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Harley MS 1527
- Record Id:
- 040-002047357
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002047357
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000709.0x000022
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 1527
- Title:
- Bible moralisée
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript and Harley MS 1526 are part of a Bible moralisée that is divided between Oxford, Paris and London (the Oxford-Paris-London Bible moralisée): volume 1 is Oxford, MS Bodley 270b; volume 2 is Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS latin 11560; and volume 3 is divided into the two Harley volumes (Harley MS 1526 and MS 1527). The separation of the Harley volumes seems to have been originally intended (see Lowden 2000, pp. 146-48). This manuscript contains the New Testament.
Decoration:
1408 miniatures in colours and gold, of 8 roundels in two columns of 4 in rectangular frames on a folio, usually on alternating facing folios interspersed with 2 blank folios with visible underdrawings executed as pressure-tracings with a stylus (miniatures on ff. 4v-5r, 6v-7r, 8v-9r, 10v-11r, 12v-13r, 14v-15r, 16v-17r, 18v-19r, 20v-21r, 22v-23r, 24v-25r, 26v-27r, 28v-29r, 30v-31r, 32v-33r, 34v-35r, 36v-37r, 38v-39r, 40v-41r, 42v-43r, 44v, 45v-46r, 47v-48r, 49v-50r, 51v-52r, 53v-54r, 55v-56r, 57v-58r, 59v, 60v-61r, 62v-63r, 64v-65r, 66v-67r, 68v-69r, 70v-71r, 72v-73r, 74v-75r, 76v-77r, 78v-79r, 80v-81r, 82v-83r, 84v-85r, 86v-87r, 88v-89r, 90v-91r, 92v-93r, 94v-95r, 96v-97r, 98v-99r, 100v-101r, 102v-103r, 104v-105r, 106v-107r, 108v-109r, 110v-111r, 112v-113r, 114v-115r, 116v-117r, 118v-119r, 120v-121r, 122v-123r, 124v-125r, 126v-127r, 128v-129r, 130v-131r, 132v-133r, 134v-135r, 136v-137r, 138v-139r, 140v-141r, 1442v-143r, 144v-145r, 146v-147r, 148r, 149v-150r, 151v-152r, 153v).
Large initials in red with blue penwork decoration, or in blue with red penwork decoration. Running headings in blue or gold letters. Initials and headings are unfinished on ff. 60v-65r.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002047357", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 1527: Bible moralisée" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002047357 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 1527 : Bible moralisée - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[1528]/040-002047357
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- Parchment codex.
- Digitised Content:
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_1527 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1225
- End Date:
- 1249
- Date Range:
- 2nd quarter of the 13th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 400 x 275 mm (text space: 295 x 200 mm).
Foliation: ff. 153 ( + 6 unfoliated paper flyleaves: 3 at the beginning and 3 at the end; f. 1 is a modern paper flyleaf; ff. 2-3 are medieval parchment flyleaves; f. 3 is placed after f. 153). 18th-century foliation (ff. 29-178) continuous with the foliation of the previous volume, Harley MS 1526.
Collation: i-iii8 (ff. 4-27); iv8-2 (ff. 28-33; 2 folios missing after f. 30); v8 (ff. 34-41); vi8-1 (ff. 42-48; 1 folio excised after f. 44); vii8 (ff. 49-56); viii8-5 (ff. 57-59; 4 folios missing after f. 58 and 1 after f. 59); ix6 (ff. 60-65); x-xii8 (ff. 66-89); xiii6 (ff. 90-95); xiv8-4? (ff. 96-99; perhaps 4 folios missing after f. 97); xv-xx8 (ff. 100-147); xxi8-1 (ff. 148-153; 1 folio missing before f. 148 and 1 after f. 153). Quire signatures (numbered at the end or at the beginning of quires; extant marks at the beginning and at the end of quire iii, ff. 20r, 27v); inscriptions 'Novel Testam[en]t' (quires i-viii) and 'Epistole' (quires x-xi); catchwords (ff. 73v-74r, 81v-82r, 89v-90r, 95v).
Script: Gothic.
Binding: Post-1600 binding of brown leather with blind and gold tooling.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: France (Paris).
Provenance:
Blanche of Castile (b.1188, d. 1252), Queen consort of France; probably commissioned by her in 1234 as a wedding gift for Margaret of Provence (b. 1221, d. 1295), wife of Louis IX, her son (see Lowden 2000).
In England by last quarter of the 13th century, where it was the basis of a copy, now Add. MS 18719 (see discussion Lowden 2000 p. 185).
John Thwayte: inscription 'John Thwayte', 16th-century (f. 2v).
? Sir Christopher Heydon (b. 1561, d. 1623), soldier and writer on astrology: he presented volume 1 to the Bodleian Library (now Bodley MS 270b).
William Innys, bookseller, Prince's Arms, St Paul's Churchyard, owned until 1711: receipt signed 'Wm Innys' to John Kemp for payment for manuscripts for £40 dated 30 June 1711 (pasted onto f. 1r).
