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Harley MS 2991
- Record Id:
- 040-002048822
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002048822
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000761.0x000119
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100056047450.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 2991
- Title:
- Gregorian sacramentary, with benedictions
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript and Harley MS 2992 are companion volumes; Harley MS 2992, which is the continuation of Harley MS 2991, has suffered more extensive water damage.
Contents:
ff. 1r-138v: Gregorian sacramentary, with benedictions. It includes musical notation, in the form of neumes, and was made Nevers in the 10th century (ff. 3-3v, 39v-40, 86v-88, 90v-92v). The rubric following a chant is the 'Consecratio fontis' (f. 87v).
Decoration:
Large decorated lettering in gold at the Canon of the Mass ('Vere digum' and 'T'(e igitur)) and the Vigil of the Lord ('D'eus), with gold display capitals (ff. 39v-40r and 43v). Frequent initials in gold from f. 44r onwards; 'Vere dignum' sign in gold (f. 86r). Display capitals (ff. 38v-39r). Initials and rubrics in red.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- England and France 700-1200 Project
Harley Collection - Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002048822", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 2991: Gregorian sacramentary, with benedictions" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002048822 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 2991 : Gregorian sacramentary, with benedictions - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[2992]/040-002048822
- 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_100056047450.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 0875
- End Date:
- 0924
- Date Range:
- 4th quarter of the 9th century-1st quarter of the 10th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 180 x 220 mm (text space: 135 x 175 mm).
Foliation: ff. 135 (+ 4 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves: 2 at the beginning and 2 at the end), f. 117 is misbound and should come between ff. 114 and 115 (f. [ii]); ff. 38, 45 have been trimmed.
Collation: Mostly in quires of 8. ff. 1-2v are an inserted bifolio; f. 3 is a singleton.
Script: Caroline minuscule.
Binding: Post-1600. Red leather 'Harleian' binding with extensive gold tooling, rebacked in 1954.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: France.
Provenance:
The Benedictine abbey of St Columba, Sens: late 10th-century and early 11th-century additions related to a late 9th-century or early 10th-century Sacramentary of the abbey (see Orchard, The Leofric Missal (2002)).
The cathedral church of St Cyr, Nevers: late 10th-century and early 11th-century additions conform the Sacramentary to the use of Nevers Cathedral (ff. 1-38). Other minor additions and notes (ff. 42r-43r, 55v, 59r, 61v, 90r, 114r-115r, 118r, 122r, 127r, 129r).
Nathaniel Noel (fl. 1681, d. c. 1753), bookseller, employed by Edward Harley for buying books and manuscripts chiefly on the Continent, where his agent was George Suttie (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972)): sold to Edward Harley on 13 August, 1724 (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972) and Wright and Wright, The Diary of Humfrey Wanley (1966)).
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 mensis Augusti, A.D. 1724’ (f. [iv] recto); Humfrey Wanley records 18th-century conservation efforts by a Mr. Elliot (see Wright and Wright, The Diary of Humfrey Wanley (1966)).
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. 2904.
Augustin Crosnier, Etudes sur la liturgie nevernaise (Nevers, 1868), p. 45.
Augustin Crosnier, Sacramentarium ad usum æcclesiæ Nivernensis, Société Nivernaise des Sciences, Lettres et Arts (Farnborough: Gregg, 1873; second edition 1969), p. xxxvii (with full textual edition of another sacramentary from Nevers: Paris, BnF, lat. nouv. acq. 1109; and with discussion of an unidentified manuscript that may be this manuscript).
H. Netzer, L’Introduction de la messe romaine en France sous les Carolingiens (Paris: Alfred Baudrillart, 1910; second edition Farnborough: Gregg, 1968), pp. 123-27.
Wilhelm Köhler, 'Die Karolingishen Miniaturen', in Zweiter Bericht über die Denkmäler Deutscher Kunst (Berlin: Reimer, 1912), pp. 52-77 (p. 58).
H. Leclercq, ‘Nevers’ in Dictionaire d’Archeologie chretienne et de Liturgie, (Paris: Librarie Letouzey et Ane, 1935), col. 1155.
M. Huglo, ‘Un Nouveau Prosaire Nivernais’, Ephemerides Liturgicae, 71 (1957), p. 28.
C. E. Wright, 'Humfrey Wanley: Saxonist and Library-Keeper,' in Proceedings of the British Academy, 46 (1960), pp. 99-129.
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. 304, n. 7, and p. 320.
François Masai, 'Bulletin codicologique', Scriptorium: Revue internationale des études relatives aux manuscrits, 20, no. 986 (1966), p. 344.
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. 250, 255.
Walter Cahn, Studies in Medieval Art and Interpretation (London: Pindar Press, 2000), p. 188.
Bernhard Bischoff, Katalog der festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts, 3 vols (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998-2014), II (2004): Laon-Paderborn, ed. by Birgit Ebersperger, p. 118 (no. 2464).
Richard Kay, Pontificalia: A Repertory of Latin Manuscript Pontificals and Benedictionala (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 2009), p. 75, no. 379.
- 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.