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Harley MS 671

Record Id:

040-002046500

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002046500

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000652.0x0000b1

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 671

Title:

Collection of geomantic treatises

Scope & Content:

Contents:

f. 1r: Two astronomical tables, entitled: ‘Tabula terminorum planetarum’ and ‘Tabula facibus Planetarum’.

f. 1v: A brief note in English on the interpretation of geomantic figures for different types of man, for example: ‘Thies [two geomantic figures] signify men of trost’.

f. 2r: Tables showing the relationship between astrological houses and geomantic figures.

f. 3r: A list of the geomantic figures the 'sixteen judges' and their various meanings in Latin.

ff. 3v-5r: A table of contents, beginning at f. 61 in the old foliation and f. 73r in the new foliation

ff. 5v-13r: A geomantic treatise, beginning: ‘To knaw þe intent of þe querent. Thyes be rewltes qwich perycience þe auttour of þis science and a wyes philosopfre pittes and hath compild in his lyfe / and aftir þe us of arrabis and of many oder auttuors of egipt hath maid and proved’; a fragment of this tract is extant in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmolean MS 1478, ff. 120r-121v [but originally was part of Ashmolean MS 1501, an astrological and alchemical miscellany].

ff. 14r-25r: The Sothefast Connyng of Astrology, an astronomical treatise, beginning: ‘Her begins þe mervellus connyng of astrologi fond and prouid 200. ȝer er crist was borne be þe gret phelisofer tholomeus and prophetabill. It is to knaw evere day in þe ȝer in qwat sing þe mone is’; featuring marginal notes, which appear to be in the same hand as the main text, commenting on weather conditions in specific phases of the moon between 1477 to 1489.

ff. 25r-25v: Weather prognostications based on the on the day of the week on which the first of January falls in a particular year, beginning: '[I]ff þe first day of January be on þe sunday þe Wynter schallbe gud and werme wynde and most part most somber dry . hervest wyndy / much corne and gud / gud wyne and hony plente’.

ff. 26r-71v: A geomantic teatise, beginning: ‘The werk is of þe sciens of geomanci And to knaw in þis prologe þe caws qwy þis sciens was so foaden’.

f. 72r: A short Latin tract, entitled: ‘Capitulum ad sciendum terminum eventus rei future’.

ff. 73r-81r: A geomantic questionary treatise, beginning: ‘To knaw of singes [sic for ‘signs’] þat be stabil mobill and mediocre’.

ff. 81v-84r: A geomantic treatise to find a person’s name, beginning: ‘Her beginnys a tretis to find a mans name and aftir it schalbe mad opine to þe . þe invencioun of thoghtes and of all hid thing . with þe exposicioun how you schalt come þer to’.

f. 84v: An onomantic treatise, beginning: ‘To knaw qwedir a man and woman marid schalle leife well to gedir and qwer in schalbe þer most fortune’.

ff. 85r-89v: A geomantic treatise for the interpretation of names, beginning: ‘Her beginnys þe significacioun of evere name aftir þe fegurs and þe planettes of þe statur þe colur and þe toknis and qwat disposiscioun or craft he is most diposid to aftir þe planettes er singes’.

ff. 90r-91r: A geomantic treatise for the interpretation of places, beginning: ‘Her schall þe significacioun of places qwat maner of plas þat evere ffegure signifies and qwat growne’.

ff. 91r-91v: A geomantic tract on the interpretation of things according to their elemental complexion, beginning: ‘Her schall I schew þe þe significacioun of þe singes in generall aftire þer compleccioun’.

ff. 91v-92r: A geomantic tract on the complexion of geomantic figures, beginning: ‘Her schalt þou have mad in verse þe fegurs and qwat compleccioun þai be’.

ff. 92r-94r: A geomantic tract on geomantic figures of planets and astrological houses: ‘Her schalt þou knaw in qwat hows þat evere fegur and planett Joys’.

ff. 94v-97v: A collection of short geomantic and astrological tracts.

ff. 97r-155r: A geomantic treatise explaining methods for finding answers to a variety of questions, beginning: ‘And yf þou wilt knaw þe thoght of a man . se þe .i. hows and þe fegur of it And qwer he dobils hims And eftir þat gyfe Jugement’.

ff. 155v-163r: Geomantic tracts providing an ‘exemplum for al maner of Jugmentes’, beginning: ‘And a man ask a question for theft’.

ff. 163v-165v: A geomantic tract in Latin, entitled: ‘Of multiplicacioun of evere fegure’.

ff. 165v-168v: A geomantic tract in Latin, entitled: ‘[D]e modo erectionis figurarum in domibus’.

ff. 168v-169r: A geomantic tract ‘Of translacioun of fegurs’, beginning: ‘[A]nd it is to be well seine of the translacioun of fegus [sic] in evere question for yf the fegur be evil that is the signifier ther may be translacioun’.

ff. 169r-175r: A geomantic treatise in Latin, entitled: ‘Capitulum figure sextedecime’.

