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Cotton MS Tiberius A II
- Record Id:
- 040-001102147
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-001101582
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000001246.0x00021e
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Cotton MS Tiberius A II
- Title:
- The four Gospels ('Athelstan' or 'Coronation' Gospels)
- Scope & Content:
-
The manuscript consists of 3 separate items:
ff. 1r-1v: A cutting from the Breviary of Margaret of York;
ff. 2r-2v: Cottonian list of contents;
ff. 3r-218v: The four Gospels with prefatory texts.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Cotton Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-001101582
040-001102147 - Is part of:
- Cotton MS : Cotton Manuscripts
Cotton MS Tiberius A II : The four Gospels ('Athelstan' or 'Coronation' Gospels) - Contains:
- Cotton MS Tiberius A II, ff 1r-1v : Breviary (the 'Breviary of Margaret of York'), fragment
Cotton MS Tiberius A II, ff 3r–218v : The four Gospels ('Athelstan' or 'Coronation' Gospels)
Cotton MS Tiberius A II, ff 2r-2v : Cottonian list of contents in the "stylized" hand
Click here to View / search full list of parts of Cotton MS Tiberius A II - Hierarchy:
- 032-001101582[0431]/040-001102147
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Cotton MS
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
A parchment codex consisting of 3 items: 218 folios
- Digitised Content:
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Cotton_MS_Tiberius_A_II (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-

- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 0875
- End Date:
- 1499
- Date Range:
- 4th quarter 9th century-4th quarter 15th century
- 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:
-
Condition: outer edges of leaves damaged by fire in 1731
Materials: Parchment codex
Dimensions: Binding: approximately 345 × 270 mm; folios: 235 x 180 (text space: 150 x 110).
Foliation: ff. 218 (+ 2 unfoliated parchment flyleaves).
Script: Caroline minuscule (ff. 167r-172v are the work of a second scribe).
Binding: British Museum 1844.
- Custodial History:
-
All components of this manuscript were acquired by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (b. 1571, d. 1631), 1st baronet, antiquary and politician: inscribed 'Ro' Cotton Bruceus' (f. 3r), included in the first catalogue of his collection (Harley MS 6018, no. 6), and the Cottonian catalogue, Additional MS 36789 (f. 156v, no 24) (see Colin G. C. Tite, The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library: Formation, Cataloguing, Use (London, 2003), p. 103). Old English and Latin documents from the current manuscript were bound separately as Cotton Claudius MS A III and Cotton Faustina MS B VI (see Ker 1938).
Cotton’s collection was augmented by his son, Sir Thomas Cotton (b. 1594, d. 1662), 2nd baronet, and grandson, Sir John Cotton.
Sir John Cotton (b. 1621, d. 1702), 3rd baronet: bequeathed the entire Cotton collection of books and manuscripts to trustees ‘for Publick Use and Advantage’, 12 and 13 William III, c. 7. Formed one of the foundation collections of the British Museum in 1753.
- Information About Copies:
- Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk.manuscripts.
- Publications:
-
All parts:
W.R. Tymms and M.D. Wyatt, The Art of Illuminating as Practised in Europe from the Earliest Times (London: Day and Sons, 1860), p. 23, pl. IX.1.
Walter De Gray Birch and Henry Jenner, Early Drawings and Illuminations: An Introduction to the Study of Illustrated Manuscripts (London: Bagster and Sons, 1879), p. 3.
[E. Maunde Thompson and G. F. Warner], Catalogue of Ancient Manuscripts in the British Museum, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1881-1884), Part II: Latin, pp. 35-37.
Catalogue of Ancient Manuscripts in the British Museum, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1884), II: Latin, pp. 35–37.
Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, 4th edn, ed. by Edward Miller, 2 vols (London: George Bell & Sons, 1894), II, 76.
J.A. Herbert, Illuminated Manuscripts (London: Methuen, 1911), p. 144.
Walter Howard Frere, Studies in Early Roman Liturgy (London: Humphrey Milford, 1930), I: The Kalendar, Alcuin Club Collections, 28, p. 74n.
H.H. Glunz, History of the Vulgate in England from Alcuin to Roger Bacon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), no. 18.
