Hard-coded id of currently selected item: . JSON version of its record is available from Blacklight on e.g. ??

Metadata associated with selected item should appear here...

Harley MS 2254

Record Id:

040-002048085

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002048085

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000709.0x0002fa

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 2254

Title:

Walter Hilton, The Prickynge of Love and Of Mixed Life

Scope & Content:

This manuscript contains The Prickynge of Love, an English translation, perhaps made by the Augustinian canon and mystic Walter Hilton, of the late 13th-century Stimulus Amoris by the Franciscan friar James of Milan. The translation survives in 16 manuscripts. Other copies can be found in Harley MS 2415 and Add MS 22283. It also features Hilton's Of Mixed Life, a letter of advice for a wealthy layman who was attracted to a life of contemplation.

Contents:

ff. 1r-72v: Walter Hilton, The Prickynge of Love; with the title: 'Incipit tractatus cuius titutlus dicitur Stimulus Amoris', beginning: 'How a man shal have criste is passion in mynde'; ending with an explicit: 'Here endeth þe treetis þat is kallid prickynge of love made bi a frere menour. Bonaventure; þat was cardinal of þe courte of Roome'.

ff. 73r-82r: Walter Hilton, Of Mixed Life; imperfect at the beginning: 'of worldeli good and maken hem self pore'; ending with an erroneous explicit: 'Here endeth þe tretys þat is called prickynge of love made bi a frere menour Bonaventure that was a cardinal of þe court of rome'.

Decoration:

1 large (5-line) blue initial in a frame with gold ground and a full border with bars in blue, purple and gold, decorated with acanthus leaves in blue, green, purple, and gold (f. 1r). Large (3- to 4-line) initials in blue with red penwork decoration and pen-flourishing. Paraphs in red or blue. Line-fillers in red and blue. Rubrics in red.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002048085", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 2254: Walter Hilton, The Prickynge of Love and Of Mixed Life" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002048085

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 2254 : Walter Hilton, The Prickynge of Love and Of Mixed Life

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[2256]/040-002048085

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:

1400

End Date:

1449

Date Range:

1st half of the 15th century

Era:

Access:

Please request the physical items you need using the online collection item request form.

Digitised items can be viewed online by clicking the thumbnail image or digitised content link.

Readers who have registered or renewed their pass since 21 March 2024 can request physical items prior to visiting the Library by completing
this request form.
Please enter the Reference (shelfmark) above on the request form.

If your Reader Pass was issued before this date, you will need to visit the Library in London or Yorkshire to renew it before you can request items online. All manuscripts and archives must be consulted at the Library in London.

This catalogue record may describe a collection of items which cannot all be requested together. Please use the hierarchy viewer to navigate to individual items. Some items may be in use or restricted for other reasons. If you would like to check the availability, contact our Reference Services team, quoting the Reference (shelfmark) above.

User Conditions:

Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Parchment.

Dimensions: 285 x 185 mm (text space: 200 x 135 mm, in 2 columns).

Foliation: ff. 1* + 82 (+ 4 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 4 at the end); f. 1* is a parchment leaf at the beginning that originally served as a flyleaf; 1 unfoliated parchment stub after f. 8, and 1 after f. 28 (featuring remains of a text); 1 unfoliated modern paper pastedown on f. [iv]recto (bibliographical notes).

Collation: i-ix ⁸ (ff. 1-72), x ⁶ (8-2, the first and last leaves missing) (ff. 73-78), xi four (ff. 79-82); indicated by leaf signatures and catchwords; each quire has been mounted separately onto a paper guard.

Script: Gothic cursive (Anglicana).

Binding: British Museum in-house; red half leather binding with the Harleian arms gold stamped on the outside cover; the former covers of blind-stooled and gold-stamped brown leather pasted into the inside covers; rebound on 25 November 1965.

Custodial History:

Origin:

Southern England.

Provenance:

Beatrice Shirley [née Brewes] (d. c. 1440), wife of Sir Hugh Shirely (d. 1403) and sister and heir of Sir John Brewes (d. 1426) of Wedon Hill Manor, Amersham, Buckinghamshire: her heraldic arms in the lower margin of. f. 1r [quarterly, 1st and 4th quarter, paly of six or and azure, a quarter ermine, 2nd and 3rd quarters, azure, semée of crosslets a lion ramptant or] (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), pp. 304-305 and Plate XVI).

The Dominican nunnery of St Mary and Margaret, Dartford, Kent, known as Dartford Priory, founded in 1346 and dissolved in 1559: an inscription on f. 1*verso states that the book belonged to Alice Braintwath, prioress in 1461, 1465 and 1467: 'Thys boyk longeth to Da[me] Alys Braintwath / the worchypfull p[ri]oras of Dartford'; the same folio contains a late 15th-century request for prayers for Elizabeth Rede, possibly one of Dartford's nuns: 'Orate pro anima domina Elizabith Rede huius loci' [Pray for the soul of Lady Elizabith Rede of this place]; and a request for prayers of c. 1500 for a certain Joan Newmarch, possibly a benefactor of Dartford Priory: 'Orate pro anima Johana Newmarche' [Pray for the soul of Joan Newmarch] (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), pp. 80, 124, 251, 284).

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), II (1808), pp. 591-92 (no. 2254).

Minor Works of Walter Hilton, ed. by Dorothy Jones (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1929), pp. xvii, xxii, li.

Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. by N. R. Ker, 2nd edn, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 3 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1964), p. 57.

Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 80, 124, 251, 284, 304-05, and Plate XVI.

Robert E. Lewis and Angus McIntosh, A Descriptive Guide to the Manuscripts of the Prick of conscience (Oxford: Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature, 1982), pp. 72-74 [with additional bibliography].

The Prickynge of Love, ed. by Harold Kane, Elizabethan & Renaissance Studies, 92:10, 2 vols (Salzburg: Institut fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1983), I, p. iv (as 'H2').

David N. Bell, What Nuns Read: Books and Libraries in Medieval English Nunneries, Cistercian Studies Series, 158 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1995), p. 131 (no. 4).

Mary C. Erler, Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 19, 147, 156 n. 44.

Eleanor J. Giraud and J. Cornelia Linde, A Companion to the English Dominican Province From Its Beginnings to the Reformation, Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition, 97 (Leiden: Brill, 2021), p. 17.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Hilton, Walter, c 1343-1396,
see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000118213408

Places:

Southern England