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Arundel MS 16
- Record Id:
- 040-002039296
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002039280
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000395.0x00020e
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100161518936.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Arundel MS 16
- Title:
- Osbern of Canterbury, Vita Sancti Dunstani
- Scope & Content:
-
Osbern, precentor of Christ Church, Canterbury, composed this version of the Vita Sancti Dunstani (Life of St Dunstan) between c.1089 and c.1093. This is thought to be the earliest of some twenty manuscripts of the text, and it may have been the original Christ Church copy (Alexander, Romanesque Manuscripts (1975)). According to the Dover priory library catalogue of 1389, other texts were once included in the same volume: Osbern's Vita Sancti Elphegi (Life of St Elphege) and Translatio Sancti Elphegi (Translation of St Elphege) and Eadmer's Vita Sancti Odonis (Life of St Odo) followed the Vita Sancti Dunstani.
Contents:
f. 1r-v: Osbern of Canterbury, Epistola de vita Sancti Dunstani (Prologue of the Life of St Dunstan).
ff. 2r-45v: Osbern of Canterbury, Vita Sancti Dunstani (Life of St Dunstan).
Additions:
f. 38r: Inserted half-size folio, containing an account of a miracle that occurred at Sapperton, a community of which St Dunstan was patron.
ff. 39r-40v: Folios with text in a post-medieval hand, added to replace missing folios in the original.
Decoration:
2 historiated initials in purple, red, green and blue, on yellow and orange grounds (ff. 1r, 2r). Initials in red, green, or blue. Rubrics in red, purple, green or blue capitals.
The details of the historiated initials are:
f. 1r: 'U'(niversis) with an angel holding a book, a knight with a shield and spear, a crouching man, and a dragon's head forming part of the letter (damaged), at the beginning of the Epistola;
f. 2r: 'R'(egnante) with a seated scribe, labelled 'OSBEARNUS', a censing monk, animals, and animal heads, at the beginning of Osbern's Life of St Dunstan.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Arundel Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002039280
040-002039296 - Is part of:
- Arundel MS 1-550 : Arundel Manuscripts
Arundel MS 16 : Osbern of Canterbury, Vita Sancti Dunstani - Hierarchy:
- 032-002039280[0016]/040-002039296
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Arundel MS 1-550
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- https://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100161518936.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1085
- End Date:
- 1124
- Date Range:
- c 1090-1st quarter of the 12th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Script: Protogothic.
Dimensions: 250 x 155 mm (text space: 190 x 105 mm).
Foliation: ff. 45 (+2 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and 3 at the end. f. 38 is a half-sized added parchment leaf and ff. 39 and 40 are modern parchment leaves).
Collation: i6(ff. 1-6), ii8+2 (ff. 7-17), iii8 (ff. 18-25), iv8(26-33), v4+3(34-40), vi5 (ff. 41-45).
Binding: Post-1600. British Museum/British Library in-house.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Canterbury, Southern England.
Provenance:
? The Benedictine cathedral priory of Christ Church, Canterbury (f. 2r, see Gameson, Early Norman England (1999) p. 94).
The Benedictine priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Martin, Dover by the 14th century: inscribed with the press mark 'D VII' and title (f. 2r) and included in the 1389 catalogue of the monastic library.
John Joscelin [Joscelyn] (b. 1529, d. 1603), Old English scholar and Church of England clergyman, Archbishop Parker's secretary, with his annotations and supplements (see Tite, 'Cotton Library' (1992), p. 117).
? Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (b. 1571, d. 1631), 1st baronet, antiquary and politician: erased signature 'R[ ]on' ? (f. 1r).?
Thomas Howard (b. 1585, d. 1646), 2nd earl of Arundel, 4th earl of Surrey, and 1st earl of Norfolk, art collector and politician. Henry Howard (b. 1628, d. 1684), 6th duke of Norfolk, presented to the Royal Society in 1667.
The Royal Society, London, ink stamp: 'Soc. Reg. Lond / ex dono HENR. HOWARD / Norfolciensis.' (f. 1r).
Purchased by the British Museum from the Royal Society of London together with 549 other Arundel manuscripts in 1831.
- 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 Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm.
- Publications:
-
Memorials of St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. by William Stubbs (London, 1874), p. 71, n. 1, (manuscript F), [an edition of the text].
Catalogue of Manuscripts in The British Museum, New Series,1 vol. in 2 parts (London: British Museum, 1834-1840), I, part I: The Arundel Manuscripts, p. 4.
M.R. James, The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover: the catalogues of the libraries of Christ Church Priory and St. Augustine's Abbey at Canterbury and of St. Martin's Priory at Dover (Cambridge: University Press, 1903), p. xciii.
Thomas Boase, English Art 1100-1216, The Oxford History of English Art, 8 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), p. 42, pl. 10a.
C. R. Dodwell, The Canterbury School of Illumination 1066-1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), pp. 48 n. 1, 120.
Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. by N. R. Ker, 2nd edn, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 3 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1964), p. 35.
C. M. Kauffmann, Romanesque Manuscripts 1066-1190, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 3 (London: Harvey Miller, 1975), no. 7, pl. 12 [with further bibliography].
Colin G. C. Tite, ''Lost or Stolen or Strayed': A Survey of Manuscripts Formerly in the Cotton Library', British Library Journal, 18 (1992), 107-47 (p. 117).
M. Budny and T. Graham, 'Dunstan as Hagiographical Subject or Osbern as Author? The Scribal Portrait in an Early Copy of Osbern's Vita Sancti Dunstani', Gesta, 33 (1993), 83-96.
Richard Gameson, 'English Manuscript Art in the Late Eleventh Century: Canterbury and its Context', in Canterbury and the Norman Conquest: Churches, Saints and Scholars, 1066-1109, ed. by Richard Eales and Richard Sharpe (London: Hambledon Press, 1995), pp. 95-144 (pp. 118, 136, 142).
Tessa Webber, 'Script and Manuscript Production at Christ Church Canterbury after the Norman Conquest', in Canterbury and the Norman Conquest: Churches, Saints and Scholars, 1066-1109, ed. by Richard Eales and Richard Sharpe (London: Hambledon Press, 1995), pp. 145-58 (p. 157).
Richard Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England (c. 1066-1130) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) p. 94 no. 355.
Helmut Gneuss, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 241 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001) no. 303.
Asa Simon Mittman, Maps and Monsters in Medieval England (New York: Routledge, 2006), pls. 9.1, 9.2.
Eadmer of Canterbury: lives and miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan, and Oswald, ed. and translated by Andrew J. Turner and Bernard J. Muir, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon, 2006), pp. lxxv, 206 n. 57.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)