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Harley MS 1738

Record Id:

040-002047569

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002047569

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000709.0x0000f6

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 1738

Title:

Medulla grammaticae

Scope & Content:

The manuscript contains a complete copy of the Medulla grammaticae, a 15th-century Latin-English dictionary.

Several other manuscript copies of the Medulla grammaticae survive: British Library, Add MS 24640, Add MS 33534, Add MS 37789 (bound with the Promptorium parvulorum), Add MS 62080, Harley MS 1000, Harley MS 2181, Harley MS 2257, Harley MS 2270; Bristol, University Library, MS DM 1 (fragment), MS DM 14; Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys MS 2002; Cambridge, St John's College, MS C.22 (72); Canterbury, Cathedral Library, MS D.2; Downside Abbey, MS 26540; Gloucester, Diocesan Record Office, MS 31 (fragment); Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 88, MS 111; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Holkham Misc. MS 39, Rawlinson MS C.101, Rawlinson MS D.913 (fragment); Oxford, Brasenose College, MS UB S.2.87-88 (fragment); Shrewsbury School, MS 16; Stonyhurst College, MS 15 (A.1.10).

Six other lost or unlocated copies are noted by McCarren, 'Bristol University MS DM 1', Traditio, 48 (1993), p. 224.

The author of the Medulla grammaticae is not known. The text is often confused with the Promptorium parvulorum, not least because of the inclusion of 'Medulla grammaticae' as an alternative title in early printed editions of the Promptorium. As a result, authorship of the Medulla is often mistakenly attributed to Geoffrey the Grammarian: for example, annotations in Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 88, assign Geoffrey's name, plus the otherwise unattested surname of Starkey, to the contents.

No sources are explicitly mentioned in the Medulla, however comparative studies have indicated several likely candidates: glossae collectae from the Bible and classical texts, the vocabulary (class glossary) or nominale, and medieval Summae and encyclopaedia, such as Huguccio of Pisa's Liber derivationem and Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae.

The contents of the manuscript are as follows:

ff. 1v-8r: 'A' (imperfect).

ff. 8v-11r: 'B'.

ff. 11r-20r: 'C'.

ff. 20r-24v: 'D'.

ff. 24v-29r: 'E'.

ff. 29r-32r: 'F' (imperfect).

ff. 32r-34v: 'G'.

ff. 34v-36r: 'H'.

ff. 36r-41r: 'I'.

f. 41r: 'K'.

ff. 41r-45r: 'L'.

ff. 45r-50r: 'M'.

ff. 50r-52r: 'N'.

ff. 52r-54r: 'O'.

ff. 54r-62v: 'P'.

ff. 62v-63v: 'Q'.

ff. 63v-66v: 'R'.

ff. 66v-74v: 'S'.

ff. 74v-78r: 'T'.

ff. 78r-81v: 'U/V'.

f. 81v: 'X', 'Z'.

Decoration:

Plain red initials.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002047569", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 1738: Medulla grammaticae" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002047569

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 1738 : Medulla grammaticae

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[1740]/040-002047569

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:

1460

End Date:

1499

Date Range:

Late 15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Paper, with several leaves of parchment (ff. 1, 3-4, 8, 80).

Dimensions: 210 x 140 mm (text space: 170 x 105 mm).

Foliation: ff. 81. Plus four blank, unfoliated, modern paper endleaves at the beginning and four at the end.

Collation: i^ten-two (ff. 1-8; perhaps originally a quire of 10 leaves, with two leaves missing after f. 1), ii¹² (ff. 9-20), iii^12-1(ff. 21-31; 10th leaf missing after f. 29), iv-vii¹² (ff. 32-79), two single leaves (ff. 80, 81).

Script: Gothic hybrid (Bastard anglicana).

Binding: Post-1600. Brown morocco with decorative blind-tooled framing and gold-stamped Harley coat of arms in the centre, front and back.

