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Add MS 45025
- Record Id:
- 032-002017645
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002017645
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000037.0x0003d8
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 45025
- Title:
-
Bible fragment from the Book of Kings ('the Ceolfrith or Ceolfrid Bible')
- Scope & Content:
-
Contents:
10 folios, with fragments of an eleventh, from a Bible in the Vulgate version, containing parts of the third and fourth books of Kings, as follows:
ff. 1r–4v, 3 Kings 21:17–22:4; IV Kings 1:1–3:25;
ff. 5r–6v, 4 Kings 8:27–10:19, imperfect;
ff 7r–8v, 4 Kings 15:12–17:15;
ff. 9r–v, 4 Kings 18:35–19:31;
ff. 10r–v (fragments), 4 Kings 19:37–20:2, 8–10,15–17, imperfect;
ff. 11r–v, 4 Kings 21:6–22:13.
Decoration: First lines of chapters in red or blue and initials in red. The beginning of 4 Kings is marked by a single initial P in black with red dots and, in the margin, the Chi Rho monogram flanked by alpha and omega (f. 2v).
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "032-002017645", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Add MS 45025: Bible fragment from the Book of Kings ('the Ceolfrith or Ceolfrid Bible')" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002017645
- Is part of:
- not applicable
- Hierarchy:
- 032-002017645
- Container:
- not applicable
- Record Type (Level):
- Fonds
- Extent:
-
10 folios from a parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_45025 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 0690
- End Date:
- 0716
- Date Range:
- 690-716
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
- Restrictions to access apply please consult British Library staff
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to use this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment codex.
Dimensions: 480 × 340 mm (written area 360 × 270 mm).
Foliation: ff. 1–11 (+ 4 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and 16 at the end).
Layout: Written in two columns of 44 lines. Arranged per cola et commata.
Script: Uncial.
Binding: Post-1600. Blue leather.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Part of one of three large Bibles (another being the Codex Amiatinus, Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS. Amiatino I) probably copied in the Northumbrian monastery of Jarrow or Wearmouth, on the orders of Abbot Ceolfrith (r. 690–716) (see Catalogus librorum Bibliothecae Wigorniensis, ed. by Ivor Atkins and Neil R. Ker (1944), p. 77).
Provenance:
Perhaps the ‘Great Bible’ recorded at Worcester Cathedral, to which Bishop Wulfstan II ordered copies of the cathedral's important documents to be added during the late 11th century (see Catalogus librorum Bibliothecae Wigorniensis, ed. by Ivor Atkins and Neil R. Ker (1944), pp. 77–79).
Modern chapter number and a note marking the division between 3 and 4 Kings (f. 2v) added in red ink, probably at a monastery in the Midlands (first half of the 14th century). The same markings are found in Add MS 37777.
Leaves used as covers of the 16th-century documents of the lands of the Willoughby family of Nottinghamshire: labels relating to deeds written upside down in the margins (ff. 2v, 4r, 6r) (see G. R. C. Davis, Medieval Cartularies, 2010, nos. 1338-1341; cf. notes on ff. 1v, 2v, 4, 6).
The Willoughby family, Barons Middleton of Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire (see Hist. MSS. Comm., Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton preserved at Wollaton Hall, by W. H. Stevenson, 1911, pp. 196-197, 611-612).
Purchased from Lord Middleton for the British Museum in 1937 by the Friends of the National Libraries.
- Source of Acquisition:
- Presented to the British Museum by the Friends of the National Libraries in 1937.
- Information About Copies:
-
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://bl.uk/manuscripts.
- Publications:
-
C. H. Turner, 'Iter Dunelmense', Journal of Theological Studies, 10 (1909), 540-44.
Codices latini antiquiores : a palaeographical guide to Latin manuscripts prior to the ninth century, 11 volumes, ed. by E. A. Lowe, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1935), II, no. 177.
H. I. Bell, 'Leaves of an early Bible MS', British Museum Quarterly, 12 (1938), 39-40.
Ivor Atkins, 'The Church of Worcester from the Eighth to the Twelfth Century, Part II, Antiquaries Journal,20 (1940), 220-23.
N. R. Ker, 'The Offa Bible and the Nero-Middleton Cartulary' in Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Wigorniensis made in 1622-1623 by Patrick Young, ed. by Ivor Atkins and Neil R. Ker ([Cambridge]: Cambridge University Press, 1944), pp. 77-79.
