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Harley MS 3864

Record Id:

040-002049700

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002049700

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000807.0x000177

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 3864

Title:

Bede, In epistolas catholicas

Scope & Content:

Contents:

ff. 3r-92v: Bede, In epistolas catholicas; with marginal notes by Symeon of Durham (fl. c. 1090–c. 1128), Benedictine monk and historian.

The manuscript contains a few additions:

f. 1v: A title inscription: 'Epistola [added: Iacobi]'; added in the 12th century.

f. 1v: A title inscription: 'De exposicione venerabilis Bede presbet[e]r[i] sup[er] ep[isto]las cano[n]icas'; added in the 15th century.

f. [1a]recto: A paper pastedown with on its recto and verso lemmata for a (?) glossary or vocabulary, including, written in a 15th-century hand, the words: 'Panis', 'Paradisus', 'Pars', 'Passio'. The recto features an imperfect inscription in a different 15th-century hand: 'Eccl[es]ia seiconis erat fundata hiis [text missing] fuerunt ab[ba]to petro ad p[rae]dica[n]du[m] [text missing] metropolis fancie i[n] honore b[ea]ti [text missing] h[? ic] lyra sup[er] Esai c[apitulo] 11o i[n] fine'.

ff. 2v, 94r: Two leaves with text (on one side only) from a 12th-century (pre-1175) liturgical manuscript: the first one (f. 2v) containing a fragment of liturgical texts for Easter Sunday, beginning: '[Deus] qui hodierna die per unigenitum tuum'; and the other one (f. 94r) contianing a fragment of liturgical texts for the Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday, beginning: '[O]mnipotens sempiterne [deus cuius iudi]cio universa fundantur'.

Decoration:

Large initials in combinations of blue, red, and green with foliate decoration (ff. 3r, 26r, 45r, 58r, 84v, 86r, 87v). Small initials in red or green. Rubrics in red. Added drawings of human faces (e.g. f. 76v) and a knot (f. 83v) in brown ink. The 12th-century text on ff. 2v, 94r, has some simple red, blue, or green initials and rubrics in red.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002049700", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 3864: Bede, In epistolas catholicas" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002049700

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 3864 : Bede, In epistolas catholicas

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[3856]/040-002049700

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:

1100

End Date:

1149

Date Range:

1st half of the 12th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

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Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Parchment.

Dimensions: 275 x 185 (text space: 200 x 135 mm, in 2 columns).

Foliation: ff. 94 (+ 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 4 at the end); ff. 1, 2 and 94 are parchment leaves that were added to this manuscript as flyleaves; ff. 2v and 94 have been taken from a 12th-century (?) missal; f. 93 is a parchment leaf; 1 unfoliated paper pasted onto f. 2r (f. [1a]); all quires have been mounted onto paper guards.

Script: Protogothic. This scribe also wrote Harley MS 4688 ff. 7 line 7/8-end, and there are numerous subject notes in the margins written by Symeon of Durham, according to information supplied by Michael Gullick, which we gratefully acknowledge.

Binding: British Museum in-house. Rebound on 10 November 1966.

Custodial History:

Origin:

Northern England (Durham).

Provenance:

The Benedictine cathedral priory of St Cuthbert, Durham: its ownership inscription in a 13th-century hand on f. 1r: 'Liber Sancti Cuthberti'; and, in a (?) 14th-century hand on f. 1r: 'Beda sup[er] ep[isto]las cano[n]icas [...] co[mmun]i libraria mo[na]chor[um] dunelm[ensis]' (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 142).

'Robert Houde [or Hoide]', 15th-century: inscribed a practice alphabet and his name on f. 51v: 'by me Roberte Ho[u/i]de' (not in Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972)).

Thomas Tempest (d. 1743), 4th baronet, county Durham: his name inscribed on f. 3r: 'S[ir] Tho[mas] Temp[es]t Baronet' (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 325).

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. 88.

Michael Gullick, 'The Hand of Symeon of Durham: Further Observations on the Durham Martyrology Scribe', in Symeon of Durham: Historian of Durham and the North, ed. by David W. Rollason, Studies in North-Eastern History, 1 (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 1998), pp. 14-31 (pp. 17, 27 n. 20).

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. 73.

Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. by N. R. Ker, Supplement to the Second Edition, ed. by Andrew G. Watson, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 15 (London: The Royal Historical Society, 1987), p. 30.

Anne Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts in Northumbria in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Woodbridge: Brewer, 2003), p. 170, fig. 64.

Registrum anglie de libris doctorum et auctorum veterum, ed. by Richard H. & Mary A. Rouse, and R.A.B. Mynors, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 2 (London: British Library in association with the British Academy, 1991), p. 98.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Bede the Venerable, Saint, c 673-735,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000120962352,
   see also http://viaf.org/viaf/61539765
Symeon of Durham, fl 1090-1128,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000080044353

Places:

Durham, England
Northern England