Custodial History:

Origin:

England (not in A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English, ed. by McIntosh and others, 4 vols (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1986).

Provenance:

William Harper (late 15th century), perhaps the scribe of the volume: his name and the following colophon inscribed inverted at the foot of f. 81v: 'Willelmus Harper igitur de Henrico. Si mea penna valet, melior mea littera fiet'.

'Thomas brother I pray yow of halgentylnesse that yow wyl do the labor for to by me ii bokys in lyn papir for wrytyng [...] ad verssus the pralaying bokys and wel that ys callyd Medulla gramatice': late 15th century (f. 1r).

Inscribed, 17th century: 'Recepi 3 Nonas Februarii a Mr Emery 1673' (f. 81r).

Sir Henry Worsley (d. 1747), Governor of Barbados: gave his collection of manuscripts to Robert Harley at some date before or during 1712 (see The Diary of Humfrey Wanley, 2 vols (1966), I, pp. xix-xx).

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:

Promptorium parvulorum sive clericorum: Lexicon Anglo-Latinum Princeps, auctore Galfrido Grammatico Dicto e predicatoribus Lenne episcopi, Northfolcensi..., ed. by Albert Way, Works of the Camden Society, 25, 54, 89, 3 vols (London: Camden Society, 1843-65), III, pp. li-lii.

Peter Haworth, 'The First Latin-English Dictionary: A Bristol University Manuscript', Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 45 (1923), 253-75, pls I-II [on the text].

DeWitt T. Starnes, Renaissance Dictionaries: English-Latin and Latin-English (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1954), pp. 5-6, 9, 25-37, 39, 42, 129, 132, 135-36, 367n., 368n., 379n.

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, pp. xix-xx).

C.E Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts Preserved in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 361, 400.

Gabriele Stein, 'The English Dictionary in the 15th Century', in Logos Semantikos: Studia Linguistica in Honorem Eugenio Coseriu, 1921-1981, ed. by Horst Geckeler and others, 5 vols (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1981), I: Historia de la Filosofía del Lenguaje y de la Lingüística, ed. by Jürgen Trabant, pp. 313-22 (pp. 315-18).

Gabriele Stein, The English Dictionary before Cawdrey, Lexicographia: Series Maior, 9 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1985), pp. 74-90.

Vincent P. McCarren, 'Bristol University MS DM 1, A Fragment of the Medulla Grammatice: An Edition', Traditio: Studies in Ancient and Medieval History, Thought, and Religion, 48 (1993), 173-235 [on the text].

Vincent P. McCarren, 'The Gloucester Manuscript of the Medulla grammatice: An Edition', The Journal of Medieval Latin, 10 (2000), 338-401 [on the text].

Vincent P. McCarren, 'Linguistic Problems within the Tradition of the 15th Century Glossary Medulla Grammatice', Bulletin Du Cange, 60 (2002), 235-60 [on the text].

Reiko Takeda, 'Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS O.5.4: A Fifteenth-Century Pedagogical Dictionary?', in Historical Dictionaries and Historical Dictionary Research: Papers from the International Conference on Historical Lexicography and Lexicology, at the University of Leicester, 2002, ed. by Julie Coleman and Anne McDermott, Lexicographia: Series Maior, 123 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2004), pp. 11-18 (pp. 11, 13-14, 17).

Vincent P. McCarren and others, 'A Prolegomenon to the Stonyhurst Medulla: An Edition of the Letter "A"', Bulletin du Cange, 65 (2007), 45-116 [on the text].

Florent Tremblay, A Medieval English-Latin Dictionary: Based on a Set of Unpublished 15th Century Manuscripts [of the] 'Medulla Grammaticae'/'Marrow of Grammar' kept in the British Museum (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2009) [on the text].

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Worsley, Henry, scholar and manuscript collector, envoy at the Court of Portugal (1714-1721) and governor of Barbados (1721-1731), 1675-1747