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Harley MS 2664

Record Id:

040-002048495

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002048495

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000761.0x00036a

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 2664

Title:

Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria

Scope & Content:

Contents:

ff. 1v-188r: Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (b. c. 35, d. c. 100), Institutio Oratoria (Institutes of Oratory), with running header on the top right of each verso specifying which book of the Institutio is covered, added in the 15th century.

ff. 90r-91v: Replacement text for lost folios, perhaps added in the 14th or 15th century, the script of which imitates Caroline minuscule script but with Gothic elements.

Decoration:

Plain initials in brown ink throughout.

Pen drawing of a bird in the lower margin (f. 58r).

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002048495", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 2664: Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002048495

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 2664 : Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[2665]/040-002048495

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

Languages:

Greek
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1000

End Date:

1099

Date Range:

11th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Parchment.

Dimensions: 315 x 235 mm (written area 235 x 175 mm).

Foliation: ff. 188 (+ 2 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves and 1 unfoliated modern parchment flyleaf at the beginning + 2 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves and 1 unfoliated modern parchment flyleaf at the end).

Script: Caroline minuscule, noticeable change of hand between ff. 89v and 90r.

Binding: Post-1600: Harley binding of gilt-tooled red leather; marbled endpapers.

Collation: Regularly occurring quire signatures in two sequences: ‘ii’ (f. 16v), ‘iii’ (f. 24v), ‘iiii’ (f. 32v), ‘v’ (f. 40v) ‘vi’ (f. 48v), ‘vii’ (f. 52v), ‘viii’ (f. 60v), ‘viiii’ (f. 68v), ‘x’ (f. 76v), ‘xi’ (f. 84v), ‘xii’ (f. 92v), ‘xiii’ (f. 100v), ‘xiiii’ (f. 108v), ‘xv’ (f. 116v), ‘xvi’ (f. 124v) and ‘i’ (f. 132v), ‘ii’ (140v), ‘iii’ (148v), ‘iiii’ (f. 156v), ‘v’ (161v), ‘vi’ (169v), ‘vii’ (f. 177v), ‘viii’ (f. 185v).

Condition: Several folios with insect and rust damage at the beginning and end.

Custodial History:

Origin:

Germany.

Provenance:

The chapter of Cologne Cathedral: ownership inscription added in the 13th century, 'Iste liber est maioris ecclesie' (f. 1r; see also Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 109).

Johann Georg Graevius (b. 1632, d. 1703), German classical scholar and critic: borrowed by him from Cologne Cathedral (see Clark, 'Library of J. G. Graevius' (1891), p. 369); his catalogue no. 7, sold to Johann Wilhelm together with the rest of his library in 1703 (see: Clark, 'Library of J. G. Graevius' (1891), p. 369; Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 169).

Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine (b. 1658, d. 1716), owner of a library in Düsseldorf: bought the entire Graevius library in 1703 (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 169).

Giovanni Giacomo Zamboni (d. 1753), resident in London for the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt (c. 1723-1753), friend of Michael Mattaire, the classical scholar and historian of printing: bought the Wilhelm library at some point before 1724 through Johann Büchels (b. 1659, d. 1738) (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 367).

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, HumfreyWanley ‘6 die mensis Augusti, A.D. 1724’ (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:

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. 706, no. 2664.

Émile Chatelain, Paléographie des Classiques Latins, vol 2 (Paris: Hachette, 1894-1900), p. 23, pl. clxxvi.

A. C. Clark, 'The Library of J. G. Graevius', The Classical Review, 5 (1891), 365-72 (pp. 366, 369, 372).

Wilhelm Köhler, 'Die Karolingishen Miniaturen', in Zweiter Bericht über die Denkmäler Deutscher Kunst (Berlin: Reimer, 1912), pp. 52-77 (p. 56).

The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by Cyril Ernest Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), II: 1723-1726, p. 302 n. 9.

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. 109, 169, 367.

Michael Winterbottom, 'Quintilian: Institution oratoria,' in Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics, ed. by L. D. Reynolds (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 332-34 (p. 333).

Joachim M. Plotzek, 'Zur Geschichte der Kölner DombibliotheK, in Glaube und Wissen im Mittelalter: Die Kölner Dombibliothek. Ausstellung, Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum, Köln, 7 August – 15 November 1998, ed. by Joachim M. Plotzek and others (Munich: Hirmer, 1998), pp. 15-64 (p. 34).

Henry Mayr-Harting, Church and Cosmos in Early Ottonian Germany: The View from Cologne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 140.

John O. Ward, Classical Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: The Medieval Rhetors and Their Art 400–1300, with Manuscript Survey to 1500 CE, International Studies in the History of Rhetoric, 10 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), p. 155.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Fabius Quintilianus, Marcus, Rhetorician, c 35-c 100
Graevius, Johann Georg, German classical scholar, 1632-1703
Wilhelm, Johann, Elector Palatine, 1658-1716
Zamboni, Giovanni Giacomo, Chargé d'Affaires of the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt in England, d. 1753

Places:

Germany

Related Material:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, II (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808), p. 706:

‘M. Fabii Quintiliani, Institutionum oratoriar. lib. 10. Codex membranaceus, venerabilis. IX.'