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Harley MS 4012
- Record Id:
- 040-002049849
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002049849
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000807.0x00020c
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165168616.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 4012
- Title:
-
Collection of religious prose and verse, including The Cleansing of Man's Soul; The Charter of Our Heavenly Heritage; The Mirror of Sinners; The Twelve Degrees of Meekness; Treatise on the Apostles' Creed; Mirror of St Edmund; The Syon Pardon; Lives of St Katherine, St Margaret, and St Anne; 'St Patrick and His Purgatory'
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript contains a collection of religious Middle English prose and verse, which may have been made for and commissioned by its first known owner: Anne Wingfield (b. c. 1426, d. 1498) of East Harling, Norfolk, who wrote her (now erased) ownership inscription on a former flyleaf (f. 153r). That the manuscript may have been made for her is suggested by its inclusion of a verse life of St Anne, her name saint, and the Pardon of Syon. Anne must have hade a strong association with Syon Abbey at Isleworth, since her will describes her as a 'suster' of the Bridgettine monastery.
The items on ff. 1r-103v are also found in London, Lambeth Palace, MS 3597, a manuscript from the 3rd quarter of the 15th century that also may have been made for a woman: its first known owner was a certain Elisabeth who inscribed her name ('Elyzbeth') on f. 95r.
Contents:
ff. 1r-68v: The Cleansing of Man's Soul ('The clensynge of mans sowle').
ff. 69r-72r: The Charter of Our Heavenly Heritage ('The Charter of ouer eritage'); extracted from the Pore Caitif.
f. 73r: Four Things Be Needful ('ffoure thingis be nedefull to evere Cristen man and woman to rule theem bi to obtayne þe blisse of heven'.
ff. 73r-77r: The Mirror of Sinners ('the mirroure of sinnes').
ff. 77v-78r: Teaching of Christ to St Moll [based on the revelations of Mechtild of Hackeborn, as recorded in the Liber Specialis Gratiae], entitled: 'Theis be the wordis that ouer saueoure ihesu spake to his holy spouse and virgen Sent Moll in al thi werkis kepe iii thingis in thi mynde' [edited by Voaden, 'The Company She Keeps' (1996), pp. 57-58].
ff. 79r-83r: The Twelve Degrees of Meekness, 'Here beginneth a tretes of mekenes withoute whiche noman maie come to ane other vertu or loue of godd for hit is the grounde of all perfeccion of goodnes and vertue'.
ff. 83v-100v: Treatise on the Apostles' Creed ('Here foloing be the artikill of the faith redy for every man to rede and se'); featuring on ff. 94r-94v a poem with an appeal from Christ to Man from the Cross, beginning: 'Unkinde man take hed of mee / Loke what payne I suffer for the' [edited by Brown, Religious Lyrics (1939), p. 158; DIMEV 6111-2].
ff. 101r-102r: Chapter list for the following treatise, the Mirror of St Edmund.
ff. 103r-103v: The Mirror of Holy Church [Mirror of St Edmund]; Middle English prose translation of the Speculum Eccleise by Edmund of Abingdon, Archbishop of Canterbury; imperfect.
ff. 104r-104v: Fragmentary text on confession and penaunce, beginning: 'for remember ther also ther be many thingis þat be not exceptable before god and but if a man ever refuse them he shll never com wher god is'.
ff. 105r-105v: The Four Manners of Washings ('fowre maner of wasshingis'), imperfect at beginning.
ff. 106r-108v: Poem on the Passion, beginning: 'Ihesu the sonne of mare mylde / The secunde parsone in trinyte' [edited by Wilson, 'An Unpublished Passion Poem' (1977), 485-488; see also DIMEV 2935-1].
ff. 109r-109v: Poem on the appeal of Christ to Man from the Cross, based on John Skelton's Wofully araid [edited by Brown, Religious Lyrics (1939), pp. 156-158; see also DIMEV 808-4]; ending with an indulgence: 'Who sumever saith this devotely hathe grauntid be divers Bisshopes saing at the laste ende five pater nosters and five Aves. CCCCCC dayes of pardon'.
ff. 110r-113r: The Syon Pardon ('the pardon of the monastery of Shene whiche is Syon') [see Rand, 'The Syon Pardon' (2013), pp. 331-332, 342].
ff. 113v-114v: Treatise on Tribulation, entitled: 'Here is foling a short and a frutefull tretes how that ther was assembelid viii wise men and masters for to declare what meret tribulacioun is for manne mekely sufferd'.
ff. 115r-123v: Prose Life of St Katherine of Alexandria.
ff. 124r-130r: Prose Life of St Margaret.
ff. 130v-139v: Verse Life of St Anne [edited by Parker, Life of St Anne (1971), pp. 110-126; see also DIMEV 5016-2].
ff. 140r-151v: 'St Patrick and His Purgatory' [DIMEV 4743-1].
The manuscript contains a few later additions:
f. 152v: Copy of a quitclaim in Latin, dated to 10 July 1505, concerning Thomas Curleys, a yeoman of Wilby, Norfolk, and Peter Payn of Banham, Norfolk.
Decoration:
Ink drawing of Christ on the Cross (f. 109r). 10 large initials in gold and colours with acanthus leaves extending in the margins to form 2-3-sided partial borders (ff. 1r, 1v, 3r, 6r, 8r, 10r, 12v, 16v, 83v, 101r). Smaller initials in gold and colours with pen flourishing extending in the margins. Numerous initials in blue (sometimes with reserved designs) with red pen-flourishing. Cadels sometimes developing into a larger motif (e. g., ff. 9r, 11v, 30r, 67r, a human figure on f. 33v, a fish on f. 45v, faces on ff. 101v-102), scrolls wrapped around ascenders (e.g., ff. 50v-51r, 52r).
