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Harley MS 1585

Record Id:

040-001958799

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-001958799

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000725.0x0002f8

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 1585

Title:

Illustrated pharmacopoeial compilation

Scope & Content:

The manuscript is a compilation of late-antique and early medieval pharmacopeial texts:

ff. 1v-6v: A table of contents relating to Pseudo-Antonius Musa, De herba vettonica liber and Pseudo-Apuleius' Herbarium;

ff. 6v-9v: Pseudo-Hippocrates, Epistula ad Antiochum regem.

ff. 10r-12r: Pseudo-Hippocrates, Epistula ad Maecenatem (De regenda sanitate).

ff. 12v-13v: Precatio Terrae and Precatio omnium herbarum: Prayers to the earth goddess and herbs.

ff. 13v-58r: Pseudo-Antonius Musa, De herba vettonica liber (ff. 13v-16v) and Pseudo-Apuleius Platonicus, Herbarium or De medicaminibus herbarum (ff. 16v-58r) written continuously as one text.

ff. 58r-78v: (Pseudo-?) Sextus Placitus, Liber medicinae ex animalibus, prefaced by De taxone.

ff. 79r-92v: Pseudo-Dioscorides, Liber medicinae ex herbis femininis.

f. 92v: Text relating to a plaster for gout (excerpt from Theodorus Priscianus, Euporista ?).

Marginal Arabic numeration of chapters (ff. 14v-57) added later (18th century?).

Decoration:

Large or full-page drawings of medical procedures or physicians (ff. 7v-9v, 12v, 13r) in ink, mostly against backgrounds of coloured washes, some also with gold. Drawings of plants, scenes and animals throughout. Large initials (2-4 lines) in alternating blue and red, occasionally with penwork decoration in the same or contrasting colour. Titles and rubrics in red.

According to Collins (2000), the iconography of the plant illustrations descend from South Italian cycle such as found in Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana, MS Plut. 73.41 and Harley MS 5294. Harley MS 1585 served as model to Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 1462, and Sloane MS 1975.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection
Harley Science Project

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-001958799", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 1585: Illustrated pharmacopoeial compilation" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} },{ "id" : "041-001958800", "parent" : "040-001958799", "text" : "Harley MS 1585, ff 1v-6v: Table of contents" },{ "id" : "041-001958801", "parent" : "040-001958799", "text" : "Harley MS 1585, ff 6v-9v: Pseudo-Hippocrates, Epistula ad Antiochum regem" },{ "id" : "041-001958803", "parent" : "040-001958799", "text" : "Harley MS 1585, ff 10r-12r: Pseudo-Hippocrates, Epistula ad Maecenatem (De regenda sanitate)" },{ "id" : "041-001958806", "parent" : "040-001958799", "text" : "Harley MS 1585, ff 12v-13v: Precatio Terrae and Precatio omnium herbarum" },{ "id" : "041-001958807", "parent" : "040-001958799", "text" : "Harley MS 1585, ff 13v-58r: Pseudo-Antonius Musa, De herba vettonica liber and Pseudo-Apuleius Platonicus, Herbarium or De medicaminibus herbarum" },{ "id" : "041-001961832", "parent" : "040-001958799", "text" : "Harley MS 1585, ff 58r-78v: De taxone and (Pseudo-?) Sextus Placitus, Liber medicinae ex animalibus" },{ "id" : "041-001961835", "parent" : "040-001958799", "text" : "Harley MS 1585, ff 79r-92v: Pseudo-Dioscorides, Liber medicinae ex herbis femininis" }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-001958799

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 1585 : Illustrated pharmacopoeial compilation

Contains:

Harley MS 1585, ff 1v-6v : Table of contents
Harley MS 1585, ff 6v-9v : Pseudo-Hippocrates, Epistula ad Antiochum regem
Harley MS 1585, ff 10r-12r : Pseudo-Hippocrates, Epistula ad Maecenatem (De regenda sanitate)
Harley MS 1585, ff 12v-13v : Precatio Terrae and Precatio omnium herbarum
Harley MS 1585, ff 13v-58r : Pseudo-Antonius Musa, De herba vettonica liber and Pseudo-Apuleius Platonicus, Herbarium or De medicaminibus herbarum
Harley MS 1585, ff 58r-78v : De taxone and (Pseudo-?) Sextus Placitus, Liber medicinae ex animalibus
Harley MS 1585, ff 79r-92v : Pseudo-Dioscorides, Liber medicinae ex herbis femininis

Click here to View / search full list of parts of Harley MS 1585

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[1586]/040-001958799

Container:

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

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_1585 (digital images currently unavailable)

Thumbnail:

Languages:

Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1150

End Date:

1174

Date Range:

3rd quarter of the 12th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Parchment.

Dimensions: 215 x 160 mm (text space: 160 x 115 mm).

Foliation: ff. vi + I + 92 (f. I is a 18th-century paper flyleaf). Modern foliation in pencil '1-92' (f. 1r blank).

Collation: i-ii⁶, iii^10-1 (tenth missing), iv-ix⁸, x^8-1 (eighth missing), xi⁸, xii⁶, xiii²; all gatherings with hairside out.

Layout: Pricked and ruled from fleshside in hard and metal point (single vertical bounding lines) mainly for double columns (but four columns on ff. 2r-6v, 59r-62r, and single on ff. 12v-13r) of 28 lines. Text above top line.

Script: Protogothic; written in dark brown and black ink.

Binding: 19th-century British Museum binding in gilt-tooled green leather with the Harley arms and motto at centre of covers; gilt edges.

