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Harley MS 4733

Record Id:

040-002050576

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002050576

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000859.0x0000fb

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 4733

Title:

Miscellany of Middle English verse containing 'Parvus Cato' and 'Cato Major' by Benedict Burgh, 'Proverbs of Old Philosophers' and 'Destruction of Jerusalem' ('Titus and Vespasian')

Scope & Content:

Contents:

1. (ff. 3r-30r): 'Parvus Cato' and 'Cato Major': the Disticha Catonis, translated into English verse by Benedict Burgh (d. in or before 1483). See Boffey and Edwards 2005, nos. 854 and 3955. For an edition of the Benedict Burgh translation, see Fumio Kuriyagawa, Paruus Cato Magnus Cato: Translated by Benet Burgh, Seijo English Monographs, 13 (Tokyo: Seijo University, 1974). Incipit of 'Parvus Cato' (f. 3r): 'Cum animam adverterem quam plurimos homines in via morum graviter errare'. Explicit of 'Parvus Cato' (f. 4r): 'love Every why[g]t And this shall the a vaunce Explicit'. Incipit of 'Cato Major' (f. 4r): 'Si deus est animus nobis ut carmina dicunt'. Explicit of 'Cato Major' (f. 30r): 'Naught causeth but simpelnes of witt / [E]xplicit liber catonis compositus per mangistrum Benedictum Burgh vicarium de Maldon et cetera'.

2. (ff. 30r-40r): 'Proverbs of Old Philosophers': proverbs in English verse, attributed to various saints, prophets and authorities. See Boffey and Edwards 2005, no. 3501. For an edition of the poem, see The Minor Poems of the Vernon Manuscript, Part 2, ed. by Frederick J. Furnivall, Early English Text Society, original series 117 (1901; repr. 1973), pp. 522-53. Incipit (f. 30r): 'The wyse man in his boke hat thys seying / that the begynnyng of good lyvyng / Over all thyng ys god to drede / And hym to wurship with all oure spede'. Explicit (f. 40r): 'Now prayth all with devocyon / For hym þat made thys lesson / that he through oure oryson / May com to salvacion / And god that made all thynge / [G]eve us all good endyng'.

3. (ff. 40v-127r): 'The Destruction of Jerusalem' ('Titus and Vespasian'). See Boffey and Edwards 2005, no. 1881 and Herbert 1905. Incipit (f. 40v): 'Lesteneth alle þat be alyve / Boþe cristen men & wyve'. Explicit: 'And god graunt us all there to be / Amen amen par Charite / Explicit hic sedes vel obsidium de / Civitate Jerusalem / Jhesus est Amor meus'. Occasional marginal notes in both English and Latin are some by the scribe (red ink) and some by a 15th century reader.

4. (ff. 128r-v): A late 12th-century fragment of the Brut in Anglo-Norman is bound as a flyleaf with the reverse as a recto. Wormholes indicate this folio has been bound with Harley 4733 for a long while. See Imelmann 1906.

Decoration:

Two decorated initials in blue with red pen-flourishing (ff. 3r and 4r). Small initials in blue (ff. 3r-4r); small initials in red (ff. 30r-40v). Rubrics in red (ff. 3r-40v).

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002050576", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 4733: Miscellany of Middle English verse containing 'Parvus Cato' and 'Cato Major' by Benedict Burgh, 'Proverbs of Old Philosophers' and…" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002050576

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 4733 : Miscellany of Middle English verse containing 'Parvus Cato' and 'Cato Major' by Benedict Burgh, 'Proverbs of…

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[4732]/040-002050576

Container:

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

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

Languages:

Anglo-Norman
English, Middle
French
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1450

End Date:

1499

Date Range:

2nd half of the 15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: paper and parchment.

Dimensions: 210 x 130 mm (text space: 160 x 95mm).

Foliation: ff. 128 (ff. [i-ii] and [130-32] are unfoliated modern paper flyleaves, of which ff. [i] and [132] are marbled on one side; f. [iii] is an unfoliated parchment flyleaf; f. 128 is a parchment flyleaf made from a leaf cut from another manuscript).

Script: Gothic cursive.

Binding: British Museum/British Library in-house binding.

Custodial History:

Origin:

England

Provenance:

Added text, 15th century: excerpt from the 'Libro Bruti' (f. 127v).