E. A. Lowe, English Uncial (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), pp. 8, 19, no. X.
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), pp. 104-05, 207.
The British Museum Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts 1936-1945, 2 vols (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1970) I, pp. 69-70.
J. J. G. Alexander, Insular Manuscripts: 6th to the 9th Century, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 1 (London: Harvey Miller, 1978), p. 33.
Andrew G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 700-1600 in The Department of Manuscripts: The British Library, 2 vols (London: British Library, 1979), I, no. 383.
Christopher de Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts (London: Phaidon Press, 1986), p. 18, pls. 10-12.
The Making of England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture AD 600-900, ed. by Leslie Webster and Janet Backhouse (London: British Museum, 1991), no. 87a [exhibition catalogue].
Margaret T. Gibson, The Bible in the Latin West, The Medieval Book (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), no. 3.
Patrick McGurk, ‘The Oldest Manuscripts of the Latin Bible’, in The Early Medieval Bible: Its Production, Decoration and Use(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 1-23 (pp. 2-3).
Bernhard Bischoff, Manuscripts and Libraries in the Age of Charlemagne, trans. and ed. by Michael Gorman, Cambridge Studies in Palaeography and Codicology, 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 14, n. 88a.
Bonifatius Fischer, Lateinische Bibelhandschriften im frühen Mittelalter, Vetus Latina, 11 (Freiburg: Herder, 1985), pp. 19, 21, 23-24, 67-69, 249.
Michelle Brown, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts (London: British Library, 1991), pl. 57.
Richard Marsden, ‘The Old Testament in Late Anglo-Saxon England: Preliminary observations on the Textual Evidence’, in The Early Medieval Bible: Its Production, Decoration and Use (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 101-24 (pp. 101).
Richard Marsden, 'Ask What I am Called': The Anglo-Saxons and Their Bibles', in The Bible as Book: The Manuscript Tradition, ed. by John L. Sharpe III and Kimberly Van Kampen (London: British Library, 1998), pp. 145-76 (p.171).
Michelle P. Brown and Patricia Lovett, The Historical Source Book for Scribes (London: British Library, 1999), pl. on p. 41.
Michelle P. Brown, ‘Mercian Manuscripts? The ‘Tiberius’ Group and Its Historical Context’, in Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe, ed. by Michelle P. Brown and Carol A. Farr (London: Leicester University Press, 2001), pp. 281-91 (p. 284).
Michelle P. Brown, The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe (London: British Library, 2003), fig. 30.
C. M. Kauffmann, Biblical Imagery in Medieval England 700-1500 (London: Harvey Miller, 2003), p. 11.
In the Beginning: Bibles before the Year 1000, ed. by Michelle P. Brown (Washington: Freer Gallery of Art & Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2006), no. 41 [exhibition catalogue] [with additional bibliography]
Celia Chazelle, 'Christ and the Vision of God: The Biblical Diagrams of the Codex Amiatinus', in The Mind's Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages, ed. by Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Anne-Marie Bouche (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 84-111 (p. 84, n. 4, 85).
Scot McKendrick and Kathleen Doyle, Bible Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2007), p. 10, no. 17.
G. R. C. Davis, Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain and Ireland, revised by Claire Breay, Julian Harrison and David M. Smith (London: British Library, 2010), p. 218.
The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts: texts, owners and readers, ed. by Ralph Hannah and Thorlac Turville-Petre (York: York Medieval Press, 2010), p. 122.
Richard Gameson, 'The Earliest English Royal Books' in 1000 Years of Royal Books and Manuscripts, ed. by Kathleen Doyle and Scot McKendrick (London: The British Library, 2013), pp. 3-35 (p. 7).
Helmut Gneuss and Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), under no. 293.
Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, ed. by Claire Breay and Joanna Story (London: The British Library, 2018), no. 33 [exhibition catalogue].
Richard Gameson, ‘Writing at Wearmouth-Jarrow’, in Manuscripts in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Cultures and Connections, ed. by Claire Breay and Joanna Story with Eleanor Jackson (Dublin: Four Courts, 2021), pp. 28-44 (pp. 28 n. 2, 38).
Joanna Story, ‘Insular manuscripts in Carolingian Francia’, in Manuscripts in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Cultures and Connections, ed. by Claire Breay and Joanna Story with Eleanor Jackson (Dublin: Four Courts, 2021), pp. 66-85 (pp. 72, 80 n. 45).
- Exhibitions:
- Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, British Library, London, 19 October 2018 - 19 February 2019
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)