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Cotton MS Vitellius C III
- Record Id:
- 040-001103004
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-001101582
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000001273.0x000247
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100059906235.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Cotton MS Vitellius C III
- Title:
- (1) Old English Illustrated Herbal and Medicina de quadrupedibus in Old English; (2) Peter of Poitiers, Compendium in Genealogia Christi; (3) Macrobius, Saturnalia, books i–ii; (4) notes by William Harvey
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript contains four separate items, bound together for Sir Robert Cotton (d. 1631):
f. 1: Cottonian frontispiece.
f. 3r: early modern endleaf.
f. 4r: early modern table of contents.
ff. 5r-10v: Peter of Poitiers, Compendium in Genealogia Christi, copied in England in the 1st quarter of the 13th century.
ff. 11r-85v: illustrated Old English herbal, with an Old English translation of Medicina de quadrupedibus (ff. 75r-82v), copied in England in the early 11th century.
ff. 86r-138v: Macrobius, Saturnalia, books i-ii, copied in northern France in the 3rd quarter of the 9th century.
ff. 139r-141v: medical recipes copied in the 1st half of the 17th century by William Harvey, the physician who discovered the circulation of blood.
The leaves formerly numbered Cotton MS Vitellius C III, ff. 2r-v and ff. 142r-v are cuttings from a Psalter made in England between 1350 and 1360. They were removed in December 1912 and rebound as Royal MS 13 D I/1, f. 22 (formerly Cotton MS Vitellius C III, f. 142) and f. 25 (formerly Cotton MS Vitellius C III, f. 2).
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Cotton Collection
England and France 700-1200 Project - Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-001101582
040-001103004 - Is part of:
- Cotton MS : Cotton Manuscripts
Cotton MS Vitellius C III : (1) Old English Illustrated Herbal and Medicina de quadrupedibus in Old English; (2) Peter of Poitiers, Compendium… - Contains:
- Cotton MS Vitellius C III, ff 5–10 : Peter of Poitiers, Compendium in Genealogia Christi
Cotton MS Vitellius C III, ff 11–85 : Old English Illustrated Herbal; Medicina de Quadrupedibus
Cotton MS Vitellius C III, ff 86–138 : Macrobius, Saturnalia, books i–ii
Cotton MS Vitellius C III, ff 139-141 : Medical recipes copied by William Harvey
Click here to View / search full list of parts of Cotton MS Vitellius C III - Hierarchy:
- 032-001101582[0831]/040-001103004
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Cotton MS
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100059906235.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Anglo-Norman
English
English, Old
Greek, Ancient
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 0850
- End Date:
- 1649
- Date Range:
- 3rd quarter of the 9th century-1st half of the 17th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
- Restrictions to access apply please consult British Library staff
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Condition: leaves damaged by fire in 1731.
Materials: parchment (ff. 2-142) and paper (f. 1).
Dimensions: binding: 320 x 250 mm (folios not including paper frames: 260 x 185 mm).
Foliation: ff. 142 (where ff. 2 and 142 have been removed, ff. 1, 3-4 are early modern endleaves; Cottonian title-page + 1 unfoliated wax paper leaf at the beginning and at the end and 5 unfoliated paper folios at the beginning and 4 at the end).
Binding: British Library in-house. Rebound in 1977.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
ff. 5r-10v (Peter of Poitiers, Compendium in Genealogia Christi)
England.
Origin:
ff. 11r-85v (illustrated Old English herbal)
England (Canterbury or Winchester?).
Provenance:
?Christ Church Cathedral, Canterbury or ?Winchester: the script and drapery suggest that the manuscript could have been made at Christ Church Canterbury (Stokes, English Vernacular Minuscule, pp. 126-27, D'Aronco, 'Gardens on Vellum', p. 123); the borders on the miniatures have been used to attribute the manuscript to the Old Minster, Winchester, or at least to the same workshop as the Tiberius Psalter, Cotton MS Tiberius C VI (Backhouse and others, The Golden Age, p. 158).
Richard Hollond: inscribed 'Richerd Hollond thys boke' in a late 15th- or early 16th-century hand (f. 76r).
Elysabet Colmore: inscribed with her name in a 16th-century hand (f. 11r). The same hand added the annotation 'beteyne' (f. 20r; D'Aronco and Cameron, Old English Illustrated Pharmacopoeia, p. 15).
Origin:
ff. 86r-138v (Macrobius, Saturnalia, books i-ii)
Northern France.
Provenance:
? England, 10th or 11th century (Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, p. 170).
Origin:
ff. 139r-141v (medicinal recipes)
England.
