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Egerton MS 618
- Record Id:
- 040-001983669
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-001983667
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000116.0x0002fa
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165163661.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Egerton MS 618
- Title:
- Wycliffite Bible
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript contains the books of the Bible from Matthew to Revelation in the earlier version of the English translation produced by followers of John Wycliffe (d. 1384). This and Egerton MS 617, containing Proverbs to Maccabees, probably once formed a single continuous volume. A further volume, containing Genesis to Psalms, has not survived (see Fristedt, 'A Weird Manuscript Enigma’, (1964), pp. 118-19). This two-volume Bible, made for Thomas Woodstock, duke of Gloucester (b. 1355, d. 1397), is the earliest datable copy of the complete Bible in English.
ff. 1r-21v: Matthew; f. 21v: Prologue to Mark; ff. 22r-34r: Mark; ff. 34r-35v: Prologue to Luke; ff. 35v-57r: Luke; f. 57r: Prologue to John; ff. 57v-73v: John; ff. 74r-95r: Acts of the Apostles; ff. 95v-97v: James; ff. 97v-99v: 1 Peter; ff. 99v-101r: 2 Peter; ff. 101r-102v: 1 John (ends imperfectly due to loss of leaves); f. 104r: Jude (begins imperfectly due to loss of leaves); ff. 105v-113v: Romans; ff. 115r-121v: 1 Corinthians (begins imperfectly due to loss of leaves); ff. 121v-126v: 2 Corinthians; ff. 127r-129v: Galatians; ff. 129v-132r: Ephesians; ff. 132v-134r: Philippians; ff. 134v-136r: Colossians; ff. 136r-138r: 1 Thessalonians; ff. 138r-139r: 2 Thessalonians; ff. 139r-141r: 1 Timothy; ff. 141v-142v: 2 Timothy; f. 144r: Titus 3: 14-15 (the rest of the text is missing due to loss of leaves); f. 144r: Prologue to Philemon; f. 144r: Philemon; ff. 144v-150r: Hebrews; ff. 150v-159v: Revelation; ff. 160r-177r: Tables of Lections.
Decoration: 21 incipit pages to biblical books with full foliate borders and large foliate initials in colours on gold grounds (ff. 1r, 22r, 35v, 57v, 74, 95v, 97v, 101, 105v, 105v, 121v, 127, 129v, 132v, 134v, 136, 138, 139, 141v, 144v, and 150v), some with masks or hybrid creatures (ff. 1, 74, 10, 129v, 141v, 144v). Small initials in gold on red blue grounds with foliate decoration, including gold, red, or blue leaves. Catchwords decorated with brown penwork, including sometimes heads (e.g. ff. 5v, 93v, 101v). Line-fillers in red and blue. Running headers in red.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Egerton Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-001983667
040-001983669 - Is part of:
- Egerton MS 617-618 : Wycliffite Bible, Earlier Version
Egerton MS 618 : Wycliffite Bible - Hierarchy:
- 032-001983667[0002]/040-001983669
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Egerton MS 617-618
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
A parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100165163661.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1385
- End Date:
- 1397
- Date Range:
- c 1390-1397
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 440 x 290 mm (written space: 310 x 190 mm, in two columns).
Foliation: ff. 177 (+ 2 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and at the end); old foliation 224-400 continues from Egerton MS 617.
Collation: Mostly quires of 8 leaves; the first quire is of 5 leaves (ff. 1-5) and the final quire is of 4 leaves (ff. 174-177); some leaves have been excised and replaced with blank modern parchment leaves (ff. 103, 114 and 143).
Script: Gothic.
Binding: Post-1600. Brown leather with gold tooling.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: S. England, London?
Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester (b. 1355, d. 1397): his arms in the border decoration (Egerton MS 617, f. 2r). Another coat of arms in the lower border of the same page, now excised, may have been that of his wife, Eleanor de Bohun (see Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts (1986), pp. 164-65). The manuscripts Egerton MSS 617/618 can probably be identified as ‘un bible en Engleys en ij grantz livres coverez de rouge quyr’ (a Bible in English in two large books covered in red leather) listed in the inventory of Thomas of Woodstock’s property at Pleshey castle, seized after his arrest and death in 1397 (Dillon and Hope, ‘Inventory of the Goods and Chattels’ (1897), p. 300).
