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Harley MS 1117
- Record Id:
- 040-002046946
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002046946
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000652.0x00026f
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100058107312.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 1117
- Title:
-
Verses on the translation of Edward the Martyr; Bede's prose and verse Vitae sancti Cuthberti; excerpts from Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica; an office for St Cuthbert; a poem on Abbot Wigbeorht; offices of St Benedict and St Guthlac
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript includes material for the cult of St Cuthbert as well as poems and offices for other English churchmen and saints and for St Benedict. Bede's Lives of Cuthbert are glossed in Latin and Old English, in a hand which seems to be contemporary with the main text.
The manuscript includes:
f. 1r: verses on Edward the Martyr;
ff. 2r-42r: Bede's prose Vita sancti Cuthberti (or Vita sancti Cudbercti; Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina, no. 2021);
f. 42v: blank;
ff. 43r-44r: office for Vespers on St Cuthbert's feast day with musical notation;
f. 44v: blank;
ff. 45r-62v: Bede's metrical Vita sancti Cuthberti (or Vita sancti Cudbercti; Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina, no. 2020);
f. 62v: verses on Wigbeorht;
ff. 63r-65r: office for St Benedict with musical notation;
ff. 65r- 66v: office for St Guthlac, with musical notation.
Decoration:
Large interlace initials with animal heads in brown and red (ff. 2r, 4r, 45r); title page with a rectangular border in red, green, and blue (f. 3v); large initials in red, green, and blue, some with penwork decoration, including of animal heads (ff. 48v, 51r, 57v); rubrics in red, blue or green throughout; highlighting of intials in red; decorated line-filler in red (f. 42r); musical notation (ff. 43r-44r, 63r-66v). Syntactic marks or glosses using a system of dots and dashes have been used.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002046946", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 1117: Verses on the translation of Edward the Martyr; Bede's prose and verse Vitae sancti Cuthberti; excerpts from Bede's Historia…" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002046946 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 1117 : Verses on the translation of Edward the Martyr; Bede's prose and verse Vitae sancti Cuthberti; excerpts from Bede's… - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[1117]/040-002046946
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100058107312.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Old
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 0990
- End Date:
- 1015
- Date Range:
- c 1000
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: binding 275 x 190 mm (text space ranges from 165 x 100 mm to 200 x 145 mm).
Foliation: ff. 66 (+ 3 unfoliated modern paper leaves at the beginning and 2 at the end).
Script: Caroline minuscule, Anglo-Saxon vernacular minuscule.
Binding: Post-1600.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England (Christ Church Cathedral, Canterbury?).
On the basis of script and decoration, some scholars have associated this manuscript with Canterbury and, more specifically, with Christ Church (see Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts (1975), no. 30 (vii); Bishop, 'Notes' (1959-63), pp. 421-22; Stokes, English Vernacular (2014), p. 71). The manuscript also contains an epigram (f. 62v), but this seems to have been copied into the manuscript from an earlier (now lost) Psalter and does not seem to describe the circumstances of the manuscript's own production: 'Iusserat ecclesiae Wigbeorhtus scribere nabla hoc abbas huius; cunctos rogitat qui hic psallere captant utque sui memores cantus cumulamine constent, quo Deus omnipotens sibi crimina cuncta relaxet' ('Wigbeorht, the abbot of this church, ordered this psalter (?) to be written. He asks those who begin to chant their Psalms that they remember him through the abundance of their song, whereby God Omnipotent may forgive them their sins', ed. and trans. by Lapidge, Anglo-Latin (1996), p. 75). No figure named Wigbeorht is recorded in any surviving sources from England until Domesday Book, but the abbot in the epigram has been linked to an Anglo-Saxon abbot of Fritzlar who died in 747 (see Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature (1996), p. 75).
Two exemplars have been proposed for the texts in MS Harley 1117: Cotton MS Vitellius A XIX (which possesses a similar prose Vita sancti Cuthberti: see Colgrave, Two Lives (1940), pp. 46-47; Rollason, 'St Cuthbert' (1989), p. 418), and Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana Reg. lat. 204 (see Barker-Benfield, St Augustine's (2008), III, p. 1818). The production of both Cotton Vitellius A XIX and Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana Reg. lat. 204 has been attributed to the Benedictine abbey of St Augustine, Canterbury.
