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Harley MS 3426

Record Id:

040-002049257

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002049257

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000761.0x000366

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 3426

Title:

Humanistic miscellany, including select lives from Plutarch's Parallel lives

Scope & Content:

A humanist anthology of classical and patristic Greek authors translated into Latin by Leonardo Bruni.

Contents:

ff. 1r-134v: Select lives from Plutarch, Parallel lives, translated by Leonardo Bruni.

ff. 1r-37r: Life of Antonius, with preface.

ff. 37r-56v: Life of Pyrrhus.

ff. 56v-73r: Life of Paulus Aemilius.

ff. 73r-89v: Life of the Gracchus Brothers.

ff. 89v-98v: Life of Sertorius, with preface to Antonio Luschi (b. 1368, d. 1441), incomplete at the end. two fragments of the missing folios, containing portions of the Life of Sertorius were found by M. R. James in the binding of printed book n. 135 in the cathedral library at Bury St Edmunds (see De la Mare and Gilliam, Duke Humfrey's Library (1988)).

ff. 99r-123v: Life of Cato, incomplete at the beginning.

ff. 124r-134v: Life of Demosthenes.

ff. 134v-157r: Leonardo Bruni, Cicero novus, with preface, printed in Paolo Viti, Leonardo Bruni Opere letterarie e politiche (Torino: U.T.E.T, 1996), pp. 416-99.

ff. 157r-166r: St Basil of Caesarea, On Studying of Classical Literature, translated from Greek into Latin by Leonardo Bruni, with preface to Colluccio Salutati.

ff. 166r-177r: Xenophon, Hiero or the Tyrant, translated from Greek into Latin by Leonardo Bruni.

f. 177v: Table of contents written by the scribe.

Decoration:

Defaced white vine initial at the beginning of each main section (ff. 1r, 2v, 37r, 56v, 73r, 89v, 90v, 124r, 134v, 135r, 157r, 157v, 166r, 167r).

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002049257", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 3426: Humanistic miscellany, including select lives from Plutarch's Parallel lives" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002049257

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 3426 : Humanistic miscellany, including select lives from Plutarch's Parallel lives

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[3427]/040-002049257

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

Languages:

Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1425

End Date:

1449

Date Range:

2nd quarter of the 15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Parchment.

Dimensions: 315 x 215 mm (220 x 125 mm).

Foliation: ff. 177 (+ 5 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and 4 at the end).

Script: Humanistic, copied by Ser Giovanni di Piero da Stia.

Binding: British Museum/British Library in-house. Remains of the previous binding (gold- and blind-tooled dark brown sprinkled leather) pasted on the inside covers and on f. [ii].

Custodial History:

Origin:

Florence, Italy.

Provenance:

Copied by Ser Giovanni di Piero da Sita.

Humphrey (b. 1390, d. 1447), prince, soldier, and literary patron, duke of Gloucester from 1414: identifiable as the manuscript given to the University of Oxford by Duke Humfrey of Gloucester in February 1443/4 (no. 97; secundo folio evidence), contains his erased ownership inscription (f. 177r) and notes in his hand and in the hand of his secretary Antonio Beccaria (see De la Mare and Gillam, Duke Humfrey's Library (1988)). Inscribed with the price 'xij d' (f. 1r).

John Blaxton, at Peckwater Inn at Oxford in 1532 and Oxford University registrar in 1534): inscribed '?Sir Johannis Blaxtoni liber' and in the lower margin, 'J B' on either side of a love knot with a Greek inscription (f. 1r).

Robert Burscough (b. 1651, d. 1709), prebendary of Exeter 1701, Archdeacon of Barnstaple 1703: sold 17 May 1715 (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 ‘17 die Maij, 1715’ (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:

Select digital coverage available for this manuscript; see the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts: https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=4271&CollID=8&NStart=3426.

Publications:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), III (1808), no. 3426.

The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by Cyril Ernest Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), I: 1715-1723, p. 11 n. 6.

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. 74, 87-88.

Edmund Fryde, 'The beginnings of Italian humanist historiography: the 'New Cicero' of Leonardo Bruni', The English Historical Review 376 (1980), 533-52 (p. 536 n. 1, passim).

A. C. de la Mare, ‘Duke Humfrey’s English Palladius (MS. Duke Humfrey d. 2)’, Bodleian Library Record, 12 (1985), 39-51 (p. 48, n. 2).

Albinia de la Mare, 'New Research on Humanistic Scribes in Florence', in Miniatura fiorentina del Rinascimento, 1440-1525: un primo censimento, ed. by Annarosa Garzelli, 2 vols, ([Florence]: Giunta regionale toscana, 1985), I, pp. 395-574 (p. 499).

A. de la Mare and S. Gillam, Duke Humfrey's Library and the Divinity School 1488-1988 (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 1988), no. 37.

Paul Oskar Kristeller, Iter Italicum: Accedunt Alia Itinera: A Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and other Libraries, 7 vols (London: Warburg Institute; Leiden: Brill, 1963-1997), IV (1989), p. 170.

David Rundle, Of Republics and Tyrants : Aspects of Quattrocento Humanist Writings and their Reception in England, c.1400-c.1460 (Oxford: University Press, 1997), pp. 415-20.

A. C. de la Mare, ‘M. R. James and a Fragment of Plutarch’s Lives’, The Legacy of M. R. James [Papers from the 1995 Cambridge Symposium], ed. by Lynda Dennison (Donnington: Shaun Tyas, 2001), 65-76.

Nigel Mortimer, John Lydgate's Fall of Princes: Narrative Tragedy in its Literary and Political Contexts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), p. 82 n. 127.

The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English literature, ed. by Rita Copeland. 5 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012- ), I, 800-1558 (2016), p. 508.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Basil of Caesarea, Saint, Bishop of Caesarea; also known as 'the Great', 329-379,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000121029433,
   see also http://viaf.org/viaf/88967224
Blaxton, John
Bruni, Leonardo, Italian humanist, 1370-1444,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000121442279
Burscough, Robert, Church of England clergyman, 1650/51-1709
Humphrey of Lancaster, Duke of Gloucester, 1390-1447
Mestrius Plutarchus, Lucius, c 46-after 120,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000449227580
Xenophon, Greek historian and philosopher, c 430BC-354BC