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Add MS 35166
- Record Id:
- 032-002088563
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002088563
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000051.0x000024
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 35166
- Title:
-
Apocalypse in Latin with commentary
- Scope & Content:
-
Contents:
Apocalypse, with abridged Berengaudus commentary in Latin (ff. 3-30v), imperfect, and the life of John beginning with the proconsul's letter (ff. 1r-2v; 31r-38v).
There are folios lacking between ff. 16 and 17 containing images and text from Revelations, 10:7 to 16:8.
Decoration:
76 framed half-page miniatures in colour washes and gold, some with silver, on each page, with the text below. Large initials in gold on blue and rose grounds, some with decoration in white, in the main text. The main text is written in black and the commentary is in red, with the initials in blue.
The subjects of the miniatures are (see Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts (1988), pp. 100, 203-13):
f. 1r: John before Emperor Domitian;
f. 1v: John in a cauldron of boiling oil;
f. 2r: John on the boat to Patmos;
f. 2v: The arrival at Patmos;
f. 3r: The angel waking John and asking him to write;
f. 3v: John writing to the seven churches;
f. 4r: John kisses the feet of Christ who is seated between 7 candlesticks;
f. 4v: Vision of Heaven;
f. 5r: John with an Elder, while the angel reads the names of the worthy;
f. 5v: The adoration of Christ, who is seated in a mandorla with a book;
f. 6r: The Lamb enthroned, surrounded by crowned Elders;
f. 6v: The Lamb takes the book from Christ;
f. 7r: The First Seal: the White Horse;
f. 7v: The Second Seal: the Red Horse;
f. 8r: The Third Seal: the Black Horse;
f. 8v: The Fourth Seal: the Pale Horse;
f. 9r: The Fifth Seal: the Souls of the Martyrs;
f. 9v: The Sixth Seal: the earthquake;
f. 10r: Angels holding the winds and an Angel standing with a seal (left);
f. 10v: Adoration of God and the Lamb;
f. 11r: The Seventh Seal: the Angels give trumpets and incense;
f. 11v: Incense poured on the Altar of Heaven (left) and on the earth (right);
f. 12r: The First Trumpet: fire rains on the earth;
f. 12v: The Second Trumpet: fire on the sea;
f. 13r: The Third Trumpet: a burning star falls from Heaven;
f. 13v: The Fourth Trumpet: the sun and moon are darkened;
f. 14r: The lament of the eagle;
f. 14v: The Fifth Trumpet: the falling star;
f. 15r: The locusts come up from the pit;
f. 15v: The Sixth Trumpet: the four Angels with swords and shields;
f. 16r; The horsemen attack the people;
f. 16v: The Angel with the Seven Thunders;
32-36 scenes are missing here, but copies were made of them in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.10.2 (c. 1390) and in Madrid, El Escorial Bib. Monasterio San Lorenzo, MS E Vitr. 5 (c. 1430), so the folios were probably removed in the post-medieval period (see Morgan, End of Time (2012)).
f. 17r: The Fourth Vial poured on the sun;
f. 17v: The Fifth Vial poured on the Beast's seat and darkness descends;
f. 18r: The Sixth Vial poured on the Euphrates;
f. 18v: Frogs come out of the mouths of the Dragon, the Beast and the False Prophet;
f. 19r: The Seventh Vial: the earthquake and destruction on earth;
f. 19v: The Harlot seated on the waters;
f. 20r: The Harlot seated on the Beast;
f. 20v: The Harlot drunk with the blood of the Saints;
f. 21r: The fall of Babyon;
f. 21v: Lament over Babylon;
f. 22r: The Angel casts the millstone into the sea;
f. 22v: Heaven triumphs and the Harlot is cast into the flames;
f. 23r: The marriage feast of the Lamb;
f. 23v: The Angel asks John to write (left); John kneels before the Angel (right);
f. 24r: Christ in the winepress (left); vision of the armies of Heaven (right);
f. 24v: The birds eating the flesh of kings and all men;
f. 25r: The battle with the Beast;
f. 25v: The Beast is killed;
f. 26r: The Dragon is captured by angels and locked away in the bottomless pit;
f. 26v: The First Resurrection;
f. 27r: Satan returns and attacks the Holy City;
f. 27v: Satan is cast into the pit of Hell;
f. 28r: The Day of Judgement;
f. 28v: The Holy City comes down and John is instructed to write;
f. 29r: John is shown the New Jerusalem by the Angel;
f. 29v: The River of Life;
f. 30r: John worshipping at the feet of the Angel;
f. 30v: John is addressed by Christ enthroned;
f. 31r: The raising of Drusiana;
f. 31v: John changes sticks and stones to precious gems;
f. 32r: The raising of Stacteus;
f. 32v: Aristodemus challenges John to drink poison;
f. 33r: John drinks from the poisoned cup;
f. 33v: Two men who have drunk poison are revived by Aristodemus using John's cloak;
f. 34r-36v: A young man is presented to a bishop by John and becomes his cup-bearer; the young man, riding a white horse, joins a band of robbers and they kill and steal; John is told this by the bishop and rides out to bring the young man back to him;
f. 37r: John's vision of Christ and the Apostles;
f. 37v: John says farewell;
f. 38r: John says Mass and later lies dead in his tomb;
f. 38v: The tomb is found empty, containing only manna from Heaven.
