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Stowe MS 2
- Record Id:
- 040-001952778
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-001952775
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000493.0x000218
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100063300200.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Stowe MS 2
- Title:
- Psalter with gloss in Old English
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript contains a decorated Gallican Psalter and Canticles (ff. 168v-180v), made in England in the mid-11th century. The Psalter was glossed in Old English in the second half of the 11th century.
This Psalter might be related to fragments/binding strips of a glossed Psalter in Cambridge, Pembroke College 312 C, no. 1 and 2 and Haarlem, Stadsbibliotheek, 188 F. 53 (see Gretsch, Intellectual Foundations (1999), p. 18 n. 39).
Contents:
ff. 1r-168v: The Book of Psalms.
ff. 168v-180v: Canticles, imperfect at the end.
Decoration:
Large initial with beast-head terminals, interlace and foliate decoration in pink, orange, yellow, green and blue (f. 1r). Initial with beasts and foliate decoration in yellow, white, blue, red, green, pink, and orange (f. 56r). Initial with beast-head terminals, interlace and foliate decoration in yellow, green, pink and blue (f. 111v). Initial in purple with blue decoration (f. 48r). Capitals in green, red and blue (f. 1r). Initials in red, green blue and sometimes purple throughout. Rubrics in red throughout.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- England and France 700-1200 Project
Stowe Collection - Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-001952775
036-001952776
040-001952778 - Is part of:
- Stowe Ms 1-1085 : Stowe Manuscripts
Stowe MS 1-9 : CLASS I.BIBLE, WITH BIBLE HISTORIES, GOSPEL HARMONIES, ETC.
Stowe MS 2 : Psalter with gloss in Old English - Hierarchy:
- 032-001952775[0001]/036-001952776[0002]/040-001952778
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Stowe Ms 1-1085
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100063300200.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Old
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1030
- End Date:
- 1066
- Date Range:
- 2nd or 3rd quarter of the 11th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: parchment and ink.
Dimensions: ff. 275 x 175 mm (text space: 235 x 135 mm).
Foliation: ff. 180 (+ 3 unfoliated parchment flyleaves at the beginning + 5 at the end).
Script: Anglo-Caroline minuscule; English vernacular minuscule; Uncial capitals.
Binding: Post-1600. Brown leather binding with gold-stamped borders featuring insect motifs.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: ? Winchester, Southeastern England.
Provenance:
The Benedictine abbey of the New Minster, Winchester, founded in 901: owned the manuscript (see Bishop, English Caroline (1971), p. xvi). The main text was possibly copied by a single scribe, who has also been identified in Le Havre, Bibliothèque municipal, 330, Cambridge, University Library Ii.4.6, and Corpus Christi College 201, pp. 170-76 (see Kimmens, Stowe Psalter (1979), p. xvii, xix). The text of the Psalter is close to that in Cotton MS Tiberius C VI.
An unknown 11th-century English owner: added glosses in Old English in the 2nd half of the 11th century. Some glosses were erased or altered at a later date (see Kimmens, Stowe Psalter (1979), p. xxii-xxiv).
An unknown 11th or 12th century owner: added Latin notes (ff. 80r, 82v, 97r, 168r).
An unknown (?) 12th-century owner: inscribed with text with musical notation (ff. 29r, 32r, 34v, 37v, 46r, 49r, 50r, 58v, 59v, 61r, 63v, 64v, 68r, 72r, 75r, 77v, 80v, 82r, 88r, 90v, 92r, 94r, 96v, 98r, 107r, 109r, 110v, 111v, 115r, 119r).
An unknown (?) 14th century owner: added marginal notes, including antiphons, in red and black ink in a Gothic hand (ff. 5r, 10r, 13v, 17v, 18r, 19r, 25v, 27v, f. 134v.)
An unknown 15th-century owner: added a title in a 15th-century script (f. 135v).
An unknown (? )15th-century owner: added practice alphabets and letters (ff. 154v, 162v).
An unknown (?) 15th- or 16th-century owner: added marginal drawings of a geometric design (f. 43r), dogs (ff. 87v, 95v), creatures with horns or antlers (ff. 90v), a snail (f. 96r) and of a hand and sleeve (f. 168v).
An unknown 15th-century English owner: inscribed 'The man that wyll hys lord plese' on f. 22r.
An unknown 15th- or 16th-century English owner: inscribed a Latin proverb ('prestat otiosum esse quam nihil agere') and 'To Thomas permissione [...]' on f. 180r.
Katherine Rudston, owned in the 15th or 16th century: her name inscribed in a 15th- or 16th-century hand on f. 9r ('Kateryn Rudston') and f. 53r ('Kater').
Sir Henry Spelman (b. 1563/4, d. 1641), historian and antiquary: inscribed 'Henricj Spelman' (ff. 1, 180v); with the date 'May 17 1638' and 'imprimatur' (f. 180v) for the 1640 edition of the Psalter made by his son, Sir John Spelman (b. 1594, d. 1643), royalist author; printed by (?) Thomas Wykes (fl. c. 1630-c. 1650), London printer: his name inscribed on f. 180v: 'Imprimat[ur] T. Wykes R. P. Episc: Lond: Cap: domest:'.
