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Add MS 15350

Record Id:

032-002087108

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

032-002087108

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000052.0x00026f

LARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100062417317.0x000001

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Add MS 15350

Title:

Codex Wintoniensis (The St Swithun Cartulary)

Scope & Content:

Known as 'Codex Wintoniensis', this 12th-century manuscript contains the St Swithun or Winchester Cartulary, a collection of charters pertaining to the cathedral priory of Winchester (Old Minster) written in Latin and Old English. The manuscript may have been in the hands of the Benedictine monk and historian Thomas Rudborne (fl. 1447-1454), see Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England (1996), p. 494 (n. 1).

Contents:

ff. 2v-120v: The 'St Swithun Cartulary' preceded by a list of tituli (f. 2v).

This manuscript contains two additions:

ff. 1r-1v: A fragment leaf from a different manuscript used as pastedown in the original binding containing parts of the Verba seniorum (The Sayings of the Elders), Book 5 of the Vitas Patrum (The Lives of the Fathers) in an ? 8th-century hand; this leaf as well as f. 121 were part of a different volume probably written in Italy (see Gneuss, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts (2014), p. 216.)

ff. 121r-121v: Another fragment leaf containing parts of Verba seniorum.

Decoration:

Numerous large initials in red, green and yellow, many with penwork and foliate decoration in red, green and yellow (e.g. ff. 9r, 11v, 22v, 27v, 45r). Rubrics in red.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Additional Manuscripts
England and France 700-1200 Project

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "032-002087108", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Add MS 15350: Codex Wintoniensis (The St Swithun Cartulary)" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002087108

Is part of:

not applicable

Hierarchy:

032-002087108

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_100062417317.0x000001

Thumbnail:

Languages:

English, Old
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1130

End Date:

1150

Date Range:

1130-1150

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Parchment.

Dimensions: 400 x 280 mm (text space: 310 x 220 mm).

Foliation: ff. 121 ( + 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 2 at the end).

Script: Uncial (ff 1, 121); Protogothic (ff. 2-120).

Binding: Pre-1600. The original Romanesque covers are kept separately (Add MS 15350/1). Brown leather over wooden covers, blind-tooled, with geometric, zoomorphic and foliate decoration. Rebound in 1961.

Custodial History:

Origin: Winchester, Southeastern England.

Provenance:

The Benedictine Cathedral Priory of St Peter, St Paul, and St Swithun, Winchester, founded in 642: the manuscript contains the cartulary of the priory.

Thomas Dackomb (b. 1496, d. 1572), English book collector: owned the manuscript in 1550; his ownership inscription (f. 2r).

Winchester Cathedral: owned the manuscript before 1844; its ownership inscription 'Winchester Cathedral Library' added in a 19th-century hand (f. 2r).

Purchased by the British Museum from the Dean and Chapter of Winchester Cathedral on 21 December 1844 (f. 2r) for £200.

Information About Copies:

Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk.manuscripts/.

Publications:

Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1841-1845 (London: British Museum, 1850), p. 1 (no. 15350).

Catalogue of Ancient Manuscripts in the British Museum, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1881-1884), II (1884), p. 62.

Geoffrey D. Hobson, English Binding before 1500, The Sandars Lectures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1929), p. 29.

Codices Latini Antiquiores, ed. by Elias Avery Lowe, 11 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934-1966), II: Great Britain and Ireland (1935), no. 164.

Thomas S. R. Boase, English Art 1100-1216, Oxford History of English Art, 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), p. 232.

Andrew G. Watson, ‘A Sixteenth-Century Collector: Thomas Dackomb, 1496-c. 1572’, The Library, 18 (1963), 204-17 (p. 214, no. 12).

Alexander Richard Rumble, The Structure and Reliability of the Codex Wintoniensis (British Museum, Additional MS 15350; the Cartulary of Winchester Cathedral Priory) (unpublished doctoral thesis, University College London, 1979).

Christopher F. R. De Hamel, Glossed Books of the Bible and the Origins of the Paris Booktrade (Woodbridge: Brewer, 1984), p.83 (n. 119).

Kathryn Lowe "'As Fre as Thowt'?: Some Medieval Copies and Translations of Old English Wills", English Manuscript Studies, 4 (1993), 1-23.

Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England: c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (Routledge: London, 1996).

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), p. 216 (no. 281).

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.

Subjects:

Hagiography
History
Law

Places:

Winchester, England

Related Material:

Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1841-1845 (London: British Museum, 1850), p. 1 (no. 15,350):

'ANCIENT CARTULARY of the Priory of St. Swithin, Winchester, containing a large collection of royal and other charters, in Anglo-Saxon and Latin, from the reign of Ceadwalla of Wessex, A.D. 688, to the reign of Edward the Confessor, A.D. 1046; with the addition of a few others of later date, granted by William I., Stephen and Henry I. The volume is very finely written throughout, with ornamental initial letters, and was probably compiled in the time of Henry de Blois, Bishop of Winchester (brother of king Stephen), between the years 1130-1150. It is in the original stamped binding, and at each end have been pasted down portions of four large quarto leaves of a very ancient manuscript (probably of the beginning of the viith century), written in uncial letters, and containing a fragment of the Latin translation, by Pelagius Diaconus, of the work De Vitis Patrum, from cap. xiii. § 9. p. 615, col. 2, to cap. xiv. § 17, p. 619, col. 2, of Rosweide's edition, Antv. 1615. An index of contents has been originally prefixed to the volume, but is mutilated, and only a portion remains. On the recto of the first leaf appears the name of a former pos;- sessor, " Liber dni Thome Takcombe, 1550." On vellum. Folio. [15,350.]'.

Related Archive Descriptions:

Add MS 15350/1