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Harley MS 2624
- Record Id:
- 040-002048455
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002048455
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000761.0x0002c2
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100056035271.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 2624
- Title:
- Cicero, De inventione; Pseudo-Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herennium
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript preserves two important classical works of rhetoric: Cicero (b. 106 BC, d. 43 BC)'s handbook for orators known as De Inventione (On Invention) and the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium (Rhetoric for Herennius). The latter was composed in the early 1st century BC and attributed, until recently, to Cicero. Both works were extremely popular in the medieval period and usually circulated together, as this manuscript exemplifies. The division between the two works (f. 47v) is not marked in any way in the manuscript, suggesting that they were thought of as a unit.
Contents:
ff. 3v-47v : Cicero, De Inventione, beginning: ‘Sepe et multum hoc mecum cogitavi’.
ff. 47v- 85r: Pseudo-Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herennium, beginning: ‘Etsi in negociis familiaris inpediti vix’.
Decoration:
1 large initial ‘S’ in brown ink with a green and mauve back ground, with grotesques and foliate motifs (f. 3v). Large initials in red or green, occasionally with some penwork decoration.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- England and France 700-1200 Project
Harley Collection - Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002048455", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 2624: Cicero, De inventione; Pseudo-Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herennium" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002048455 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 2624 : Cicero, De inventione; Pseudo-Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herennium - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[2625]/040-002048455
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- A parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100056035271.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1100
- End Date:
- 1124
- Date Range:
- 1st quarter of the 12th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 205 x 120 mm (text space: 150 x 75 mm).
Foliation: ff. 1* + 85 ( + 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 3 unfoliated parchment flyleaves and 3 paper flyleaves at the end), f. 1* is a parchment leaf that follows after f. 1; ff. 1 and f. [88] are lifted pastedowns.
Script: Protogothic.
Binding: British Museum/British Library in-house; marbled endpapers.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: St Albans, Eastern England.
Provenance:
The Benedictine abbey of St Alban, St Albans, founded in 793: its late 12th-century ownership inscription, partly erased, on f. 3v (see Munk Olsen, L’Etude (1982), I, p. 211); an early 15th-century pressmark from St Albans 'D.II.5.l' on f. 3v (see Hunt, 'Library of St Albans' (1978), p. 259, no. 38); one scribe has been identified with the scribe of Leiden, University Library, Bibl. Publ. MS Lat. 114 B; further annotators have been identified in other St Albans manuscripts (see Pächt, Dodwell and Wormald, St. Albans Psalter (1960), p. 276 and Thomson, Manuscripts (1982), pp. 19, 25, pl 61); perhaps its press-marks: 'no 3', 'no 58' (f. 1*), 'D. 3. no 30' (f. 2r); perhaps also added the 14th-century texts on ff. 3r and 85v (erased).
Hugh Legat (fl. c. 1399–1427), monk of St Albans, scholar and prior of Redbourn: his name inscribed 'Hunc librum fuit ligari dompnus Hugo Legat monachus Sancti Albani', in elaborate display script in brown ink with pen-flourished initial (f. 2r); the word 'Albani' has been erased.
John Hatfield (fl. c. 1420), monk of St Albans, scribe and prior of the abbey of Hatfield Peverell: his name inscribed on f.1v: 'Hatfeld' (see Clark, Monastic Renaissance (2004), p. 110, no. 111); he also added notes on Medea and Aegisthus on f. 1v.
An unknown 16th-century owner: added an excerpt of Ovid's Fasti (Book IV) on f. 1v: ‘Mayam et electram taigetemque Jovi / Septima mortali merope tibi sisphe nupsit / Penitet et facti sola pudore latet’.
Nathaniel Noel (d. c. 1753), bookseller, employed by Edward Harley for buying books and manuscripts chiefly on the Continent, where his agent was George Suttie (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 253).
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 ‘18 die Januarij, A.D. 1723/4’ (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.
- Information About Copies:
-
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk.manuscripts/.
Select digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts at 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, 1808-12), II (1808), p. 704, no. 2624.
Otto Pächt, Charles R. Dodwell, and Francis Wormald, The St. Albans Psalter (Albani Psalter) (London: Warburg Institute, 1960), pp. 5, 6, 276, pl. 170a.
Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. by Neil R. Ker, 2nd edn, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 3 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1964), p. 167.
The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by Cyril E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), II, p. 240, no. 6.
Cyril E. Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 218, 254.
Richard W. Hunt, 'The Library of the Abbey of St Albans', in Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts & Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker, ed. by Malcolm B. Parkes and Andrew G. Watson (London: Scolar Press, 1978), pp. 251-78 (p. 259, no. 38).
Birger Munk Olsen, L’Étude des auteurs classiques latins aux XIe et XIIe siècles, 3 vols (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1982-1989), I (1982), p. 211 no. C.243.
Rodney M. Thomson, Manuscripts from St Albans Abbey 1066-1235, 2 vols (Woodbridge: Brewer, 1982), I, pp. 17-19, 25, 40 (no. 49), 133 (no. 23), II, pl. 10, 61.
Birger Munk Olsen, 'The Production of the Classics in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries', in Medieval Manuscripts of the Latin Classics: Production and Use, ed. by Claudine A. Chavannes-Mazel and Margaret M. Smith (Leiden: Anderson-Lovelace, 1996), pp. 1-17 (p. 8, no. 60).
English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues, ed. by Richard Sharpe and others, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 4 (London: British Library, 1996), pp. 542-43.
Richard Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England (c. 1066-1130) (Oxford: University Press, 1999), p. 107.
James G. Clark, A Monastic Renaissance. Thomas Walsingham and his Circle c.1350-1440 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), p. 144.
Martin Camargo, 'Rhetoricians in Black: Benedictine Monks and Rhetorical Revival in Medieval Oxford', in New Chapters in the History of Rhetoric, ed. by Laurent Pernot, International Studies in the History of Rhetoric, 1 (Boston: Brill, 2009), pp. 375-84 (p. 382).
Martin Camargo, 'Chaucer and the Oxford Renaissance of Anglo-Latin Rhetoric', Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 34 (2012), pp. 173-207, pp. 180-81.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)
- Notes:
- This manuscript is part of The Polonsky Foundation England and France Project: Manuscripts from the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, 700-1200.