John Kemp (b. 1665, d. 1717): see above receipt; his sale at the Phoenix Tavern, Pall Mall, 27 March 1721?, acquired by Harley.
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, née Cavendish 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.
- Administrative Context:
- France (Paris).
- Information About Copies:
-
Select digital coverage available for this manuscript, see Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm.
- Publications:
-
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-1812), II (1808), nos 1526, 1527.
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. 8.
Georg Graf Vitzthum, Die Pariser Miniaturmalerei: von der Zeit des hl. Ludwig bis zu Philipp von Valois und ihr Verhältnis zur Malerei in Nordwesteuropa (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1907), pp. 4, 9-10.
[George Warner], Reproductions from Illuminated Manuscripts, Series I, (London: British Museum, 1907), pl. 22.
J. A. Herbert, Illuminated Manuscripts (London: Methuen, 1911), pp. 199-200.
A. de Laborde, La Bible moralisée illustrée conservée à Oxford, Paris et Londres: Reproduction intégrale du manuscrit du XIIIe siècle accompagnée de planches tirées de Bibles similaires et d’une notice, 5 vols (Paris, 1911-1927).
[J. A. Herbert], British Museum: Reproductions from Illuminated Manuscripts, Series 1, 3rd edn (London: British Museum, 1923), pl. 22.
Hugo Buchthal and Francis Wormald, Miniature Painting in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1957), pp. 49, 51, 53 ff., 62, 64 ff., 73 ff., 80, 97 n. 2.
Jean Porcher, French Miniatures from Illuminated Manuscripts (London: Collins, 1960), p. 90.
R. Haussherr, 'Eine Warnung vor dem Studiern von zivilem und kanonischem Recht in der Bible moralisee', Fruchmittelalterliche Studien, 9 (1975), 390-404.
Jaroslav Folda, Crusader Manuscript Illumination at Saint-Jean d'Acre, 1275-1291 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 72 n. 146, 109 n. 175.
Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Manuscript (Oxford: Phaidon, 1979), pl. 25.
Richard Kenneth Emmerson and Suzanne Lewis, 'Census and Bibliography of Medieval Manuscripts containing Apocalypse Illustrations, ca. 800-1500 III', Traditio: Studies in Ancient and Medieval History, Thought and Religion, 42 (1986), 443-72, no. 154.
Nigel Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, 2 vols, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 4 (London Harvey Miller, 1982-1988), II: 1250-1285, p. 138.
Alison Stones, 'Indications écrites et modèles picturaux, guides aux peintres de manuscrits enluminés aux environs de 1300', in Artistes, artisans et production artistique au Moyen Age: Colloque international, ed. by. Xavier Barral i Altet, 3 vols (Paris: Picard, 1986-1990), III: Fabrication et consommation de l'oeuvre, 321-49.
Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of Work (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 62, fig. 91.
Janet Backhouse, ‘Sire Robert Cotton’s Record of a Royal Bookshelf’, British Library Journal, 18 (1992), 44-51 (p. 48).
The Apocalypse and the Shape of Things to Come, ed. by Frances Carey (London: British Museum, 1999), pp. 71-2, no. 7 [exhibition catalogue].
John Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, 2 vols (University Park, Pennsylvania, 2000), I, The Manuscripts, esp. pp. 139-87, II, passim [with additional bibliography].
Nigel Morgan, ‘French Interpretations of English Apocalpyses’, in England and the Continent in the Middle Ages: Studies in Memory of Andrew Martindale, Proceedings of the 1996 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by John Mitchell and Matthew Moran, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 8 (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 2000), pp. 137-56 (p. 139).
Richard H. Rouse and Mary A. Rouse, Manuscripts and Their Makers: Commercial Book Producers in Medieval Paris 1200-1500, 2 vols (Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2000), I, p. 337 n.120.
Christopher de Hamel, The Book: A History of the Bible (London: Phaidon, 2001), p. 146.
John Lowden, 'The Apocalypse in the Early-Thirteenth-Century Bibles Moralisées: A Re-Assessment', in Prophecy, Apocalypse and the Day of Doom, Proceedings of the 2000 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by Nigel Morgan, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 12 (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2004), pp. 195-217 (pp. 198, 207-212, 216, pls 20, 26-28, 31).
Nigel Morgan, 'Illustrated Apocalypses of Mid-Thirteenth-Century England: Historical Context, Patronage and Readership', in The Trinity Apocalypse (Trinity College Cambridge, MS R.16.2) (London: British Library, 2005), pp. 3-22 (p. 4).
John Lowden, ‘The Holkham Bible Picture Book and the Bible Moralisée’, in The Medieval Book: Glosses from Friends and Colleagues of Christopher de Hamel, ed. by James H. Marrow, Richard A. Linenthal, and William Noel (Houten, 2010), pp. 75-83.
Babette Hellemans, La Bible moralisée: une œuvre à part entière : création, sémiotique et temporalité au XIIIe siècle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 219-21.
- Exhibitions:
- Armenia!, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York , 22 September 2018 - 13 January 2019
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)