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Add MS 11283
- Record Id:
- 032-002109041
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002109041
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000040.0x00019c
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100055965341.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 11283
- Title:
-
Bestiary
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript is the earliest extant manuscript of a type of bestiaries known as 'Clark's Second-Family' that brings in new materials by following a system of classification into beasts, birds and reptiles. This taxonomy is supported by illustrations.
Contents:
ff. 1r-41r: A Bestiary, beginning: 'Leo fortissimus bestiarum ad nullius pavebit occursum'. Ending: 'Nam amor feminarum quarum peccatum ab initio cepit id est ab Adam usque nunc in filios inobediente debachatur'.
Decoration:
1 large drawing in red and green (f. 41r). 100 unframed drawings mainly in brown ink, some with colour wash (e.g., f. 23r). Several drawings are pricked for pounce transfer. Small decorated initials in red and blue with some pen flourishing.
Animals depicted in the drawings include:
f. 1r: A lion;
f. 2r: A horse; a leopard;
f. 3v: A griffon with prey in its claws;
f. 4r: An elephant;
f. 5r: A hyena eating a human leg from a tomb;
f. 8r: A crocodile ('cocodrilllus') with a dead figure in his claws;
f. 10r: A king setting dogs to attack two men;
f. 13r: A camel; a dromedary;
f. 17r: A vulture; cranes;
f. 23r: A peacock; a hen, both in colours;
f. 27v: Snakes;
f. 41r: Two human figures in a lake of fire.
Two artists worked on the drawings, according to Clark, Medieval Book of Beasts (2006), no. 12.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
England and France 700-1200 Project - Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "032-002109041", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Add MS 11283: Bestiary" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002109041
- Is part of:
- not applicable
- Hierarchy:
- 032-002109041
- 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_100055965341.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1175
- End Date:
- 1199
- Date Range:
- 4th quarter of the 12th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 280 x 180 mm (text space: 210 x 130 mm).
Foliation: ff 41 (+ 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 2 at the end).
Script: Protogothic.
Binding: Post-1600.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: England.
Provenance:
Short glosses in different hands in the margins, early 13th century and 14th century (e. g., ff. 5r, 6 v, 14r, 23v passim).
Cheshire county: inscribed 'nota pro stagno Blakemere', 14th century (f. 31r), 'Blakmere bog' refers probably to Delamere forest, Cheshire.
Pen trials and alphabet, 15th century (e. g., f. 34r).
Inscribed twice upside down 'Richard Lavere/ Richard Levere', late 15th century (f. 28v).
Inscribed three times upside down 'George Sparke', late 15th century (f. 28v).
Inscribed upside down, 'Ambros[ius] booke/ Thomas Butler ow[es] this booke' followed by numbers, early 16th century (f. 16r).
Inscribed with the names 'Cuthbert and Sigfrid', 16th century (ff. 3r, 5v).
Added references to sources such as Solinus, 17th century (throughout in the margins).
Sir Philip Mainwaringe (b. 1589, d. 1661) from Cheshire, government official: his signature (f. [iii] recto).
Purchased by the British Museum from the bookseller William Pickering (b. 1796, d. 1857) on 11 November 1837.
- Information About Copies:
- Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk.manuscripts/.
- Publications:
-
List of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1836-1840 (London: British Museum), p. 47.
G. C. Bruce, 'The Medieval Bestiaries and their influence on ecclesiastical decorative art', Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 25 (1919), pl. 5.
F. McCulloch, Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960), p. 34.
C. M. Kauffmann, Romanesque Manuscripts: 1066-1190: A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 3 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1975), III, no. 105.
Philip L. Armitage and John A. Goodall, 'Medieval Horned and Polled Sheep: The Archeological and Iconographic Evidence', The Antiquaries Journal, 57 (1977), 73-89.
English Romanesque Art 1066-1200 (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1984), no. 84 [Exhibition catalogue].
Ann Payne, Medieval Beasts (London: The British Library, 1990), p. 13, passim.
Xénia Muratova, 'Transmission Textuelle et Picturale des Bestiaires', in Comprendre et maîtriser la nature au Moyen Age: Mélanges d'Histoire des Sciences offerts à Guy Beaujouan, ed. by Danielle Jacquart (Paris: Droz, 1994), pp. 586, 591, 593, 595.
Debra Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image and Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pl. 55, 125, 142, 159.
Ron Baxter, Bestiaries and Their Users in the Middle Ages (London, 1998), pp. 128-32.
Debra Hassig, The Mark of the Beast: The Medieval Bestiary in Art, Life and Literature (New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 65, 88, 91.
Michelle P. Brown, The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), pp. 290, 292, pl. 126.
Willene B. Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-Family Bestiary: Commentary, Art, Text and Translation (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), no. 12.
P. D. A. Harvey, The Hereford World Map: Medieval World Maps and their Context (London: British Library, 2006), pp. 156-57, 163.
David Badke, The Medieval Bestiary: Animals in the Middle Ages (2011) http://bestiary.ca/manuscripts/manu980.htm [accessed 24 August 2016].
Susan Crane, Animal Encounters: Contacts and Concepts in Medieval Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), pp. 76-77, 101-02.
- 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.