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Cotton MS Claudius B IV
- Record Id:
- 040-001102470
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-001101582
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000001246.0x000315
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Cotton MS Claudius B IV
- Title:
- Old English Hexateuch (imperfect)
- Scope & Content:
-
The manuscript contains portions of the Hexateuch, in Old English:
ff. 1r-1v: Ælfric’s preface to Æthelwærd (imperfect).
ff. 1v-72v: Genesis.
ff. 72v-105v: Exodus.
ff. 105v-110v: Leviticus.
ff. 111r-128r: Numbers.
ff. 128v-140r: Deuteronomy.
ff. 140v-156v: Joshua.
The Old English text was written around the second quarter of the 11th century.
Notes in Old English (Kentish) and Latin commentaries and titles (some excerpts from other texts, including Peter Comestor's Historia scholastica, Jerome's translation of Eusebius's De situ et nominibus locorum Hebraicorum and Jerome's Liber quæstionum hebraicarum in Genesim) were added during the 12th century.
Decoration:
Twelve full-page miniatures, in pen outlines and colours (ff. 2r, 19r, 29r, 43v, 49r, 54r, 66r, 67v, 139v, 140r, 143r, 151r).
Many smaller miniatures, ranging from almost full-page to around a quarter of a page in size, throughout the volume, in pen and colours, many in varying stages of completion.
Small, plain initials, in colours.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Cotton Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-001101582
040-001102470 - Is part of:
- Cotton MS : Cotton Manuscripts
Cotton MS Claudius B IV : Old English Hexateuch (imperfect) - Hierarchy:
- 032-001101582[0566]/040-001102470
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Cotton MS
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
Parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Cotton_MS_Claudius_B_IV (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Old
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1025
- End Date:
- 1199
- Date Range:
- 2nd quarter of the 11th century-2nd half of the 12th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
- Restrictions to access apply please consult British Library staff
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to consult this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 325 × 215 mm (text space: 260 x 160 mm).
Foliation: ff. 156 (1884 foliation, replacing ink foliation of the 16th or 17th century, which had been done after the loss of the original first leaf and omits number '32' (ff. 1-31, 33-157)).
Collation: i8-1 (ff. 1-7), ii8 (ff. 8-15), iii4+1 (ff. 16-20; 2nd leaf added after f. 16), iv-ix8 (ff. 21-68), x6+2 (ff. 69-76; 6th leaf inserted after f. 73, 8th leaf inserted after f. 75), xi-xiv8 (ff. 77-108), xv8+1 (ff. 109-117; 5th leaf inserted after f. 112), xvi-xviii8 (ff. 118-141), xix8+1 (ff. 142-150; 6th leaf inserted after f. 146), xxsix (ff. 151-156; 6th leaf inserted after f. 155).
Script: Insular set minuscule; Insular caroline minuscule (annotations).
Binding: British Museum, in-house.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: England (Canterbury).
Provenance:
The Benedictine abbey of St Augustine, Canterbury: manuscript identified in the medieval catalogue of the abbey's library by the opening words of the second folio (now f. 1r, as the first leaf has been lost) (see James, Ancient Libraries (1903), pp. xxvi, lxxxiv, lxxxviii, 201, no. 95; Barker-Benfield, St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury (2008), pp. lxi n., 95, 376, 405-06, 417, 424, 506, 1380, 1398; Heslop and Mitchell, 'The arts and learning' (1997), pp. 80-82).
Robert Talbot, antiquary (b. 1505/6, d. 1558): inscribed by him 'ca. XXXVII' (f. 53r).
Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, 1st baronet, antiquary and politician (b. 1571, d. 1631): inscribed by him, 'Ro. Cotton Bruceus' (f. 1r). The volume was in Cotton's possession by 1621, since the loan of the book to William Lisle 'before this April 1621' is recorded in the catalogue of the Cottonian collection, Harley MS 6018.
Cotton’s collection was augmented by his son, Sir Thomas Cotton, 2nd baronet (b. 1594, d. 1662), and his grandson, Sir John Cotton.
Sir John Cotton, 3rd baronet (b. 1621, d. 1702): 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:
-
The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch: British Museum Cotton Claudius B. IV, ed. by C.R. Dodwell and Peter Clemoes, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, XVIII (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1974).
Benjamin C. Withers, The Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, Cotton Claudius B.iv: The Frontier of Seeing and Reading in Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto; Buffalo: The British Library and University of Toronto Press, 2007), with CD-ROM.
- Publications:
-
Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, ed. by Claire Breay and Joanna Story (London: The British Library, 2018), no. 93 [exhibition catalogue].
Backhouse, Janet, The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting in the British Library (London: The British Library, 1997), no. 17.
Barker-Benfield, B. C. (ed.), St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 13, 3 volumes (London: The British Library, 2008), pp. lxi n. 28, 95, 405-06, 417, 424, 376, 506, 1380, 1398, 2034.
Barnhouse, Rebecca, ‘Pictorial responses to textual variations in the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch’, Manuscripta, 41 (1997), 67–87.
Barnhouse, Rebecca and Benjamin C. Withers (eds.), The Old English Hexateuch: Aspects and Approaches (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000) [on the text].
