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Harley MS 2965
- Record Id:
- 040-002048796
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002048796
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000761.0x0000fd
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100058098397.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 2965
- Title:
-
The Book of Nunnaminster
- Scope & Content:
-
A decorated prayerbook with extracts from the Gospels.
The text and decoration link it to a group of Southumbrian prayerbooks known as the 'Tiberius Group'. In particular, its script and contents are related to those in Royal MS 2 A XX (the Royal Prayerbook), Harley MS 7653 (the Harley Prayerbook), and Cambridge, University Library, MS Ll.1.10 (the Book of Cerne). At f. 37, the decoration of the text and the script slightly changes (although the scribe remains the same), and the contents of the manuscript after that point may be derived from an Irish exemplar (Brown, Book of Cerne (1996), p. 154). The manuscript also includes a vernacular text, which was added to record the bounds of a piece of land which Ealhswith, wife of King Alfred, gave to the Nunnaminster, Winchester (f. 40v). In the early 10th century, a confession was added that may have been intended for a female audience, since it refers to 'peccatrice', a feminine form (f. 41r). A different hand added the masculine form, 'vel peccatori', later.
The first quire of the manuscript may be missing. The text begins at Mark 14:61: 'Tu es Chr[istus] Filius d[e]i benedicti...' Another folio seems to have been cut out between the current ff. 17v and 18r.
The manuscript includes:
ff. 1r-16r: extracts from the Gospels;
ff. 16v-19r: prayers of St Gregory and St Augustine;
ff. 20r-32v: prayers on the life of Christ;
ff. 32v: a prayer concerning the Day of Judgement;
ff. 32v-37r: various prayers;
f. 37: a prayer against poison;
ff. 37v-38: the oldest known copy of the Lorica of Laidcenn, an Irish prayer for protection;
f. 40v: vernacular account of the bounds of land in Winchester belonging to Ealhswith and later given to the Nunnaminster (added in the late 9th century);
f. 41r: confessional prayer (added early 10th century).
Decoration: decorated initials with animal-head terminal and interlace (ff. 4v, 11r, 16v). Decorated initial in black ink with red (f. 19r). Initials with blue and yellow decoration (f. 37r, 38r). Plain red initials throughout. Display script in orange or red (ff. 4r, 16v, 18v, 37v, 40r). Headings in red throughout. Letters filled with various colours (including yellow, green, and red) and surrounded by dots throughout.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002048796", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 2965: The Book of Nunnaminster" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002048796 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 2965 : The Book of Nunnaminster - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[2966]/040-002048796
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- 1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100058098397.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Old
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 0790
- End Date:
- 0924
- Date Range:
- late 8th to 1st quarter of 10th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 220 x 170 mm.
Foliation: ff. i + 41 (+ 1 unfoliated paper flyleaf at the beginning, 1 after f. i, and 3 at the end; f. i is a paper flyleaf; 1 folio excised between ff. 32 and 33).
Script: Insular hybrid minuscule with Insular display capitals; early Anglo-Saxon square minuscule.
Binding: Post-1600.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England (Southumbria). The main text was written by a single scribe. The decoration and script are of the Southumbrian 'Tiberius Group'. Details of the script and decoration suggest a western Mercian origin, according to Brown, Book of Cerne (1996), pp. 164-68. The text contains some prayers with feminine word endings, which may suggest that this manuscript was made by or for a woman.
Provenance:
The Benedictine nunnery of St. Mary's, Nunnaminster, Winchester: late 9th- or 10th-century inscriptions in Old English of land boundaries of donation given by Ealhswithth (d. 902), wife of Alfred the Great (f. 40v). Added early 10th-century prayers also include feminine endings, as in 'peccatrice' (f. 41r). Another, possibly contemporary hand later added masculine forms (f. 41r). It has been suggested that Eahlswith, who came from Mercia had owned this book and gave it to the Nunnaminster, which she founded; however, there is no firm evidence of this (Gameson, 'Earliest English Royal Books' (2013), pp. 10, 30).
The Roscarrock family of Cornwall: its arms were added to the manuscript (f. 37v); perhaps owned by Nicholas Roscarrock (b. c. 1547, d. c. 1634), Catholic activist and hagiographer and a member of the household of Lord William Howard (see The Diary of Humphrey Wanley (1966), I, 60 n. 3).
? Lord William Howard of Naworth (b. 1563, d. 1640), antiquary and landowner: this manuscript was bought by Harley from John Warburton with a group of manuscripts that had formed part of his library (The Diary of Humphrey Wanley (1966), I, 58).
