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Cotton MS Otho C V
- Record Id:
- 040-001102881
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-001101582
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000001273.0x0001fe
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100057807671.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Cotton MS Otho C V
- Title:
- Gospels of St Matthew and St Mark (part of the 'The Otho-Corpus Gospels') (imperfect)
- Scope & Content:
-
This codex contains part of an Insular Gospel-book which was badly damaged in the Ashburnham House fire of 1731.
Contents:
ff. 1r–64v: The Gospels of St Matthew and St Mark (imperfect). The Gospels of St Luke and St John are contained in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 197B and possibly Royal MS 7 C XII, ff. 2–3. The canon tables now in Royal MS 7 C XII may have come from the same original manuscript, judging by their size (Budny, 'Biblia' (1999), p. 278 n. 39). Together, these are known as the 'Otho-Corpus Gospels' or the 'Cambridge London Gospels'. It is unknown when these parts were separated. A fascimile of some passages which was made before the fire is Stowe MS 1061, f. 36..
Decoration:
Red text in a black frame (f. 22r). Decorative capitals on a background of red dots with yellow decorations (ff. 22v, 25v). Red text (f. 25v). Miniature of a lion in red (f. 27r). Initial with interlace and spiral decoration in red and yellow, with yellow capitals (f. 28r). Numerals in red. Yellow fill highlighting letters throughout. Red dots highlighting letters and words throughout.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Cotton Collection
England and France 700-1200 Project - Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-001101582
040-001102881 - Is part of:
- Cotton MS : Cotton Manuscripts
Cotton MS Otho C V : Gospels of St Matthew and St Mark (part of the 'The Otho-Corpus Gospels') (imperfect) - Hierarchy:
- 032-001101582[0758]/040-001102881
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Cotton MS
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- A parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100057807671.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 0675
- End Date:
- 0724
- Date Range:
- 4th quarter of the 7th century-1st quarter of the 8th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Condition: leaves badly damaged by fire in 1731.
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: folio size including paper frames 255 x 165 mm (maximum folio size and text space: 160 x 105 mm).
Script: Half-uncial.
Foliation: ff. 64 (+ 2 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning + 2 at the end).
Binding: British Museum/British Library in-house. Rebound in 1963.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: ?Northumbria, Northern England.
Provenance:
This manuscript's text, decoration and some of its scripts have been compared to the Lindisfarne Gospels (Cotton MS Nero D IV), the Durham Gospels (Durham Cathedral Library A II 16) and the Echternach Gospels (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 9389), leading its production to be linked to a Northumbrian centre such as Lindisfarne or an Irish centre with connections to Echternach, such as Rath Melsigi. (For aspects of this debate, see Brown, The Lindisfarne Gospels (2003), pp. 48-50, Verey, ‘Lindisfarne or Rath Maelsigi?’, pp. 327-35.)
Southern England (St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury?): additions made in the late 8th or early 9th century to the text which is now Corpus Christi College MS 197B (see McKitterick, 'The Coming of Christianity' (2005), p. 48). A 17th-century tradition that these Gospels had belonged to St Augustine himself, repeated by Matthew Parker and Robert Cotton, has no basis, but the manuscript may have been associated with the house, if it is one of the Gospel-books mentioned in lists from the library of St Augustine's (see Tite, Early Records (2003), p. 153; Budny, Insular (1997), I, p. 58; Barker-Benfield, St Augustine's (2008), III, 1663-64, 1696).
It is unknown when the parts of the Gospel-book were separated; however, this may have occurred before the Dissolution of the monasteries, if the canon tables in Royal MS 7 C XII, ff. 2r-3v were part of this Gospel-book. Those fragments contain the signature of Thomas Wolsey (b. 1470/71, d. 1530), royal minister, archbishop of York, and cardinal(f. 2r), which may suggest that they were already being used as flyleaves at that stage.
Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (b. 1571, d. 1631), 1st baronet, antiquary and politician: owner. Cotton’s collection was augmented by his son, Sir Thomas Cotton (b. 1594, d. 1662), 2nd baronet, and his 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:
-
Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, ed. by Claire Breay and Joanna Story (London: The British Library, 2018), no. 27 [exhibition catalogue].
Alexander, J.J.G., Insular Manuscripts: 6th to the 9th Century, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 1 (London: Miller, 1978), no. 12.
Barker-Benfield, B.C., St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 13, 3 vols (London: British Library, 2008), III, pp. 1663-64, 1696, 1733-34, 1792, 1796.
Brown, Michelle P., Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts (London: British Library, 1991), pl. 66b.
Brown, Michelle P., The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe (London: British Library, 2003), pp. 47-50, 236, 258, 265, 347, 353, 388n., 393n., 400-01.