The manuscript is very close in style and iconography to the Dyson Perrins Apocalypse (Los Angeles, Getty Museum, MS Ludwig III. i) and may have been produced in the same workshop, or perhaps by the same artist. Lewis (Reading Images (1995)) asserts that it has a Westminster prototype, related to Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.10.2.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "032-002088563", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Add MS 35166: Apocalypse in Latin with commentary" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002088563
- Is part of:
- not applicable
- Hierarchy:
- 032-002088563
- Container:
- not applicable
- Record Type (Level):
- Fonds
- Extent:
-
A parchment codex, 38 folios
- Digitised Content:
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_35166 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1250
- End Date:
- 1299
- Date Range:
- 2nd half of the 13th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
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- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: parchment.
Dimensions: 285 x 220 mm (text space: 110 x 155 mm).
Foliation: ff. 38 (+ 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves and 1 parchment flyleaf at the beginning and 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves and 1 parchment flyleaf at the end).
Script: Gothic.
Layout: The text is written in two columns in the lower half of each page, below the miniature.
Binding: BM/BL in-house. Former parchment covers (c. 1600), with tooled centre and corner-pieces (ff. [iii] and [v]).
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: England, S.E. (?London).
Provenance:
Perhaps belonged to a religious Guild of Kalendars: an inscription in a 15th-century hand, 'Liber Domus Kalendarum' (f. 1r).
?The Blois family of Cockfield Hall, Yoxford, Suffolk: belonged to them, according to the British Museum Catalogue of Additions (1901)).
Reverend S. H. Turner of Beccles, Suffolk, bought from him by the British Museum: an inscription on f. [ii] recto, 'Purch[ase]d of Rev[erend] S. H. Turner, 4 April, 1898'.
- 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, 1894-1899 (London: British Museum, 1901), p. 194.
L. Delisle and P. Meyer, L'Apocalypse en français au XIIIe siècle (Bibl. Nat. Fr. 403) (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1901), no. 9, IV, XII-LIX, LXXXIV-LXXXV.
M. R. James, The Trinity Apocalypse (London: Roxburghe Club, 1909), pp. 9, 15, 16-19, 25.
J. A. Herbert, Illuminated Manuscripts (London, 1911; repr. Bath, 1972), p. 214.
Montague Rhodes James, La Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei (Roxburghe Club, 1920), pp. 32, 34-35.
Eric G. Millar, English Illuminated Manuscripts from the Xth to the XIIIth Century (Paris: Van Oest, 1926), pp. 60, 100, pl. 92.
Montague Rhodes James, The Apocalypse in Latin, MS 10 in the Collection of C. W. Dyson Perrins (Oxford, 1927), pp. 10-11, 27, 31, 34, 48, 51-53, 54-55.
Montague Rhodes James, The Apocalypse in Art, The Schweich Lectures of the British Academy, 1927 (London: British Academy, 1931), no. 9, pp. 4, 52, 54.
Peter Brieger, English Art 1216-1307, Oxford History of English Art, 4 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1957), p. 167.
Christel Hansen, Die Wandmalereien des Kapitelhauses der Westminsterabtei in London (Wurzburg, 1939), pp. 90, 101, 123.
Albert Hollaender, ‘The pictorial work in the "Flores Historiarum" of the so-called Matthew of Westminster’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 28.2 (1944), 361-81 (pp. 12, 14).
René Planchenault, L’Apocalypse d’Angers, Bulletin Monumental, III (1953), pp. 248, 258-59.
R. Freyhan,‘Joachism and the English Apocalypse’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 18 (1955), 211-44 (pp. 219, 223 n. 4, 227, 232, 233, 243, pl. 49d).
Richard Vaughan, Matthew Paris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), p. 226.
