or 20th century: an unidentified bookplate pasted on f. [i] verso.
Alexander Peckover (b. 1830, d. 1919), 1st Baron Peckover, manuscript collector, owned in the 19th or 20th century: his bookplate pasted on the inside cover.
? Elizabeth Josephine Peckover (b. 1859, d. 1930), daughter of Alexander Peckover: probably inherited the manuscript and passed it on to her son Lionel Sharples Penrose.
Lionel Sharples Penrose (b. 1898, d. 1972), psychiatrist and geneticist at University College London, owned 1932-1972: lent by him to the Colchester and Essex Museum in 1932 (there listed as MS 229a.32, see Colchester and Essex Museum Annual Report, 1932-1933 (1933), p. 24) and returned to his executors after his death in 1972.
Shirley Victoria Hodgson (b. 1945), geneticist, daughter of Lionel Sharples Penrose: purchased from her by the British Library in February 1982.
- Information About Copies:
- Fulldigital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/manuscripts/.
- Publications:
-
Colchester and Essex Museum Annual Report, 1932-1933 (1933), p. 24.
Neil Ripley Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 3 (London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1941), p. 104.
Andrew G. Watson and Neil Ripley Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, Supplement to the Second Edition (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1987), p. 65.
The British Library Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts, New Series, 1981-1985, 2 vols (London: The British Library, 1994), I: Descriptions, pp. 55-56.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)
- Notes:
- This manuscript is part of The Polonsky Foundation England and France Project: Manuscripts from the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, 700-1200.