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Harley MS 3941

Record Id:

040-002032707

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002032707

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000153.0x000205

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 3941

Title:

Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae

Scope & Content:

The manuscript was originally a single codex, but has been divided into two volumes, now Harley MS 3941/1 and Harley MS 3941/2.

The Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville (b. 599, d. 636), an encyclopedia in twenty books dedicated to Braulio, Bishop of Saragossa (b. 590, d. 651), the editor of the text.

The manuscript is partly a palimpsest (ff. 125r-125v, 134r-135r, 240r-241r, 246r, 248r-249r, 251r, 253r-260r, 265r): the palimpsest leaves contain extracts from the Chronicle of Eusebius-St Jerome in uncial script datable to the 5th or 6th century.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection
Harley Science Project

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002032707", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 3941: Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae" },{ "id" : "041-003346694", "parent" : "040-002032707", "text" : "Harley MS 3941/1: Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} },{ "id" : "041-003346696", "parent" : "040-002032707", "text" : "Harley MS 3941/2: Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002032707

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 3941 : Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae

Contains:

Harley MS 3941/1 : Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae
Harley MS 3941/2 : Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae

Click here to View / search full list of parts of Harley MS 3941

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[3934]/040-002032707

Container:

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

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

2 volumes

Digitised Content:

Languages:

Breton
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

0800

End Date:

0899

Date Range:

9th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Letter of introduction required to use this manuscript

Custodial History:

Origin: Northwestern France.

Provenance:

A scriptorium in Brittany: according to Bischoff, Katalog (2004), pp. 121-22 (no. 2481).

An unknown tenth century owner: contemporary and 10th-century marginal and interlinear glosses, partly in Old Breton (see Fleuriot, 'Gloses inedits' (1979) p. 179; Lambert, 'Gloses Celtiques (1999) p. 91), and musical notation from the late 10th century (f.20v) and 11th century (f. 84v).

The Benedictine abbey of St. Peter at Jumièges, near Rouen, founded in 654: a 12th-century inscription with anathema: 'Liber Sancti petri Gemeticensis qui eum furatus fuerit vel celaverit anathema sit amen' (f. 265v) (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972) p. 208).

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.

Information About Copies:

Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Default.aspx

Select digital coverage available for this manuscript, see Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm.

Publications:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: 1808-12), III (1808), p. 97.

Wilhelm Köhler, 'Die Karolingischen Miniaturen', in Zweiter Bericht über die Denkmäler Deutscher Kunst (Berlin: Reimer, 1912), pp. 52-77 (p. 58).

Charles Henry Beeson, Isidor-Studien, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters begründet von L. Traube, 4.2 (München, 1913), p. 19.

Dorothea Waley Singer, Catalogue of Latin and Vernacular Alchemical Manuscripts in Great Britain and Ireland, dating from before the XVI Century, 3 vols (Brussels: Lamertin, 1931), II, p. 688 (no. 1056).

Walter Porzig, 'Die Rezensionen der Etymologiae des Isidorus von Sevilla', Hermes, 72 (1937), 129- 70 (p. 132).

Dorothea Waley Singer and Annie Anderson, Catalogue of Latin and Vernacular Plague Texts in Great Britain and Eire in Manuscripts written before the Sixteenth Century (London: William Heinemann Medical Books, 1950), p. 125 (no. iii).

Elias Avery Lowe, 'Codices rescripti: A List of the Oldest Latin Palimpsests with Stray Observations on their Origin', in Mélanges Eugène Tisserant, 5, Studi e Testi, 235 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Vaticana, 1964), p. 86 (no. xxxvi).

Bernhard Lambert, Bibliotheca Hieronymiana manuscripta: La tradition manuscrite des œuvres de Saint Jérôme, Instrumenta Patristica, 4:2 (Steenbrugge: Abbey of St Peter, 1969), p. 203.

Codices Latini Antiquiores, Supplement, ed. by Elias A. Lowe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 12, (no. 1704).

Cyril E. Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 208, 437.

Léon Fleuriot, 'Gloses inédites en vieux-breton', Études celtiques, 16 (1979), 197-210 (pp. 197, 199).

Rosamond McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1989), p. 277.

Die Karolingischen Miniaturen, ed. by Wilhelm Koehler and Florentine Mütherich, 6 vols (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1930-2013), Die Schule von Reims: Von den anfängen bis zur mitte des 9. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Karoline Mütherich, IV.1 (1994) p. 58.

Pierre-Yves Lambert, 'Gloses celtiques à Isidore de Séville', in Studia Celtica et Indogermanica:Festschrift für Wolfgang Meid zum 70. Geburtstag: ed. by Peter P. Anreiter and Erzsébet Jerem (Budapest: Archaeolingua Alapítvány, 1999), pp. 187-200.

David Ganz, 'Harley 3941: from Jerome to Isidore', in Early Medieval Palimpsests, ed. by Georges Declercq, Bibliologia, 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 29-35.

L'Edition Critique des Oeuvres D'Isidore de Seville: Les Recensions Multiples, ed. by A. Andres Sanz, J. Elfassi and J.C. Martin (Paris: Institut d'Études Augustiniennes, 2008), pp. 195-230.

'London, British Library, Harley 3941', at 'Innovating Knowledge', ed. by Evina Steinová ((Huygens Institute, Amsterdam, 2021), online at https://db.innovatingknowledge.nl/#detail/M0171 [accessed 28.01.2022].

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.

Related Material:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: 1808-12), III (1808), p. 97:

'1. Registrum Brevium Ed. 3.

2. Chartae, Magna, Edw. 3. de Foresta, de Merton, Marleberge, Westmonasterio, Gloucestria, Wintonia, Statuta, &e.'