Dr John Hunter [perhaps (b. 1728, d. 1793), surgeon and anatomist?]: inscribed 'This Ms. was once in the Collection of Doctor John Hunter' (Egerton MS 617, f. 1v); see also the inscription on f. 55v (below).
Dr John Fell (b. 1735, d. 1797), independent minister and classical tutor: his sale, according to Clarke’s notes published in his library catalogue (see below).
Adam Clarke (b. 1762, d. 1832), Wesleyan Methodist minister and scholar: inscribed 'Sum Adami Clerici, olim D. Joannis Hunteri Londoni 1796' (Egerton MS 617, f. 55v); described in his library catalogue (Clarke, A Historical and Descriptive Catalogue (1835), no. xxii, pp. 17-20); his catalogue number ‘No. 22’ is written on the flyleaf (f. [i]v).
Baynes and Straker (or Baynes and Son), booksellers: their sale, Sotheby’s, London, June 1836, lot no. 485; the entry in the Department of Manuscripts’ copy of the sale catalogue is annotated with the price of ‘£110’ and the name ‘Cochrane’; most likely John Cochran (fl. 19th century), London bookseller, who perhaps bought the manuscript as an agent for the British Museum (the manuscript is not recorded in Cochran’s A Second Catalogue of Manuscripts (London, 1837)).
The British Museum: bought using the Bridgewater fund (£12,000 bequeathed in 1829 by Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater (b. 1756, d. 1829)); inscribed 'Purchased of Straker, Feb 1837 (2 vols)’ (f. [ii]r).
- Publications:
-
J. B. B. Clarke, A Historical and Descriptive Catalogue of the European and Asiatic Manuscripts in the Library of the Late Dr. Adam Clarke (London: John Murray, 1835), pp. 17-20.
List of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1836-1840 (London: British Museum, 1843), 1837, p. 55.
The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal Books, in the Earliest English versions made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his Followers, ed. by Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden, 4 vols (Oxford: University Press, 1850), I, p. xliii, no. 32 (as 'G').
E. M. Thompson, Wycliffe Exhibition in the King’s Library (London: Clowes and Sons, 1884), no. 28.
Viscount Dillon and W. H. St John Hope, ‘Inventory of the Goods and Chattels belonging to Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, and Seized in his Castle at Pleshy, Co. Essex, 21 Richard II (1397)’, Archaeological Journal, 54 (1897), 275-308 (p. 300).
Facsimiles of Biblical Manuscripts in the British Museum, ed. by Frederic G. Kenyon (London: British Museum, 1900), no. XXIV.
British Museum Bible Exhibition 1911: Guide to the Manuscripts and Printed Books exhibited in Celebration of the Tercentenary of the Authorized Version (London: British Museum, 1911), no. 24.
J. A. Herbert, Illuminated Manuscripts (London: Methuen, 1911), p. 231.
Schools of Illumination: Reproductions from Manuscripts in the British Museum, 6 vols (London: British Museum, 1914-1930), IV: English A.D. 1350 to 1400 (1922), pl. 2.
Eric. G. Millar, English Illuminated Manuscripts of the XIVth and XVth Century (Paris: Van Oest, 1928), p. 87.
A Guide to the Exhibition of Some Part of the Egerton Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London, 1929), no. 55.
Margaret Rickert, 'Illumination', in The Text of the Canterbury Tales Studied on the Basis of All Known Manuscripts, ed. by John M. Manly and Edith Rickert, vol. 1, 'Description of the Manuscripts' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), pp. 561-605 (p. 566).
Sven L. Fristedt, The Wycliffe Bible, 2 vols (Stockhom: Almquist & Wiksell, 1953-1969), Part I: The Principal Problems Connected with Forshall and Madden's Edition, Stockholm Studies in English, 4, p. 15.
