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Arundel MS 44
- Record Id:
- 040-002039324
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002039280
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000395.0x00022a
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100161503379.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Arundel MS 44
- Title:
- Conrad of Hirsau (?), Speculum virginum
- Scope & Content:
-
Contents:
f. 1r: Notated antiphon ‘Audite o lucis filie’ from the Epithalamium in the Speculum Virginum; musical notation: neumes on 4-line staves.
ff. 1v-129v: Conrad of Hirsau (?), Speculum virginum; this work is in the form of a dialogue between the teacher, a Benedictine named Peregrinus, and a nun or 'virgin of Christ', called Theodora.
Decoration:
12 large diagrammatic drawings in brown or colours with highlighting in green, blue, yellow and red (ff. 2v, 13r, 28v, 29r, 34v, 46r, 57v, 70r, 83v, 93v, 108v, 114v). 2 small miniatures of Peregrinus and Theodora in brown ink with highlights in colours (f. 17v). Drawings of hands within the text in red (f. 82r). Large and small initials in red or brown, some with penwork decoration. Musical notation of neumes on a stave (f. 1r).
The subjects of the images are:
f. 2v: The Tree of Jesse back to Booz, who is seated on the lower part of the frame, holding two branches which proceed from his breast. Above to his left is Obeth, his son, and above to his right Jesse, his grandson. Directly above Booz is David who is crowned, and above him, with the omission of all the intervening generations, is the Virgin holding an open book on which is written 'Quasi terebintus extendi ramos' (Ecclesiasticus 24:22). Above is Christ, flanked by Zacharias and Isaiah, with his halo supporting seven stems, leading to heart-shaped leaves that represent the seven Gifts of the Spirit, inscribed with the associated qualities; above are seven more leaves with inscriptions.
f. 13r: The Mystic Paradise, with the Virgin and Child at the centre, flanked by personifications of the virtues and the symbols of the Evangelists, at the beginning of epistle I.2.
f. 17v: Peregrinus and Theodora.
f. 28v: Tree of Vices, with Pride at the bottom and Luxury at the top, with snakes and dragons, at the beginning of epistle IV.1.
f. 29r: The Tree of Virtues, flanked by angels, with Love at the top with an image of Christ blessing, illustrating epistle IV.1.
f. 34v: The Victory of Humility, stabbing Pride, in the centre, flanked by Jael and Judith, at the beginning of epistle IV.2.
f. 46r: The Quadriga, with the Virgin in the centre with her feet on a wheel and holding the infant Christ whose feet also rest on a wheel. St John the Baptist, bearded, with nimbus, and with shaggy clothing (right) and St John the Evangelist (left) both with wheels beneath their feet. Two angels in medallions above hold open books with inscriptions.
f. 57v: Wise and Foolish Virgins (centre), with Christ in Judgement, flanked by St Cecila and St Mary (above), and angels blowing trumpets to awaken the dead (below), at the beginning of epistle VI.
f. 70r: The parable of the Sower, interpreted as the fruits of Virginity, Chastity, and Conjugality; the virgins represent the hundred-fold fruit, the chaste represent the sixty-fold fruit, and the married represent the forty-fold fruit, each personified as men and women, often with books, placed in a stylised tree, with Adam and Eve at the base and Christ at the top, at the beginning of epistle VII.
f. 83v: A Cross with the Fruits of the Flesh and of the Spirit, with God above and a dragon below, including personifications of Reason, Wisdom, Goodness, and Law, holding a sword, at the beginning of epistle VIII.
f. 93v: The Ladder of Virtue, with nuns climbing a ladder towards Christ, with a devil holding swords in the centre and a dragon below, at the beginning of epistle IX.
f. 108v: Christ in Majesty in a mandorla holding an open book, surrounded by martyrs and saints, with a kneeling monk touching his right foot, at the beginning of epistle X.
f. 114v: The Temple of Wisdom consisting of an abbreviated Tree of Jesse or genealogy of Christ, with the Virgin and Christ both holding books with inscriptions in an architectural setting of columns and temples; the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are inscribed on leaves above, at the beginning of epistle XI.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Arundel Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002039280
040-002039324 - Is part of:
- Arundel MS 1-550 : Arundel Manuscripts
Arundel MS 44 : Conrad of Hirsau (?), Speculum virginum - Hierarchy:
- 032-002039280[0044]/040-002039324
- 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_100161503379.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1150
- End Date:
- 1174
- Date Range:
- 2nd or 3rd quarter of the 12th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 280 x 185 mm (text space: 215 x 145 mm).
Foliation: ff. iii + 131 (ff. i-iii and 130-131 are modern paper flyleaves).
Script: Protogothic.
Binding: British Museum / British Library in-house. Rebound in 1959.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Southern Germany.
Provenance:
The Cistercian abbey of St Mary, Eberbach: inscribed 'hugo mag[ister]' (f. 1r), probably late 12th century, apparently owned by the same Magister Hugo as four other manuscripts from Eberbach (see Palmer, Zisterzienser, 1998); 'f4' in the Eberbach library catalogue of 1502.
Shelfmarks(?): 'Z196' and '43' (f. 1r); similar inscriptions occur in many other Arundel manuscripts.
? 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: its ink stamp 'Soc. Reg. Lond / ex dono HENR. HOWARD / Norfolciensis.' (f. 1r); its book-plate, with the inscription 'XV:8.9' (f. ii recto).
