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Harley MS 2391

Record Id:

040-002048222

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002048222

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000709.0x000383

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 2391

Title:

Collection of sermons, exempla and didactic works in Latin and Middle English

Scope & Content:

Contents:

ff. 1r-1v: Prognostications for Christmas day and subsequent days (Latin).

ff. 2r-133r: John Mirk, Festial, Middle English sermons from Advent to St Katherine.

ff. 133r-133v: The Nine Virtues, shown by God to a ‘gud and a hely man’.

f. 134r: The Ten Commandments, here entitled ‘Decem Mandata’ (Middle English).

f. 134r: The Seven Deadly Sins, here entitled ‘Septem capitulia a peccata’ (Middle English)

f. 134r: A single couplet: ‘kepe x and leyfe vij . misspend not .v. and go to heven’.

ff. 134r-138v: A form of confession (Middle English).

ff. 138v-156r: A collection of Middle English sermons, featuring three exempla attributed to the Vitas patrum, Speculum historiale, and Gesta Romanorum.

ff. 156v-230v: Northern Homily Cycle; a collection of exempla in Middle English verse organized according to the liturgical year, from the feast of the Virgin Mary to the 25th Sunday after the Trinity.

ff. 231r-238r: A collection of Latin exempla, including an exemplum of an illiterate Cistercian monk who could only read the Ave Maria, exempla on the Mass, Lechery, Confession, correction of a Parishioner, Greed, pilgrimage; and a miracle of the Virgin Mary; ending with a Middle English sermon on the Seven Deadly Sins.

f. 238v: A form of confession, imperfect (Middle English).

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002048222", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 2391: Collection of sermons, exempla and didactic works in Latin and Middle English" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002048222

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 2391 : Collection of sermons, exempla and didactic works in Latin and Middle English

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[2392]/040-002048222

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:

1425

End Date:

1474

Date Range:

mid 15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Paper.

Dimensions: 215 x 145 mm.

Foliation: ff. 238 (+ 3 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning + at the end); a paper pastedown on f. [ii]recto (bibliographical notes); each leaf has been mounted on a paper guard.

Script: Gothic cursive.

Binding: Post-1600. British Museum in-house.

Custodial History:

Origin:

England.

Provenance:

‘Johannes Smyth’, copied ff. 156v-230v around the mid-15th century: a colophon on f. 230v: 'Amen quod Johannes Smyth'.

Robert Sanderson (b. 1660, d. 1741), clerk in the Rolls Chapel: owned until 1720 according to an inscription on f. 1r (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 296).

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, inscribed as usual by their librarian, Humfrey Wanley ‘Given by Mr Sanderson [of] the Rolls 18 Febr. 1919/20’ (f. 1r).

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. 680-82.

Harry Leigh Douglas Ward and John Alexander Herbert, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols (London: British Museum, 1883-1910), III (1910), pp. 793-94.

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. 408.

Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards, A New Index of Middle English Verse (London: The British Library, 2005), nos 25/7, 26/7, 32/7, 45/6, 46/5, 47/7, 79/5, 89/5, 284/6, 286/3, 288/4, 289/8, 291/5, 306/6, 314/7, 348/3, 416/4, 485/5, 1129/5, 1144/3, 1464/6, 1469/3, 1482/7, 1641/5, 1642/6, 1645/5, 1646/5, 3289/6, 3296/1, 3298/5, 3547/2, 3784/4, 3816/7, 3865/6, 3954/6.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

John Mirk, c 1382-c1414,
see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000123309404

Places:

England