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Harley MS 4196

Record Id:

040-002050033

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002050033

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000807.0x0002d8

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 4196

Title:

Expanded Northern Homily Cycle; Tractatus de legenda Sanctorum; The Gospel of Nicodemus; The Prick of Conscience

Scope & Content:

Contents:

ff. 1r-132r: Expanded Northern Homily Cycle.

ff. 133r-205r: Tractatus de legenda Sanctorum [Sermons for saints’ days].

ff. 206r-215r: The Gospel of Nicodemus.

ff. 215v-258v: The Prick of Conscience, imperfect [7 leaves missing between f. 228 and f. 229].

Decoration:

Large initials in gold on grounds of blue and pink with painted flourishes at the beginning of each new narrative section. Cadels in brown ink, including faces of animals, human faces, and leaves (ff. 134r-164v). Catchwords decorated in ink with pen-work scrolls, and in one case a ‘dragon’ (f. 172v).

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002050033", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 4196: Expanded Northern Homily Cycle; Tractatus de legenda Sanctorum; The Gospel of Nicodemus; The Prick of Conscience" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002050033

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 4196 : Expanded Northern Homily Cycle; Tractatus de legenda Sanctorum; The Gospel of Nicodemus; The Prick of Conscience

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[4189]/040-002050033

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

Languages:

English, Middle
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

-9999

End Date:

-9999

Date Range:

4th quarter of the 14th century-1st quarter of the 15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Parchment.

Dimensions: 380 x 270 mm.

Foliation: ff. 258 (+ 5 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 3 at the end); 1 unfoliated paper pastedown (f. [ii]recto); 1 unfoliated parchment stub between f. 213 and f. 214

Script: Gothic cursive.

Binding: British Library in-house; re-bound in 1983.

Custodial History:

Origin: England.

Provenance:

An unknown 16th-century English owner: erased the sermon for St Thomas of Canterbury (ff. 23v-24r); perhaps their erased ownership inscription on f. 258v.

William Brown (b. 1590/91, d. 1645?) poet: his name inscribed on f. 1r: ‘W[illia]m Browne 1622’ (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 85).

James Anderson (b. 1662, d. 1728), historiographer and antiquary: sold to Harley on 19, November 1725 (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 49).

The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (1661-1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (1689-1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts, inscribed as usual by their librarian, Humfrey Wanley 19 Die mensis Novembris, A.D. 1725' (f. 1r).

Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta Cavendish Harley, née Holles (1694-1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (1715-1785), 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, 1808-1812), III (1808), p. 124.

John B. Friedman, Northern English Books, Owners, and Makers in the Late Middle Ages (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995), p. 320 n. 33.

Richard Morris's 'Prick of Conscience': A Corrected and Amplified Reading Text, ed. by Ralph Hanna and Sarah Wood, Early English Text Society, Original Series, 342 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

C. M. Kauffmann, Biblical Imagery in Medieval England 700-1500 (London: Miller, 2003), p. 263.

Robert E. Lewis and Angus McIntosh, A Descriptive Guide to the Manuscripts of the Prick of Conscience, Medium Ævum Monographs, New Series, 12 (Oxford: Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature, 1982), pp. 66-67 [with additional bibliography].

‘The Northern Homily Cycle: The Expanded Version in MSS Harley 4196 and Cotton Tiberius E vii’, ed. by Saara Nevanlinna, 3 vols, Mémoires de la Société néophilologique de Helsinki, 38, 41, and 43 (1972-1984), I (1972): From Advent to Septuagesima, 1-303 (esp. pp. 5-11); II (1973): From Septuagesima to the Fifth Sunday after Trinity, 1-294; III (1984): From the Fifth to the Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity, 1-296.

Ruth Wilson Tryon, 'Miracles of Our Lady in Middle English Verse', Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 38 (1923), pp. 313-20 (p. 323).

H. L. D. Ward and J. A. Herbert, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols (London: British Museum, 1883-1910), II (1893), pp. 739-40, 746.

The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by C. E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), II: 1723-1726, p. 394.

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. 49, 85, 441.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Anderson, James, historiographer and antiquary, 1662-1728

Places:

England