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Harley MS 2975
- Record Id:
- 040-002048806
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002048806
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000761.0x000107
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165167588.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 2975
- Title:
-
Breviary
- Scope & Content:
-
Contents:
f. 1v: Notes on the Calendar in Latin.
f. 2r: A circular diagram with instruction for finding Sunday Letters and Golden Numbers, starting in the year 1500.
f. 2v: 'Tabula duodecum signorum zodyaci'.
ff. 3r-8v: Calendar, including feasts for St Ludger, Bishop of Münster in Westphalia, and St Willehad, Bishop of Bremen; with additions indicating the 'dies periculosa'.
f. 9r: A table for determining the number of weeks between Christmas and the first Sunday of Quadragesima.
ff. 10r-243v: Breviary; including an entry for St Othmar, first abbot of St Gall.
The manuscript contains a few later additions:
f. 179v: Prayers, beginning with the Sub tuum praesidium; added in the 2nd half of the 15th century.
ff. 242v-243v: A text with unfinished initials for the feast of St Scholastica, patron saint of the Benedictine nuns; added in the 2nd half of the 15th century.
Decoration:
2 full-page miniatures with full borders in colours and gold of the Nativity (f. 9v), and the Crucifixion, with a border inscription: 'O homo vide quid pro te pacior / est ne dolor sicut quo crucior / Ad te clamor qui pro te morior / Vide clavos quibus confodior / cum sit dolor tantus exterior / Interius est planctus gravior / Cum te tam ingratum te experior' (f. 73v).
2 three-sided scatter borders with large initials in colours and gold (ff. 23r, 109r).
6 three-sided foliate borders inhabited by people, animals, birds, and grotesques with very large initials in colours and gold (ff. 10r, 74r, 105r, 136v, 145v, 192).
21 three-sided foliate borders with smaller initials in colours and gold, some historiated (ff. 18r, 52v, 56r, 60r, 62r, 83v, 91r, 101r, 118v, 127v, 150v, 167v, 180r [St Peter with the Keys of Heaven and St Paul with a sword and girdle book] 194v [St John the Evangelist writing, with an angel], 200r, 205r, 209r [Christ holding orb], 217v, 225r [Coronation of the Virgin; with a three-sided border featuring Christ and eleven Apostles], 229v [St Anne teaching the Virgin Mary to read], 237r).
20 large initials in colours and gold or silver (ff. 21v, 87r, 114r, 124r, 125r, 134r, 141r, 149v, 153r, 156r, 174v, 176v, 198v, 203v, 207r, 213r, 220v, 228r, 234r, 236v).
Large initials in blue with red pen-flourishing or penwork decoration. Large initials in red with purple pen-flourishing or penwork decoration; and smaller plain initials in red or blue.
Penwork borders with foliate motifs in red, purple, and/or blue, some partial, others three-sided, many inhabited by birds and grotesques.
The miniatures and all but one illuminated border (f. 52v) are on parchment leaves.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
Medieval and Renaissance Women - Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002048806", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 2975: Breviary" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002048806 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 2975 : Breviary - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[2976]/040-002048806
- 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_100165167588.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1450
- End Date:
- 1499
- Date Range:
- 2nd half of the 15th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Paper and parchment (ff. 1-10, 18, 23, 56, 60, 62, 73, 74, 83, 91, 101, 104, 105, 109, 118, 127, 136, 139, 145, 150, 167, 180, 191, 192, 194, 200, 205, 209, 217, 225, 229, and 237 only).
Dimensions: 210 x 140 mm (text space: 145 x 95), written in 2 columns.
Foliation: ff. 243 (+ 4 unfoliated paper and 2 parchment flyleaves at the beginning + 1 unfoliated parchment stub after f. 243 + 1 unfoliated parchment flyleaf and 4 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the end); 5 small, round blue and red fabric tabs serve as bookmarks (ff. 18, 23, 37, 109, 180); one tab appears to have been torn out of f. 207.
Script: Gothic.
Binding: Post-1600. Red leather, tooled in gold, with the Harleian arms gold-stamped on the upper and lower covers; marbled endpapers.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
Northern Germany.
Provenance:
'Soror Modesta', perhaps a Benedictine nun, Northern Germany, wrote the manuscript: as indicated by her in a previously unnoticed colophon in the same hand as the manuscript on f. 179r: 'Soror Modesta me scripsit Deo gracias'. The feasts for St Ludger and St Willehad and the style of the decorated initials suggest that she was located in Northern Germany.
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.
- Publications:
-
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts, in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), II (1808), p. 723 (no. 2904).
Walter de Gray Birch and Henry Jenner, Early Drawings and Illuminations: An Introduction to the Study of Illustrated Manuscripts (London: Bagster, 1879), p. 19.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)