John Pynnyngton, recorded as master of the King's School in Worcester in 1487 (see Alec MacDonald, A History of the King’s School Worcester (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1936), p. 16): inscribed with 'Master John Penyngton schole master of Worcestur ys possessed of thys booke' (f. 2v).

John Lyenell, 15th century: inscribed with his name (f. 1v).

English inscription, 1553 or later: 'Thys Indenture made the ijus day off february in the vj ere of oure soferant lorde king Edward By the grace king off England france and Irelan[d]'.

John Bland, 16th century: inscribed with his name (ff. 1r, 127r, 127v).

John Pygyn, 16th or 17th century: inscribed with his name (ff. 1r-2v, 127v).

John Russel, 16th or 17th century: inscribed with his name (f. 1v, 127v).

Latin inscriptions, reproducing the first lines of the Disticha Catonis, 17th century (f. 2r).

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.

Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta Cavendish, 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. 197 (no. 4733).

Max Förster, 'Die Burghsche Cato-Paraphrase', Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Litteraturen, 115 ( 1905), 298-323 (p. 299).

Titus and Vespasian, or, the Destruction of Jerusalem, in Rhymed Couplets, ed. by John A. Herbert, Roxburghe Club, 146 (London, 1905).

R. Imelmann, Layamon: Versuch über seine Quellen (Berlin: 1906), p. 111.

Carleton Brown and Rossell Hope Robbins, The Index of Middle English Verse (New York: Columbia, 1943), nos. 854, 1881, 3501, and 3955.

Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), p. 447.

Gisela Guddat-Figge, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Middle English Romances, Münchener Universitäts-Schriften Philosophische Fakultät Texte und Untersuchungen zur Englischen Philologie, ed. by Helmut Gneuss and Wolfgang Weiss, 4 (Munich: Wilhem Fink, 1976), no. 51.

Peter Damian-Grint, ‘A 12th-century Anglo-Norman Brut fragment (MS BL Harley 4733, f.128)’, Anglo-Norman Anniversary Essays, ed. by Ian Short, Anglo-Norman Text Society, Occasional Publications Series, 2 (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1993), 87-104.

Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards, A New Index of Middle English Verse (London: British Library, 2005), nos. 854, 1881, 3501, and 3955.

Maria Careri, Christine Ruby and Ian Short, Livres et écritures en français et en occitan au XIIe siècle: Catalogue illustré (Rome: Viella, 2011), no. 41.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Bentinck, Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Portland, née Harley, collector of art and natural history specimens and patron of arts and sciences, 11 Feb 1715-17 Jul 1785,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000115857160,
   see also http://viaf.org/viaf/2356861
Burgh, Benedict, clerk and translator, d in or before 1483,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000077333971
Harley, Edward, second earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts, 2 Jun 1689-16 Jun 1741,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000108078249,
   see also http://viaf.org/viaf/160524259
Harley, Henrietta Cavendish, Countess of Oxford and Mortimer, née Holles, patron of architecture, 4 Feb 1694-9 Dec 1755,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000030125833,
   see also http://viaf.org/viaf/6045563

Related Material:

Entry in A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-1812), III (1808), p. 197 (no. 4733):

'A book of vellum and paper intermixed, containing; XV.

1. Cato's Distichs, in Latin, with a translation in English verse subjoined to each. At the end, "Explicit liber Catonis, compositus per magistrum Benedictum Burgh, Vicarium de Malden," &c.

2. A collection of moral Sentences in Verse, in divisions of four, six, & eight lines, iwth the name of an author from whom the sentence is taken prefixed to each. Probably by the same author.

3. A very long poem, in couplet Verse, on the death of Christ, & the destruction of Jerusalem.

It begins, "Listeneth alle þat ben alyve / Boþe cirsten men & wyve / I shal yow tellen a wondur cas / how Ihus crist yhaten was / Al of þe Jewes fel & kene / And þ^t was sethen on hem ysene."

It ends, "Now yblessyd be our lord so hende / Here is the story ybrougt to an ende / Yblessyd mot the all now be / Of Jhu crist in trinite / þat his deth han now Iwroken / As I have before ispoken / And eke I hope þat þey han I wys / All to haer mede hevyn blysse / And God graunt us all there to be / Amen, amen, per charite."

"Explicit hic sedes et (scr. ut) obsidium de civitate Jerusalem. Jhs est Amor meus."

Some leaves appear to be deficient or transposed towards the end. the book is perhaps older than the 15^th Century, or early in it'.