Provenance:
Verses on Edward the Martyr added in the early 11th century (f. 1r).
John Anstis the elder (b. 1669, d. 1744), herald and antiquary: gave to Robert Harley together with other manuscripts, according to an inscription (f. 1v).
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.
- Information About Copies:
- Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, ed. by A.N. Doane and others, 10 (Binghamton, New York, and Tempe, Arizona, 2003), no. 268.
- Publications:
-
B. C. Barker-Benfield, St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 3 vols (London: British Library, 2008), III, p. 1818.
Nicolas Bell, Music in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2001), p. 18.
The Benedictines in Britain, British Library Series, 3 (London: British Library, 1980), no. 27 [exhibition catalogue].
Bibliotheca Hagiographica Antiquae et Mediae Aetatis, Subsidia Hagiographica, 6, 2 vols (Brussels, 1898–1901; repr. 1992), no. 2020 and 2021.
Walter de Gray Birch, Memorials of Saint Guthlac of Crowland. Collected from the original manuscripts (Wisbech: Leach and Son, 1881), pp. 66-69 [includes an edition of the office for St Guthlac].
T.A.M. Bishop, 'Notes on Cambridge Manuscripts, Part VI', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 3 (1959-63), 412-23 (pp. 421-22).
Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, ed. by Claire Breay and Joanna Story (London: The British Library, 2018), no. 124 [exhibition catalogue].
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), I, no. 1117.
Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac, ed. by Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge: University Press, 1956), p. 10.
Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, ed. by Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), pp. 28-50, 142-307 [includes edition of Bede's prose Vita sancti Cuthberti, with Harley 1117's text collated as 'H'].
David N. Dumville, English Caroline Script and Monastic History, Studies in Benedictinism, A.D.950-1030 , Studies in Anglo-Saxon History, 6 (Suffolk: Boydell, 1993), pp. 88, 108, 109.
Christine Fell, Edward, King and Martyr (Leeds: University of Leeds, School of English, 1971), p. 17 [includes edition of the verses on Edward].
Helmut Gneuss and Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 241 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), no. 427.
K. D. Hartzell, Catalogue of Manuscripts Written or Owned in England up to 1200 containing Music (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), no. 157.
Werner Jaager, Bedas metrische Vita sancti Cuthberti (Leipzig, 1935) [includes an edition of Bede's metrical Vita S Cuthberti, with Harley 1117's text collated as 'H'].
N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), no. 234.
Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature 600-899 (London: Hambledon Press, 1996), p. 75 [includes edition of the poem on Wigbeorht].
Michael Lapidge, 'Prolegomena to an Edition of Bede's Metrical Vita Sancti Cuthberti', Filologia Mediolatina, 2 (1995), 127-63.
Herbert Dean Meritt, Old English Glosses: A Collection (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1945), no. 7 [includes edition of the Old English glosses].
Fred C. Robinson, 'Syntactical Glosses in Latin Manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon Provenance', Speculum 48.3 (1973), 443-75 (pp. 459-61).
David Rollason, 'St Cuthbert and Wessex: The Evidence of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 183', in St Cuthbert, His Cult and Community to AD 1200, ed. by Gerald Bonner, David Rollason, and Clare Stancliffe (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989), pp. 413-24 (pp. 418-19).
L.M. Sole, 'Some Anglo-Saxon Cuthbert Liturgica: the Manuscript Evidence', Revue Bénédictine, 108 (1998), 104-44 (pp. 140-43) [includes edition of the rhymed office for St Cuthbert].
Peter A. Stokes, English Vernacular Minuscule from Æthelred to Cnut circa 990-1035 (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2014), pp. 61-62, 70-71.
Elzbieta Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts 900-1066, Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 2 (London: Harvey Miller, 1976), no. 30 (vii).
Teresa Webber, 'Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica as a Source of Lections in Pre- and Post- Conquest England' in The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past, ed. by Martin Brett and David Woodman (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 47-74 (p. 51).
Teresa Webber, ‘The lector and lectio in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Manuscripts in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Cultures and Connections, ed. by Claire Breay and Joanna Story with Eleanor Jackson (Dublin: Four Courts, 2021), pp. 108-118 (p. 117; fig. 8.6).
- Exhibitions:
- Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, British Library, London, 19 October 2018 - 19 February 2019
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)