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Harley MS 4951
- Record Id:
- 040-002050795
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002050795
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000859.0x0001d6
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100062423556.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 4951
- Title:
-
John Halgren of Abbeville, Sermones dominicales; Roman Gradual
- Scope & Content:
-
This composite manuscript is formed of two parts that were produced separately in Southern France. The first part (ff. 1-118) was produced in the last quarter of the 12th or 3rd quarter of the 13th century and contains the sermons for Sundays attributed to John Halgren of Abbeville (d. 1237), French scholastic philosopher, papal legate, Archbishop of Besançon, and Bishop of Sabina. The second part (ff. 119-301) is a Roman Gradual produced in the last quarter of the 11th century for the cathedral of Saint-Etienne in Toulouse. Its tonary (a collection of chant melodies) has been decorated with human figures playing and dancing to music. It is one of a group of Aquitanian manuscripts that preserve the earliest and most comprehensive collections of processional Antiphons.
Contents:
ff. 1r-118v: John Halgren of Abbeville, Sermones dominicales (Sunday Sermons).
ff. 119r-301v: A Roman Gradual with neumes.
Decoration:
See Harley MS 4951, ff. 1-118 and ff. 119-301.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- England and France 700-1200 Project
Harley Collection - Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002050795", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 4951: John Halgren of Abbeville, Sermones dominicales; Roman Gradual" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} },{ "id" : "041-003391134", "parent" : "040-002050795", "text" : "Harley MS 4951, ff 1-118: John Halgren of Abbeville, Sermones dominicales" },{ "id" : "041-003391137", "parent" : "040-002050795", "text" : "Harley MS 4951, ff 119-301: Roman Gradual" }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002050795 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 4951 : John Halgren of Abbeville, Sermones dominicales; Roman Gradual - Contains:
- Harley MS 4951, ff 1-118 : John Halgren of Abbeville, Sermones dominicales
Harley MS 4951, ff 119-301 : Roman Gradual
Click here to View / search full list of parts of Harley MS 4951 - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[4951]/040-002050795
- 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_100062423556.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1050
- End Date:
- 1224
- Date Range:
- 3rd quarter of the 11th century -1st quarter of the 13th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: ff. 1r-118v: 350 x 245 mm (text space: 285 x 175 mm, in 2 columns); ff. 119r-301v: 350 x 260 mm (text space: 250 x 145 mm, including neumes).
Foliation: ff. 301 ( + 2 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and 1 unfoliated original parchment flyleaf + 3 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the end); f. 119 is a former flyleaf; 2 unfoliated parchment pages between f. 118 and f. 119 (f. [118a] and f. [118b]); 1 fragment of a torn parchment page between f. 301 and f. [302]; a label with Harley's shelf-mark ('4951') pasted on f. [iii] recto; parchment repairs and loss of text on ff. 288, 289, 293-296, 299-301; medieval foliation in roman numerals on ff. 119-301.
Binding: Post-1600. Gold-tooled red half leather binding with Harley’s bookplate gold-stamped on the upper and lower covers, the spine inscribed in gold at the British Museum: ‘DE ABBAVILLA. SERMONES DOMINICALES. GRADUAL OF THE CHURCH OF TOULOUSE’; marbled endpapers.
- Custodial History:
-
Provenance:
The two separate parts of this manuscript were joined together in Harley's library:
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 ‘22 die Junij, A.D. 1726’ (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, https://bl.uk/manuscripts/.
Select digital coverage available for this manuscript; see the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/.
- Publications:
-
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), III (1808), p. 231.
Meyer Schapiro, ‘From Mozarabic to Romanesque in Silo’, Art Bulletin, 21 (1939), 313-374 (p. 340).
Le graduel romain: édition critique par les moines de Solesmes, 2 vols (Solesmes: Abbaye Saint-Pierre, 1957), II: Les sources, p. 64.
Werner Bachmann, Die Anfänge des Streichinstrumentenspiels (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1964), p. 190, pl. 38.
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. 337 n. 3.
Michel Huglo, Les tonaires, inventaire, analyse, comparaison, Publications de la Société française de musicologie, 3rd series, 2 (Paris: Heugel & Cie, 1971), pp. 134-35, 138-39, 153, n. 1, 398, 401.
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. 162, 330.
Charlotte D. Roederer, 'Can We Identify an Aquitanian Chant Style?', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 27:1 (1974), 75-99 (pp. 76-78, 84-93, 95).
Ruth Steiner, 'The Music for a Cluny Office of Saint Benedict', in Monasticism and the Arts, ed. by Timothy G. Verdon (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1984), pp. 81-113 (pp. 101, 103, 108) [reprinted as Ruth Steiner, Studies in Gregorian Chant (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999)].
David Hiley, Western Plainchant: A Handbook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. ii, 597.
Walter Cahn, Romanesque Manuscripts: The Twelfth Century, 2 vols (London: Miller, 1996), II: Catalogue, p. 43.
Theodore Karp, Aspects of Orality and Formularity in Gregorian Chant (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998), pp. 63, 66, 83-84, 150-53, 164-68, 172-74, 191, 231, 253, 322, 405, 410, 446-47, n. 2.
David G. Hughes, ‘Guido’s Tritus: an Aspect of Style’, in The Study of Medieval Chant: Paths and Bridges, East and West, ed. by Peter Jeffery (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2001), pp. 211-25 (pp. 214-19, 222, 223).
Ruth Steiner, ‘On the Verses of the Offertory Elegerunt’, in The Study of Medieval Chant: Paths and Bridges, East and West, ed. by Peter Jeffery (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2001), pp. 283-301 (pp. 286, 290, 293).
Nicholas Bell, Music in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2001), p. 19.
- 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.