Brown, Michelle P., 'Preaching with the Pen: the Contribution of Insular Scribes to the Transmission of Sacred Text, from the 6th to 9th Centuries', University of London Annual Palaeography Lecture, January 2004, School of Advanced Study, Institute of English Studies, University of London, Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies, Courses & Events, p. 19 [accessed 3 April 2006].
Brown, Michelle P. (ed.), In the Beginning: Bibles before the Year 1000 (Washington: Freer Gallery of Art & Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2006), pp. 295-96 [exhibition catalogue].
Budny, Mildred, 'The Biblia Gregoriana', in St Augustine and the Conversion of England, ed. by Richard Gameson (Thrupp: Sutton, 1999), pp. 237-84 (pp. 252, 272).
Budny, Mildred, Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College Cambridge: An Illustrated Catalogue, 2 vols (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), I, p. 58.
Doyle, Kathleen and Charlotte Denoël, Medieval Illumination: Manuscript Art in England and France 700-1200 (London: British Library, 2018), also published as Enluminures Médiévales: Chefs-d'oeuvre de la Bibliothèque nationale de France et de la British Library, 700-1200 (Paris : BnF Éditions, 2018), p. 37.
Gameson, Richard, Manuscript Treasures of Durham Cathedral (London: Third Millennium, 2010), pp. 27, 33, 38.
Gneuss, Helmut and Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), no. 63.
Ker, N.R., ed., Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 3, 2nd edn (London: Royal Historical Society, 1964), p. 47.
Laffitte, Marie-Pierre and Charlotte Denoël, Trésors carolingiens: Livres manuscrits de Charlemagne à Charles le Chauve (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2007), p. 69.
Lowe, E.A., ed., Codices Latini Antiquiores, 11 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934-66), II: Great Britain and Ireland (2nd edn, 1972), no. 125.
McGurk, Patrick, Latin Gospel Books from A.D. 400 to A.D. 800 (Paris: Érasme, 1961), no. 23.
McKitterick, Rosamund, 'The Coming of Christianity: Pagans and Missionaries', in The Cambridge Illuminations: Ten Centuries of Book Production in the Medieval West, ed. by Paul Binski and Stella Panayotova (London: Harvey Miller, 2005), pp. 38-73 (p. 48, no. 2).
Marsden, Richard, '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. 145-76 (p. 173).
Marsden, Richard, 'The Gospels of St Augustine', in St Augustine and the Conversion of England, ed. by Richard Gameson (Thrupp: Sutton, 1999), pp. 285-312 (p. 297).
Meehan, Bernard, ‘The Royal-Otho-Corpus / Cambridge-London / Parker-Cotton-Wolsey Gospels’, in Manuscripts in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Cultures and Connections, ed. by Claire Breay and Joanna Story with Eleanor Jackson (Dublin: Four Courts, 2021), pp. 16-27, figs 2.1-2, 4-5, 8-10.
Ó Cróinín, D., 'Rath Maelsigi, Willibrord and the Earliest Echternach Manuscripts', Peritia, 3 (1984), 17-49.Micheli, G.L., L’enluminure du haut moyen age et les influences irlandaises (Brussels: Editions de la connaissance, 1939), p. 191.
Netzer, N., 'Willibrord's Scriptorium at Echternach and its Relationship to Ireland and Lindisfarne', in St Cuthbert, His Cult and His Community to AD 1200, ed. by G. Bonner and others (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989), pp. 203-12.
[Planta, J.], A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library, Deposited in the British Museum (London: [British Museum], 1802), p. 365.
Scrivener, Frederick Henry Ambrose, A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, ed. by Edward Miller, 4th edn, 2 vols (London: George Bell & Sons, 1894), II, p. 76.
Smith, T., Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Cottoniae (Oxford: [Sheldonian], 1696), p. 72.
[Thompson, E. Maunde and G. F. Warner], Catalogue of Ancient Manuscripts in the British Museum, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1881-1884), II: Latin, p. 20.
Tite, Colin, The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton's Library: Formation, Cataloguing, Use (London: British Library, 2003), p. 153.
Verey, Christopher D., ‘Lindisfarne or Rath Maelsigi? The Evidence of the Texts’, in Northumbria’s Golden Age, ed. by J. Hawkes and S. Mills (Thrupp: Sutton, 1999), pp. 327-35.
Webster, Leslie and Janet Backhouse, eds, The Making of England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture, AD 600-900 (London: British Museum Press, 1991), no. 83a [exhibition catalogue].
- Exhibitions:
- Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, British Library, London, 19 October 2018 - 19 February 2019
- 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.