Provenance:
William Harvey (b. 1578, d. 1657), physician: copied by him (Jones, Medieval Medicine, pp. 26, 62).
Provenance (all parts of the volume):
Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (b. 1571, d. 1631), 1st baronet, antiquary and politician: owned and probably assembled by him; his added flyleaf (f. 3). Cotton’s collection was augmented by his son, Sir Thomas Cotton (b. 1594, d. 1662), 2nd baronet, and grandson, Sir John Cotton (b. 1621, d. 1702), 3rd baronet, who bequeathed the entire 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. 107 [exhibition catalogue].
Backhouse, Janet, D. H. Turner and Leslie Webster (eds), The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art, 966-1066 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984), no. 162.
Bierbaumer, P., Der botanische Wortschatz des Altenglischen. II Teil: Lacnunga, Herbarium Apulei, Peri Didaxeon, Grazer Beiträge zur englischen Philologie, 2 (Bern/Frankfurt am Main/München: Lang, 1976).
Catalogue of Ancient Manuscripts in the British Museum, II, Latin (London, 1884), p. 74.
Cockayne, Oswald, Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, 3 vols (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1864-66), vol. 1 [includes translation; available online at https://archive.org/details/b21924235_0001].
D'Aronco, M. A., and M. L. Cameron, The Old English Illustrated Pharmacopoeia. British Library Cotton Vitellius C III, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 27 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1998).
D'Aronco, M. A., 'Gardens on Vellum: Plants and Herbs in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts', in Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden, ed. by P. Dendle and A. Touwaide (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008), pp. 101-27 (pp. 113 n. 43, 114, 117, 121-23, 125).
de Vriend, Hubert Jan (ed.), The Old English Herbarium and Medicina de Quadrupedibus, Early English Text Society, 286 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984) [includes edition].
Doane, A. N. (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1994), vol. 1.
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. 162.Flom, George T., 'On the Old English Herbal of Apuleius, Vitellius C. III', Journal of English and German Philology, 40 (1941), 29-37.
Flood, Bruce P., 'The Medieval Herbal Tradition of Macer Floridus', Pharmacy in History, 18 (1976), 62-66.
Frisk, Gösta, 'A Middle English Translation of Macer', Manitius, 2 (1949), 539-47.
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. 402 and 402.5.
Hollis, Stephanie, and Wright, Michael, Old English Prose of Secular Learning, Annotated Bibliographies of Old and Middle English, 4 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer 1992).
Jones, Peter Murray, Medieval Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts (London: The British Library, rev. edn, 1998), pp. 14, 15 26, 61, 62.
Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957; repr. 1990), no. 218, 219.
Ker, N. R. (ed.), Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books 2nd edn (London: Royal Historical Society, 1964), p. 36.
Lapidge, Michael, The Anglo-Saxon Library (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 170.
Moore, Philip S., 'The Works of Peter of Poitiers, Master of Theology and Chancellor of Paris (1193-1205)' (unpublished doctoral thesis, Catholic University of America, 1936).
Planta, J., A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library, Deposited in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1802), p. 423.
Roberts, Jane, Guide to Scripts Used in English Writings up to 1500 (London: British Library, 2005)
Rusche, Philip G., 'The Sources for Plant Names in Anglo-Saxon England and the Laud Herbal Glossary', in Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden, ed. by P. Dendle and A. Touwaide (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008), pp. 128-44 (pp. 146 n. 7, 147).
Scott, Kathleen L., Tradition and Innovation in Later Medieval English Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2007), p. 171 n. 339.
Stokes, Peter A., English Vernacular Minuscule from Æthelred to Cnut, c. 990-c. 1035 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014), pp. 126-27.
Temple, Elzbieta (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, 900-1066, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 2 (London: Harvey Miller, 1976), p. 81.
Tite, Colin, The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton's Library: Formation, Cataloguing, Use (London: British Library, 2003), p. 163.
Van Arsdall, Anne, Medieval Herbal Remedies: The Old English Herbarium and Anglo-Saxon Medicine (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. x, xv, 84, 96 n. 9, 101-06, 108, 110, 116 [includes translation].
Voigts, Linda E., 'Anglo-Saxon Plant Remedies', ISIS, 70 (1979), 250-68.
Voigts, Linda E., 'A New Look at a Manuscript Containing the Old English Translation of the Herbarium Apulei', Manuscripta, 20 (1976), 40-60.
Voigts, Linda E., 'One Anglo-Saxon View of the Classical Gods', Studies in Iconography, 3 (1977), 3-16.
- 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.