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Add MS 16918
- Record Id:
- 032-002094711
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002094711
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000044.0x000110
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100055975235.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 16918
- Title:
- Usuard, Martyrology; lections for Sundays and liturgical feasts
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript was originally bound together with Add MS 16979, containing a necrology from the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Gilles and the Rule of St Benedict. The original manuscript was copied by scribe who identifies himself as 'Petrus Guillelmus', a Benedictine monk from Saint-Gilles, and who dates his work to the year 1129 in a colophon on f. 62r. This manuscript contains the martyrology of Usuard (d. c. 875), a monk of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and lections for Sundays and liturgical feasts. This indicates that the manuscript was used for communal worship in the Divine Office.
Contents:
ff. 1r-74r: Usuard, Martyrology, beginning: ‘INCIPIT PRAEFATIO USUARDI MONACHI [...] AD KAROLUM AUGUSTUM SUPER MARTIR [...]’.
ff. 74v-98r: Lection for Sundays and feasts, beginning ‘INCIPIUNT LECCIONES EVANGELORUM QUE IN CAPITULO LEGUNTUR’.
f. 98v: An instruction to pray thirty masses and perform devotional practices for deceased brothers, attributed to an abbot named ‘Bertranus’.
Decoration:
1 large initial in colours in a golden frame (oxidised) on f. 1r; 1 large initial in colours with knotwork and foliate decoration on f. 74v. Large initials in blue and green with red penwork decoration and large initials in blue with green penwork decoration throughout the manuscript. Large display capitals in red and green on f. 1r and f. 74v.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
England and France 700-1200 Project - Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "032-002094711", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Add MS 16918: Usuard, Martyrology; lections for Sundays and liturgical feasts" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002094711
- Is part of:
- not applicable
- Hierarchy:
- 032-002094711
- 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_100055975235.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1124
- End Date:
- 1134
- Date Range:
- c 1129
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 275 x 170 mm (text space: 180 x 105 mm).
Foliation: ff. 98 ( + 3 unfoliated paper leaves at the beginning + 3 at the end); ff. 1-15 were, at some point in time, damaged and repaired with blank parchment (loss of text on ff. 1-6).
Script: Protogothic.
Binding: Post-1600. Gold-tooled brown leather binding, the spine inscribed in gold at the British Museum: ‘USUARDI MARTYROLOGIUM’.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: France, S. (Saint-Gilles-du-Gard).
Provenance:
The Benedictine abbey of Saint-Gilles in Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, owned in the 12th century: written in or before 1129 by Petrus Guillermus of Saint-Gilles who identifies himself in a colophon on f. 62r of Add MS 16979 (containing a necrology for the abbey of Saint-Gilles), with which Add MS16918 was originally bound. The lections contain two entries (f. 59r and 59v) for the dedications of two churches of Saint-Gilles: one is dedication for a church of St Peter in 'Vallis Flaviana' (Saint-Gilles) and another for a church of St Giles. f. 98v contains an instruction for a prayer community that includes devotions to St Giles, who founded Saint-Gilles in the 7th century.
An unknown clergyman, in 1847: his sale, Puttick & Simpson, London, 26 April, 1847, lot 746 (a note on f. [iii] recto). Purchased by the British Museum per Thomas Rodd the Younger (b. 1796, d. 1849), London bookseller and agent for the British Museum, for £4.10.
- Information About Copies:
-
Complete digital coverage available for this manuscript; see Digital Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/manuscripts/.
- Publications:
-
Paul Alexandre Marchegay, Cartulaires français en Angleterre (Paris: Didot, 1855), p. 27.
Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1846-1847 (London: Woodfall and Kind, 1864), p. 324.
Ethel Cecilia Jones, Saint Gilles: essai d’histoire littéraire (Paris: Champion, 1914), p. 55.
Jean Dufour, ‘Le rouleau mortuaire de Boson, abbé de Suse (vers 1130)’, Journal des savants, 3.1 (1976), pp. 237-54 (p. 252).
Andrew G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c.700-1600 in the Department of Manuscripts, The British Library, 2 vols (London: British Museum Publications, 1979), I, p. 48 (no. 168).
Ulrich Winzer, S. Gilles: Studien zum Rechtsstatus und Beziehungsnetz einer Abtei im Spiegel Ihrer Memorialüberlieferung (Munich: Wihelm Fink, 1988), pp. 106-45, 213.
Walter Cahn, Romanesque Manuscripts: The Twelfth Century, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), II, p. 63 (no. 51).
Florian Mazel, ''L'Invention d'une Tradition' Les Monastères Saint-Victor de Marseille et Saint-Gilles à la Recherché du Patronage de Pierre (XIe-XIIe siècles', in Ecrire son Histoire: les Communautés religieuses régulières face à leur passé, ed. by Nicole Bouter (Saint-Etienne: C.E.R.C.O.R, 2005), pp. 337-67 (p. 342, n. 15).
- 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.