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Harley MS 3745
- Record Id:
- 040-002049577
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002049577
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000807.0x0000fe
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 3745
- Title:
- Medical miscellany
- Scope & Content:
-
Medical miscellany containing Latin translations of medical treatises originally written in Arabic:
1. Pseudo-Serapion (Ibn Wāfid), Liber aggregatus in medicinis simplicibus (ff. 1r-74r);
2. Yūhannā ibn Sarābiyūn (Serapion the Elder), Breviarium medicinae (ff. 75r-158v);
3. Pseudo-Mesue, Canones (ff. 159r-177r);
4. Pseudo-Mesue, Liber graduum simplicium (177-177v);
5. Pseudo-Mesue, Grabadin or Antidotarium electarum confecionum (177v-190v);
6. Medical recipes (f. 190r).
Decoration:
Six historiated initials in colours and gold, with instructions to the artist written in plummet in the margins and still visible on ff. 83r, 92v, 112v, while visibly erased on ff. 4r, 129v. The subjects of illustrations are:
f. 1r: Initial 'P'(ostquam) of a university doctor in a tall chair teaching students.
f. 4r: Initial 'Q'(uam) of a doctor attending a patient lying in bed.
f. 83r: Initial 'S'(cias) of a university doctor seated in front of a patient whose hand points to his eyes.
f. 92v: Initial 'N'(ostra) of a university doctor seated in front of a patient whose hand points to his stomach.
f. 112v: Initial 'C'(ause) of a university doctor seated in front of a patient whose hand points to his face.
f. 129v: Initial 'N'(ecesse) of a doctor on horseback showing a square pouch to a man standing at his side.
5 large zoomorphic initials in colours and gold (ff. 75r, 100r, 124v, 159r, 166v). 2 added initials in colours with foliate motifs (ff. 177r, 177v). Initials in red with purple pen-flourishing or in blue with red pen-flourishing. Smaller initials in red or blue. Rubrics in red. Paraphs in red or blue. Marginal instructions to the rubricator.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
Harley Science Project - Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002049577", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 3745: Medical miscellany" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} },{ "id" : "041-002188931", "parent" : "040-002049577", "text" : "Harley MS 3745, ff 1r-74r: Pseudo-Serapion, Liber aggregatus in medicinis simplicibus" },{ "id" : "041-002188932", "parent" : "040-002049577", "text" : "Harley MS 3745, ff 75r-158v: Yūhannā ibn Sarābiyūn (Serapion the Elder), Breviarium medicinae" },{ "id" : "041-002188933", "parent" : "040-002049577", "text" : "Harley MS 3745, ff 159r-177r: Pseudo-Mesue, Canones" },{ "id" : "041-002188935", "parent" : "040-002049577", "text" : "Harley MS 3745, ff 177r-177v: Pseudo-Mesue, Liber graduum simplicium" },{ "id" : "041-002188936", "parent" : "040-002049577", "text" : "Harley MS 3745, ff 177v-190v: Pseudo-Mesue, Grabadin or Antidotarium electarum confecionum" }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002049577 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 3745 : Medical miscellany - Contains:
- Harley MS 3745, ff 1r-74r : Pseudo-Serapion, Liber aggregatus in medicinis simplicibus
Harley MS 3745, ff 75r-158v : Yūhannā ibn Sarābiyūn (Serapion the Elder), Breviarium medicinae
Harley MS 3745, ff 159r-177r : Pseudo-Mesue, Canones
Harley MS 3745, ff 177r-177v : Pseudo-Mesue, Liber graduum simplicium
Harley MS 3745, ff 177v-190v : Pseudo-Mesue, Grabadin or Antidotarium electarum confecionum
Click here to View / search full list of parts of Harley MS 3745 - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[3746]/040-002049577
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
190 folios.
- Digitised Content:
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_3745 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1300
- End Date:
- 1324
- Date Range:
- 1st quarter of the 14th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment codex. Few parchment flaws (ff. 24, 85 restored), occasionally with old repairs (see ff. 95, 105, 175).
Dimensions: 445 x 300 mm (text space: 306-312 x 178-191 mm).
Foliation: ff. viii + 1* +190 (all unfoliated flyleaves are modern paper leaves). Modern foliation in pencil '1*, 1-190' (front parchment flyleaf foliated as 1*; f. 74v originally blank).
Collation: Gatherings (flesh-side out; now mounted on guards): i-vi10, vii8, viii6, ix-xvi10, xvii4, xviii-xix10, xx12, with alphabetical leaf signatures (most gatherings), and horizontal catchwords at centre of the lower margin of last versos.
Layout: Ruled in ink and metal point (single vertical bounding lines) for double columns of 66-68 lines. Text written below top line.