? Charles Howard, 3rd earl of Carlisle (b. 1669, d. 1738), politician and landowner: Harley bought this manuscript from John Warburton with a group of manuscripts that he had inherited from Lord William Howard (The Diary of Humphrey Wanley (1966), I, 58).
John Warburton (b. 1682, d. 1759), of Bury, county Lancashire, antiquary and herald, Somerset Herald in 1720: sold to Edward Harley on 16 July 1720 along with several other manuscripts for 100 guineas (The Diary of Humphrey Wanley (1966), I, 58, 60).
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. 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:
-
Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, ed. by A.N. Doane and others, 1 (Binghamton, New York, and Tempe, Arizona, 1994), no. 271.
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk.manuscripts.
- Publications:
-
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), II (1808), p. 61, pl. 22.
[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, pp. 61-62, pl. 22.
W. de Gray Birch, An Ancient Manuscript of the Eighth or Ninth Century formerly belonging to St Mary’s Abbey or Nunnaminster, Winchester (London, 1889) [includes edition].
Codices Latini Antiquiores, ed. by E. A. Lowe, 11 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934-1966), II: Great Britain and Ireland (1935), no. 199.
G. L. Micheli, L’enluminure du haut moyen age et les influences irlandaises (Brussels: Editions de la connaissance, 1939), pp. 33, 65.
N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), no. 237.
Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. by N. R. Ker, 2nd edn, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 3 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1964), p. 202.
The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by C. E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), I, 58, 60.
J. J. G. Alexander, Insular Manuscripts: 6th to the 9th Century, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 1 (London: Harvey Miller, 1978), no. 41.
J. Morrish, 'An examination of literature and learning in the 9th century' (unpublished doctoral thesis, Oxford University, 1982).
Patrick Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature in Western England, 600-800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 275-76, 279, 281, 285, 290, 298, 301, 302, 311, 313, 314.
The Making of England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture AD 600-900, ed. by Leslie Webster and Janet Backhouse (London: British Museum, 1991), no. 164 [exhibition catalogue].
Michelle Brown, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts (London: British Library, 1991), pl. 41.
Henry Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination: An Historical Study, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1991), I: Themes, p. 220 n. 121.
David Dumville, Liturgy and the Ecclesiastical History of Late Anglo-Saxon England: Four Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 96, 101, 102, 125.
Julian Brown, A Palaeographer’s View: The Selected Writings of Julian Brown, ed. by Janet Bately, Michelle P. Brown, and Jane Roberts (London: Harvey Miller, 1993), p. 210, pl. 56.
Michelle P. Brown, The Book of Cerne: Prayer, Patronage and Power in Ninth-Century England (London: British Library, 1996), pp. 15, 21, 26, 42, 62, 127, 137-42, 151-54, 160, 168-72, 175, 178, 179, 181.
Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature 600-899 (London: Hambledon Press, 1996), pp. 55, 440
P. R. Robinson, 'A Twelfth-Century Scriptrix from Nunnaminster', in Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, their Scribes and Readers: Essays presented to M. B. Parkes, ed. by P. R. Robinson and Rivkah Zim (Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1997), 73-93 (p. 73 n. 2).
Michelle P. Brown, 'Female Book-Ownership and Production in Anglo-Saxon England: the Evidence of the Ninth-Century Prayerbooks', in Lexis and Texts in Early English: Studies Presented to Jane Roberts, ed. by Christian J. Kay and Louise M. Sylvester, (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001), pp. 45-67.
Michelle P. Brown, ‘Mercian Manuscripts? The ‘Tiberius’ Group and Its Historical Context’, in Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe, ed. by Michelle P. Brown and Carol A. Farr (London: Leicester University Press, 2001), pp. 281-91 (pp. 282, 288-89).
Michelle P. Brown, Manuscripts from the Anglo-Saxon Age (London: British Library, 2007), pls. 48-49.
Richard Gameson, 'The material fabric of early British books' in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, 6 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999-2012), I: 400-1100 (2012), ed. by Richard Gameson, pp. 13-93 (p. 43 n. 119).
Barbara Raw, ‘Anglo-Saxon Prayerbooks’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, 6 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999-2012), I: 400-1100 (2012), ed. by Richard Gameson, pp. 460-67 (pp. 460-64).
Richard Gameson, 'The Earliest English Royal Books' in 1000 Years of Royal Books and Manuscripts, ed. by Kathleen Doyle and Scot McKendrick (London: The British Library, 2013), pp. 3-35 (p. 11, 30).
Helmut Gneuss and Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), no. 432.
Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, ed. by Claire Breay and Joanna Story (London: The British Library, 2018), no. 52 [exhibition catalogue].
- Exhibitions:
- Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, British Library, London, 19 October 2018 - 19 February 2019
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)