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
Medieval and Renaissance Women - Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002049849", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 4012: Collection of religious prose and verse, including The Cleansing of Man's Soul; The Charter of Our Heavenly Heritage; The Mirror of…" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002049849 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 4012 : Collection of religious prose and verse, including The Cleansing of Man's Soul; The Charter of Our Heavenly Heritage; The Mirror… - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[4005]/040-002049849
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- 1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100165168616.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Middle
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1460
- End Date:
- 1479
- Date Range:
- 1460s-1470s
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 280 x 195 mm (text space: 200 x 135 mm).
Foliation: ff. i* + 153 (+ 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 3 at the end); f. [iv] is a former pastedown; f. 1* is a parchment leaf; 1 unfoliated blank parchment leaf between f. 100 and f. 101; and 1 between f. 151 and f. 152; 1 unfoliated parchment stub after f. 153; 1 unfoliated paper pastedown on f. [ii]recto (bibliopgraphical notes) and f. [iii]recto (modern description on contents).
Collation: i-xix8 (ff. 1-151); indicated by catchwords and leaf signatures.
Script: Gothic (Secretary); Gothic Hybrid (Bastard Secretary).
Binding: British Museum in-house; gold-tooled black half leather binding with the Harleian arms gold stamped on the outside covers.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
Eastern England (suggested by East Midland dialect).
Provenance:
Anne Wingfield (b. c. 1426, d. 1498), daughter and heiress of Sir Robert Harling and Jane Gonvile, East Anglian resident, with connections to, among others, Sir John Fastolf and the Pastons: her ownership inscription on f. 153r 'Thys ys the boke of dame Anne Wyngefeld of Har[l]yng' [visible under ultra-violet light]; may have been made for her (see Dutton, 'Piety, Politics and Persona' (2000), 133-146 and Jenkins, 'St Katherine and Laywomen's Piety' (2003), pp. 153-170).
Thomas Rawlinson (b. 1681, d. 1725), book collector: borrowed from him in 1720 by Thomas Hearne, antiquary and diarist (bap. 1678, d. 1735), inscribed 'Lent me by Thomas Rawlinson Esq. Read over in 1720. Tho. Hearne' (f. i*recto), sold to Edward Harley in the sale of Rawlinson's manuscripts on 4 March 1734 (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), pp. 282-283).
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 ‘20 die mensis Januarij, A.D. 1721/22’ (f. 1r); inscribed 'Oxford B.H.' (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.
- Publications:
-
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: [n. pub.], 1808-12), III (1808), pp. 103-14 [no. 4012].
Carleton Brown, Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), pp. 156-58.
Arvo Kurvinen, ‘MS. Porkington 10: Description with Extracts’, Extrait du Bulletin de la Société néo-philologique de Helsinki (Finlande), Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 54:1 (1953), 33-67 (p. 52).
The Middle English Stanzaic Versions of the Life of St. Anne, ed. by Roscoe E. Parker, Early English Text Society, Original Series, 174 (London: Milford, 1928; repr. New York: Kraus Reprint, 1971), pp. 110-26.
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. 282-83.
Edward Wilson, 'A Middle English Manuscript at Coughton Court, Warwickshire, and British Library MS Harley 4012', Notes and Queries, 24:4 [CCXXII] (1977), 295-303.
Edward Wilson, 'An Unpublished Passion Poem in British Library Harley MS. 4012', Notes and Queries, 24:5 [CCXXII] (1977), 485-488.
Robert Easting, 'The Middle English 'Hearne Fragment of St Patrick's Purgatory', Notes and Queries, 35 (1988), 436-37.
Anne M. Dutton, 'Women's Use of Religious Literature in Late Medieval England' (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of York, 1995), pp. 187-224.
Rosalynn Voaden, 'The Company She Keeps: Mechtild of Hackeborn in Late-Medieval Devotional Compilations', in Prophets Abroad: The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late-Medieval England, ed. by Rosalynn Voaden (Cambridge: Brewer, 1996), pp. 51-69 (pp. 57-58).
Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs, Richard III’s Books: Ideals and Reality in the Life and Library of a Medieval Prince (Stroud: Sutton, 1997), p. 68 n.
Anne M. Dutton, 'Piety, Politics and Persona: MS Harley 4012 and Anne Harling', in Prestige, Authority and Power in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts, ed. by Felicity Riddy, York Manuscripts Conferences: Proceedings Series, 4 (York: York Medieval Press, 2000), pp. 133-46.
A. S. G. Edwards, 'Fifteenth-Century English Collections of Female Saints' Lives', The Yearbook of English Studies, 33 (2003), 131-41 (p. 138).
Jacqueline Jenkins, 'St Katherine and Laywomen's Piety: The Middle English Prose life in London, British Library, Harley MS 4012', in St Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe, ed. by Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine J. Lewis, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 8 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 153-70.
Kari Anne Rand, 'The Syon Pardon Sermon: Contexts and Texts', in Preaching the Word in Manuscript and Print in Late Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Susan Powell, ed. by Martha W. Driver and Veronica O'Mara (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 317-49 (pp. 331-32, 342).
'Harley MS 4012' in the Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450–1700 [accessed 27 October 2021].
'London, British Library, Harley 4012' in The Digital Index of Middle English Verse [=DIMEV] [accessed 28 October 2021].
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)