Purchased by the British Museum from the Royal Society together with 549 other Arundel manuscripts in 1831.
- Information About Copies:
- Select digital coverage available for this manuscript; see the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/.
- Publications:
-
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. 10.
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.
Augustus Hughes-Hughes, Catalogue of Manuscript Music in the British Museum, 3 vols (London: British Museum, 1906-1965), I, 422.
Arthur Watson, 'The Speculum Virginum with Special Reference to the Tree of Jesse', Speculum: Journal of Mediaeval Studies 3 (1928), pp. 445-69, pls. I-VI.
Arthur Watson, The Early Iconography of the Tree of Jesse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934), pp. 102, 128-31, pls XVI, XXIX.
Martha Strube, Die Illustrationen des Speculum virginum, Inaugural-Dissertation, Bonn (Düsseldorf: Nolte, 1937), pp. 3, 40, pls 1, 2.
Albert Siegmund, Die Überlieferung der griechischen Literatur in der latainischen Kirche bis zum zwölften Jahrhundert, Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Benediktiner-Akademie, 5 (Munich: Filser, 1949), p. 117.
André Grabar and Carl Nordenfalk, Romanesque Painting from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Century, trans. by Stuart Gilbert (Lausanne: SKIRA, 1958), p. 161.
Eleanor Simmons Greenhill, Die geistigen Voraussetzungen der Bilderreihe des Speculum Virginum, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, 39 (Münster, 1962), pp. 19-22, 132-39, pls. 1-12.
Eleonor S. Greenhill, Die Stellung der Handschrift British Museum Arundel 44 in der Überlieferung des Speculum Virginum, Mitteilungen des Grabmann-Instituts der Universität München, 10 (Munich: Hueber, 1966).
Franz Ronig, Die Buchmaleriei des 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts in Verdun (Cologne: n. pub., 1967), p. 160 n. 735.
C. R. Dodwell, Painting in Europe: 800 to 1200 (London : Penguin Books, 1971). p. 172, pl. 99.
Jennifer O'Reilly, Studies in the Iconography of the Virtues and the Vices in the Middle Ages (New York: Garland, 1988, print of an unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Nottingham, 1972), pp. 365-71, pls. 27b, 30, 30a, 30b.
Lucy Freemen Sandler, The Psalter of Robert de Lisle (London: Harvey Miller, 1983), p. 104 n. 60, figs 40-41.
Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, A Medieval Scriptorium: Sancta Maria Magdalena de Frankendal, Wolfenbütteler Mittelalter-Studien, 3, 2 vols (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1990), I, 112-6; II, figs 248, 252, 253, 258, 259, 264, 265, 268, 273, 274, 278, 279.
Speculum Virginum, ed. by Jutta Seyfarth, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 5 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1990), pp. 56*-60* and passim; pls 1, 2, 4, 13-14 (as 'L').
Ornamenta Ecclesiae: Kunst und Künstler der Romanik, ed. by Anton Legner, 3 vols (Cologne: Greven & Bechtold, 1985), I, 78 [exhibition catalogue].
Nigel F. Palmer, Zisterzienser und ihre Bücher: Die mittelalterliche Bibliotheksgeschichte von Kloster Eberbach im Rheingau unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der in Oxford und London aufbewahrten Handschriften (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 1998), pp. 76-80, 146, 206ff, 220, 272, 281, 314; figs. 59, 121, 153 , 182, 197.
Bernhard Jussen, Der Name der Witwe: Erkundungen zur Semantik der mittelalterlichen Busskultur, Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), pp. 105 n. 72, 107-8, pl. 5.
Catherine Jeffreys, '"Listen, Daughters of Light!": The Epithalamium and Musical Innovation in Twelfth-Century Germany', in ~Listen, Daughter: The "Speculum Virginum" and the Formation of Religious Women in the Middle Ages, ed. by Constant J. Mews (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 137-57 (pp. 138-42, example 5).
Constant J. Mews, 'Introduction', in Listen, Daughter: The "Speculum Virginum" and the Formation of Religious Women in the Middle Ages, ed. by Constant J. Mews (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 3-14 (p. 3), figs 1-6.
Morgan Powell, 'The "Speculum virginum" and the Audio-Visual Poetics of Women's Religious Instruction', in Listen, Daughter: The "Speculum Virginum" and the Formation of Religious Women in the Middle Ages, ed. by Constant J. Mews (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 111-35 (p. 113).
Jutta Seyfarth, 'The Speculum virginum: The Testimony of the Manuscripts', trans. by Janice M. Pinder, in Listen Daughter: The Speculum Virginum and the Formation of Religious Women in the Middle Ages, ed. by Constant J. Mews (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 41-57 (esp. pp. 41-42, 44-51).
Krone und Schleier: Kunst aus Mittelalterlichen Frauenklöstern (Munich: Kirmer, 2005), no. 205a [Bonn and Essen exhibition catalogue].
Aden Kumler, Translating Truth: Ambitious Images and Religious Knowledge in Late Medieval France and England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), pp. 60 (fig. 6), 60-63, 62 (figs. 7,8), 250 (n. 51).
Jeffrey Hamburger and Nigel Palmer, The Prayer Book of Ursula Begerin, 2 vols (Zurich: Urs Graf Verlag, 2015), I, pp. 204, 206, fig. 260.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)