Theodor Klauser, Das römische capitulare evangeliorum: Texte und Untersuchungen zu seiner ältesten Geschichte, Liturgiegeschichtliche Quellen und Forschungen, 28 (Munster: Aschendorffschen, 1935), p. 50, no. 160.
N.R. Ker, 'Membra disiecta', British Museum Quarterly, 12 (1938) p. 130.
G.L. Micheli, L’enluminure du haut moyen age et les influences irlandaises (Brussels: Editions de la connaissance, 1939), p. 191.
Hanns Swarzenski, 'The Anhalt Morgan Gospels', Art Bulletin, 31 (1949), 77-83 (p. 81).
D. Talbot Rice, English Art 871-1100, Oxford History of English Art, 2 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1952), p. 35.
Francis Wormald, English Drawings (London: Faber, 1952), pp. 23, 77.
Meyer Schapiro, 'Two Romanesque Drawings in Auxerre and Some Iconographic Problem', in Studies in Art and Literature for Belle da Costa Greene, ed. by Dorothy Miner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), pp. 331-349 (p. 333n.).
N.R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), no. 239.
Hans Swarzenski, 'The Role of Copies in the Formation of the Styles of the Eleventh Century', in Studies in Western Art: Acts of the Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art, 4 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), I: Romanesque and Gothic Art, 7-18 (p. 11).
Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. by N.R. Ker, 2nd edn, (London: Royal Historical Society, 1964), Canterbury.
Margaret Rickert, Painting in Britain: the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (London: Penguin Books, 1965), pp. 30-31, 221 n. 19.
André Boutemy, 'Un manuscrit rémois peu connu du British Museum: Les Évangiles D’Eller', Scriptorium, 23 (1969), 1-12 (p. 2).
Elżbieta Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts 900-1066, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 2 (London: Harvey Miller, 1976), pp. 11, 41.
A.G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c.700-1600 in the Department of Manuscripts, The British Library, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1979), I, no.548.
Simon Keynes, 'King Athelstan's Books', in Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. by M. Lapidge and H. Gneuss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) pp. 143-201 (pp. 147-52).
Hartmut Hoffmann, Buchkunst und Königtum im ottonischen und frühsalischen Reich, 2 vols, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 30 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1986) I, p. 9-10.
Peter Lasko, Ars Sacra 800-1200, 2nd edn (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 290 n. 76.
Illuminating the Book: Makers and Interpreters, ed. by Michelle P. Brown and Scot McKendrick (London: British Library, 1998), pl. 8.
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. 145-176 (p.175).
Maurits Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures from the 8th to the mid-16th Century (Leuven: Brepols, 1999), pl. 33.
Helmut Gneuss, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001), no. 362
Otto der Grosse: Magdeburg und Europa, ed. by Matthias Puhle, 2 vols (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2001), II: Katalog, pp. 121-23, pl. III.13.
Diane Reilly, ‘French Romanesque Giant Bibles’, Scriptorium, 56 (2002), 294-311 (p. 294n.).
Michelle P. Brown, The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe (London: British Library, 2003), p. 198n.
Scot McKendrick, Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts 1400-1550 (London: British Library, 2003), pl. 30.
Scot McKendrick and Kathleen Doyle, Bible Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2007), no. 27.
Richard W. Pfaff, The Liturgy in Medieval England: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 69.
Scot McKendrick, John Lowden, and Kathleen Doyle, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (London: British Library, 2011), no. 4 [exhibition catalogue].
- Exhibitions:
- Celts, National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, 10 March 2016 - 25 September 2016
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)
- Names:
- Athelstan, King of the Anglo-Saxons, 924-939
Cotton, John, 3rd Baronet, 1621-1702
Cotton, Robert Bruce, first baronet, antiquary and politician, 22 Jan 1571-6 May 1631,
see also http://isni.org/isni/000000008116498X - Related Material:
-
Cotton Claudius MS A III, ff. 2-7, 9* and Cotton Faustina MS B VI, vol I, ff. 95, 98-100, containing papal bulls and Anglo-Saxon charters, originally formed part of this manuscript, but were bound separately by Sir Robert Cotton.
A miniature (f. 98) was removed from Cotton Domitian MS A XVII by Sir Robert Cotton and added as a frontispiece to the Athelstan Gospels, but was restored to its original location in 1848 by Sir Frederic Madden, Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum (d. 1873).