Scipt: Gothic. Written in dark brown ink. Sparse marginalia by the scribe or added by 14th- and 15th-century hands, occasionally cropped away (f. 60), and including large (ff. 4v, 24v, 42r, 42v, 49v, 76r, 131r, 161r, 164v, 186v) and small (ff. 159r-166v) maniculae, and anthropomorphic cartouches (ff. 76, 104v); the hand of the long notes on ff. 80v, 88v-89, 158v (and passim) is similar to the hand of the annotations in Harley MS 3744 (ff. 136r, 137v, and passim).
Binding: British Museum/British Library binding with the Harley arms and motto gilt-tooled at centre of covers. Covers from the old Harleian binding pasted onto modern pastedowns: gilt-lined mottled brown calf decorated with blind-rolls probably by C. Chapman: one of the two rolls is identical to Chapman's roll no. 5 in Howard M. Nixon, 'Harleian Bindings', in Studies in the Book Trade in Honour of Graham Pollard, Bibliographical Society Publications, n.s., 18 (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1975), pp. 153-94 (pl. 14). The same set of rolls were used for the bindings of Harley MS 3698 and Harley MS 3744.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: France; initials on ff. 177r and 177v were added by an Italian artist
Provenance:
Petrus Rodmullir, a parish priest of Lorsch, Germany, inscribed: 'Iste liber pertinet magistro Petro Rodmullir', early 15th century (f. 190v).
Fabrice, 'magister', of Lorsch, Germany: inscription recording the purchase of the manuscript from him in 1449 by cardinal Nicolas of Cues (see below) (f. 190v).
Nicholas of Cusa [Nicholaus von Kues, or Nicholas Cusanus] (b. 1401, d. 1464), theologian, bishop of Brixen in Tyrol in 1450 and cardinal in 1449, founder of the hospital of St Nicholas at Cues on the Mosel: left his entire library to the hospital in his last will dated 6 August 1464: inscribed, 'Iste liber pertinet ['magistro Petro Rodmullir' is crossed out] N. de cusza qui emit a magistro fabrice in lorch istum et alios plures libros in medicina et in artibus que fuerunt illius magistri petri rodmullir plebani ibidem pro 80 florenis rinensibus. 1449' (f. 190v). The manuscript is not listed in the inventory of the cardinal's possessions compiled after his death in 1464: see Mantese, 'Ein notarielles Inventar von Büchern und Wertgegenständen aus dem Nachlass des Nikolaus von Kues', Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft, 2 (1962), 86-116.
Added title 'liber Serapionis in medecinis', by a 15th-century hand, possibly that of Nicholas of Cusa (f. 1*r).
The Hospital of St Nicholas, Cues on the Moselle: inscribed, 'Liber hospitalis sancti Nicolai prope cusam' (f. 1*r).
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: purchased by Harley on 18 January 1723/4 (see Wright 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 ‘18 die Januarij, A.D. 1723/4’ (f. 1*r).
Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta, née Cavendish 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. Harley shelfmarks in brown ink '119.C.3 / 3745', and '2/III F' in pencil (f. iv recto).
- Publications:
-
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), III (1808), no. 3745.
Remigio Sabbadini, ‘Niccolò da Cusa e I conciliari di Basilea alla scoperta dei codici’, Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, 20 (1911), 3-40 (pp. 39-40).
Paul Lehmann, Mitteilungen aus Handschriften, 2, Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Abteilung, 2 (Munich: Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1930), pp. 3-55 (pp. 20, 26).
Berthold L. Ullman, 'Manuscripts of Nicholas of Cues,' Speculum: A Journal of Mediaeval Studies, 13 (1938), 194-97 (p. 196).
Rolf Winau, 'Medizinische Handschriften aus dem Besitz des Nikolaus von Kues im British Museum', Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft, 5 (1965), 137-161 (144-47, pl. 3).
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. 253, n. 10.
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. 120, 121, 148, 254, 288.
Hermann J. Hallauer, 'Habent sua fata libelli. Von der Mosel zur Themse: Handschriften des St. Nikolaus-Hospitals in der Bibliotheca Harleiana', Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellshaft, 17 (1986), 21-56 (pp. 36 n. 115, 43 no. 30).
Sigrid Krämer and Michael Bernhard, Handschriftenerbe des deutschen Mittelalters, 3 vols, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge: Deutschlands und der Schweiz, Supplement 1, ed. by Bernhard Bischoff, (Munich: Beck, 1989-1990), I, p. 159.
S. Lieberknecht, Die 'Canones' des Pseudo-Mesue. Eine mittelalterliche Purgantien-Lehre. Übersetzung und Kommentar… Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Pharmazie, 71 (Stuttgart, 1995), p. 192, no. 24.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)