B. L. Ullman, ‘Manuscripts of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester’, in Studies in the Italian Renaissance, Storia e letteratura, 51 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e letteratura, 1955), pp. 345-55 (first publ. in English Historical Review, 52 (1937), 670-72 (p. 354, no. 16).
Sven L. Fristedt, 'A Weird Manuscript Enigma in the British Museum', Studier I modern sprakvetenskap, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm Studies in Modern Philology, New Series, 2 (1964), 116-121.
Sven L. Fristedt, 'New Light on John Wycliffe and the First Full English Bible', Studies in Modern Philology (1967), 61-86 (p. 84).
Sven L. Fristedt, The Wycliffe Bible, 2 vols (Stockhom: Almquist & Wiksell, 1953-1969, Part II: The Origin of the First Revision as presented in De Salutaribus Documentis, Stockholm Studies in English, 21, p. LVI.
Henry Hargreaves, 'The Vernacular Scriptures: The Wycliffite Versions', in The Cambridge History of the Bible, 2 vols, ed. by G. W. H. Lampe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), II: The West from the Fathers to the Reformation, 387-415 (pp. 388, 393, 399).
A. I. Doyle, 'English Books In and Out of Court from Edward III to Henry VII', in English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, ed. by V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne (London: Duckworth, 1983), pp. 163-82 (p. 168).
V. J. Scattergood, ‘Literary Culture at the Court of Richard II', in English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, ed. by V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne (London: Duckworth, 1983), pp. 29-43 (p. 35).
Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts 1285-1385, 2 vols, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 5 (London: Harvey Miller, 1986), I, 36; II, 164-65.
Lynda Dennison, 'Oxford, Exeter College MS 47: The Importance of Stylistic and Codicological Analysis in its Dating and Localization' in Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence, ed. by Linda L. Brownrigg, Proceedings of the Second Conference of The Seminar in the History of the Book to 1500, Oxford, July 1998 (Los Altos Hills, California: Anderson-Lovelace, 1990), pp. 41-59 (p. 59 n. 44).
Jenny Stratford, ‘“La Somme le Roi” (Reims, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS. 570), the Manuscripts of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, and the Scribe John Upton’, in Le Statut du scripteur au moyen âge: Actes du XIIe colloque scientifique du Comité international de paléographie latine (Cluny, 17–20 juillet 1998), ed. by Marie-Clotilde Hubert, Emmanuel Poulle and Marc H. Smith (Paris: École des Chartes, 2000), pp. 267–82.
Christopher de Hamel, The Book: A History of the Bible (London: Phaidon, 2001), pp. 173-74.
Michelle P. Brown, Painted Labyrinth: The world of the Lindisfarne Gospels (London: British Library, 2003), p. 46.
Maidie Hilmo, Medieval Images, Icons, and IIlustrated English Literary Texts: From the Ruthwell Cross to the Ellesmere Chaucer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 128 n. 108, 161.
Anthony Tuck, ‘Thomas, Duke of Gloucester (1355-1397)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27197, accessed Nov 2018].
The Splendor of the Word: Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts at the New York Public Library, ed. by Jonathan J. G. Alexander, James H. Marrow, and Lucy Freeman Sandler (London: Harvey Miller, 2005), p. 82 [exhibition catalogue].
Scot McKendrick and Kathleen Doyle, Bible Manuscripts: 1400 Years of Scribes and Scripture (London: British Library, 2007), p. 139, fig. 126.
Mary Dove, The First English Bible: The Text and Context of the Wycliffite Versions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 246–47.
Matti Peikola, ‘The Sanctorale, Thomas of Woodstock’s English Bible, and the Orthodox Appropriation of Wycliffite Tables of Lessons’, in Wycliffite Controversies, ed. by M. C. A. Bose and J. P. Hornbeck II, Medieval Church Studies, 23 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 53-174.
Elizabeth Solopova, ‘The Manuscript Tradition’, in The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation, ed. by Elizabeth Solopova, Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts, 16 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017), pp. 223-45 (p. 228-29).
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)