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Harley MS 275

Record Id:

040-002046103

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002046103

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000596.0x000244

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 275

Title:

Richard Rolle of Hampole, Emendatio vitae, Incendium amoris, Commentarius in Iob seu Postille super novem lectiones mortuorum; Pseudo-Bernard of Clairvaux, Meditationes Piissimae; Innocent III, De contemptu mundi; Honorius of Autun, Elucidarium; Jerome's translation of Origen’s Homilies on the Song of Songs; Speculum humanae salvationis; A Christmas Carol; A Latin treatise against divination and superstition; Vita Adae et Evae

Scope & Content:

This manuscript contains a collection of theological treatises in Latin and Middle English that was probably produced in a monastic environment. The cataloguing of this manuscript was funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Contents:

ff. 1r-12r: Richard Rolle of Hampole, Emendatio vitae.

ff. 12v-46r: Richard Rolle of Hampole, Incendium amoris.

ff. 46r-53r: Pseudo-Bernard of Clairvaux, Meditationes Piissimae.

ff. 53r-66r: Innocent III, De contemptu mundi; imperfect.

ff. 67r-90: Richard Rolle of Hampole, Commentarius in Iob seu Postille super novem lectiones mortuorum.

ff. 91r-106v: Honorius of Autun, Elucidarium.

ff. 106v-112v: Jerome's translation of Origen’s Homilies on the Song of Songs, preceded by Jerome's letter to Pope Damasus (f. 106v).

ff. 113-146v: Speculum humanae salvationis.

f. 146v: ‘Si ecclesiastica sententia in aliquibus debeat exerceri’.

ff. 146v-147r: A Christmas Carol on the Nativity and Epiphany of Jesus Christ in Latin and Middle English, begininng: ‘Joy we all now yn this feste’ [DIMEV 589-3].

f. 148v: Thomas Kemp [Kempe], bishop of London (1448-1489), Latin letter to Thomas Darrell, armiger, concerning the marriage of William Stratton and Johanna Clerk, dated 18 November 1451 [at the top of the page is a faded inscription: ‘Dominus S. Wilhelmus Gyffard’].

ff. 149r-153r A Latin treatise against divination and superstition [See Thorndike and Kibre, Catalogue of Incipits (1963), p. 417l, and in its electronic edition on CD-ROM, no. 417L].

ff. 153r-158v: Vita Adae et Evae, in Latin but after the English tradition of the text.

The manuscript contains a few additions:

ff. 1*recto-2*verso, 159recto-160verso: two leaves from the Common of Martyrs of a 14th-century monastic Antiphoner, possibly English, with square notation on red 4-line stave. Titles of the works added in the upper margin of ff. 46, 113 by a contemporary medieval hand. The leaves have been folded in half horizontally and bound into the manuscript at their folds so that their texts and music are now displayed vertically.

f. 1*recto: A title ‘Ricardus Heremita de Hampole de conversione’, with a table of contents (written in what originally was the lower margin of the leaf); added in the 17th century; with notes added by Sir Simonds D'Ewes recording whether the individual texts had been published.

f. 158v: Two Middle English recipes relating to fever and frenzy, entitled: 'A specyall medecyne for the schakyng fevyre', and beginning: 'Take gold centorye isope weybrede vyolet'; and 'To help a manne that is Frantyke', beginning: 'Take and schave clen þe hede of þe seke and wach þe hede with warme venegre and lay þe seek in a darke place ther as he may see but esy lyght'; added in the late 15th-early or early 16th century by two different hands [See Robbins, ‘Medical Manuscripts’ (1970), p. 403 n. 28].

Decoration:

Initials (2 lines; ff. 67r, 71v, 74v, 76r, 78v, 81r) in red, some with crude penwork decoration in brown ink. Initials touched in red (ff. 1r-8r, 67r-82v); underlining of words (ff. 1-8, 67-82v), colophon (f. 90r), rubrics (ff. 91r, 106v-146r, 153r) and marginal note (f. 91r) in red. The flyleaves feature large (2-line) initials in blue or red with penwork decrotaion in the opposite colour and simple small (1-line) initials in blue or red and music 4-line music staves in red ink. Rubrics in red.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002046103", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 275: Richard Rolle of Hampole, Emendatio vitae, Incendium amoris, Commentarius in Iob seu Postille super novem lectiones mortuorum;…" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002046103

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 275 : Richard Rolle of Hampole, Emendatio vitae, Incendium amoris, Commentarius in Iob seu Postille super novem lectiones…

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[0274]/040-002046103

Container:

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

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 item

Digitised Content:

Languages:

English
English, Middle
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1400

End Date:

1499

Date Range:

15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Paper; Parchment (ff. 1*-2*, 159r-160v).

Dimensions: 220 x 150 mm (text space: approximately 168-182 x 115-120 mm; text space outlined in pen for single columns of 34-54 lines).

Foliation: ff. 1*-2* + 160 ( + 4 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 4 at the end); ff. 1*-2*, 159-160 are leaves from a 14th-century liturgical manuscript;1 unfoliated paper pastedown on f. [iv]recto (bibliographical notes); 1 unfoliated blank paper leaf between f. 112 and f. 113 and f. 123 and f. 124.

Collation: i-iv¹⁰, v-xi¹², xii¹⁰, xiii⁴, xiv⁸, xv⁴, xvi⁸, xvii², xviii¹⁰, with erratic horizontal catchwords; possibly altered by binders (see in particular xiii and xv showing catchwords on the verso of the second leaf). Each quire has been mounted onto a separate paper guard.

