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Harley MS 2767
- Record Id:
- 040-002048598
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002048598
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000761.0x000025
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100056038850.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 2767
- Title:
-
Vitruvius, De Architectura
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript consists of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (fl. 40 BC), De Architectura (On Architecture). It is the oldest known extant copy of this work. Two leaves from Harley MS 2767 are now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Rawlinson MS D. 893, ff. 135, 136).
Contents:
ff. 1r-162v: Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, De architectura, beginning: 'Vitruvii de Architectura liber I. Cum divina tua mens et numen. Imperator Caesar imperio potiretur orbis terrarum'. The scribe has copied a recipe for making wax after the explicit: 'Uncia caerae colligit in futura aeris uncias VIII et denarius XVI, aeris cypri uncias VIII denarios stagni uncius vii et denarius XVII, argenti uncius X et denarius XII, plumbi libram I et denarius VI, auri libram et uncias VII et denarius VIII'.
Decoration:
Added cross in brown ink (f. 145v). Diagram of the winds in brown ink (f. 16v). Initials in red or brown and red, some large, some small. Rubrics in red uncials. First lines of some books in red or black uncials.
Ruled in hardpoint. Quire signatures. Marginal notes are rare.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- England and France 700-1200 Project
Harley Collection - Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002048598", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 2767: Vitruvius, De Architectura" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002048598 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 2767 : Vitruvius, De Architectura - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[2768]/040-002048598
- 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_100056038850.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 0800
- End Date:
- 0824
- Date Range:
- 1st quarter of the 9th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 280 x 200 mm (text space 210 x 145 mm).
Foliation: ff. 162 (+ 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginnning + 1 unfoliated parchment and 2 paper flyleaves at the end).
Script: Caroline minuscule.
Binding: British Museum/British Library in-house, rebound in 1977.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: ? Cologne or Aachen, Western Germany.
Provenance:
? The palace scriptorium of Charlemagne, Aachen: perhaps written there according to Reynolds, Texts and transmission (1983), p. 441.
The Benedictine abbey of St Pantaleon, Cologne, founded in 955: inscribed, 'Goderamnus prepositus' (f. 145r), Goderamnus, 'prepositus' of the abbey of St Pantaleon, Cologne, and first abbot of Hildesheim from 1022 to 1030 (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972)).
Johann Georg Graevius (b. 1632, d. 1703), German classical scholar and critic: his catalogue no. 11, sold to Wilhelm together with the rest of his library in 1703 (Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972)): shelfmark 'G 9' in his catalogue of 1703.
Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine (b. 1658, d. 1716), owner of a library in Düsseldorf: bought the entire Graevius library in 1703 (Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972)).
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 sometime before 1724 through Johann Büchels (b. 1659, d. 1738) (Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972)).
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 ‘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:
-
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), no. 2767.
[E. Maunde Thompson and G. F. Warner], Catalogue of Ancient Manuscripts in the British Museum, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1881-1884), Part II, Latin, p. 72, pl. 55.
A. C. Clark, 'The Library of J. G. Graevius', The Classical Review, 5 (1891), 365-72 (p. 369).
Valentin Rose, Vitruvii De Architectura libri decem (Leipzig: Teubner, 1899), p. ix.
Wilhelm Köhler, 'Die Karolingishen Miniaturen', in Zweiter Bericht über die Denkmäler Deutscher Kunst (Berlin: Reimer, 1912), pp. 52-77 (p. 57).
Frank Granger, 'The Harleian Manuscript of Vitruvius (H) and the Codex Amiatinus', Journal of Theological Studies, 32 (1930), pp. 74-77.
Vitruvius, On Architecture, 2 vols, ed. and trans. by Frank Granger (London: William Heinemann, 1931) [an edition of Harley 2767].
Leslie Webber Jones, 'Provenience of the London Vitruvius', Speculum, 7 (1932), 64-69.
Leslie Webber Jones, The Script of Cologne from Hildebald to Hermann (Cambridge, Mass: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1932), p. 65, no. 23, pl. LXXXIX.
Frank Granger, 'The Emendation of Vitruvius', Classical Philology, 30 (1935), 337-42.
Charles H. Beeson, 'The Manuscript Problem of Vitruvius', Classical Philology, 30.4 (1935), 342-47.
Frank Granger, 'The Provenience of the London Vitruvius', Speculum, 11 (1936), 261-64.
Leslie Webber Jones, 'More About the London Vitruvius', Speculum, 12 (1937), 257-63.
Hartwig Beseler and Hans Roggencamp, Die Michaeliskirche in Hildesheim (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1954), pp. 147-50.
P. Ruffel, 'Notes sur le manuscrit G de Vitruve', Pallas: Annales publiées par la Faculté des Lettres de Toulouse, 3 (1954), 79-96.
Helen Rosenau, The Ideal City in Its Architectural Evolution (London: Routledge and Paul, 1959), pl. IIa.
P. Ruffel and J. Soubiran, 'Recherches sur la tradition manuscrite de Vitruve', Pallas: Annales publiées par la Faculté des Lettres de Toulouse, 9 (1959), 55-58, 91-97.
P. Thielscher, 'Vitruvius' in Paulys Real-Encyclopedie der classischen Alterumswissenschaft, (Stuttgart: Halbband, 1961), col. 147.
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. 303 n. 5.
Carol Herselle Krinsky, 'Seventy-Eight Vitruvius Manuscripts', The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 30 (1967), 36-70 (pp. 41, 51, 52) [with additional bibliography].
Richard E. M. Moore, 'A Newly Observed Stratum in Roman Floor Mosaics', American Journal of Archaeology, 72 (1968), 57-68 (p. 58 n. 11).
J. P. Chausserie-Laprée, 'Un nouveau stemma vitruvien', Revues des études latines, 47 (1969), 347-77.
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, 166, 169, 367.
Bernhard Bischoff, 'Die Überlieferung der technischen Literatur', in Bernhard Bischoff, Mittelalterliche Studien 3 vols (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1981), III, pp. 277-97.
Birger Munk Olsen, L’Étude des auteurs classiques latins aux XIe et XIIe siècles, 2 vols (Paris: Centre National de la recherche scientifique, 1982-85), II, pp. 831-32.
S. F. Weiskittel and Leighton Durham Reynolds, 'Vitruvius', in Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics, ed. by L. D. Reynolds (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 440-45 (pp. 440-44; see also p. xxv).
Bernhard Bischoff, Manuscripts and Libraries in the Age of Charlemagne, trans. and ed. by Michael Gorman, Cambridge Studies in Palaeography and Codicology, 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; originally published in Mittelalterliche Studien: Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte I-III (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1966-1981), p. 139.
Sigrid Krämer, Handschriftenerbe des deutschen Mittelalters, 3 vols, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge Deutschlands und der Schweiz, Supplement 1, ed. by Bernhard Bischoff (Munich: Beck, 1989-1990), II (1989), 354.
Les activités intellectuelles: L'Europe de l'an mil, ed. by Pierre Riché (Paris, Zodiaque, 2001), pp. 53-59.
Henry Mayr-Harting, Church and Cosmos in Early Ottonian Germany: The View from Cologne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 103.
- 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.