Custodial History:

Origin:

Southern Netherlands (Meuse Valley).

Provenance:

Henry Worsley (b. 1675, d. 1741), scholar and manuscript collector, envoy at the Court of Portugal (1714-21) and governor of Barbados (1721-31), his manuscript no. 49; donated by him to Robert Harley together with other manuscripts from Worsley's collection (now Harley MSS 1586-1747, Harley MS 1811, and Harley MS 1812) before December 1712: a note in pencil (f. i recto) in the hand of Harley's librarian, Humfrey Wanley (1672-1726), reads 'Coll Worsley'.

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. Harley shelfmarks '91.A.1/1585' in dark brown ink and '2/III B' in pencil on f. i recto.

Publications:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), II, no. 1585.

Walter de Gray Birch and Henry Jenner, Early Drawings and Illuminations: An Introduction to the Study of Illustrated Manuscripts (London: Bagster and Sons, 1879), p. 5.

Karl Sudhoff, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Chirurgie im Mittelalter: Graphische und textliche Untersuchungen in mittelalterlichen Handschriften, 2 vols (Leipzig: Barth, 1914-1918), I, Studien zur Geschichte der Medizin, 10, pp. 15, 81.

Hanns Swarzenski, Die Lateinischen Illuminierten Handschriften des XIII. Jahrhunderts in den Ländern an Rhein, Main und Donau, 2 vols (Berlin: Deutscher Verin fur Kunstwissenschaft, 1936), I, 101 n. 2.

T. S. R. Boase, English Art 1100-1216, Oxford History of English Art, 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), p. 193 n. 2.

Loren MacKinney and Thomas Herndon, Medical Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts, Wellcome Historical Medical Library, New Series, 5 (London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1965), nos 50, 86.41.

D. H. Turner, Romanesque Illuminated Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1966), p. 15, pl. 6.

The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by Cyril Ernest Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), I: 1715-1723, pp. xix-xx.

Florens Deuchler, Der Ingeborgpsalter (Berlin: de Gruyter & Co., 1967), pp. 135-36, pls 213-14.

Illuminated Manuscripts Exhibited in the Grenville Library (London, British Museum, 1967), no. 36.

M. W. Evans, Medieval Drawings (London: Hamlyn, 1969), no. 63.

Robert Herrlinger, History of Medical Illustration from Antiquity to A. D. 1600 (Nijkerk: Pitman Medical & Scientific Publishing, 1970), p. 32, fig. 32.

Harvey Stahl, ‘Le bestiaire de Douai’, Revue de l’art, 8 (1970), 6-16 (pp. 10-11, n. 19).

C. R. Dodwell, Painting in Europe: 800 to 1200 (London: Penguin Books, 1971). p. 162, fig. 179.

Larry M. Ayers, 'A Miniature from Jumièges and Trends in Manuscript Illumination around 1200', in Intuition und Kunstwissenshaft: Festschrift für Hanns Swarzenski, ed. by Peter Bloch and others (Berlin: Mann, 1973), pp. 115-40 (pp. 126-27, fig. 17).

Elisabeth Klemm, Ein romanischer Miniaturenzyklus aus dem Maasgebiet, Winer Kunstgeschichtliche Forschungen, 2 (Vienna: Adolf Holzhausens, 1973), pl. 82.

Reiner Haussherr, 'Der Ingeborgpsalter Bemerkungen zu Datierungs- und Stilfragen' in The Year 1200: A Symposium (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975), 231-50 (p. 236).

C. M. Kauffmann, Romanesque Manuscripts 1066-1190. Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 3 (London: Harvey Miller, 1975), pp. 113, 126.

Linda Ehrsam Voigts, 'One Anglo-Saxon View of the Classical Gods', in Studies in Iconography 3 (1977), 3-16 (p. 14, n. 32).

Wilfred Blunt and Sandra Raphael, The Illustrated Herbal (London: Frances Lincoln, 1979), pp. 39, 41.

J. M. Riddle, 'Pseudo-Dioscorides' Ex herbis femininis and Early Medieval Medical Botany', Journal of the History of Biology, 14 (1981), 43-81 (p. 70 n. 64).

Nigel Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, 2 vols, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 4 (London Harvey Miller, 1982-1988), I: 1190-1250, p. 55.

Peter Murray Jones, Medieval Medical Miniatures (London: British Library, 1984), pp. 84, 86, 99-100, 102. figs 37, 44.

John E. Murdoch, Album of Science: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. by I. B. Cohen (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1984), nos 195, 203.

C. R. Dodwell, The Pictorial Arts of the West 800-1200 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 273, pl. 270.

Ursula Nilgen, 'Heinrich der Löwe und England', in Heinrich der Löwe und seine Zeit: Herrschaft und Repräsentation der Welfen 1125-1235, ed. by Jochen Luckhardt and Franz Niehoff, 3 vols (Munich: Hirmer, 1995), II, pp. 329-42 (p. 331, pl. 221).

Minta Collins, Medieval Herbals: The Illustrative Traditions (London: British Library, 2000), pp. 203-05, fig. 55-56.

The Grant Atelier: Pathways of Art in Europe (5th-18th Centuries), ed. by Roland Recht (Brussels: Europalia, 2007), no. IV.9, p. 114 [exhibition catalogue] [with additional bibliography].

The Medieval Bestiary: Animals in the Middle Ages, ed. by David Badke, http://bestiary.ca/manuscripts/manulocshelf.htm [accessed 14 August 2009].

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)