Broderick, Herbert R. ‘The veil of Moses as exegetical image in the illustrated Old English Hexateuch (London, B.L. Cotton Ms. Claudius B.iv’, in Insular and Anglo-Saxon Art and Thought in the Early Medieval Period, ed. by Colum Hourihane, Index of Christian Art Occasional Papers XIII (Princeton, NJ: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), pp. 271–86.
Broderick, Herbert R., 'Northern Light: Late Anglo-Saxon Genesis Illustration and the Mosaics of San Marco', in Das Genese der Genesismosaiken und ihre mittelalterliche Wirklichkeit, ed. by Martin Buchsel, Herbet L. Kessler, and Rebecca Muller (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2014), pp. 211-30.
Broderick, Herbert R., Moses the Egyptian in the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch(London, British Library Cotton MS Claudius B.iv) (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2017).
Herbert R. Broderick, 'The Illustrated Old English Hexateuch (London, British Library Cotton MS Claudius B.iv)', Oxford Bibliographies in Medieval Studies, ed. by Paul E. Szarmach et al. [2018].
Crawford, Samuel J. (ed.), The Old English Version of the Heptateuch, Ælfric's Treatise on the Old and New Testament and His Preface to Genesis, Early English Text Society, 160 (London: Oxford University Press, 1969) [Critical edition of the text].
Doane, A. N. and William P. Stoneman, Purloined Letters: The Twelfth-Century Reception of the Anglo-Saxon Illustrated Hexateuch (British Library, Cotton Claudius B. iv) (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2011).
Dodwell, C. R., ‘L’originalité iconographique de plusieurs illustrations anglo-saxonnes de l'Ancien Testament’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 14 (1971), 319–28.
Dodwell, C. R., Anglo-Saxon Art: A New Perspective (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982), p. 171, plates 12, 13, 33, 38, 46.
Dodwell, C. R. and Peter Clemoes (eds.), The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch: British Museum Cotton Claudius B. IV, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, XVIII (Copenhagen, 1974) [facsimile].
Gneuss, Helmut, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001), no. 315.
Henderson, George, ‘The Joshua cycle in B.M. Cotton MS. Claudius B. IV’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 3rd series, 31 (1968), 38–59.
James, Montague Rhodes, The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903), pp. xxvi, lxxxiv, lxxxviii, 201, no. 59.
Jost, Karl, 'Unechte Aelfrictexte', Anglia: Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie, 51 (1927), 81-104, 177-219.
Karkov, Catherine E., Text and Picture in Anglo-Saxon England: Narrative Strategies in the Junius 11 Manuscript (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 208.
Ker, Neil R., Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1957; repr. 1990), no. 142.
Ker, Neil R. (ed.), Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, 2nd edition (London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1964), p. 43.
Lewis, Michael J. (review), 'The Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, Cotton Claudius B.iv: The Frontier of Seeing and Reading in Anglo-Saxon England', The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 9, 4 (2008), 479-81.
Marsden, Richard (ed.), The Old English Heptateuch and Ælfric's 'Libellus de veteri testamento et novo', Early English Text Society; 330 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
McKendrick, Scot and Kathleen Doyle, Bible Manuscripts: 1400 Years of Scribes and Scripture (London: The British Library, 2007), no. 51.
Mellinkoff, Ruth, ‘The round, cap-shaped hats depicted on Jews in BM Cotton Claudius B. iv’, Anglo-Saxon England, 2 (1973), 155–65.
Mellinkoff, Ruth, 'Serpent Imagery in the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch', in Modes of Interpretation in Old English Literature: Essays in Honour of Stanley B. Greenfield (Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 1986), pp. 51-64.
Morrell, Minnie Kate, A Manuel of Old English Biblical Materials (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1965), pp. 3-13.
Raith, Josef, 'Aelfric's share in the Old English Pentateuch', The Review of English Studies, New Series, 3, 12 (1952), 305-14.
Smith, Andrea B. (ed.), The Anonymous Parts of the Old English Hexateuch: A Latin-Old English/ Old English-Latin Glossary(Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1985) [on the text].
Temple, Elzbieta, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts 900-1066 (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 1976), no. 86.
Treharne, Elaine, 'The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220', http://www.le.ac.uk/english/em1060to1220/mss/EM.BL.Clau.B.iv.htm#top [accessed 2 September 2014].
Wilcox, Jonathan (ed.), Aelfric's Prefaces (Durham: Durham Medieval Texts, 1994), pp. 116-19.
Withers, Benjamin C., 'Unfulfilled promise: the rubrics of the Old English prose Genesis', Anglo-Saxon England, 28 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 111-40.
Withers, Benjamin C., 'A "secret and feverish genesis": the Prefaces of the Old English Hexateuch', The Art Bulletin, 81, 1 (1999), 53-71.
Withers, Benjamin C., The Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, Cotton Claudius B.iv: The Frontier of Seeing and Reading in Anglo-Saxon England (London: The British Library, 2007).
Wormald, Francis, English Drawings of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1952), no. 19.
- Exhibitions:
- Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, British Library, London, 19 October 2018 - 19 February 2019
Magna Carta, (online), 10 March 2015- - Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)