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Cotton MS Titus A XV
- Record Id:
- 040-001103506
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-001101582
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000001273.0x00031e
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165160143.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Cotton MS Titus A XV
- Title:
- John Joscelyn and John Parker, Old English-Latin dictionary (Volume I)
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript is the first volume of an Old English-Latin dictionary, made by John Joscelyn (b. 1529, d. 1603), an English clergyman and one of the first scholars of the Old English language, in collaboration with John Parker (b. 1548, d. 1619), son of Matthew Parker (b. 1504, d. 1575), archbishop of Canterbury. It was most likely made in the 1580s while Joscelyn was serving as the Latin secretary for the archbishop and had access to his extensive library at Lambeth Palace in London, which included a collection of at least 40 Old English texts and a wide range of medieval chronicles (see Graham, 'Joscelyn's Old English Lexicography' (2000), p. 97).
Collectively, the dictionary contains around 22,500 entries. This volume comprises entries for the letters A-L, arranged alphabetically and in two columns. Each entry in Old English is accompanied by a definition written in Latin or modern English, or sometimes in both languages. In many cases, the definition is also followed by an abbreviated reference to the source from which it derives. The second volume, containing entries for the letters M-Y, is now Cotton MS Titus A XVI.
Although the dictionary was not published, it was consulted a number of times by 17th-century lexicographers. The German philologist Friedrich Lindenbrog (b. 1573, d. 1628) made a transcript of part or all of it while visiting England early in the century, and Sir Simonds D'Ewes (b. 1602, d. 1650) made a full transcript that is now Harley MSS 8 and 9.
In the process of creating their dictionary, Joscelyn and Parker compiled a series of Old English word lists, which now survive as London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 692. Joscelyn's working notebook also became part of the Cotton library and is now Cotton MS Vitellius D VII.
The 17th-century Cottonian binding of the manuscript is now detached and kept separately as Cotton MS Titus A XV/1.
Contents:
f. 1r: Title-page; inscribed in Latin, 'Dictionarium Saxonico-Latinum / 1. p[ar]s'.
ff. 2r-305v: John Joscelyn and John Parker, Old English-Latin dictionary (Volume I), comprising the letters A-L; f. 181 is a smaller added leaf written in Parker's hand, which supplies an omission, the recto featuring a sequence of entries from 'Geomrunga' to 'Geonet sped' that would have appeared on f. 182r.
ff. 1v, 81v, 181v, 222v, 272v, and 305v are blank.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Cotton Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-001101582
040-001103506 - Is part of:
- Cotton MS : Cotton Manuscripts
Cotton MS Titus A XV : John Joscelyn and John Parker, Old English-Latin dictionary (Volume I) - Hierarchy:
- 032-001101582[1046]/040-001103506
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Cotton MS
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100165160143.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English
English, Old
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1575
- End Date:
- 1599
- Date Range:
- 4th quarter of the 16th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Material: Paper.
Watermarks: several varieties of fleur-de-lis (throughout); a shield surmounted by a crown with the letters 'IV' on a horizontal band within the shield (ff. 5-31), similar to Briquet No. 9546, dated 1581; a six-petalled flower, with a stem issuing from the upper part, ending in an arrowhead (ff. 32-79), similar to Briquet No. 6535, dated 1582; a shield topped by a crown and bearing the initials 'IP' (ff. 96-137), Briquet No. 9525, dated 1582 (C. M. Briquet, Les Filigranes: Dictionnaire historique des marques du papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu'en 1600, A Facsimile of the 1907 edition with supplementary material, ed. by Allan Stevenson, 4 vols (Amsterdam: The Paper Publications Society, 1968), nos. 6535, 9525, and 9546).
Dimensions: c. 225 × c. 150 mm (written space: approximately 195 x 125 mm), written in 2 columns.
Foliation: ff. 305 (+ 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 2 unfoliated paper leaves after f. 31 + 1 unfoliated paper leaf after f. 81 + 3 unfoliated paper leaves after f. 93 + 3 unfoliated paper leaves after f. 106 + 5 unfoliated paper leaves after f. 222 + 2 unfoliated paper leaves after f. 272 + 1 unfoliated paper leaf after f. 278 + 1 unfoliated paper leaf after f. 288 + 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the end).
f. 181 is an added leaf mounted on a paper frame.
ff. 5, 10, 13, 14, 15 (x2), 21, 23, 25 (x2), 42, 50, 65, and 107 are affixed with paper tabs.
Collation: Mounted on paper guards.
Script: Imitative insular minuscule, written by John Joscelyn and John Parker.
Binding: British Museum in-house. Rebound 24 May 1955. Brown leather binding, with the Cottonian armorial bookplate gold-stamped on the upper and lower covers.
The boards of the 17th-century Cottonian binding are now kept separately as Cotton MS Titus A XV/1.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England.
Provenance:
The manuscript was compiled by John Joscelyn (b. 1529, d. 1603) in collaboration with John Parker (b. 1548, d. 1619), probably in the 1580s.
Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (b. 1571, d. 1631), 1st baronet, antiquary and politician: inscribed, 'Robertus Cotton Bruceus' (f. 2r) and included in the Cotton catalogues, Add MS 36789, (ff. 102r and 106r) and Add MS 36682 (see Tite, The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library (2003), p. 200).
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.
- Publications:
-
Considine, John, Dictionaries in Early Modern Europe: Lexicography and the Making of Heritage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 168 n. 55.
Franzen, Christine, The Tremulous Hand of Worcester: A Study of Old English in the Thirteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 118.
Graham, Timothy, ‘John Joscelyn, pioneer of Old English lexicography’, in Timothy Graham (ed.), The Recovery of Old English: Anglo-Saxon Studies in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Kalamazoo, MI, 2000), pp. 83–140.
Graham, Timothy, 'Old English and Old Norse Studies to the Eighteenth Century', in Corinna Wagner and Joanne Parker (eds.), TheOxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 34-52 (p. 39).
Hetherington, M.S., 'Sir Simonds D'Ewes and Method in Old English Lexicography', Texas Studies in Literature and Language 17 (1975), 75-92 (pp. 79, 85).
Hetherington, M. S., The Beginnings of Old English Lexicography (Spicewood, Texax: privately printed, 1980), pp. 39-48.
Kelen, S., Langland's Early Modern Identities (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 183 n. 2.
Langefeld, Brigitte, The Old English Version of the Enlarged Rule of Chrodegang (P. Lang, 2003), pp. 66, 90 n. 16, 91 n. 26.
Planta, Joseph (ed.), A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library Deposited in the British Museum (London: Hansard, 1802), p. 513.
Tite, C. G. C., The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library: Formation, Cataloguing, Use (London, 2003), pp. 191-92.
Rosier, James L., 'The Sources of John Joscelyn's Old English-Latin Dictionary', Anglia 78 (1960), 28-39.
Rosier, James L., 'Old English Glosses to an Epistle of Boniface', The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 59 (1960), 710-13.
Toomer, G. J., John Selden: A Life in Scholarship, Volume 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 166 n. 302.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)