The manuscript contains a few later additions:

ff. [iv]recto-[iv]verso, 180r-180v: A parchment leaf from a 14th-century glossed copy of the Institutes of Justinian that has been horizontally cut in half to create two flyleaves (f. [iv] was the upper half, and f. 180 was the lower half); the text on f. [iv]recto begins: ‘'[li]beros habet si se ad arrogandum dederit non solum ipse in potestate arrogatoris subjicitur sed est liberi eius in eiusdem sunt potestate tanquam nepotes’.

f. 72r: A Latin saying: ‘Ego sum bonus puer’; added in the (?) early 16th century.

ff. 175v-179v: These pages contain added geomantic points and figures; a practitioner has ‘cast’ sixteen lines of points on each page and interconnected these with horizontal lines; each series of lines is followed by a tableau in which geomantic figures from the lines are identified. The figures contain various interpretations, e.g.: ‘figura perfecta’, ‘malum’, ‘Significat bellum undique’, ‘pro pregnante’, ‘pro lucro’; perhaps added by the Nicholas Maynard who inscribed his ownership note on f. 178r.

Decoration:

Geomantic shield charts (diagrams) in brown ink on f. 126r, 129v, 154r, 177r [added]. Geomantic figures in the text highlighted in yellow throughout. Added sketches for two large initials with foliate decoration in black and brown ink (f. 2v), one of which features instructions for colours in Middle English (‘blew’, ‘red’, ‘qwytt’), perhaps originally part of a pattern book.

Large (5- to 10-line) initials in combinations of blue and green, green and purple, blue and purple or all three colours, sometimes featuring penwork decoration of foliate motifs in black ink, in yellow frames (ff. 14r, 16r, 16v, 17v, 18v, 19v, 20v, 21r, 22r, 22v, 23v, 26r, 29r, 47r, 54r, 57v, 58v, 73r, 85r [with green foliate motifs extending into margins[, 90r, 91r, 91v, 92r, 97r, 103r, 131v, 141r, 143r, 147r, 152r). Large (2- to 4-line) plain initials in red or blue, some with added drawings in black ink inside their letters: human figures (ff. 35r, 36r) and a bird [? owl] (f. 35v). Capitals (1 line) highlighted in yellow. Paraphs alternate between red and blue. Line-fillers in red and blue.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002046500", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 671: Collection of geomantic treatises" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002046500

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 671 : Collection of geomantic treatises

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[0671]/040-002046500

Container:

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

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

Languages:

English, Middle
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1472

End Date:

1494

Date Range:

c 1477-c 1489

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: paper; parchment (ff. [iv], 180).

Dimensions: 200 x 145 mm (text space: 135 x 95 mm).

Foliation: ff. 13* + 72* + 180 (+ 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves and 1 unfoliated parchment flyleaf at the beginning + 4 at the end); ff. [iv] and 180 are parchment leaves that have been taken from another manuscript to serve as flyleaves in this manuscript; 2 unfoliated paper stubs of exised leaves between f. 178 and f. 179; original foliation in Arabic numerals throughout.

Collation: Catchwords (f. 145v only); each quire has been mounted separately onto a paper guard.

Script: Gothic cursive.

Binding: British Museum in-house; brown half leather binding with the Harleian armorial bookplate gold-stamped on the outside covers; re-bound on 17 August 1967.

Custodial History:

Origin:

East England (? Norfolk).

Provenance:

The Middle English texts feature dialectal forms that are associated with Norfolk ('qwane' and 'qwen' [when], 'qwat' [what], 'qwedir' [whether], qwer' [where], 'qwerfor' [wherefore],'qwich' [which], 'qwo' [who], 'qwome' [whom], 'werk [work], 'werld' [world]).

George Maynard, owned in the (?) early 16th century: his ownership inscription on f. 72*recto: ‘thes ys Jorge maynard ys boke’ (previously unrecorded, not in Wright, Fontes Harleaini (1972)).

Nicholas Maynard, owned in the (?) early 16th century: his ownership inscription on f. 178r: ‘Memorandum that thys ys Nycolay maynar ys boke hoso ever stell thes boke’; and his name is also inscribed on f. 179v [see below] (previously unrecorded, not in Wright, Fontes Harleaini (1972)).

William ?Car, borrowed or owned in the (?) early 16th century: his name inscribed on f. 13*recto: ‘Wylliam [?] Car [?] meason [? ‘mason’ or ‘measoun’] of Wyneworth servant’; perhaps also inscribed f. 13*verso: ‘Thys ys my ungkyll Neclys [? Nicholas] Maynard[es] record’ (previously unrecorded, not in Wright, Fontes Harleaini (1972)).

‘Hudson’, (?) 16th century: his name inscribed on f. 179v: ‘Geomanti hudson’ followed by various rows of dots interconnected with horizontal strokes, perhaps representing a geomantic chart.

Edward Stillingfleet (b. 1635, d. 1699), bishop of Worcester and theologian (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972)).

Edward Stillingfleet (b. 1661, d. 1708), physician and Church of England clergyman, son of the former; in 1707 acquired by Robert Harley (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972)).

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 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:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), I (1808), pp. 403-04 (no. 671).

Rossel Hope Robbins, ‘English Almanacks of the Fifteenth Century’, Philological Quarterly, 18 (1939), 321-31 (p. 324, n. 19).

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. 316.

Marion B. Smith, 'The Nature of Islamic Geomancy with a Critique of a Structuralist's Approach', Studia Islamica, 49 (1979), 5-38 (p. 20 n. 1).

Laurel Means, 'Electionary, Lunary, Destinary, and Questionary: Toward Defining Categories of Middle English Prognostic Material', Studies in Philology, 89: 4 (Autumn, 1992), 367-403 (pp. 376 n.26, 380 n.42, 398 n.90, 401-402).

Kathleen L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390-1490, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 6, 2 vols (London: Miller, 1996), II, 254 [f. 2v].

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Places:

Eastern England