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Harley MS 3871
- Record Id:
- 040-002049707
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002049707
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000807.0x00017e
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 3871
- Title:
- Works on rhetoric
- Scope & Content:
-
ff. 1r-57v: Pseudo-Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herennium (Rhetoric for Herennius), bk 2.
ff. 58r-122v: Cicero, De inventione (On Invention), bk 4.
ff. 123r-143r: Cicero, De partitione oratoria (On the Classification of Rhetoric).
ff. 144r-156r: Pseudo-Cicero, Synonyma (Synonyms).
ff. 157r-172v: Gasparinus de Bergamo, Exempla exordiorum (Examples of Prologues).
ff. 173r-183v: Gasparinus de Bergamo, Precepta de elocutione (Lessons in Elocution).
The manuscript was probably written by the scribe of Harley 4106 and 4921 and these manuscripts, which are similar in size, style of decoration, and all other particulars (including similar creases in the parchment), may have originally formed a single book or set of volumes.
Harley 4105 has a colophon of 1462; Harley 4921 has a colophon of 1463; Harley 4106 lacks a colophon. The manuscripts have alphabetical quire signatures: A, B, C, etc.
According to unpublished notes of A. C. de la Mare at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the manuscript was possibly made in Milan in the 1st quarter of the 15th century. Barzizius died in 1431, so if de la Mare is correct, it would have been written within his lifetime.
Horizontal catchwords.
f. 143 is written by a different scribe in a humanistic hand.
ff. 143v and 156v are blank.
Decoration:
1 large initial in colours and gold with an unidentified coat of arms and acanthus extensions (f. 1r). Another large initial in colours and gold (f. 58r). Large, medium, and small intials in red with blue penwork decoration, and in blue with red penwork decoration. Some brown initials with brown penwork decoration. Paraphs in blue.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002049707", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 3871: Works on rhetoric" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002049707 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 3871 : Works on rhetoric - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[3863]/040-002049707
- 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:
- 1400
- End Date:
- 1424
- Date Range:
- 1st quarter of the 15th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Material: Parchment.
Dimensions: 300 x 210 mm (text space: 180 x 120 mm).
Foliation: ff. 183 (+ 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and at the end).
Script: Semi-humanistic.
Binding: Post-1600. Mottled brown calf with gold tooling.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
Italy, N. (Milan?).
Provenance:
Unidentified arms of a bisected shield; silver on top and green below (f. 1r).
Johann Georg Graevius (b. 1632, d. 1703), German classical scholar and critic: possibly sold to Wilhelm in 1703 with the rest of his library (see Wright 1972).
Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine (b. 1658, d. 1716), owner of a library in Düsseldorf: bought the entire Graevius library in 1703 (see Clark 1891; Wright 1972).
Giovanni Giacomo Zamboni (d. 1753), resident in London for the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt (c. 1723-1753), friend of Michael Mattaire, the classical scholar and historian of printing: bought the Wilhelm library sometime before 1724 through Johann Büchels (b. 1659, d. 1738): sold by him to Edward Harley on 6 August 1724 (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 ‘6 die Augusti, A.D. 1724’ (f. [iir]).
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), III (1808), no. 3871.
A. C. Clark, 'The Library of J. G. Graevius', The Classical Review, 5 (1891), 365-72 (p. 369).
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. 68 n. 1.
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. 169, 367.
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. 177.
Arend Hendrik Van der Laan, 'Antonius Liber Susatensis-Familiarum Epistolarum Compendium', Humanistica Lovaniensia: Journal of Neo-Latin Studies, 44 (1995), 137-167 (p. 150 n. 51).
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)