William Aspley (d. 1640), bookseller: inscribed with his name (f. 180v).
? Henry Walley, clerk to the company of stationers (fl. 1643): inscribed 'This is Entered Hen[ricus] Walley' (f. 180v).
Walter Clavell (d. 1740), F. R.S., elected 1704, admitted to the Inner Temple in 1700: his sale, 29 March 1742, lot 18.
Thomas Astle (b. 1735, d. 1803), archivist and collector of books and manuscripts: facsimile of f. 1 inscribed 'Ex Bibliotheca Thomae Astlei Arm.' (Stowe 1061, f. 60r) and of f. 111v, 'Thomae Astlei, Arm.' (Stowe 1061 f. 61r).
Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville (b. 1776, d. 1839), 1st duke of Buckingham and Chandos, of Stowe House, near Buckingham inscribed with the press-mark 'Press 3 No.28'' (inside upper cover) corresponding to his catalogue; see O'Conor, Bibliotheca Ms. Stowensis (1819), II, 27-34.
Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville (b. 1797, d. 1861), 2nd duke of Buckingham and Chandos: sold in 1849 to Lord Ashburnham.
Bertram Ashburnham (b. 1797, d. 1878), 4th earl of Ashburnham, of Ashburnham Place, Sussex: purchased from Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville.
Bertram Ashburnham (b. 1840, d. 1913), 5th earl of Ashburnham: purchased by the British Museum from him together with 1084 other Stowe manuscripts in 1883.
- Information About Copies:
-
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk.manuscripts/.
Select digital coverage available for this manuscript; see the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/.
- Publications:
-
John Spelman, Psalterium Davidis Latino-Saxonicum vetus... (London: R. Badger, 1640).
Charles O'Conor, Bibliotheca Ms. Stowensis: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Stowe Library, 2 vols (Buckingham: Seeley, 1818-1819), II, 27-34.
Catalogue of the Stowe Manuscripts in the British Museum, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1895-1896), I, no. 2.
Georg Swarzenski, Die Regensburger Buchmalerei des X. und XI. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1901), p. 120.
André Wilmart, The Psalter Collects From V-Vith Century Sources, ed. by Louis Brou, Henry Bradshaw Society, 83 (London: Harrison, 1949), pp. 24-25.
Cecilia Sisam and Kenneth Sisam, The Salisbury Psalter, edited from Salisbury Cathedral MS. 150, Early English Text Society, 242 (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. ix (as 'F').
N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), no. 271.
Francis Wormald, 'An English Eleventh-Century Psalter with Pictures: British Museum, Cotton MS Tiberius C. VI', Walpole Society, 38 (1962), 1-14, pls 1-30 (pp. 1, 6).
James L. Rosier, 'The Stowe Canticles', Anglia: Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie, 82 (1964), 397-432.
Minnie Cate Morrell, A Manual of Old English Biblical Materials (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1965), pp. 101-03 (as 'Spelman (F)').
T. A. M. Bishop, English Caroline Minuscule (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. xv-xvi.
Elzbieta Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts 900-1066, Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 2 (London: Miller, 1976), no. 99, p. 64, pl. 296 [with additional bibliography].
The Stowe Psalter, ed. by Andrew C. Kimmens, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979) [edition].
Francis Wormald, Collected Writings, ed. by J. J. G. Alexander, T. J. Brown, and Joan Gibbs, 2 vols (London: Miller, 1984), I: Studies in Medieval Art from the Sixth to the Twelfth Centuries, pp. 123, 128.
C. R. Dodwell, ‘The Final Copy of the Utrecht Psalter and its Relationship with the Utrecht and Eadwine Psalters’, Scriptorium: Revue internationale des études relative aux manuscrits, 44 (1990), 21-53 (p. 28 n. 32).
The Eadwine Psalter: Text, Image, and Monastic Culture in Twelfth-Century Canterbury, ed. by Margaret Gibson, T. A. Heslop, and Richard W. Pfaff, Modern Humanities Research Association, 14 (London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), pp. 95-107, 198 n. 26, 199 (as 'Stowe').
Phillip Pulsiano, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, Volume 2: Psalters I, Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, 137 (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1994), pp. 65-68.
George Brown, 'The Psalms as the Foundation of Anglo-Saxon Learning', in The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages, ed. by Nancy Van Deusen (Albany: State University of New York, 1999), pp. 1-24 (p. 7, as 'F').
Mechthild Gretsch, The Intellectual Foundations of the English Benedictine Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 18-19, 26, 27, 39, 64, 93, 97, 138, 196, 268, 313.
K. D. Hartzell, Catalogue of Manuscripts Written or Owned in England up to 1200 containing Music (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), no. 193 (p. 337).
Richard W. Pfaff, The Liturgy in Medieval England: A History (Cambridge: University Press, 2009), p. 111.
Helmut Gneuss 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. 499.
- 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.