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Harley MS 937

Record Id:

040-001949808

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-001949808

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000335.0x0003a6

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 937

Title:

Physician's folding almanac

Scope & Content:

Contents: A portable physician's folding almanac based on the 'Kalendarium' of John Somer (d. in or after 1409), Franciscan friar at Bridgwater and astronomer. It was apparently made for the sons of a northern noble family.

This is the only known surviving almanac of its kind written in English.

The manuscript includes:

1. Calendar canon (ff. 1r-2v), title badly effaced on f. 1r, 'þe [...] of / þe kalendere' (f. 2r), introduction, incipit (f. 1r) 'My souerayne / maistres certen evy/dens have / done me to understonde 3our / abylyte to lerne'. For the edition of the text see J. O. Halliwell-Phillips, Rara Mathematica, or a Collection of Treatises on the Mathematics and Subjects Connected with Them from Ancient Unedited Manuscripts (Cambridge, 1846), pp. 89-93);

2. Tables of leap years and moveable feasts (f. 2r, lower half);

3. John Somer, Calendar (ff. 3r-6v), entitled 'Januarius …. December', three months to a leaf, one month per half-leaf, the first displayed on versos, the following two on rectos, with lunar conjunctions of the 19-year Metonic cycle from 1463 to 1481;

4. Eclipse canon (ff. 7r-7v), entitled 'þe [...] of / þe table of þe pla/nets and þe moyne';

5. Diagrams of solar eclipses from 1431 to 1462 and for Lunar eclipses from 1431 to 1436 (ff. 8r-8v, upper half), entitled 'þe eclyps of þe sonne / þe eclyps of þe moyne';

6. Diagrams for lunar eclipses from 1439 to 1462 (f. 9r-9v; f. 10v), entitled 'þe eclyps of / þe moyne'. Another copy of the Middle English translation of the canon in Cotton MS Vitellius A. i (ff. 1r-20r).

Decoration:

Large initials (2-4 lines) in gold set against a background of blue and light purple with black and white tracing. Small initials (1 line) in blue with contrasting penwork decoration in red. Paragraph marks in blue. Minor initials touched in red. Titles in black and red on the front of versos of folded leaves. Eclipses diagrams (ff. 8r-10r) in gold, blue and red.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection
Harley Science Project

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-001949808", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 937: Physician's folding almanac" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-001949808

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 937 : Physician's folding almanac

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[0937]/040-001949808

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

10 folios, folded into six parts.

Digitised Content:

http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_937 (digital images currently unavailable)

Thumbnail:

Languages:

English, Middle

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1425

End Date:

1431

Date Range:

c 1430-1431

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

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Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Parchment folded separate leaves.

Dimensions: 145 x 45 mm when folded, circa 282 x 120 mm when unfolded.

Foliation: ff. 10.

Layout: Ruled in metal point and ink for columns of 29 lines.

Script: Gothic cursive (Anglicana).

Binding: Folded leaves sewn together in a tab at the lower edges, with a binding of limp vellum covered in velvet with braided cord. Kept in a leather box together with Harley MS 3812.

Custodial History:

Origin: England, N.

Provenance:

Possibly made for the sons of a noble family in Northern England (see Mooney 1998).

The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts.

Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta, née Cavendish Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d. 1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library. Harleian shelfmark '63.A.34 / 937' in ink (f. 1v).

Publications:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), I (1808), no. 937.

New Palaeographical Society: Facsimiles of Ancient Manuscripts, Second Series, 2 vols, ed. by Edward Maunde Thompson and others (London: [n. pub.], 1913-1930), II, pls. 72.

Rossel Hope Robbins, ‘English Almanacks of the Fifteenth Century’, Philological Quarterly 18 (1939), 321-31 (p. 323, n. 14).

J. P. Gumbert, 'Über Faltbücher, vornehmlich Almanach' in Rationalisierung der Buchherstellung in Mittelalter und Frühneuzeit, ed. by Peter Rück and Martin Boghardt (Marburg an der Lahn Institut für Historische Hilfswissenschaften, 1994), 111-22 (p. 112, n. 15).

Broxbourne Library, Styles and Designs of Bookbindings from the Twelfth to the Twentieth Centuries, ed. by Howard M. Nixon (London: Maggs Brothers, 1956), p. 9 n. 3.

Loren MacKinney and Thomas Herndon, Medical Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts, Wellcome Historical Medical Library, New Series, 5 (London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1965), p. 138, no. 86.46.

Rossel Hope Robbins, 'Medical Manuscripts in Middle English', Speculum, 45 (1970), 393-415 (p. 397, no. 5).

Andrew G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 700-1600 in The Department of Manuscripts: The British Library, 2 vols (London: British Library, 1979), I, p. 120 no. 639, II, pl. 406.

Laurel Means, 'For as moche as yche man may not haue þe astrolabe: Popular Middle English Variations on the Computus', Speculum, 67 (1992), 595-623 (p. 600 n. 24).

The Kalendarium of John Somer, ed. by Linne R. Mooney (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998), pp. xi, 48, 53, 62-63 (as MS. H2).

Hilary M. Carey, 'What is the Folded Almanac? The Form and Function of a Key Manuscript Source for Astro-medical Practice in Later Medieval England', Social History of Medicine, 16 (2003), 481-509 (pp. 488-89, 502, 505, 506 no. 10, 508 no. 10).

Pamela Robinson, 'A 'very curious Almanack': the gift of Sir Robert Moray FRS, 1668', Notes & Records of the Royal Society, 62 (2008), 301-14 (pp. 308, 309 and n. 26).

J. P. Gumbert, Bat Books: A Catalogue of Folded Manuscripts Containing Almanacs or Other Texts, Bibliologia, 41 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), no. 43, pp. 157-59.

Chelsea Silva, ‘Opening the Medieval Folding Almanac’, Exemplaria: Medieval, Early Modern, Theory, The Provocative Fifteenth Century, Vol 2, 30 (2018), 49-65, https://doi.org/10.1080/10412573.2018.1436281, accessed 9 October 2019.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)