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Harley MS 4482
- Record Id:
- 040-002050320
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002050320
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000807.0x0003d3
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100057740358.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 4482
- Title:
- Le Roman de Troie
- Scope & Content:
-
Contents:
Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Le Roman de Troie, an adaptation of Dares Phrygius, De excidio Troiae historia. The final words are lacking, as the last folio is damaged. f. 188v has later illegible inscriptions.
Decoration:
1 historiated initial in colours and gold, with a three-sided foliate bar border including a dog running after a hare, and birds (f. 1r). 14 historiated initials in colours and gold with foliate tendrils extending into the margins, occasionally with a hybrid creature (ff. 5r, 14v, 26v, 35v, 41v, 52v, 69r, 76r, 95r, 109r, 119v, 140r, 151r, 161r). Initials in red or blue with pen-flourishing in the other colour.
The subjects of the images are:
f. 1r: The author, Benoit de Sainte-Maure, writing;
f. 5r: A banquet with King Peleus and queen;
f. 14v: A ship full of knights arriving before a city;
f. 26v: Two ships fighting at sea;
f. 35v: An assembly of kings before a seated king;
f. 41v: A knight about to strike with his sword a praying king in armour;
f. 52v: Knights in full armour fighting;
f. 69r: Knights before a king seated in his tent;
f. 76r: Knights in battle on horses;
f. 95r: Knights in battle before a city;
f. 109r: Men and women praying beside a bier (of Hector?);
f. 119v: Knights in battle at the city gates ;
f. 140r: A battle scene at city gates;
f. 151r: Knights beside the body of a dead king outside a city;
f. 161r: Ships leaving a city with tents outside its walls.
The placing of historiated initials within the text is similar to Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale MS XIII C 38 (Jung Légende de Troie (1996), p. 123).
Quire numbering in Roman numerals on the verso of the last folio in each quire.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002050320", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 4482: Le Roman de Troie" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002050320 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 4482 : Le Roman de Troie - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[4476]/040-002050320
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- Parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100057740358.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- French, Middle
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1290
- End Date:
- 1310
- Date Range:
- c. 1300
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 260 x 165 mm (175 x 100 mm), written in 2 columns.
Foliation: ff. 188 (+ 4 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and 5 at the end).
Collation: Mainly in quires of 8.
Script: Gothic.
Binding: BM/BL in-house; rebound in 1975.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: France, N. (?Amiens or Arras).
Provenance:
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 (Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), pp. 253-55).
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 Augusti, A.D. 1724’ (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.
- Information About Copies:
-
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts.
Select digital coverage available for this manuscript, see Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm.
- Publications:
-
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), III (1808), no. 4482.
Harry Leigh Douglas Ward, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum 3 vols (London: British Museum, 1883-1910), I (1883), pp. 35-39.
Le Roman de Troie, par Benoît de Saint-Maure, publié d'après tous les manuscrits connus, ed. by Léopold Constans, 6 vols (Paris, 1904-1912), VI (1912), pp. 45-46 (codex 'L').
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. 253-55.
Le roman de Troie de Benoît de Sainte-Maure, ed. and trans. by Emmanuele Baumgartner (Paris: Union Générale d'Editions, 1987) [for an edition and translation of the text].
Scot McKendrick, 'La vraye histoire de Troye la grant’: Truth and romance in the late medieval story of Troy in literature and art', in Why Fakes Matter. Essays on Problems of Authenticity, ed. by Mark Jones (London: British Museum, 1992), 71-80 (p. 75, n. 4).
Marc-René Jung, La Légende de Troie en France au moyen age (Basel & Tubingen: Francke Verlag, 1996), pp. 21, 22, 24-26, 110-13.
Rosa Maria Rodriguez Porter, 'Beyond the two doors of memory: Intertextualities and Intervisualities in Thirteenth-Century Illuminated Manuscripts of the Roman de Troie and the Histoire Ancienne', in Memory and commemoration in medieval culture, ed. by Elma Brenner and others (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 68-69, n. 47.
'Medieval Francophone Literary Culture outside France', ed. by Simon Gaunt and others (2015), online at http://www.medievalfrancophone.ac.uk/browse/mss/4/manuscript.html [accessed 21.10.16].
Benoît de Sainte-Maure, The Roman de Troie, translated by Glyn S. Burgess and Douglas Kelly (Cambridge : D.S. Brewer, 2017) p. 432).
- Exhibitions:
- Troy, British Museum, London, 21 November 2019 - 8 March 2020
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)