Hard-coded id of currently selected item: . JSON version of its record is available from Blacklight on e.g. ??
Metadata associated with selected item should appear here...
Harley MS 3883
- Record Id:
- 040-002049719
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002049719
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000807.0x00018a
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100059463724.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 3883
- Title:
-
Flavius Josephus, Antiquitates iudaicae
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript contains the Antiquitates iudaicae (Jewish Antiquities) by the Roman-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (b. 37, d. 100).
Contents:
1r-306r: Flavius Josephus, Antiquitates iudaicae, beginning: ‘Hystoriam scribere disponentibus non una nec eandem’.
Decoration:
Large initials in blue, red, green, or pale brown with reserved lines, often with red, green or pale-brown pen-flourishing. Smaller coloured initials or arabesque initials in red, blue or green with reserved lines or foliate decoration, and occasionally in green with red penwork, in red with blue penwork, or in pale brown with red penwork. Capitals in red.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- England and France 700-1200 Project
Harley Collection - Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002049719", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 3883: Flavius Josephus, Antiquitates iudaicae" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002049719 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 3883 : Flavius Josephus, Antiquitates iudaicae - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[3875]/040-002049719
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- A parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100059463724.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1175
- End Date:
- 1199
- Date Range:
- 4th quarter of the 12th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
Please request the physical items you need using the online collection item request form.
Digitised items can be viewed online by clicking the thumbnail image or digitised content link.
Readers who have registered or renewed their pass since 21 March 2024 can request physical items prior to visiting the Library by completing
this request form.
Please enter the Reference (shelfmark) above on the request form.If your Reader Pass was issued before this date, you will need to visit the Library in London or Yorkshire to renew it before you can request items online. All manuscripts and archives must be consulted at the Library in London.
This catalogue record may describe a collection of items which cannot all be requested together. Please use the hierarchy viewer to navigate to individual items. Some items may be in use or restricted for other reasons. If you would like to check the availability, contact our Reference Services team, quoting the Reference (shelfmark) above.
- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 345 x 270 mm (text space: 260 x 190 mm, in 2 columns).
Foliation: ff. 306 (+ 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 3 at the end).
Script: Protogothic.
Binding: British Museum/British Library in-house; marbled end papers.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: France.
Provenance:
Gulielmus Bourbon, Dominican monk, 2nd half of the 13th century: added an inscription recording his gift of the manuscript to a Dominican convent (see below): 'Explicit Josephus in libro Antiquitatum quem Emit venerabilis religiosus frater guill[el]mus bourbo[n] [con]ventus ?nivernensis/?invernensis filius nativus fratrum p[re]dicatorum. Et hunc dicto co[n]ventui dedit pro suo anniversario p[er]petuo' (f. 306r).
? A Dominican convent, perhaps in Nevers or Inverness, 2nd half of the 13th century: the name of the convent in the donation inscription is not clear: 'conventus nivernensis' or 'conventus invernensis'. (f. 306r).
An unidentified late-14th century owner: added a historiated initial (f. 1r).
? 'William', unidentified owner, in the 15th century: inscribed with his name 'Willelmus' in a 15th-century hand (f. 184v). He may also have added the inscription, now erased, on f. 255v.
Unidentified owners: added pencil drawings of birds, an animal, a star (ff. 57r-58r), interlace (f. 65r), a stag (f. 117v), grotesques (ff. 121v, 125v), an oak tree with acorns and a bird (f. 127v), ink drawing of a bearded male head (f. 131v), in various medieval hands.
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 1972): sold to Edward Harley on 13 August 1724.
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. 1).
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), p. 94 (no. 3883).
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).
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. 77, 250, 253-55.
- 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.