Script: English cursive book script (cursiva libraria media - secretary with some Anglicana features); written by several scribes.

Binding: British Museum in-house; red half leather binding with the Harley armorial bookplate gold-stamped on the outsides of the upper and lower covers; re-bound on 18 July 1968.

Custodial History:

Origin: England.

Provenance:

Sir Simonds D’Ewes (b. 1602, d. 1650), 1st baronet, diarist, antiquary, and friend of Sir Robert Cotton: his number ‘38’ on f. 1r; perhaps annotated the table of contents on f. 1*recto; listed in his catalogues as A.231 and B.148; (see E. Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliæ et Hiberniæ in unum collecti […] (Oxford: Sheldon, 1697), II, Part 1, p. 387 [no. 10008]. Watson, The Library of Sir Simonds D'Ewes (1966), pp. 126, 297; Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 131).

Sir Simonds D’Ewes (d. 1722), 3rd baronet and grandson of the former: inherited and later sold the D’Ewes library to Robert Harley on 4 October 1705 for £450; according to a receipt in Additional MS 70478 (Portland Papers) [formerly Loan 29/254 packet 2] (see Watson, The Library of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (1966), pp. 60, 91 n. 308; Diary, ed. by Wright and Wright (1966), p. xviii n. 3).

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. Harley shelfmarks '37.A.14', '275', and '16/I A' in black ink on f. 1*recto.

Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta Cavendish, née 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.

Publications:

E. Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliæ et Hiberniæ in unum collecti […] (Oxford: Sheldon, 1697), II, Part 1, p. 387 [no. 10008].

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), I (1808), p. 103.

J. H. Mozley, 'The Vita Adae', The Journal of Theological Studies, 30 (1929), 121-149 (pp. 121, 128).

Bertram Schofield, 'A Newly Discovered 15th-century Manuscript of the English Chapel Royal - Part 1', The Musical Quarterly, 32 (1946), 509-36 (p. 522).

Friedrich Stegmüller, Repertorium biblicum Medii Aevi, 12 vols (Madrid: Consejo Superior De Investigaciones Cientificas Instituto Francisco Suarez, 1940–1980), Vol. 7: Commentaria: Anonyma P-Z (1961), no. 74.

The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by C. E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), I: 1715-1723, p. xviii n. 3.

Andrew G. Watson, The Library of Sir Simonds D'Ewes (London: British Museum, 1966), pp. 126, 297.

Nicole Marzac, Richard Rolle de Hampole: (1300-1349) : vie et oeuvres et édition critique, traduite et commentée du "Tractatus super Apocalypsim" (Paris: Vrin, 1968), p. 182, no. 139.

L. Thorndike and P. Kibre, Catalogue of Incipits of Medieval Scientific Writings in Latin, rev. ed. (London, 1963; The Mediaeval Academy of America Publication, 29; with supplements in 1965 and 1968), p. 417l [electronic edition on CD-ROM (Ann Arbor, MI, 2000), no. 417L].

R. H. Robbins, 'Medical Manuscripts in Middle English', Speculum, 45: 3 (1970), 398-415 (p. 403 n. 28).

H. Düwell, ‘Bibliographie. Noch Nicht Untersuchte Handschriften des Elucidarium von Honorius Augustodunensis’, Scriptorium, 26 (1972), 337–342 (p. 340, no. 51).

Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), p. 131.

M. E. B. Halford, 'The Apocryphal Vita Adae et Evae: Some Comments on the Manuscript Tradition', Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 82 (1981), p. 422 [as London 6].

M. E. Stone, A History of the Literature of Adam and Eve, Society of Biblical Literature, Early Judaism and its Literature, 3 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), pp. 17, 26 [as E].

J.-P. Pettorelli, 'La vie latine d’Adam et Eve: analyse de la tradition manuscrite', in Apocrypha: Revue Internationale des Littératures Apocryphes, 10 (1999), pp. 195-296 (pp. 204 and 257-258) [as E, noting that it was perhaps copied by Laurentius Noelli].

'London, British Library Harley 275', in The Digital Index of Middle English Verse [DIMEV] [accessed 11 January 2021].

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Darrell, Thomas, correspondent of Thomas Kemp, Bishop of London, fl 1451
D’Ewes, Simonds, 1st Baronet, diarist and antiquary, 1602-1650,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000083393524,
   see also http://viaf.org/viaf/12656415
Honorius of Autun, c 1080-c 1155,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000117981982,
   see also http://viaf.org/viaf/100201145
Innocent III, Pope, 1160/61-1216,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000122769169,
   see also http://viaf.org/viaf/16017787
Jerome, Saint, c 345-420,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000123213293,
   see also http://viaf.org/viaf/95147024
Kemp, Thomas, Bishop of London
Origen, c 185-c 254,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000123213322,
   see also http://viaf.org/viaf/95155322
Pseudo-Bernard of Clairvaux
Rolle, Richard, c 1310-1349,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000121177882,
   see also http://viaf.org/viaf/2465074

Places:

England

Related Material:

Description from Augustus Hughes-Hughes, Catalogue of Manuscript Music in the British Museum, vol. 1 (London: British Museum, 1906), p. 138:

f. 146b. Words of a Christmas Carol, beg. 'Joy we all now yn this feste, ffor verbum caro factum est.’ Inserted at the end of a copy of the 'Speculum humanæ salvationis.'