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Harley MS 2763
- Record Id:
- 040-002048594
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002048594
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000761.0x000021
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100059310831.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 2763
- Title:
- Priscian: Institutiones grammaticae (1-16); Ausonius: Idyllium 20
- Scope & Content:
-
This volume preserves the first sixteen books of Priscian (fl. 500)’s Institutiones grammaticae (Institutes of Grammar), a key work for learning Latin in the Middle Ages, including marginal and interlinear glosses in various hands of a later date. The glosses suggest that the manuscript was used as a schoolbook. The volume also includes Idyllium (Idyll)20 by the poet Ausonius (d. c. 395),added in a contemporary hand.
Contents:
ff. 1r-136v: Priscian, Institutiones grammaticae, books 1-16, beginning: ‘cum omnis eloquentiae doctrina et omne studiorum genus’.
f. 136v: Ausonius, Idyllium XX (Musarum inventa et munera), beginning: ‘Clio gesta canens transactis tempora’.
Decoration:
One very large initial in brown and green ink with acanthus motifs and two dragons (f. 1r). One very large zoomorphic initial in brown ink with acanthus motifs and two hybrid creatures (f. 76r). Nine smaller initials in brown with foliate decoration, one with a dragon (ff. 1v, 8r, 11v, 12v, 15r, 20v, 22r, 25r, 31r). Two plain initials in red, yellow and green washes (ff. 9v, 12r). Rubrics in brown with highlighting in red and yellow or green. Capitals marked in yellow or red. One added puzzle initial in blue and red (f. 93r). Added initials in red with blue pen-work decoration or in blue with red pen-work decoration, generally alternating.
Quire signatures in Latin numerals.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- England and France 700-1200 Project
Harley Collection - Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002048594", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 2763: Priscian: Institutiones grammaticae (1-16); Ausonius: Idyllium 20" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002048594 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 2763 : Priscian: Institutiones grammaticae (1-16); Ausonius: Idyllium 20 - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[2764]/040-002048594
- 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_100059310831.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1000
- End Date:
- 1099
- Date Range:
- 11th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 295 x 190 mm (written space: 230 x 130 mm).
Foliation: ff. 136 ( + 4 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 4 at the end).
Script: Caroline minuscule.
Binding: British Museum/British Library in-house. Rebound in 1967. Remains of a Harleian binding (gold-tooled red leather) pasted on the inside covers. The spine of an earlier binding is pasted onto f. [ii] recto; gilt edges.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: France.
Unknown 13th- and 14th-century owners: added marginal and interlinear glosses in many 13th- and 14th-century hands.
An unknown 15th-century owner: inscribed ‘Incipit liber Prisciani Minoris Cesariensis viri eruditissimi artie gramatice’ in a 15th-century hand (f. 1r).
Andrew Hay (d. 1754?), dealer: sold to Harley on 13 July 1723.
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 ‘13 die Julij, A.D. 1723' (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 the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/.
- Publications:
-
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), II (1808), no. 2763.
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. 248, n. 6.
Margaret Gibson, ‘Priscian, ''Institutiones grammaticae': A Handlist of Manuscripts', Scriptorium: Revue internationale des Études relatives aux manuscrits, 26 (1972), 105-24 (p. 114).
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. 183.
Cyril Ernest Wright, 'Manuscripts of Italian Provenance in the Harleian Collection in the British Museum: Their Sources, Associations and Channels of Acquisition', in Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance. Essays in Honour of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. by Cecil H. Clough (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976), pp. 462-84 (p. 469).
Marina Passalacqua, I codici di Prisciano (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1978), p. 144.
Geoffrey L. Bursill-Hall, A Census of Medieval Latin Grammatical Manuscripts, Grammatica Speculativa: Sprachtheorie und Logik des Mittelalters, 4 (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1981), p. 118 (no. 135).
- 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.