G. Schmidt, Die Malerschule von St Florian (Linz, 1962), pp. 123-24.
D. H. Turner, Early Gothic Illuminated Manuscripts in England (London, 1965), p. 24, pl. II.
D. H. Turner, Illuminated Manuscripts Exhibited in the Grenville Library (London, British Museum, 1967), no. 17.
Claus M. Kauffmann, An Altar-piece of the Apocalyse from Master Bertram’s Workshop in Hamburg (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1968), p. 27, fig. 25.
Peter Brieger, ‘Manuscripts’, in Art and the Courts: France and England from 1259 to 1328, The National Gallery of Canada, 1972 (Ottowa: National Gallery, 1972), pp. 50-70 (pp. 56-57, fig. 58, no. 20, pls 29, 30) [exhibition catalogue].
Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Manuscript (Oxford: Phaidon, 1979), pl. 31.
Peter Kurmann, ‘Le portail apocalyptique de la cathédrale de Reims’, in L’Apocalypse de Jean (Geneva: Droz, 1979), pp. 245-313 (pp. 255, 260 n. 50, 263, 264 n. 56, 265).
Muriel A. Whitaker, ‘Pearl and some illustrated Apocalypse manuscripts’, Viator, 12 (1981), 183-95 (pp. 185, 187, 190, fig. 5).
Peter Klein, Endzeiterwartung und Ritterideologie: Die englische Apokalypsen der Frühgotik und MS Douce 180 (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1983), pp. 6, 7, 10, 12, 13, 35, 56, 68, 98 et passim, 165, 169, 170, 178, 179, figs 25, 46, 51, 58, 139, 146, 153, 159, 163, 166.
Linda Fisher, 'Iconography and Narrative in the ‘St Albans’ Apocalypses', (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 1984), pp. 95, 111, 112, 117, 126, 151, 152, 155, 157.
Richard Kenneth Emmerson and Suzanne Lewis, 'Census and Bibliography of Medieval Manuscripts containing Apocalypse Illustrations, ca. 800-1500', Traditio: Studies in Ancient and Medieval History, Thought and Religion, 41 (1985), 367-409, no. 67.
Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts 1285-1385, 2 vols, A Survey of Illuminated Manuscripts in the British Isles, 5 (London: Harvey Miller, 1986), II, p. 176.
Nigel Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, 2 vols, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 4 (London Harvey Miller, 1982-1988), II: 1250-1285, no. 125, pls 130-32.
Suzanne Lewis, 'The English Gothic illuminated Apocalypse, lectio divina, and the art of memory', Word & Image, 7 (1991), 1-32 (pp. 21-22, 30, pls 12, 26).
Laura F. Hodges, ‘The Wife of Bath’s Costumes: Reading the Subtexts’, The Chaucer Review, 27, no. 4 (1993), 359-74 (p. 373).
Suzanne Lewis, Reading Images: Narrative Discourse and Reception in the Thirteenth-century Illuminated Apocalypse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 28, 31, 32, 34, 41, 59, 88, 97, 164, 168, 172, 173, 181, 182, 184, 185, 187, 194, 195, 198, 199, 228, 269, 341, 349 n. 51, 351 ns 76-77, 357 n. 31, 361 n. 129, figs 26, 27, 29, 132, 133, 141, 145, 153, 155, 158, 168, 172 [with additional bibliography].
Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting (London: British Library, 1997), p. 81.
The Apocalypse and the Shape of Things to Come, ed. by Frances Carey (London: British Museum, 1999), no. 11 [exhibition catalogue].
Nigel Morgan, ‘French Interpretations of English Apocalpyses’, in England and the Continent in the Middle Ages: Studies in Memory of Andrew Martindale, Proceedings of the 1996 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by John Mitchell and Matthew Moran (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 2000), pp. 137-56 (p. 141).
Nigel Morgan, ‘The Illustrated Apocalypse in Thirteenth-Century England and its Historical Context’, in Apocalipsis Gulbenkian (Barcelona: M. Moleiro, 2002), p. 21.
Nancy L. Ross, 'Forgotten Revelation: The Iconic Development of the Anglo-Norman Verse and Early Prose Apocalypse Manuscripts' (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge, 2006), pp. 7, 11, 12, 41, 46, 54, 103, 158, 159.
Scot McKendrick and Kathleen Doyle, Bible Manuscripts: 1400 Years of Scribes and Scripture (London: British Library, 2007), p. 115, fig. 102.
Nigel Morgan, The Douce Apocalypse: Picturing the End of the World in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2007), pp. 12, 29.
Nigel Morgan, Illuminating the End of Time: The Getty Apocalypse Manuscript (Los Angeles, 2012), pp. 12-13, 15-22, 68-72, figs 1, 2, 10-19 [facsimile edition with a commentary].
Ian Boxall, Patmos in the reception history of the Apocalypse (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 184, 186.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)